Reply to Do you, the mother, tell your child when he/she has hurt your feelings?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]my child doesn't hurt my feelings.  he says mean things to me occasionally, but I don't get "hurt." 1) he doesn't mean them 2) even if he did, he is 41/2 years old and I am his mom.  Thsi isn't a relationhsip where I'm expecting something from a person and hurt when I don't get it.

you peopel are overinvested in youe kids.[/quote]

if he says something mean I do correct him - "[b]that wans't nice[/b]".  But that is all.  Really the mom's job is to love and correct and give.  Anything we "get" from our kids comes through our own act of loving and correcting and giving.  My feelings don't (and shouldn't) depend on how my kids feel about me.  I'm not putting that burden on them.[/quote]

Why wasn't it nice? Because it was intended to be mean and make someone feel bad. Why isn't that ok? Trying to make someone feel bad/hurt their feelings is not ok. Why not? Trying to hurt someone's feelings is not ok because no one should ever knowingly or purposefully do something harmful or unpleasant to another person without that person's consent.

I don't want my kid to just learn *which specific phrases* are not nice and therefore not ok for him to say, I want him to learn the general principle that *saying anything with the intent to make someone feel bad* is not ok, [b]and why[/b]. That way he can apply that standard to new situations and use it as a guide to make his own choices, not merely remember which things we don't let him say.

If we have a rule, I give my child the specific ethical reason behind the rule so he knows why his behavior is being limited and can learn to exercise self control in line with our basic ethics. If "don't say X" is going to be an expectation I have of him, the reason that is the expectation is because X is something used to hurt feelings. Of course I'm going to explain that to him. Otherwise I'm placing a limit on his behavior without helping him understand deeply and completely *why* that was necessary, and that won't make sense to him, feel right to me, or be as productive as it could be if I truly helped him grasp the basic ethics behind the rule.

I know he's not going to get this completely at 3, but children are growing and developing all the time, and their moral development is an ongoing process. I can at least start from the beginning laying a foundation of how I want him to look at the world and approach deciding whether or not something is ok to do. Hopefully some of it sticks as he grows up.[/quote]

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