3 Important Conversations To Have With Your Kids

There are so many important conversations to have with your kids over the years. We want to protect them, teach them, and explain things to them to set them up for success.

When you think about the important conversations to have with your kids, what comes up for you? For me, these are 3 must have talks to have with your kids on an ongoing basis.

Talking to our kids about consent, unconditional love and how to make an apology are at the top of my list.

3 Important conversations to have with your kids

Important Conversation # 1: Consent

What is consent?

Topping my list for important conversations to have with your kids is consent.

Explain to your child the word consent and what it means. It means “giving permission for something or allowing something to happen”. If you ask me for a cookie and I say yes, that is me giving my consent.

Body Consent

It’s important to explain that body consent means saying yes or no when it comes to our body.

Make sure you have strict rules in your house about stopping immediately when someone says stop. If you are tickling or rough housing for example and someone says stop, you put your hands up immediately and stop.

You are in charge

Tell your child that they are in charge of their body. If someone is touching them (even tickles, hugs or rough housing) and they don’t like it, they are allowed to say no. In fact, they should say no if they don’t like it.

Your child might be concerned that a friend or loved one will be sad or upset if they say no. Like if a friend likes to hug them, they will be upset if I say no. Or grandpa likes it when I hug him, he will think I don’t love him if I don’t want a hug.

Explain clearly that it is NOT their job to make sure other people are happy. Other people are allowed to be sad and those are their feelings to deal with. We are allowed to say no, even if it hurts other people’s feelings.

You have to ask

If you would like to tickle someone, or you want a hug or kiss, you need to ask. It is important that kids know that it goes both ways. We have to ask someone if we want to touch their body, and we have to respect their choice if they say No.

Body language

As kids get older, explain to them that sometimes people’s words and body language don’t match up. Someone might say Yes, but their body is saying NO. We have to pay attention to their words and their body language.

You can role play examples with kids who are about 6 and up. Have them ask you if you want a kiss. Say yes with your words, but say No through your body language. Then stop and ask your child what you were really saying. This is honestly so important. Kids have to know that people communicate their true needs through not only words (or some people don’t have the words to use an only use body language).

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Important conversation # 2: Unconditional Love

This is such an important conversation to have with your kids because it’s something we think our kids instinctively understand, but they don’t.

Unconditional love means love that is not conditional on anything. It doesn’t change or waiver based on the other person’s behaviour.

We don’t actually have unconditional love with many people in our lives. Even our spouses don’t usually get unconditional love. If they cheated on you for example, you might not love them anymore.

A parent/child relationship is probably the only unconditional love in the world. For most parents, our kids could do anything in this world and we would still love them.

Here’s the trouble though, your child doesn’t know that.

Confusing messages

Parents give kids confusing messages about love all the time. We praise good behaviour and punish bad. We sent messages constantly that our kids are only loved when they are good or meet our expectations.

Parents pull love away from kids all the time when they don’t act the way we want.

The first step to this must have talk is ACTUALLY modelling unconditional love. Don’t hold love back from your child when they misbehave.

Check out the blog post about all things related to punishments and consequences here:

The Ultimate Guide to Punishments and Consequences

Shame

The difference between shame and guilt is this: Guilt is feeling bad about what we have done. Shame is feeling bad about who we are. Who we are inside. Let your kids know all the time that they ARE good inside, even when they don’t act in a good way.

You’re still loveable

Most kids internalize quickly the idea that they are bad when they do something bad. They can’t separate themselves from their behaviour. When they do something bad and get in trouble, they start to believe that they are just bad kids.

It is SO important to separate these two things for our kids. Let them know that they are not their behaviour. Even if they did something bad or wrong, that doesn’t mean THEY are bad or wrong inside.

I think this is one of the most important conversations to have with your kids because unless we tell them directly, they do not automatically know this is true.

I use this phrase “Even though you did XYZ, you are still a good kid.” Or “even though you did XYZ, you are still loveable”

Unconditional

Tell your kids (all the time) that your love for them will never change, no matter what they do. You think that they know this, but they don’t. If we get upset at our kids for something, they truly feel often that we don’t love them anymore.

Some parents use this as manipulation to get kids to behave. Never use your love as a weapon to control your children. Your love has to be freely given at all times, despite their behaviour.

During your conversation, you can say things like “Nothing you do would make me love you any less” or “No matter what you do, I will still love you the same”

Read the blog post about seeing the best of intentions in our kids here:

Getting Kids to Listen: The missing connection

Important Conversation #3: Repair

Perfect parenting doesn’t exist. We are not perfect, and that isn’t the goal anyway. In fact, teaching our kids that we are human and we mess up too is one of the best lessons we can teach.

One of the best things I hear my kids say is “It’s ok, everyone makes mistakes”. It warms my heart because I am always passing along that message. It is so important to me because I never want them to feel as though a perfect version of a human exists.

Being able to apologize to our kids, without blame or deflection is a skill not all parents possess. Likely because it’s not how our parents spoke to us.

There is so much power in modelling a good apology to your kids. When you accept 100% responsibility for your actions and words, your children learn how to do it for themselves.

If we want our kids to take responsibility for their actions and apologize, we need to model it and show them how it’s done.

The ability to make repair when we mess up is truly a very important conversation to have with your kids.

Learn more about The Roadmap to Calm: Your 9 Day Stop Yelling Reset

What makes a good apology?

I believe a good apology has 3 things:

Take 100% responsibility with no blame
Say what you’re sorry for specifically
Acknowledge your actions

Examples:

“I’m so sorry I yelled at you. I was feeling angry and I yelled. I shouldn’t have done that. Next time I will try to calm myself down before speaking”

“Mom was so upset earlier. I got angry and told you to go away. That was not kind and I’m sorry. Can you forgive me?”

“Bud, earlier when you spilled the milk I got so upset and made you feel bad. I’m so sorry. I have trouble when there is a mess, but I should not have yelled like that. I am responsible for my own feelings, not you.”

Avoid Blame

Often we are so caught up in the lesson we want to teach our kids that we apologize with blame attached. It is really important that we don’t make our kids feel responsible for our feelings. No one “makes” you mad, including your children. Your feelings and actions are yours to worry about. A lot of apologies from parents sound like this:

“I’m sorry I yelled, but you can’t just ignore me like that. Do you understand?”

“I’m sorry I got mad at you, but you can’t hit your sister. That’s not how we act”

Remove the “But…” from your apology.

Teaching

If your child acted in a way that wasn’t appropriate, you can still teach them what to do next time AND accept 100% responsibility of how YOU acted as well. Just make sure you separate the two.

“I am so sorry I yelled at you earlier. I was angry when you hit your sister. I’m in charge of my feelings and I should have calmed down before I spoke. Maybe you were also feeling angry when you hit her. Can you tell me about that?”

You can accept responsibility for yourself, without blaming your child for your actions. Then you can talk about what they can do next time instead. Most of the time our children already know their actions were bad, they don’t need us to point it out over and over. What they need is ideas, tools and skills for what to do next time.

What are the important conversations you have had with your children? Let me know in the comments! And make sure you grab some or all of the free resources below.