This week I sat down to talk to a mother of three, whose children are now grown (two are married). Whenever I need some great advice, I always turn to her. Her experiences and the way I see how her children have turned out are really inspiring to me.
While I had several things on my mind, one of them in particular was concerning a parenting decision that my husband and I had made. It was one of those decisions where you ended up with a lack of peace. Deep down inside it has been eating away at me, the fact that I might have messed up.
When I shared the specifics I could see this look cross her face, where she was trying to think about how she was going to say what would come next. With as much grace as she could conjure up, she told me the truth…yes, I had made a bad parenting decision.
Now how you would handle someone telling you that a decision you had made was wrong? Even if you knew deep down inside, it still isn’t easy to hear someone else say it. But this is truthful parenting and as difficult as it can be to hear, I also know it is necessary.
What I love about this woman is that she didn’t just leave it at that, that I had made a wrong decision. She followed it up with her reasons for it. But then she also shared how she had made her fair share of mistakes as a parent and all we can do is learn from them. In other words, she was truthful but she wasn’t judgmental.
Sometimes we are afraid to be truthful about parenting issues. It can be a very sensitive thing for parents. But we have to be willing to hear the truth. That is the making of a teachable person.
And if you are the one who has decided to show some truthful parenting toward someone else, do it with grace. Don’t condemn or criticize. Choose your words carefully. Let the other person know you aren’t judging them and you might even mention a mistake or two that you have made in parenting. Because guess what? We all have made them and we will continue to.
What do you think about this kind of truthful parenting?
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