Continuing to learn from 6-year-old son...

As a parent, I try to set a good example for my son. But sometimes, I make mistakes. I get tired. I anger too quickly. I say the wrong thing. Especially after a difficult and stressful day in the office, it's easy to occasionally make these relatively normal mistakes. Tonight, for example, my son was reassembling a toy I had disassembled and put away this morning. He said, "You shouldn't of done that."

Now, there are several ways I could have responded to that. Most appropriately, I could have addressed the issue of him telling me what I should and shouldn't do. Or I could have talked to him about cleaning up his own toys. Instead, I had a strong and angry reaction to his use of the word "of" in that sentence. It drives me mad that it is more natural for children to emulate their peers than their parents when learning language. And using of instead of have is one of my pet peeves. So I barked, "It's shouldn't HAVE, not shouldn't OF! Shouldn't OF is wrong! If you hear someone say should or shouldn't OF, you can tell them they are wrong and they don't know how to speak English!"

He calmly replied, "Mommy, that's not very nice. Why don't I just say, 'Oh, did you know it's really have, not of?' Why would I tell them they don't know English? That would just make them feel dumb."

"Well, you're absolutely right," I said, somewhat transformed. "Thank you, that's a much better idea."

I would rather have handled the situation correctly in the first place, but I'm impressed by his response.

put the toy back together?

You should of have. :)

:hi:

No. He did it. It wasn't that hard.

:hi:

it's terrific that you pay attention to your son, rather than just boss him. A different parent wouldn't have learned anything in that situation, and might have slapped the child (or disciplined in some other fashion for his sassing / back-talking.)

What children most need from their parents is time and attention. Which can be very difficult in our society.

My husband and I both work full time and my son is in after-school until 6pm. We try to make the most of our time together.

Also, my son and I have a joke about how Mommy is right 95% of the time. I think it's important to admit my mistakes. I don't think it detracts from my authority to admit when I can improve.

That is also one of my major pet peeves and I likely would have done what you did, only I would've taken it even further and pulled out the whiteboard and shown how the contraction of "should" and "have" results in "should've" and how many people then think that "'ve" is actually "of" and all this would be drawn out with arrows and everything, and my son would be rolling his eyes like crazy.

My son hates when the whiteboard comes out. :rofl:

...I need to get one of those.

is often correct from the linguistic standpoint. (or so Chomsky and Pinker often say. )

cool that he was able to be so reasonable about your response! :D We parents can't be calm and perfect and reasonable all the time. :hug:

But we try our best, just like we expect from our children. :hug:

interesting times and "attempts" at conversation! :rofl:

gives you a gold star as a parent, encouraging his autonomy and rights as a person. bravo!

He's the most important part of my world.

:)