Four Questions to Avoid These Common Parenting Pitfalls

In the book, Good Inside: A Practical Guide to Resilient Parenting Prioritizing Connection Over Correction, parenting expert Becky Kennedy describes many common mistakes parents make and how to avoid these pitfalls in the future.

The most frequent mistake is to focus on your children behaving or looking the way you want them to instead of listening, understanding and connecting to who they really are. Kennedy teaches that connection is the most important goal in parenting, and that you need to build your ‘connection capital’ when your children are young so that you can draw upon those reserves in difficult times.

Ask yourself these four questions to learn how to connect better with your children and how to avoid the most common parenting pitfalls.

1. What is your job description as a parent?

One of the most common pitfalls is that sometimes you don’t even know what you’re supposed to be doing as parents. Are you here to make your children happy? Is your goal to make sure your children are successful? Do you have ambiguous, unrealistic ideas of what are your parenting jobs?

You can come up with your own job description or you can personalize this example that Becky Kennedy suggests in her book: Keep your child safe, emotionally and physically, using boundaries, validation and empathy. Perhaps you want to add being a positive role model for Jewish values. As your children grow, this description will change, but knowing what you are trying to accomplish will continue to help you navigate the challenges of parenting.

2. What does this child need right now?

Another mistake parents often make is to see their children’s behavior as a reflection of who they are instead of a measure of what they need. Your kids’ behavior can often give you clues to what they are really asking for at this moment. For example, if a child yells at you, you may instinctively interpret their outburst as disrespectful and rude. But if you ask yourself what your child needs at this moment, instead of ‘my child does not respect me’ you may come up with a different interpretation like ‘my child is having a hard time right now.’ And then perhaps consider why you are sometimes rude to people. Is it when you are feeling misunderstood? When you want to feel seen, and you are frustrated that you are not being heard? Thinking about what would make us act out as adults can help us re-interpret what is happening for our children when they misbehave.

3. What is your most generous interpretation of what just happened?

A common pitfall in relationships, especially in parenting, is judging a situation without pausing to consider the whole story. It’s helpful to pause when you are disappointed or frustrated with a loved one and search for the best possible reason why your spouse is home late, why your teenager didn’t confide in you or why your toddler hit his classmate. Kennedy calls this searching for the MGI, Most Generous Interpretation, that you can find for what is happening.

Ask yourself this simple question: What is my MGI of what just happened ? Just the question itself will help you search for and find the goodness inherent in your children and in others.

4. What do you need to work on yourself?

A pitfall of parenting that is ubiquitous but hard to see is the way your own emotional patterns and triggers affect your parenting. Kennedy cautions against telling a child: You made me yell. No one can make you yell. Even when a child misbehaves or frustrates you, you can still choose how to respond. And when you see a situation repeatedly triggering you, then you know you have to work on your own emotional regulation in that area.

Having children challenges you and brings you joy in more ways than you can possibly imagine. You cannot always make your children happy, but you can teach them how to cope with uncomfortable, difficult emotions by modeling that yourself.

And perhaps the greatest pitfall of parenting is confusing approval with connection. You don’t have to approve of what your children are doing to love them and understand them. As Kennedy writes: “Approval is usually about a specific behavior; connection is about our relationship with the person underneath the behavior.”

Parenting your children gives you the opportunity to grow and work on yourself as you build a deep, precious connection to the next generation.