The world doesn’t revolve around you you know! Parents often exaggerate their disappointment in their child to labour their point in the hope that the child will think more about their parent’s advice and be more considerate. Yet instead of making them think responsibly, we’re likely making them feel pretty awful about themselves. Parents then wonder why their child is so reactive or resistant and further accuses them of not caring about their impact on other family members. It’s so important that we mindfully consider how we communicate feedback, requests, limits or corrections, and how the message causes our child to feel about themselves. A child’s reaction that parent’s judge to be “disrespect” is often an instant expression of their very hurt feelings. Seek to understand the feelings and unmet needs beneath the behaviour. If one of my kids reacts to a request (like “can you please bring out the compost”) or a limit (like “it’s time to log off the computer”) with a snappy tone, I try to read it as a possible emotional reaction to how I asked and I might respond with something like;”did you not like how I asked you?” I ask because I genuinely care about how they feel and always prefer to foster willing cooperation and team work for everyone’s benefit. Sometimes this leads to clarifying that they thought I was annoyed with them because of my tone of voice, which I will own and explain if I am in fact feeling annoyed towards them and explain using “I feel” statements while avoiding critical blaming language. Or I might explain that there are other reasons why I’m feeling stressed and under pressure and that’s why I sounded annoyed, which usually relieves them of feeling accused or misunderstood. Sometimes when I seek clarity around their reaction, my kid might tell me “no mum it has nothing to do with what you said, I’m just stressed” or “I’ve just had a really big day and I’m feeling frustrated/ exhausted/ stressed”. It’s important for us to remember that a grumpy reaction doesn’t necessarily mean that they have a problem with a request or a limit, it may add to their stress, hence a little empathy can make a big difference in helping them gain the energy to stretch themselves to do what needs to be done. Giving feedback, corrections and limits as respectfully as possible invites your child to listen, invites them to care, invites them to consider, invites their higher thinking, invites them to expand their thinking and feelings to also consider the thoughts and feelings of others. Whereas purposely invoking their feelings of guilt or shame, in the hope that this will motivate them to be more responsible and considerate just doesn’t work. In fact it has the opposite effect. Sometimes parents go so far as to say “you should be ashamed of yourself”, perhaps not realizing the extent that they’re shaming their child and the very debilitating effects of shame. Indeed, children do very naturally learn from the emotional responses of their parents. Children generally love and care very deeply about their parent and are very affected to see their parent’s sadness, annoyance or disappointment in response to their actions. If we are truly sensitive to our child’s feelings, we’ll see that they notice the slightest change in our mood and body language at times when we’re expressing limits, making requests or expressing a boundary. Instead of exaggerating our emotions or lecturing them in the hope of having a greater impact, we actually can have a greater influence if we assume that they can see and care about our sadness, fears, annoyance and disappointment and because they care so much about how we feel and how they affect us (when they’re not themselves upset or overly stressed), they need our reassurance of our unconditional love at these times: “I’m disappointed that you didn’t stick with our agreement, so let’s talk it through and I’m sure we can work something out”, “I don’t like when you speak to me like that, but I can see that you’re upset and I do also care about what’s going on for you. Tell me more about ….. ” “Please don’t grab the toy from your baby sister. It looks like you don’t like when the baby plays with your new toys do you? Were you disappointed to see it in her hands?” Click link to read full article. ~ Genevieve peacefulparent/tread-gently-correcting-child/
Posted on: Tue, 30 Dec 2014 01:05:38 +0000
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