A Phrase We Need to Learn to Say to Our Kids

In an article entitled "Author Kelly Corrigan reveals the hardest thing she says to her kids" by Allison Slater Tateand featured on Today.com, Tate writes about four phrases that we need to get comfortable saying to our children. Based on Corrigan's book, "Tell Me More,"  I especially resonated with the first one featured in the article:

• "I don't know."Tate writes: "In our effort to soothe our kids with an immediate answer — often delivered with high conviction — we are perpetuating an intolerance for uncertainty that carries into adulthood," Corrigan told Today. She suggested establishing an "I don't know" household, where everybody is comfortable with the phrase. "If you were to raise your kids to be able to live with the answer, 'I don't know, let me think about that,' then you might help them introduce that critical pause between impulse and decision that could take them down different and better roads for the rest of their lives," she said.

Let's face it, sometimes we just don't know the answer to something. Sometimes we don't have the answer ourselves, especially when it involves an existential unknown. Sometimes we need to sleep on something before we give them an answer. In any case, being vulnerable to not knowing something gives your children permission to also pause when necessary, reflect, and process. And to accept that there are some things in life that we just don't have an answer for, and that is okay. :) To read the full article: https://www.today.com/parents/tell-me-more-author-kelly-corrigan-t153170 Photo by Charlein Gracia on Unsplash