One of my favorite pasttimes is watching my kids interact with their environment. It is fascinating to see what draws their attention, what furrows their brow, what brings forth a smile or a chuckle, what causes their bottom lip to pucker up. It’s hard to imagine how a small child’s mind processes and interprets all the stimuli they experience every day.

But, that’s just the enjoyable side of my musings. I often have the same sentiment in response to their negative behavior. I see the toothpaste that my son dispensed all over his room and wonder, ‘What was he thinking?’ I witness my two-year old kicking sand in a little girl’s eyes and cannot figure out why that seemed like a thing to do.

While some of these things bring a smile to my face, other things bring a snarl. I see what they are doing and interpret it in my adult mind and pass judgment as to whether it is a good thing or a bad thing. If I don’t understand and cannot relate to what they are doing, then I end up assigning it a ridiculous score. This score is expressed in the volume and tone of my voice. If it is mildly ridiculous, like my son’s rearrangement of my cooking utensils, then he receives a low volume, annoyed tone. If it is highly ridiculous, like my other son’s decision to crawl through the doggie door to the garage and then open the garage door, then he receives a high volume, irate tone. Unfortunately, this system isn’t very effective in actually teaching my children anything about decision-making and responsibility; just in achieving various scores on mommy’s ridiculous meter.

I know this doesn’t work. But to do anything differently, I need to start with how I interpret my children’s behavior. Taking a moment and realizing the disservice that I am doing to my children by jumping to conclusions and then being confident in my knee-jerk assessment is earth-shaking. It dissipates my anger and makes me wonder how else I could react to the things my children do.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I will never find toothpaste in my carpet something to smile about. Nor will I chuckle as my son kicks sand in a poor girl’s eyes. But perhaps I don’t need to lose my cool either. Perhaps I don’t need to assume that because I wouldn’t do it and I would prefer they not do it, that my children share in my adult reasoning. Perhaps I can regard them as the children they are and with the child brains they have.

From this space, I can remain calm. From this understanding, I can find common ground. From this perspective, I can find empathy. And empathy makes all the difference in whether my parenting is authoritative or authoritarian. Many of us had the authoritarian parent, maybe you referred to them as a bully, a dictator, or just a mean ol’ jerk, but you know this kind of parent. This parent jumps to conclusions, won’t listen to your point of view, believes their way is the right way no matter what, and expects you to jump when told to jump (don’t even consider asking how high because questioning is disrespectful). And it leads to a child’s rebellion. Whether it be overt or covert, rebellion is still rebellion. It is defiance and resistance and rejection of all that the other person says and does.

I don’ t want that for my child. I don’t want to be that type of parent. So, what to do? Swing to the middle of the parenting styles and aim for authoritative. It is balancing having a relationship with my child and having boundaries, rules and discipline. It is being a loving authority figure. It is following in the parenting footsteps of our own Heavenly Father. If I can tap into the empathy, I may be able to understand somewhat where my child is coming from, how that way might be errant, and how I can influence my child’s reasoning and behavior rather than just shutting them down in a judgmental or angry fashion.

So, instead of losing it when I find the toothpaste art, I can see how a 4-year old might find it fun to use this blue gel as finger paint to add color to his room, and from this place do some teaching on the drawbacks of this activity, some appropriate alternatives, and on how to clean up toothpaste from multiple surface types. All are valuable life skills that I would have short-circuited with my knee-jerk, top-of-my-lungs, snarly-faced, “What were you thinking?!” My goal now is to take a trip through a child’s mind and see how my adult mind can coach it into the reasoning skills that he will need to be a successful adult himself.