Admitting you've made a mistake is never easy for anyone, but it can be especially tough for kids to confess when they've done something wrong. Whether they're afraid of being punished or they just don't want to let mom and dad down, it takes a lot for a child to be honest about messing up!
In a video posted on June 16, a dad is negotiating with his toddler over a juice pouch when his older son comes running in with a confession to make (involving a golf cart and a broken mailbox), but he's having a little bit of trouble getting to the point.
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"Hypothetically speaking," wrote Derek Lipp . Hey, you can't blame the kid for wanting to know what would happen to him before he broke the bad news ! (And at least he was honest about why he was on the golf cart in the first place.)
Related: Little Boy Is Super Honest With His Mom About Getting in Trouble at School
As soon as big brother came in with his hypotheticals, dad knew it was time to give up on the whole juice pouch thing, which was highly amusing to commenters.
"The way he gives the juice box back. That guy be choosing his battles," wrote Emily Holoch.
"That drink pouch doesn't seem to be that big of a deal now," wrote Patrick_378.
"Where did you get this?? Oh forget it. Just drink it!" wrote Kara.
"As soon as he said hypothetically speaking he was like this is gonna be so much worse than this Capri Sun," wrote maddie <3.
We don't know what happened next, but chances are that kid is going to be a lot more careful on the golf cart from now on! As a parent, it can be hard to know how to handle situations like this one.
How Punishing Kids Can Backfire
It might seem like the right thing to do when a kid does something like this is to punish them in some way . But as CNBC reported, traditional punishments often do more harm than good.
"According to Alan Kazdin, director of the Yale Parenting Center, while punishment might make a parent feel better, it won’t change a child’s behavior .
'Parents might start out reasoning, but they’re likely to escalate to something a little bit more, like shouting, touching, firmly dragging their child — even if they’re well-intentioned,' he said in an interview with The Atlantic. 'Even wonderful, gentle punishments like a time-out or reasoning — those don’t work.'"
While it might seem like a punishment is working at first, in the long run, "it could make your child less likely to cooperate because they’ve learned to resent you. In other words, it erodes your close connection with your child."
Instead of thinking about how their behavior affects other people, punishment "teaches children to focus on the consequences they suffer."
"This prevents them from developing essential emotional intelligence skills, such as empathy and social-awareness."
Instead of punishing kids, the goal should be to communicate with them and help them to understand why they need to change their behavior.
It's safe to say the boy in this video already knows he can't go driving into mailboxes anymore...even hypothetically!
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