Children: Going Through A Phase

Raising children is never an easy task. At the best of times they can be angels and at the worst horrible terrors that bear little resemblence to what you are trying to teach them. Often times when children are fixated or otherwise on to something that seems quite a bit unusual for them they are said to be "going through phase." Parent fears cause them to wonder if it is something that will change with time and that this "phase," will pass and better more normal behavior will return or if they are stuck with the new behavior.

I know myself as a father I have seen many sides of my daughter. Once we received a call from one of her friend's mothers she told us that her son had come home with a silver coin and that our daughter had given it to him. The coin in question was actually one of my coins from a collection I keep and had been showing her. We advised his mom that we didn't know she had taken it but if he could bring it back with him the next day so we could get it back we would appreciate that. She was understanding about it and said she would make sure he brought it.

We realized that our daughter had stolen the coin and lied to her friend and told him we said it was alright with us that she gave it to him. To be quite honest I was very disappointed in her. But decided that when she came through the door after school that we would not say anything at first. We would give her a chance to come clean, to do the right thing. We casually told her that I couldn't find one of my coins and asked her if she had seen it. She responded with a no. So we asked her if she had taken it to school and she again lied and said no. So we bluntly asked if she had taken it and given it to a boy at school to which she said no. We were pretty angry by this point and she was punished. We had never known her to be a thief, a liar and that she would lie and lie even when faced with the obvious truth that we knew what she'd done.

Another instance I recall involved our cat. We trained our cat very well and she would never climb unto our table or coffee table, she wouldn't even think of it. But for some reason we started catching our cat on the table. I would give the cat a swat and she would jump down and go back to her bed. After this happened several times we became a little suspicious and my wife caught our daughter picking up the cat and putting her on the table. She was doing it on purpose as she was taking some form of amusement from seeing the cat get punished for it. Suffice to say again she was punished, and we gave our cat a lot of treats.

In both instances our daughter was a shadow of the great person we felt she was and it took quite a few talks with her for us all to get past it. But one thing I think parents need to keep in mind is that these are rarities in the grand scheme of things. If the good outweighs the bad your on the right track. Also if the phase they are going through is a fixation with a movie, cartoons, comics or even moodiness for that matter this is normal, this will change as the discover themselves and find their place in the world. All you can do is be there give them the best of yourself and hope for the best.

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