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Sometimes your child commits an act which shakes you to your very soul. Perhaps your child has broken one of your explicit rules or has done a foolhardy act which put himself in great danger. Your first reaction may be anger. You may feel that he has betrayed you - turning against you and your values, the careful teachings you have brought him up with. You naturally feel a great disappointment in him but also in yourself for having raised a child who could do such a thing. Your confidence as being a worthwhile parent is undermined if you could produce a child that could commit such an act. Your complete confidence in him is shaken so badly that you wonder if you can ever trust this child to make worthwhile again. You feel a need to monitor his actions, to ground him and to keep tight rein over the possibilities of his future acts.

This is a very sensitive time for both you and your child. His emotions may be as high if not higher than yours. He may feel anger for being found out and embarrassment because you are now subject to what he thought was private to him. He may feel angry for not being allowed to make his own decisions and be rebellious. This is a dangerous time for him. He may completely withdraw from you. He may act out further -- doing the very thing that you are objecting to! While you certainly have the obligation to express your disapproval and lay down the logical consequences of punishment and setting forth the guidelines for future behavior, you don't want to do anything which will have the boomerang effect of more inappropriate behavior.

This is an extremely delicate time for the both of you because the previous trust that you felt towards your child has been violated. You can take steps to insure that in all your dealings with the child, you convey the attitude that he is a trustable human being. He is a person who is capable of making the right decisions for himself. This is difficult to do when you have a child who has not demonstrated this ability to you in the past. Try to convey the impression that his foolish actions are part of a phase, a part of growing, a part of learning to choose and to make decisions and simply a wrong decision at that time. Helping him see his mistake as part of the learning process will help him forgive himself for the misdeed and regain his inner belief of himself as being a worthwhile person.

What is the purpose of mistakes in our lives? Much of our learning does come from making a mistake; we try out a certain way to act and then suffer negative consequences. If we're smart, we put the cause and effect together learning from them trying to vary our behavior in the future so that we get better consequences. Children who are brought up to believe that mistakes are made so that we can learn better ways to act in the future are more have better self esteem. With the philosophy of errors are made to be corrected, your child will be much more comfortable taking responsibility for his transgressions. You can instill in your child that he can learn from mistakes that he has made. You can ask him, Now, what have you learned? to determine if he sees cause-effect relationship.

Point out to the child when you make mistakes and how you resolve to change in the future. Learning from his mistakes will become a natural process for him. He will learn that it is allowable to make an occasional wrong decision as long as some positive comes out of it.

Allow your child to make mistakes and then learn from them. This says to him You don't have to be perfect. Asking a child to be perfect is one of the biggest loads that parents can lay on an already confused youngster. By admitting our humanity as parents, by saying, "hey, I'm not a perfect person, sometimes I really goof up," we allow our child the freedom to grow.

Children try on many ways to acting to see which ones fit them. The process of finding one's own identity is to try many new behaviors and roles. Some will be good and some bad. Hopefully they discard the foolish, inappropriate ways - that is they will if parents let them. If we can show our trust that they have the intelligence and good sense to learn from their errors, they will come through to become the son or daughter that you expect them to be.

A child will become what the parent expects him to become. If the parent calls the child lazy, dumb, or a liar, a sneak, or a bitch, the child internalizes this negative label. He comes to believe he is that negative expectation that others place on him. That's why it is important to distinguish between what the child did and what he is. Help him distinguish between the unacceptability of his actions and the acceptability of himself. For example, you might say, For a smart person, you did a dumb thing. You're not dumb, but boy did you goof up!