My daughter called herself stupid and I agreed, please read the post before you judge

My daughter is 7 and a very confident, stubborn, beautiful, smart, and charming little girl.Whenever she makes a mistake or misbehaves she calls herself stupid. Until now I have told her with emphasis and love that she is not stupid when she does this. That it was a stupid thing to do, but that she herself is not stupid. It does not seem to work/mean anything/help her feel better.Last week my son (11) did the same because he had forgotten to feed our pet rabbit (I fed it, don't worry). He was feeling really bummed over this and said "I feel so stupid". I answered, "We all feel that sometimes". And then we just started laughing so hard, because of course, I meant that we all sometimes feel stupid and not that we all sometimes feel that HE is stupid. But somehow it lifted his mood and improved the whole situation to laugh about it.I decided to try something similar on my daughter yesterday. She called herself stupid and I looked at her with a smile and said: "Yes, wow you really are CRAZY stupid" (I actually used a more offending term in our native language, but I can't find anything that fits in English, so this will have to do), she looked at me in shock and I added: "I am too sometimes.", she smiled. I continued: "You are also smart, brave, and very kind. Sometimes you are stupid. Even dumb actually." She laughed. "And sometimes you are beautiful, ugly, funny, angry, happy, sad, sleepy, scared, and no matter what you are I love you very much. All the time."At this point, she was snuggling in my arms and looked very happy. We talked a little more about how much I loved her and she came up with a lot of both serious and ridiculous examples - like what if she was very small or very big? Or if she had giant feet or no hair at all, or what if she had done something very bad? I confirmed that I loved her and would love her no matter what.It was just so lovely to see how much better this approach worked. Embracing her mistakes and flaws and making her feel loved anyway just made her so happy. It was really nice to be able to reassure her this way. via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/3iAHWfn