How to Repair with your Child when You are the one Who Messed Up

Let's talk about when we mess up. We talk a lot about when our kids mess up and how we help them do better, but the reality is that we're superhuman and we mess up. And this is one of the best things about attachment research. The primary indicator of a secure attachment is the capacity for a caregiver or a parent to make repair with their child.

So the rupture to repair. . It's not that you don't have conflict, then we'd all be in a bit terrible mess and there'd be no secure attachments. It's what happens when you get out of sync and you get dysregulated. Are you, as the caregiver able to then go back and make that repair? I'm gonna tell you a story about a recent repair I made with my son to kind of give you an idea of that cycle and how it works, and then some tips on how to make repairs with.

So I had been at work for the day and my son was at my mom's house and there were some out-of-town relatives. And so he's a super extroverted kid and he loves being around everybody. You guys are something in my teeth. Come on, pretend you didn't see that. So he's.  hanging out in the front room, and I come in and I can tell that he is kind of in this funny, jovial, joking mood.

And one of my relatives says to me, um, slate told us that he doesn't have any crashes. Well, the day before my son had confessed his love to another girl, another a second grader? No, he's a second grader. She's a third grader. He confesses his love to her and it was the cutest story. She just looked at him and goes, that was bold, and they like then continued to just play.

It was so cute. So I made a mistake, which is, I told a story that wasn't mine to tell, that was his private story. But he was in such a laughing mood. I was misreading his, um, kind of state. So I kind of thought he wanted me to almost, um, but I misread him. So anyway, I said to the group, wait a minute, what do you mean you don't have a crush?

You confessed your loved Amaya yesterday. And he laughed and he acted like it was funny. And they, you know, one of them was kind of, not tickling him, but kind of going after him. . It felt playful. Well then he went out to the front and then I was gathering at my other kids and leaving. And I walk out to the porch and he is crying on the porch.

And he goes, mom, why did you do that? And instantly I knew, I was like, I flubbed. That is private sensitive of information. It doesn't belong to me. That's his information. Um, and so my repair process looked like me owning what I did going, buddy, I am so sorry. I shared that really tender piece of information that you hadn't shared.

Clearly you'd been telling them you didn't have any crushes, so you didn't wanna share that, and I shared it. I really messed up. I really misread you and I put you in a word situation. So ownership. Acknowledgement of what it was. And then I gave space for him to say anything else. Like, is that right? Is that why you're feeling He cried some, I let him cry with me, let him tell him me, how it made him feel.

And then we had to get home and get ready for bed. And as we were getting ready for bed, I just checked in with him like, how are you feeling? Do you have thoughts on, on anything else I can do to make this right? And I would call this like reparations. So in every repair. , right? There needs to be acknowledgement space for the other person to share their feelings with you.

That, so that's what he did. And then a reparation of some form, what is it you need in order for me to make this better? Um, what we came up with is that he needed me to commit to not talking about his, you know, special feelings with other people without his permission, and that he wanted me to go and tell my extended family and my mom that I made a.

And I think that was really interesting to me because there's something about the need for someone to own their mistakes publicly. It's very social of us anyway. So, and to tell them that he did not want to be teased about it or asked about it again. So I did those things and it hasn't come up again because it's repaired, right?

So we rupture, we acknowledge what we've done, we let them feel the feelings, and then we, then we ask what reparations need to be made in order. Trust and healing to be reestablished. A couple of notes. Also, when we mess up with our kids, it's really important that we don't beat ourselves up in front of them.

If you struggle with being really harsh on yourself, I get it. You may grew up in trauma and that was what you were taught to do. But we don't wanna model that for our kids, and we don't want them to feel that they can't tell us that something is wrong or upsetting about what we've done without it creating some form of abuse from us to ourselves.

Then they're gonna wanna tell us things cuz they're gonna afraid that we're going to take it harder than it really is. So when you are recognizing that something is wrong or your child's telling you, you've really hurt me, or You're not you, I don't feel like you care about me, whatever the thing. , you wanna make sure to shore up that kind of message in your brain.

Repair is a part of your relationship. Secure parents have rupture with their kids. My job is to listen and help this get repaired. It is not to punish myself. Okay, last note is that sometimes repair takes time depending on your child and their personality. If they're more sensitive or if it takes them a while to really digest and figure out what they're feeling, you might think you've repaired something and find out it comes out sideways Again, that's.

You just attend to that repair as many times as it needs to be there. Kids need to narrate and talk about the things that bother them. And so sometimes after you've gone through a fight, they'll bring it up again and again and again. You'll think like, didn't we deal with that? You, you did, you dealt with it, but they're still processing it and that's okay.

And you can just acknowledge like, yeah, that really didn't feel good to you and I feel really bad and I wish I had acted differently. And, uh, thank you for just continuing to remind me what you need and we'll keep getting better at this. Good luck.

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