How To Correct Someone Correctly

Recently one of my clients asked me how to handle her two-year old boy that was being naughty, without breaking his spirit.

I recommended that she invalidate his wrong action, without invalidating him.

I firmly believe that we are all basically good, and that bad behavior is actually not our nature. So, I told her to say, when he was being naughty: “That’s not my boy. I know my boy. My boy is nice”.

He’d been acting pretty awful that day. After our session she went home, and he was being mean to the cat. She did what I recommended, and the boy stopped hurting the cat and went off saying “Im a nice boy!” and was wonderful for the rest of the day.

This has been very successful with handling children and adults, too.

When you correct someone, you can target the bad action, not the person.

You can say to the child, (or co-worker, or husband or wife): “What you did was wrong”, or “That wasn’t OK”. “I love you, but it upsets me that you hit your brother.” “I know you are a good person, (child, husband, secretary, etc.., but that wasn’t the right thing to do”.

You will get a much better response and less tendency for the person to make errors, than if you tell them THEY are wrong, bad, etc.

Try it and let me know how it works for you.

Love,

Louise