Many times I hear parents scolding their little ones for their perceived “bad” behavior. While at the park, a Mom was yelling over to her 2 1/2 year old, “If you don’t come over here right now, right this moment, you’ll get a spanking—and you’re not going to like that!”I’m not an adherent on rebuking my child angrily for her behavior. It simply seems unproductive. But, that’s easier- said-then-done. One day this week, my attitude was put to the test. When we think an activity should go in a certain direction and it doesn’t, many times we lose our cool and get angry, scolding our little ones for the perceived slight to our time—which we view as very important.My daughter asked for milk with her lunch and after pouring her some, she took the cup (which was about 30% full) over to the dining room table. She climbed onto “Daddy’s chair” and proceeded to place the cup down. As she let go of the cup it flipped from her hand, bounced on the table, spilling its contents across the surface. It soaked not only the cloth place mats, but any papers within proximity (yes, our dining room table doubles as a desktop sometimes).I could feel the trembling of annoyance shoot through my body, as I began to exclaim, “HONEY ...!”But I stopped. For a nanosecond of a moment, I looked at my little one’s face and she was as surprised as I was. I refocused away from myself onto her and it hit me at that moment—she didn’t do anything to me. She was trying to be a conscientious child, at her level. It was an attempt to do things well and if I were to scold that, I would be showing her that her intention to learn was really a nuisance to me. So, I shifted my knee-jerk response of annoyance to: parent-who-needs-to-show-his-kid-how-to-accomplish-cleaning-up-after a spill. The act of spilling has already occurred, why scold when it wasn’t done maliciously? Why not simply help her learn how to clean it up?So, I grabbed an absorbent towel and showed her the rudiments of slowly wiping up a spilled liquid (they tend to rush and smear). As I helped her clean, I was understanding that children are going to make (what we may call) mistakes as they are on the road to learning. Now, we can help them on their road by showing them where they erred and how to do it better or we can turn that road into a minefield by adding our unconscious negative emotions into the mix.One road reinforces our own weaknesses and throws them onto our children.The other one bypasses those faults by focusing on our child’s well-being.I guess the idiom, “there’s no use crying over spilled milk,” is relevant here. Once the act is done by our little ones, is there really any reason to add scolding to the mix or might it be better for our own growth to move past ourselves to their best interest?all content The New Parent © 2007