Good Parenting Means Admitting When You're Wrong

"7:30! Screens off!" I declared. 

My son, who was in the middle of watching a basketball video, closed his laptop. 

"You need to power it down," I said. "If you just close it, the laptop's still running. Your information is still active. people can hack in while you sleep." Granted, I made some things up. I wanted to make my point.

"But if I power it down, I'll lose information. I'll lose things I was working on."

"Well, you knew that you were shutting off at 7:30. So, you could have saved what you had before the deadline," I said, holding my children to a higher standard than myself. I've flipped down my own laptop tons of times. 

"So, if you're in the middle of a job application, you just shut if off and lose all of your information?"

Now I'm wondering why my almost 12 year old is filling out job applications. 

"You should complete the application, save it to your computer, in a word doc, or downloaded to your documents folder, and turn off your computer. That way, you're not leaving any cookies or threads from your personal work out there, running."

"Then why do all the other kids at school do it?"

"Son, do you want to be like everybody else or do you want to be smart?"

He held his head down, stared at the floor. "I wanna be smart," he mumbled. 

"Good," I said. "Okay. Let's turn our devices off and get ready for bed."

My kids did as they were told. I wanted them to get to bed. I wanted to not have to think about what they needed any more this night. I wanted to get to my own work and fun distractions.

About an hour or so later, I came to a gigantic realization!

I thought I was trying to teach my son a lesson. In truth, I was really just trying to be right. By the end of the argument, my son felt defeated. His head was low. He was mumbling the words he knew I wanted to hear.

I had won. And he had lost.

I felt like absolute shit.

My mother was the household rule maker. My father was the 'This-is-how-you-do-it' guy. When I was turning into a teenager and arguing my points, I would raise counterpoints to my mother's rules. I would point out loopholes in the household law, just like my son was tryin to do. My mother shut that down. Quite frankly, my mother and my father do not know how to be wrong.

And guess what they passed down to me?

My father's way of doing things was always the 'right ' way: how to tie a knot. How to set up a camp. How to pack the car. How to fix a bicycle. How to open a jar of pickles. 

Every how-to lesson that he taught us was The Way to do that thing.

It's scary to be wrong. What if your child discovers that they have more power? What if they realize that you're not always right? That there is the possibility - the outside chance - that they are right and you just didn't realize it yet.

That can be scary for a parent. For anybody.

My mother fought for attention her whole life. She grew up in the shadow of an accomplished older brother who received the accolades for his achievements. Even before she set out on what would be a very accomplished career, her opinion was not to be questioned. She defended her reasoning, no matter how flawed, fiercely. No matter what kind of argument  - logical or, as sometimes was the case, not - she made sure I saw that she was right. And I, too, admitted my defeat, by repeating the words she wanted me to say. 


Since my parents did not know how to be wrong, I learned that feeling of defeat. And I suddenly recalled all the times throughout my life when I chose not to speak up, because I had been taught that my opinion was wrong. It was a feeling that carried into adulthood. I chose the sidelines as opposed to standing up for my ideas. I became more of an observer that a doer. I was taught to accept that I was probably wrong by parents who had to be right. 

I was passing on that same lesson of defeat to my son. I was horrified. I was disgusted. And I was grateful that I was able to recognize the pattern I was repeating. 

I raced upstairs to my son's room. 

"May I come in?"

"Sure," he said. He was lying in bed, staring off. He looked sad. 

"I need to apologize to you, son. I... when we were arguing about the computer, you were making a very good point about saving your work. But I needed to be right. So I tried to prove how right I was instead of recognizing that you had a good point. I wanted to teach you, but instead, I ended up needing to defeat you. I was doing something that my parents did to me. And it didn't make me feel good about myself. That's what I was doing to you. And I'm sorry. I am so sorry."

He smiled at me a little. "Thanks for apologizing."

"Son, it's better to speak up for what you believe and be wrong, than to never have spoken up at all. I was wrong."

"You were trying to teach me something, Dad. But you do the same thing. I've seen you. So, you can't teach something and then do it yourself. That makes you a hypocrite."

"That's a great word. Where did you learn that word?"

"I read it in a book."

"So, you do read?"

"Lots. Whattaya think - all I do is watch videos?" He smiled that smile, knowing that he put anoher one past me.

I was wrong again. I have never been so happy to be so wrong.

Our children will grow up and learn things that I never did. My sons will know things about the world I won't. Their world will be different and they will be experts in that world while I will be an observer. I will always have common sense lessons to pass on, but when it comes to the details - and especially to my hypocritical do as I say not as I do lessons, my sons will, hopefully, point out the flaw in my ethics.

We want to be teachers to our kids. The best teaching is modeling, teaching by doing, and passing on the practice. I like to think that we all want to be better parents to our kids. One of the best ways to do that, I believe, is to admit our faults whenever possible. 

If I had left things as they were, my son would have gone to bed with a defeated, deflated feeling. he would have woken up with that feeling. And I would have totally succeeded in chipping away at his self-esteem.

By apologizing to my son and admitting my error, his confidence was rescued from being crushed underneath my own feet. I helped to build his self-esteem and in so doing, I helped to prepare him for the next obstacle in his life. Because confidence, and the right attitude, is everything.

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