Avoid This Parenting Trap: The Hidden Dangers of Taking Things Personally #transformativeparenting

Many mistakes that parents make with discipline are the result of them taking their children's behavior personally. Often this involves parents interpreting difficult behaviors as being either willful or disrespectful. Most child behavior is not personal at all. It is mostly instinct and impulse and imitation. There is almost always a perfectly reasonable explanation for how they're behaving. For instance, and I'll cover this more later, when you don't take time to connect with your child before trying to get them to do something, they are almost guaranteed to ignore you or defy you. This is an instinct they have when they don't feel connected to you. When we take this behavior personally, we aren't seeing what's really going on and we're making it about us rather than our child. And when this happens, we're not going to make good decisions. Parents who learn to not take their children's behavior personally and rather to get curious about what's going on and take responsibility for the situation are going to automatically become much more effective.