Chapter 30 Healing your child's emotional wounds

When Daniel tells his mother that he was insulted and pushed by the driver of the school bus, it is not the mother's responsibility to find the driver's motives for doing so, nor to make excuses for the driver. Provide emotional first aid: "That must have been embarrassing for you." "You must feel humiliated." "That must make you very angry." "You must have hated him very much at that time." Such a statement would show Daniel that his mother understood his anger, hurt, and humiliation, and would show Daniel that she was there when he needed her.Just as parents immediately provide physical first aid to their children when they fall and are injured, parents also need to learn to provide mental first aid to their children when they are emotionally injured.

Without exception, children learn from the environment in which they live.If they live with criticism, they don't learn to be responsible, they learn to condemn themselves, they learn to look for faults in others; they learn to doubt their own judgment, belittle their own abilities, and doubt the intentions of others.And most importantly, they learned to constantly anticipate impending doom and live with it. The easiest way to make a child feel that something is wrong is with criticism.Criticism makes them smaller and smaller in their own minds.Children need information that is not demeaning, not criticism.

A mum who watched her seven-year-old son Steven spoon almost an entire can of chocolate pudding into an oversized bowl was about to accuse him: "You're so selfish! You only think of yourself! It's not at home. only you!" But she already knew that this kind of qualitative evaluation was useless, and pointing out his bad personality qualities to the child would not make him a more loving person.Instead of those qualifying words, she said something non-derogatory: "Son, the pudding is for four." "Oh, sorry," Steven replied, "I don't know, I'll put some back. "