Recently I read on Scouts-L a posting that said that children spend an average of only 7 minutes a day interacting with their parents as compared to 8 hours about 100 years ago. I don't doubt those statistics at all. About 15 years ago I read a similar study. When I read it the study included the fact that much of the time spent interacting with children was mostly yelling at or correcting their child.
Now that you are a unit leader, you spend about an hour a week interacting with not only your own child, but others in the den. How are you spending that time with them?
Oh sure, there are times when we correct a child so they don't hurt themselves or others, or to simply conform to our perception of the right way. But if that is the only way we communicate with young people, they probably aren't listening to us.
It really is okay for kids to make mistakes. If they don't make mistakes, because we always correct them, we deny them the opportunity to learn from their mistakes.
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