Things got screwed up. Somebody dropped the ball. There was a miscommunication. There was a delay. You’re not going to get what you were promised or what you wanted or what you’d prefer. You were caught off-guard.

What do you do when these things happen? You get a little frustrated. You get a little upset. As Phoebe Bridgers sings on her new album, “I’ve been known to throw a tantrum / When things are not the way I imagine them.” It happens to the best of us…

And yet, when our kids do it, we come down on them. We tell them this isn’t age-appropriate. We tell them they’re embarrassing us. We tell them we refuse to reward this behavior. It’s true that this is behavior that we shouldn’t reward, but we should do a better job understanding it. We should do a better job appreciating that they have naïver hopes and expectations than we do…and even less experience managing that disappointment. We should not try to hold them to standards that even we—as adults—fail to meet in our own way.

We all get upset. We’ve all thrown little tantrums. We should try to get better at not doing this, but we also should be kinder to our kids when they’re doing not only something pretty natural, but something they’ve seen us do plenty of times.

P.S. The ability to pause before reacting isn’t just good parenting advice. It’s something that great leaders throughout history have practiced. They pause. They reflect. They choose their response.

Our Pause & Reflect Medallion was made for that moment. To help you choose wisdom over impulse. Because your children don’t only inherit your features—they’re inheriting your responses. The parent who masters their reactions gives their children a priceless gift: the knowledge that emotions are to be felt, but not always acted upon.

Get your Pause & Reflect Medallion.