How to Repair After an Argument

John here. You're listening to "The Mindful Activity," all about mending your relationship with your child after a rupture. While this may be a stressful time, this is actually an opportunity. You have a chance to model how to reconnect and repair in a relationship. So if we're gonna do it, how should we do it? With tape, of course. We started off this series making it very clear that despite our best hopes to be a parent who's crushing it every single moment, that we are imperfect humans. And all the time we are not gonna be the most mindful or the most supportive or understanding parents. And there will be moments where we raised our voice, where we said something we didn't mean and that hurt the feelings of our child. And now you're left wondering what to do next. Well, this is a rupture. In some homes, there's not much attention to these. There's sort of this waiting out and hoping that it will settle back to normal. But I would encourage that this is an opportunity to notice the rip and try to mend it. And if we think of it as a rip, well, what works best to deal with a rip? TAPE, T-A-P-E, another mnemonic to help us as a strategy so that we can improve our relationship with our child and also model what we want our child to do when there has been a disconnect. So TAPE: T stands for take time. Now, sometimes after an argument, we have this urge to wanna just fix it or end the distress right away. Often we do need to take a moment. I would say at minimum two to three minutes to reflect on what happened. So it might be two minutes. It might be an hour. We want to make sure that we do get to address this rip. So I wouldn't advise for seven weeks. But taking the time we need is important to sort of get ready to move towards making a repair. A stands for apologize. Now, there is not a single ask here for you to take full responsibility and apologize for every aspect of the rupture. Instead, in that taking time, we're hoping that there's a moment that you could reflect on your role in the recent rupture. What could you have done better? And when you come to apologize, we want this to be sincere and specific. "I'm sorry that I raised my voice when we were talking." And let's not invalidate it with but. You probably don't even need to add their role in at this point. We're wanting to invite a conversation. So T, take time. A, apologize. P: P, propose a path forward. We're gonna help try to name a solution for the rupture. "Hey, I'm sorry that I said you never clean up your toys. I know you do it sometimes. That was not a nice thing to say. I'm sorry. It really...