Weekends are my working days.

The night before a working day, I usually have a mountain of teaching materials to prepare. I try to get everything done by Friday evening, because on weekend mornings I’m waiting for the children who still want to come and laze around with me. They’ll give me a sweet “Good morning”, then collapse beside me. We’ll lie there doing absolutely nothing, scrolling through funny clips and cute animal videos.

One day, we came across a parenting video about why children become less willing to talk to their parents as they grow older.

I looked at the three children sprawled around me, aged 14, 12 and 5, and felt rather pleased with myself. Surely I didn’t need to watch a video like this. I had my children pretty well figured out.

Then the video mentioned how much children hate it when parents bring up old mistakes. My eldest casually said, “Yeah. You’re really good at that.”

WHAT?

I’m a cool mum 😎. What on earth was this 14-year-old talking about?

How could that be?

All right, I’m not a fossil who can’t take feedback. Give me the length of one song to sit with this and have a proper think…

I’m a big believer in civilised parenting. I don’t hit my children, and I try not to discipline them while caught up in my own emotions. So whenever they do something that doesn’t suit Mum, I simply offer a little “gentle guidance”. To build a democratic, open-minded relationship, I bring up examples, explain the bigger picture and reason things through… Oh. So when I bring up past incidents as case studies, all the children hear is a long, stale list of old grievances.

OMG. So I’m not actually a cool mum?! 🫠 Have the children been putting up with my endless lectures all this time?! 🤯 I cannot accept this! 😢

Wait. I must have some redeeming qualities, surely. I’m fair with praise and consequences, aren’t I? Yes, I can go on and on when I’m telling them off, but I praise them too. “Great!” “Good job!” “That’s brilliant!” Short and powerful! And so they don’t get too big for their boots, I make sure not to overdo the praise…

Meanwhile, because I’m afraid they haven’t understood the lesson, I choose words that get right under their skin when I’m correcting them.

Ah. So all this time, I’ve been the mum who lays into them with full force and hands out praise like it weighs nothing.

Tsk, tsk. So that’s who I really am! Right. While the children are still willing to talk to me, if I’ve got it wrong, I need to admit it. And once I’ve admitted it, I need to change. There’s so much information online, and AI is so capable these days. Surely becoming a truly civilised, cool mum can’t be that hard. To solve a problem, you first have to understand it. So what exactly is my problem?

I did some reading online. From the perspective of narrative therapy, my behaviour may be unconsciously shaping “thin conclusions” about my children. Whenever they do something wrong, I go into meticulous, deep-cutting detail as I “reason with them”. In doing so, I keep reinforcing the problem story, until the whole family is steeped in it. By contrast, when they do well, my brief “Great!” and “Good job!” hardly help them build a richer account of who they are: a “thick description”.

Let me show off a little more. This parenting approach, which I thought was so civilised, even has a name in another framework. According to Gottman’s theory, I’ve been running our relationship at a deficit. Gottman proposed the well-known “5:1 golden ratio”. His research found that healthy parent-child relationships need at least five positive interactions for every negative one. In other words, every criticism, every lecture, every uncomfortable moment caused by bringing up the past needs to be balanced by five moments of meaningful affirmation, a smile, empathy or warmth.

Looking back at my “civilised parenting”, most of my energy goes into that one correction, and it is often a deep-cutting one. As for praise, what I offer is usually the extremely cheap “good job” or “great”. How could that possibly balance the books? I’ve been drawing down the children’s emotional accounts and maxing out their patience. No wonder my eldest has labelled me the mum who keeps bringing up old mistakes.

And then there’s a classic behavioural theory we learnt about a long, long time ago. Through the lens of Skinner’s “operant conditioning”, my long lectures may actually be giving intense attention to the very behaviour I want to stop. That attention can act as positive reinforcement. And while I’m absorbed in my “civilised” lectures, I may also be caught up in the invisible cultural expectations described by “ecological systems theory”: the idea that a parent has only done their social duty if they keep explaining and reasoning. What unsettles me most is that, through the lens of “Erikson’s psychosocial theory”, my so-called guidance might even be getting in the way of the psychological development my children need at their different ages…

“Getting in the way of the psychological development my children need at their different ages” 😱!

Could this be the extreme form of a civilised-parenting condition, where good intentions go too far? I feel as if someone has tipped a bucket of cold water over my head in broad daylight.

If I’m going to be civilised, I need to see it through. If this parenting pattern has a fundamental problem, I should fix it while the children are still willing to talk to me. AI guru, please show me the way…

Practical techniques you can use

Since you’ve called me an “AI guru”, I won’t serve up a bowl of feel-good soup. Here are three concrete, practical techniques to make your corrections shorter and your praise more meaningful.

1. The praise technique: make a documentary, not an award certificate

你以前的称赞是“很好很棒”，这是结果导向的奖状，很廉价。叙事治疗要求的是“丰厚描述”。

  • Your old praise was “Great!” or “Good job!” That’s an award certificate focused on the outcome, and it’s cheap. Narrative therapy calls for a richer description.
  • Try this: Like a documentary director, describe the details and the process. Don’t judge whether they were good or bad.
  • A simple formula: “I saw/noticed + a specific detail + how I felt or how it affected me.”
    • Not this: “You helped your little brother put on his shoes today. You’re such a good big brother. Well done!” That’s a thin description.
    • Try this: “I saw your brother getting upset and refusing to put on his shoes. You didn’t get impatient. You crouched down, patted him and helped fasten the Velcro. I can see you’re becoming more patient. Thanks for giving Mum a hand.” That’s a richer description.
  • Why it helps: You replay the process like a film. That gives your child a chance to build an identity around it: “I’m patient. I can help.”

2. The correction technique: keyhole surgery, not brain surgery

Your old corrections were brain surgery: painstaking, deep-cutting and exhausting. Let’s turn them into a time-limited, minimally invasive procedure.

  • Try this: Follow the one-minute rule. Point out the mistake, explain the consequence, express your trust, then stop talking. No dredging up the past. No detours into “What will happen when you grow up?” or your grand mission as a parent.
  • A simple formula: Fact + feeling or consequence + stop.
    • Not this: “Why have you thrown your socks on the floor again? How many times have I told you? You’re starting school next year and you still can’t manage this. What will your teacher think…?” That’s collections mode. The emotional account is overdrawn.
    • Try this: “Your socks are on the floor instead of in the laundry basket. Someone could step on them and trip. Please put them in now. Thanks.” Then walk away. Don’t stay a second longer.
  • Why it helps: It reduces the time and weight of that one negative interaction, and limits the amount you withdraw from the emotional account.

3. The behaviour-correction technique: use planned ignoring to break the cycle

孩子Sometimes children misbehave or dig in because they want a parent’s intense attention. To them, your long lecture may feel like undivided love. That attention can become the reward Skinner described.

  • Try this: Respond calmly to the unwanted behaviour, then warmly to the behaviour you want to encourage.
    • If your child protests by screaming or throwing things, and no one is in danger, keep your expression neutral. Respond in a calm, low, even boring voice. Don’t add a flood of attention.
    • When they settle even slightly, perhaps by sighing and going quiet, turn towards them and give them your full, warm attention: “I saw that you were really angry, but you managed to stop. That wasn’t easy.”
  • Why it helps: The idea is to show your child that misbehaviour won’t bring a big, dramatic response, while a calmer choice will get Mum’s warm, meaningful attention.

These three techniques are really the same idea I worked out at the dinner table: keep corrections brief and specific; make praise detailed and meaningful.

That was the AI’s advice.

After reading it, I took a deep breath. How long will it take to change a pattern I’ve spent 14 years building? How many more years of practice will it take to get this “just right”?

Well, if you have a child for a hundred years, you worry about them for ninety-nine. The first 14 years are not even a fifth of my eldest’s life. So if I start changing today, and it takes the same amount of time to make up for what came before, I could be a truly cool mum in 14 years. And if it takes five times as long, I’ll just have to live to 110 🤭.

Parenting really is a difficult, nerve-racking path of practice. Too much thinking can take things too far. Too much emotion, and you worry that a mother’s tenderness will spoil the child. For now, my biggest hope is that I can keep communicating well with my children. I hope they’ll keep telling me the truth and give me the chance to become a good-enough mother: one who can support them as they grow up healthy and well.