Yeah I don’t get this.. glad I don’t have kids. I mean what are you supposed to say?
it’s about the context. if a kid feels bad about doing something, they are unlikely to do it again unless they feel like they have to or if they don’t know another way to get it done. children are just small humans; they don’t like feeling bad/guilty/etc. any more than anyone else does. so if a kid comes forward and says ‘I did this bad thing and I feel bad about it’ and you scold them for doing that thing that they already feel bad about, then you are effectively just scolding them for coming forward. if the kid already feels bad, they don’t need an adult to tell them they should feel bad. in reality, the kid was probably coming forward about it because they wanted the adult to explain how to make it right, or how to do it properly.
Thank you, this helps. I like kids but being autistic sometimes it’s confusing because here in don’t know what the script is.
An appropriate script could be:
Telling the kid that it is very brave of them to come forward and admit that they did something wrong.
Having a conversation to find out why they did the bad thing. Sometimes there’s an underlying reason that needs to be addressed like ‘I’m worried the other kids think I’m not cool enough so I broke a rule’ or ‘I was mad at my sister because she called me fat so I broke her toy’, etc. These conversations might be more important than the bad thing.
Telling the kid that we all make bad decisions sometimes and while we should try not to do that again, making a bad decision doesn’t mean we’re bad forever.
Telling the kid that the best way to feel less bad about it is to try to make things right. Did they secretly take mom’s piece of cake? Maybe we can go bake a new piece of cake together and give it to mom. (The point here is not to make the kid really produce something of equal value to what they stole/broke/etc. A child often can not do that. The point is to practice what fixing the damage you have done looks like).
Finishing the conversation with supportive words and maybe a hug, depending on the child and your relationship to that child. Above all the goal is making sure the child leaves the conversation feeling happy that they chose to come forward and committed to doing so again if they mess up in the future.
