Fresh starts only begin after your child has achieved emotional balance and after completing their consequence. Ideally your child has discussed what will be different next time a similar situation arises.
Fresh start means no holding onto mistakes, no sulking around, no “guilting”, and no long lectures. When a consequence is served that is the end; no going back and bringing past events up over and over to hammer home your point.
This concept is tough for parents and yet one of the most rewarding steps we can follow. My own son brought this home to me one day. He had in the past asked, “Can I have a fresh start?”
Now, out of the blue, he asked me, “Why do you always give us fresh starts? Wow! He had started to notice that this is not how it worked with his friends when they made mistakes.
We had a wonderful discussion about how we all make mistakes and that mistakes are an important part of helping us learn what we need to work on. Mistakes are just information, what we do to correct our mistakes is part of our character and who we want to become. I had the chance to help him understand that I never know when he will chose to work on improving and making better choices but that we know that he is responsible and will work on issues in his time and in his own way.
The natural consequences are there just as they are for all of us, but fresh starts to me are like waking up in the morning and realizing what the answer is to something I was struggling with the night before. When I let go of everything and don’t cloud my mind with anxiety or pressure, the answer just seems to surface. So in much the same way, letting go of our children’s mistakes makes room for better decisions and new solutions. I explained I just didn’t want to get in the way or make the waters murky by holding on to what I couldn’t change. Change has to have room to breathe.
When you think about it, if we don’t give fresh starts we are keeping our children on the old tracks of where we don’t want them headed. Isn’t it better to let them start fresh, without any obstruction on a better track?
