Mom explains how to avoid creating lifelong bad memories for kids when they make mistakes

It is natural to lose patience from time to time as a parent. After all, children can be a handful pretty often. However, one mom's recent frustration led her to realize that she might be unintentionally harming her child and leaving a negative memory ingrained in her forever. Thankfully, the mom, @MrsJellySanton on Twitter, has also figured out a way to control herself from having emotional outbursts in front of her children in a sweet way.

Santos, who works as a radio show producer, left a series of tweets to spark discussion on an important topic after a trivial interaction with her daughter. "Let me tell you how easy it is to create lifelong bad memories for your kids," she wrote in the first tweet. "The other day a conversation about lipstick with my toddler reminded me how easy it is to cause damage to these little beings." In the following tweets, Santos elaborated on the story about losing her patience when her daughter smeared lipstick on her face while they were running late. 

The exasperated mom shared pictures with her daughter and explained how the little one loved playing with her mom's makeup kits and would often put makeup on her mom's face. But the little girl picked the worst time to play around with the makeup and as a result, Santos lost her patience with her. "We were running late. She decided to take my lipstick and smear it on her face," Santos wrote, adding how she got upset with her daughter and told her things that every kid might have heard from their parents at some point.

"I said why is she doing that," Santos recalled. "That she always wants to make herself look like a clown with lipstick before we go out." Santos immediately understood that she could have controlled her frustration rather than scolding her daughter for it. "Her face. The hurt. Oh my god. I felt bad," Santos further wrote. "​​Her lip moved. Her tears formed. And I realized how much that hurt her." She immediately apologized to her daughter and tried her gentle parenting tactics on her.

"She let the tears roll," Santos said, and after fixing the lipstick. "She smiled and hugged me. But it stayed with me." Santos did notice a change in her daughter the very next day when she was playing with makeup once again because she was being very careful with it. "I knew I was the reason. So I said lemme see your lipstick. And she says 'Look, mommy. I don’t look like a clown today' and there it was. Damage waiting," Santos continued and she had to "check on herself so fast."

Santon took time to explain to her daughter that it's okay to do her clown makeup when they are at home and it makes both of them happy. The little girl's eyes lit up as soon as she got the validation. "But when we're home we can go crazy with the big lipstick like the clowns. It was as simple as that. It's been love ever since," Santos tweeted. "That one moment could’ve stayed with her forever had I not corrected myself." People shared their thoughts on this and appreciated the mother for adopting a calmer approach.

@_parkersj_ wrote, "My mom told me when rushing or late, that’s where the start of the day can end up being a bad one. It’s happened but I love how you handled that." @whitneyparfait_ added, "In the tender journey of parenting, moments of realization can blossom into gardens of understanding it's in the gentle repair of a child's spirit, mended with words of love and actions of grace, that the truest bonds are formed these are the lessons that shape both the young and the grown, crafting legacies of compassion in the soft clay of the heart."