My husband and I went to a parenting seminar at our church and we learned a lot of really great tools that we could use in raising our kids.

But the most surprising lesson we took home that day had to do with the concept of treating your child with dignity.

What does that mean exactly, you ask? (As did I.)

Well, here is a definition: Dignity: The quality or state of being worthy of esteem or respect. It originally comes form a latin word which meant “worthy”.

Basically, if you are treating someone with dignity, you are treating them in such a way as to grant them respect and some elevated status. In short, you are pretty much treating them in way in which most of us parents would like to be treated 24/7. (Wouldn’t that be nice.)

So how do you do this with your kid, you ask? (As did I.)

Well, for example, when you are about to interrupt your child in the middle of whatever he is doing to scoop him up and take him to the next place, do you let him know beforehand? Do you allow him to finish what he is doing or do you get impatient when he refuses to comply?

It seems to me that if I was in the middle of something and someone came by, picked me up with no warning and put me in a car or stroller, I’d be pretty upset.

Here is another one: when your child does something you wish he wouldn’t do in a public place, do you yell at him in front of other people? Are you one of those moms I have seen say to their child “You are embarrassing me!!” loud enough for others to hear?  I have often wished the moms who say that had the sense to really know who I was embarrassed for in those moments.

When your kid refuses to share his toys, do you ask him if it’s okay to let someone else play or do you chastise him and force him to share by taking his toys against his will to give to the other child . My husband and I have found many times that if our boy does not want to share something, we can always solve it by asking him which toy he WILL share. This resolves any upset very quickly which could have escalated into two crying kids in seconds.

It seems that any law of behavior that one would apply to adults would also apply to a child. A child has opinions, moods, gets hungry, gets tired, and has curiosities that wished to be fulfilled. This can drive us, as parents, a little crazy from time to time–especially when we cannot figure out which one it is–but it would make sense that if we could consult the child rather than enforcing our decisions on him and further grant him the respect and dignity that we expect from him, we might just get someplace.

A child’s world is so much different than ours. They see everything from a different angle, hear things that do not make sense all day long and find humor and beauty in things that, to us, are so mundane. I think that as parents, if we can take time everyday to understand the real world of the child by taking the extra time to grant them their dignity, we might just get a lot more in return.

You know what they say, when you point the finger, there are three pointing back at you.

So the next time we find ourselves thinking “he just won’t listen” or “he refuses to understand” or “she is being such a brat!”, maybe we need to take a look in the mirror and see who is really causing the problem.