Repair With Your Kid

Kids notice repair. Kids especially notice the absence of repair. Most parents skip repair because they were never modeled it. They explode, the storm passes, life goes on, and the kid carries the weight of what was never addressed.

A real repair conversation with a kid takes 2 to 5 minutes. Worth doing.

Fill these in and read it back to yourself before you go. Nothing here is saved or sent anywhere.

• Don't apologize and immediately ask for forgiveness.
• Don't apologize and then turn it into a lesson for them.
• Don't apologize and ask them to comfort you.
• Don't apologize so often that it loses meaning. Repair matters because it's connected to actual change.

1. Identify a recent incident.
2. Use the steps within 24 hours.
3. Don't accept "it's okay" from them. Repair fully.
4. Demonstrate change.
5. Bring what you notice to your next coaching session, if you have one.

Reactive parenting episodes don't come out of nowhere. They have predictable preconditions. Tiredness. Specific times of day. Specific topics. Specific kid behaviors. Mapping the preconditions lets you intervene before the explosion, not after.

Common preconditions

• Tiredness
• Hunger
• Work stress overflow
• The end of the day
• Specific kid behaviors (whining, defiance, slowness)
• Being witnessed (in public, by your spouse, by your own parents)

After each blowup, notice

• What set it off
• What I was already feeling
• How long the buildup was
• What I'd do differently

Plan a pre-emption for your top three

Lord, help me see the preconditions. Help me intervene before the explosion. Don't let me embitter what you've given me to steward.

You're not parenting in a vacuum. You're parenting against the backdrop of how you were parented. Some of what you absorbed you want to keep. Some you don't. Without seeing it clearly, you'll repeat it on autopilot, even when you swore you wouldn't.

Name one pattern that stops with you, and what replaces it. Tell your spouse.