Also consider your feelings behind the response like if you respond in a way that you think is calm but you see a thing inside and you have all this boiling anger, then it doesn't matter how calm you may feel on the outside. Part of that energy is going to be sentenced. So really, think about not just what you think your outward responses are, but what your inward responses to your child's mistakes and errors are. So when we consider it, we will look at those negative emotions, do we respond with anger, irritation, impatience, concern or do we become worried?
Your whole future is gonna go downhill from here. It's not always just anger and irritation. It can be concerning or it can be worrying. Those come across to our children, they'll receive that often as they're not good enough. They aren't capable, if we're worried or concerned that they're not capable. The sense that we give them and that without them being capable, maybe they're not worthy of our love? I mean, if we're angry and irritated or frustrated, the same feelings often.
Our children might think that they can't have their parents' love without having those perfect responses all the time. This will create a fixed mindset and when they get in that fixed mindset, they will not want to tell us things. They'll want to hide the truth. They might even lie or cheat so that they can avoid it. Feeling from us those things that we've displayed in the past to them when they've made errors or mistakes and it doesn't serve on because they still feel that way inside.
How do we respond? We talked about those things that will cause that fixed mindset. What helps to create a growth mindset is neutrality. Being neutral in our response, we don't give a judgment of positive or negative.
It has that same outcome whenever the error is, that's why that neutrality is so important. Neutrality is safe for our children. They can tell us anything if they don't feel judged, if it's just finding information, and if we feel like they're capable, they're capable of figuring this out. They might have to go through some rough parts and learn the hard way for certain things, but that's life. Didn't we have to do that a little bit ourselves?
We are just neutral and we ask them questions. Questions like how did that feel? What did you do to get that A and how did that feel? What did you do when you got that F? How did it feel to pick on your brother? Is that feeling that you want to have 'cause sometimes when we're picking on him, we feel powerful and that powerful feeling can hide our not good enough feelings. When we are neutral we can just seek out information and we seek out underlying causes.
It's not about how we feel. It's not about us because often if we're responding with that positive or that negative response to it, an error or something done well, then it's about us and about how we feel. It's not about our child and how they might be feeling. So it's important that if we want that growth mindset, we learn about ourselves and our responses and how we can change those responses.
Sometimes, you can be like, how can I not be angry? They just hit their little brother. How can I not feel frustrated that we've been sending him to tutors and he still is not getting A's in class? When we respond with them and ask why they're not getting the grades, then we might be feeling that we failed, right? Or if I do this then the outcome might also be that there's something wrong with my child.
We might not think those exact thoughts, but they will come across to our child. And this is the opportunity to really look at your feelings behind your reactions and why you might have those feelings or where they might come from, so when we respond to our child, we can have neutrality of love and the neutrality of not a positive or negative, but just investigating, just listening, because we have that unconditional love. So remember, children are great by their very nature and we have that privilege and opportunity to raise them.
