The 6 Big Mistakes in Parenting – Mistake #3
When being right is the goal, very little progress is ever made.
I remember a class I used to give in the office of an extremely wealthy man, every week I would find myself battling some idea or concept with him. I don’t know why he kept asking me to come back, he argued with everything I said. One week I showed up and he looked awful, and in as gentle a way as I could put it, I asked him how he felt. "Why do you ask?" he responded. "Well, to be quite honest," I gingerly replied, "You don’t look too good, I think you should have yourself checked out."
To my amazement, he didn’t argue, he simply made an appointment with his doctor. When it comes to health, any criticism, any insight, any advice from anyone, was taken into consideration.
However, when it comes to our children we tend to get defensive, go into denial, argue and sometimes will get extremely offended by any comment about them that isn’t positive.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
An old friend of mine would ask me repeatedly whenever I would talk to his children, "Tell me what you think their problems are?"
He would constantly ask this of me. Compliments he didn’t need.
We all know children that have issues, but we are also very reluctant to tell their parents they need help. Unless you put it out there that you are not one of those parents, no one is going to tell you anything.
In Judaism we say, "A wise man learns from other’s mistake, a fool has to learn from his own."
If our attitude on our health were the same as it is with our children, most of us would be dead by now.