When my children make a mistake, I don't immediately correct them

When my children make a mistake, I don’t immediately correct them. Instead I ask them four questions:

1. “What happened?” (Let them explain)
2. “Is that what you wanted to happen?”
3. “How did that make you feel?”
4. “What do you think might prevent that from happening again?”

Often, motivated by their own desires to improve, they autocorrect based on the stimulation of these questions; however, if they make the same mistake 3 times in a row, I have this conversation with them.

“You’re too smart to keep making the same mistakes over and over again, but you’re not yet able to stop. Why?”

“Well, I didn’t mean to do X. It wasn’t my intention.”

“Of course, you didn’t intend to do anything wrong; you are a good child. I’m not accusing you; I’m helping you think through this so that you can make it stop. This is how we develop wisdom.

You did start to uncover the important part. Your intention. You didn’t intend to make the mistake, but you also didn’t act with intentionality to do the thing you were supposed to be doing. You let your environment and chance dictate your actions instead of your will.”

“But I just got distracted by…” (He lists the distractions).

“I know. Your brain is not fully developed yet. It’s hard for a young person to focus for long periods of time. As you exercise your ability to control your impulses, it will get easier and easier. Every time you say no to distraction, even for a second, your mind gets stronger, your will begins to dominate, and you become the agent acting upon yourself and the world rather than a helpless NPC.

Do you want to become powerful? Then you need to keep practicing the control of your mind. And at the same time you should remove any distractions that you can control. No need to make your life harder than it needs to be. There will be enough challenges arising naturally. What can you do to your environment right now to help you focus?”

“Well, I could clean up my desk; I could put on some headphones to block out noises…”

“OK, great plan, let’s do it now. Do you need my help to do any of these things?”

Your goal as a parent is NOT to produce obedient children. The world is already full of obedient children, unable to think for themselves, unable to make life decisions, taken in by every conman and cult, unable to even choose who to be obedient to.

Your goal is to produce mature, agentic adults who are capable of imposing their will on reality. You will not get that outcome unless you teach your children how to think, reason, and act in systematic and replicable ways.

Every conversation with your children should be carefully designed to program new and better decision-making heuristics into their developing minds.