“Oops” – one of the best words in the English language
From a very early age, most of us were taught that making mistakes was wrong, that making mistakes was the basis for criticism and punishment.
Our well-intentioned parents and teachers (and all those people who had a major influence in our young lives), criticised and punished us in the hope that we wouldn’t make a mistake next time. Sadly, the lesson backfired. Why?
Because kids work out very quickly that the best way not to make mistakes is to not do anything. Why would we attempt to do something, knowing we may make a mistake and be criticised and punished?
So, in many cases, our fear of being punished stopped us from exploring and stepping outside of our ‘comfort zones’. They called this criticism and punishment Discipline. The problem was, we were really raised with Fear but it was given the acceptable name of Discipline.
Now, Discipline is a wonderful thing; learning Discipline leads to Self Discipline. It can be such a positive process.
As you know, in all of The Centre Within workshops, when we talk about our early training, I refer to the work of John Holt and read an excerpt from a summary of his book “How Children Fail”. John Holt considered the great difference between so-called bright children and not-so-bright children had nothing to do with their intelligence – it was the amount of Fear they experienced in their lives.
Are we still raising our kids with ‘criticism and punishment’? And if we do, is that what we mean when we say we use Discipline. This has been going on for thousands of years – it’s only now we are starting to really talk about it and, thank goodness, do something about it.
These days, as adults, when we make a mistake, how do we react? Do we go back into the old reminders of “wrong again, wrong again, wrong again” that we remember as children and feel awful, as we did then?
Try this. When we make a mistake (as we all do because we are all human!) rather than berating and guilt-tripping ourselves, we can say: “Oops, I made a mistake. Next time I’ll do it better.” (or ‘differently’, or ‘this way’, or whatever….) Even though we say this, we may still feel that awful pain inside that says we’ve ‘done something wrong’, but at least we’re now treating our mistake as a learning experience.
Making mistakes is the way we learn – we know that. What a great idea to teach our kids that wonderful word, “Oops”.
When I run the three-hour Parenting Workshop, we talk about how we have been trained, so that we can understand where we are coming from and why we ‘do what we do’. We talk about other cultures and the different ways they raise their kids, and we explore what works and what doesn’t in other societies and in our own.
The feedback I receive is very satisfying, and the comments I hear so often from parents are about how effective the word “Oops” has been in their family life. They say, even if they learned only one thing from the workshop, it was about the use of the word “Oops”.
It’s a little word – but what a powerful effect it can have.
Have a wonderful month.
Love and laughter,
