Practice Positive Discipline – Page 20

Loving one another in anger

I feel a lot of love in my house.

But there are conflicts, hurt feelings and misunderstandings. I know we are on a journey together to love each other the best we can — to forgive and accept, and to challenge ourselves to feel our feelings without hurting others with our actions or words.

This is a big challenge for me, having grown up with a parental mandate to be happy. If I wasn’t happy, my parents became annoyed or angry. So strong feelings went inside.

I want my children to express their feelings — all of them — and I want us to be a family that shows respect and kindness. So how to manage the moments when the feelings come out and they are hurtful?

“You gave me a broken lollipop!” screams one child at the other. “Well, I didn’t know!” the other yells back, tears welling up in both their eyes.

What do I do as a parent who wants to validate emotions, live in an environment where strong feelings are OK and model communication that is not hurtful?

My instincts from childhood direct me to snap at my children to shut down the yelling. I feel my anger rising in response to theirs. I just want them to be happy! I feel annoyed that they are not.

I have a moment of empathy for my parents. I am chilled, knowing how easy it is to repeat the cycles we grow up with even when we did not thrive in them and do not want to repeat them.

So I stop myself from saying anything in the moment. I pause and breathe.

My children are each sniffling in the back seat, one with her hands over her face and the other staring at a book. We are in the driveway, about to drive away from the house. I turn off the engine, and we just sit for a moment.

This is my chance to change the cycle. This is my chance to do it differently. If I really believe that how I deal with conflict helps them learn to deal with conflict, then this moment is important.

I take another breath and think about myself as a kid and what I would have liked my parents to say and do when I was angry, hurt and frustrated. And the answer? Hugs, empathy, help expressing my feelings, reassurance and a gentle, strong presence that told me it’s all going to be OK.

Q&A: Toddler fights bedtime

Q: My 2-year-old son doesn’t calm down easily for bedtime, and my wife and I need some ideas. We’ve always coslept with him and my wife breastfeeds him, and we’re keeping to a bedtime routine, but a few months ago, our son began to really fight bedtime, even when he is very tired. I really need some help as it’s really hard to not lose my cool when I’m still up at midnight trying to get my child to sleep!

A: That sounds like my 2-year-old daughter! If it makes you feel any better, our pediatrician said fighting sleep like that tends to be a sign of intelligence!

It still often takes us an hour or so to get her down, but here are some things that helped us manage better and get her to sleep at 9:00-9:30 p.m. instead of 10:00-11:00 p.m.:

If she’s not up from nap by 3:00 p.m., there’s no way she’ll get to sleep before 10:00-11:00 p.m. So we ended up moving lunch to an earlier time, so that she is able to start naptime sooner in order to be done with her nap before 3:00 p.m.
If, for whatever reason, she hasn’t started her nap in time to be awake by 3:00 p.m., we skip nap and put her to bed for the night earlier than usual, say around 6:30 p.m. We cosleep, too, so when we skip naptime, I watch for the second she starts to stir — around 10:00-11:00 p.m. — and nurse her back down before she fully wakes up. That tends to prevent her from treating early bedtime as a nap.

Even still, it can get really hard trying to get any toddler to sleep at bedtime.

If I start to get annoyed with my daughter, my husband will take her and walk her or read her a book while I do something to relax. Then he brings her back to bed and goes in the living room to unwind. Doing it in shifts like that helps us both have a bit of a break, so we can cool off by ourselves if we start to get upset.

I’ve also noticed that if we wait for our daughter’s sleepy cues, it’s too late. I think kids who fight sleep, often don’t show them until they’re on the verge of a second wind. I’ve tried to notice when she tends to look sleepy, and then I try to get her in bed about 15 minutes before that.

If she starts rubbing her eyes or yawning, we have an easier time if we skip routine and just go right to bed.

A: It sounds like a second wind and an over-tired kiddo.

Instead of trying to manipulate your nap and bedtime, how about waking earlier? Then naptime can be moved sooner and bedtime as well.

Also when my child has a difficult time getting to sleep, we go into complete quiet time. There is no verbal communicating other than a soothing “ssshhhhh” sound. Lights are out, and white noise is on.

Another thing I recommend is keeping a journal of your days and sleep patterns for a couple weeks and see if there are any patterns with the easy nights and the rough ones. Some children react this way due to food sensitivities, changes in routine and other external factors that are not always apparent until we begin to notice a pattern.

Our story of adoption and Attachment Parenting

“I love you.”

Three little words that I whisper into their small ears throughout the day. I look into their eyes and say, “You are special and strong.”

A few years ago, my husband and I met our first son in a crowded, busy hospital lobby. He was just 3 days old. His dark eyes peaked out from under his hospital cap and mesmerized us. It was a long ride home, but once we were there, we held him close and rarely let him go.

After a few years, we were ready to grow our family again and were overjoyed to meet our second son, 2 days old, several states away.

It is difficult to imagine our lives without these boys or the connections we have with their birth mothers and first families.

Families formed through adoption sometimes face challenges in understanding, communicating and connecting with one another. Prenatal stressors, trauma of separation and hardships endured in first families can affect our children and how they respond to us and the world around them.

My husband and I realized fairly soon after adopting our first son that we needed to parent differently than a lot of friends and acquaintances around us. For example, nighttime cry-it-out methods, unfamiliar babysitters for parents’ night out and even the use of timeout for perceived misbehavior were not going to work for us.

We were navigating the adoption realm and still trying to figure out what was right for us as parents and for our children. As I read and studied about parenting approaches, I learned about Attachment Parenting and discovered that this model seemed to support our parenting goals by encouraging connection with our children while communicating love, safety and respect.

Forming a strong attachment with our sons became our goal, and before long, we were busy savoring skin-to-skin moments among other elements of Attachment Parenting.

When our first son was about 6 months old, we found our cosleeping groove and ability to connect throughout the night. We have been bedsharing ever since and now have both of our sons with us overnight. Cosleeping helps foster a bond between my sons and I that wasn’t necessarily formed in the womb but can be made strong now as it allows us to relax, sense and trust one another.

As our boys get older, we are constantly learning and looking for resources that will foster our parenting skills and allow us to maintain connection while trying to understand how our children are feeling.

So now when my 3 year old cries, throws himself on the ground and refuses to comply with whatever I have just asked of him, I have tools beyond threatening words or actions that will let him know that he is safe, his feelings are valid and heard, and I am going to work with him to find resolution.

Along the way we have had to make lifestyle changes that affect our personal social lives. Not everyone understands why we parent this way, and that is okay. We parent in the best way we can for our boys.

For us, that means striving for a connected family. Attachment Parenting International‘s Eight Principles of Parenting support us in raising confident children…purposefully connected and loved within our family.

A sign of affection

My beautiful 3 year old, like most I would presume, is a rather emotional breed.

Juliette knows not only what she wants but can also quite effectively articulate why she wants it and why we should appease her wishes. Sometimes I joke that she is a lawyer in the making. She is clever, intelligent, determined and oh so independent.

While these qualities are all incredibly wonderful and make her the amazing kid that she is, they also tend to be what causes us to get into battles of the will.

I have learned long ago that arguing with a child leads to frustration, hurt feelings and even more conflict. Finding ways to communicate effectively with my strong-willed daughter when we have a difference in view can be trying but, when done well, is incredibly rewarding.

The other morning Daddy was getting ready to leave for work. We were sitting down to a quick breakfast together at the breakfast bar to spend a few minutes of family time before he rushed out the door, just as we do every morning.

Juliette decided that she wanted her second cartoon — she gets to watch two each morning — prior to eating breakfast. We calmly explained that while we could not force her to come eat breakfast as a family, we would greatly appreciate if she would come spend some time with Daddy before he had to leave.

She quickly switched into defensive mode and began to argue why we should see her point of view: “Breakfast will be there after my cartoon…” “I have only watched one…” “You and Daddy can come sit with me…”

We explained once again that if she did not wish to come sit with us, that was fine, and placed her plate on the counter for when she was ready. We also explained that she would still need to wait until we were done with breakfast for us to put another cartoon on.

A tantrum ensued. The best insults a 3 year old can muster were hurled at us like bullets, tiny clenched fists full of frustration flew into the couch cushions and tears of anger began to flow.

Rather than getting angry or letting the intensity of our emotions match that of our daughter’s, my husband and I sat calmly at the breakfast bar drinking our coffee. This is not the norm for our morning routine, so we didn’t think much of it. I let her release her frustration for a few minutes.

Rather than getting upset or doling out an unnecessary punishment, we waited until our daughter was receptive and offered a simple, affectionate gesture to let her know that we were here when she was ready. When she had calmed down and made eye contact with me, I signed “I Love You.”

Ever since my daughter was an infant, Juliette has been fond of the use of sign language to communicate. We have graduated from simple baby signing to occasional sign-language classes, ASL videos and countless ASL books and flash cards. It is not uncommon for her to speak in full sentences and use accompanying signs simultaneously.

My simple act — a “sign” of affection — brought my daughter back to a calm state of mind. Without a word she climbed off the couch, walked over to us and laid her head on my lap. “I’m sorry. I love you, too, Momma,” she said.

My heart melted. This was definitely one of those moments you treasure and hold dear in your heart.

She climbed up on her stool, and we finished our breakfast together. When Daddy had kissed his girls goodbye, Juliette and I snuggled on the couch for her second morning cartoon. All was well. Peace had been restored.

Strong-willed kids have strong emotions and strong reactions to situations that they either don’t understand or don’t feel are fair. I have found that when we meet these emotions and reactions with support, love and patience, rather than anger, frustration and punishment, we are far more likely to diffuse the negativity rather than exacerbate it.

While I am sure we will have many more battles of the will, this is one that I am actually quite thankful for. That moment of connection with my daughter was like magic, and I will treasure it dearly.

Tantrums

My 2-year-old son was standing in his bedroom doorway with little sobs, tears rolling down his cheeks. All because he was so tired and it was bedtime, but he wanted to keep playing with his trains.

My heart was breaking.

He wanted me to take him back downstairs, but I was nursing his half-asleep baby sister, and his older brother was already in bed and ready for me to sing his bedtime songs.

I felt like I was doing everything I was supposed to do during a tantrum. I had stayed calm. I had talked to him about how I knew he was sad, how I knew he didn’t want to stop playing but that it was time for bed. I had tried to hug and comfort him, which he refused, so I had stayed nearby.

I didn’t know what else to try, and seeing him like that was more than I could take at that moment. I felt like I was going to start crying, too, just from seeing him so upset and from me feeling so helpless.

Then I remembered a creative suggestion I’d read recently for handling tantrums. I pulled out the nearest book, one I knew he loved. I opened it and started reading. I didn’t make a big deal out of it. I didn’t tell him to come over and didn’t read directly to him.

His tears stopped almost immediately. Soon after he was sitting beside me, giggling as we all looked at the book together. The trains were forgotten about, and once the book was finished, he climbed into bed with no more protesting.

It was the best strategy I’ve found yet for dealing with tantrums, and it’s worked for us several times now. A similar concept also worked when he had a tantrum in the car, and I turned on music and started singing to myself.

However, what I’ve found is that there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to a child’s tantrums. What works in one situation won’t necessarily work in another.

Sometimes, the reading idea will only work as a temporary fix, and right after the book is done, he’s back to crying for what he wants and can’t have. Sometimes, he just needs me to sit beside him while he cries, to offer to hold him in my lap, to comfort him.

This was the case recently when my son wanted to leave the house and go to the park, which was not something I could say yes to at that time. To him, it was so unfair. He didn’t understand why we couldn’t go right then. I tried to empathize with him and acknowledge his feelings, but there was nothing I could say to make it better. We sat on the garage stairs together for several minutes, my arm around him as he cried. Suddenly, he stopped crying, stood up, turned off the garage light, and went back into the house.

There’s a lot of trial and error in finding the right method of handling a tantrum, but I hope my son knows that I’m there for him and trying my best to figure out what he needs in that moment. It’s still a struggle for all of us when tantrums happen, but little by little, we’re finding new ways to help him deal with those big emotions.

Lying and trust

We catch children hiding the truth from the time they are quite young. It might be a child who has just scribbled on the wall, who says “no” when you ask her if she did it. It might be a child who points to his brother and says, “He did it!” when you ask him if he spilled the juice. It might be a child who denies taking money from your wallet when you know he helped himself to the $10 that was there. Children will tell you they finished their homework, cleaned their room or brushed their teeth when in fact they did not.

Lying or keeping secrets is a defensive instinct that protects the child from too much vulnerability. Since a child’s greatest need is to maintain closeness and connection with his parents, he has to avoid anything that would create separation.

Separation does not only involve being physically apart, but also having a sense of being different, being less pleasing or significant, not belonging, being unloved or being misunderstood. Sometimes telling the truth sets you up for all of these different experiences of separation, and not only children but adults, too, instinctively avoid these experiences.

Potentially, when children reach the age of approximately 6, they want their parents to know and understand them. This need for psychological intimacy drives them to share their thoughts, feelings and secrets with their parents, making it difficult for them to hide the truth. Without even knowing why, children instinctively come to their parents to tell them what’s on their minds and in their hearts. This includes telling their parents about the trouble they got into!

However, long before this age, this instinct can become skewed.

Children are very vulnerable, and sometimes this vulnerability can become too overwhelming. If a child feels that telling the truth or sharing his secret with his parents might hurt him, then he will have to make the sacrifice of not allowing the relationship to deepen. The vulnerable feelings of embarrassment, shame or guilt will prevent him from spontaneously blurting out the truth.

If a child senses his value will be reduced in the eyes of his parents — that they will be angry, disappointed or ashamed of him, or that he is too difficult or too much to handle — he will have to hide aspects of himself from them.

In order to stay inside the relationship, the child is driven to keep secrets to prevent these painful experiences of separation. The thought process that follows: “What my parents don’t know can’t hurt me.”

We need to make it safe for our children to tell us the truth. We need to extend a generous invitation to them to bring all of who they are into the relationship. They need to feel safe to tell us what they are thinking, feeling and experiencing. They need to see that we can handle these things without losing our temper or reacting in a way that alarms or shames them.

We want to make it easy for our children to be dependent on us, so that in any situation, they naturally turn to us to seek our help and guidance. When we see a child is not truthful, it’s our job to convey that we know the truth and we are here to help him make amends.

By trusting in our children’s good intentions, we can be on their side and draw out their mixed feelings about a given situation. We need to make it safe for them to tell their side of the story and then identify the right moment to draw forth other sides of the story and lead them to the appropriate outcome.

Children want to tell us the truth. They want to be good and do the right thing. It’s our role to create the right context in which they can sense that what we know about them can’t hurt them, and that nothing can divide us.

Parent-child conflict resolution

By Elisa Llamido, a producer, actress and writer and the creator of “The Perfect Pregnancy Workout vol. 3: The Ancient Art of Belly Dance for Labor,” living in Orlando, Florida, USA, with her husband, 19-year-old stepson, 5-year-old son and four frogs

My 5-year-old son and I were on our way in to the grocery store when I suddenly realized that he wasn’t beside me. I turned back to see him standing on the sidewalk transfixed, staring at the scene unfolding before him.

A mother had been calling to her toddler to come out of the store, but he didn’t want to come. There was a large scale inside of the door, and he liked climbing on it and seeing the numbers move. There was clearly a difference in priorities here.

What caught my son’s attention was her closing gambit: “You’re not coming? OK, BYE!” She turned and walked out without him. The little boy quickly dropped what he was doing and ran after her, terrified of losing her.

My son, Jason, couldn’t take his eyes off of the scene. His horrified expression made his face a frozen mask.

“Why did she say, ‘Bye!’?” he asked.

I tried to explain it away. “She probably has somewhere that she needs to go and she doesn’t want to wait anymore,” I told him.

I realized that this me-centric explanation wouldn’t be enough for my kid. “She doesn’t really want to leave him, but she said this because she wants him to come now,” I said. Since one of the things that we work on in our house is not doing things to try to manipulate others, that sounded even worse. I grasped wildly for an explanation that would mollify my son, but I came up with nothing. We both stood, watching and waiting for the rest of the drama to unfold.

We didn’t have to wait long. The boy ran out of the store to the sidewalk, where his mother grabbed him by the upper arm and attempted to pull him so he would walk to the car faster. The toddler promptly sat down on the ground, in a last effort of defiance. Now the mother pulled harder, yanking him to his feet and dragging him, stumbling to the car.

I heard crying. It wasn’t coming from the stumbling boy. There was another witness to the scene, another towheaded moppet who was watching as the pair made its way through the parking lot. I glanced from Jason to the previously unseen witness. Wow, they’re really upset.

After they walked away, Jason suddenly reanimated and started walking into the store again, but this time he had a million questions. Why did she say that? Why did she do that? Did she hurt him? Why was she so mean to him? Was she his Mommy?

I realized that to Jason, and likely to the other little witness, this scene made absolutely no sense. They put themselves in the other boy’s shoes and couldn’t see any reason why the person who was supposed to love and care for him suddenly turned mean.

I confess that I could easily relate to why the mother did what she did. It had probably been a long day, she had probably run into the store for one forgotten item that she needed to make dinner and she just didn’t have time to wait for lollygagging. Add that to any sleep deprivation that many parents experience, and I think any adult could understand what she was feeling.

But not the kids.

Little children are gifted with the joy of living completely in the moment. They don’t understand deadlines and schedules, and their birthday or winter holiday is an eternity away. Time doesn’t mean anything. So when passing by a scale, there’s really no reason why they shouldn’t climb on it. They’re here, and there’s a scale that has a hand that moves up and down when you jump on the plate. If you asked them, they’d tell you that they couldn’t understand why you wouldn’t stop to check it out, even though you have to get home to make dinner. They may never get the chance to play on this scale again.

It’s a question of priorities.

When I’m able to adopt my son’s outlook, I feel much happier. This week, I stopped on my way into a store to snap a photo of a double rainbow on my phone and then stood and looked at it a moment, savoring it, knowing that in a minute it would be gone forever.

Before becoming a parent, I was so caught up in trying to get ahead that I dismissed anything done just for pleasure as frivolous. One of my son’s many gifts to me is that he makes me stop in my break-neck pace of deadlines and stress to look at a bug or see a bird in the yard. I realize that it’s important to stop and take in the beauty of these everyday miracles, including the miracle of the big scale at the supermarket exit.

At the same time, we adults do live in a world of schedules and we need to find a way to balance this while taking our kids’ priorities into consideration so that we can create a win-win situation where both sides feel like they get what they need.

Instead of going head-to-head with her son, the hurried mom could have spent the extra minute that she spent dragging him through the parking lot making a compromise: “We’ve got to get home to make dinner, sweetheart, so 10 more jumps on the scale and then it’s time to go.” She could then count backward as he jumped so that he’d know when his time was up. That way, he’d feel as though he was allowed to do something that he wanted, even if it wasn’t as long as he wanted to do it.

Or, if she was really in a hurry, she could have offered something more fun than the scale.

I am an athletic mom, so it’s always been easy for me to squat down, show my son my back and offer a ride. “The Mommy Train is leaving the station!” I’d call out when my son was younger, then make a door closing “Rheeeee!’ sound. My son could never resist, and he’d run over to jump on my back for a quick ride to the car. Or, if he didn’t jump on, I could scoop him up making big sound effects and then swing him around — with more sound effects, of course — as I carried him off, laughing. Now that he’s older, I can usually tempt him with a race to the car.

My friend, Cynthia, has a bad back and can’t carry her daughter, so she came up with her own invention of getting her little girl moving. Her daughter was captivated watching a marching band once, so now when she needs her to move quickly, she calls out, “OK, it’s time to march! Let’s march! Let’s march!” and her daughter quickly forgets everything else in her haste to fall in line and march after her mom.

Before I became a mother I was apprehensive about parent-child conflict. I’d seen so many of these confrontations in public places, and I didn’t want to have anything to do with them. My mom gave me her advice: “An adult should always be able to outsmart a child. We have experience. We have fully formed brains. If you can’t find a way to get a child to do what they need to do happily, you need to try harder.”

Does that mean that kids will always be reasonable? No, of course not. There are some times when they want something that they just can’t have.

My son used to want to operate heavy construction machinery. It’s just not possible, and he would get very upset. At those times, I would hold him close as he cried and let him know that I understood his frustration: “I know, honey. It would be so cool to push the levers on that truck! I want to do it, too! But we can’t. It’s not our truck.” He would cry for a moment, and then it would be over. He knew that I understood him.

I glanced at him now as we walked. His eyes were toward me now, looking for answers. I told him the truth as I saw it: “That Mommy was probably tired. She needed to get home soon and was in a hurry, so she tried to get him to leave. When he didn’t want to go, she grabbed him and made him go.”

Jason’s eyes were fixed on me now, riveted. I was confirming the horror that he thought he saw. And then I added, “I don’t agree with the way that she did that, and I would never do that to you.”

“I know, Mommy,” he answered. I then asked him, “What did you think of what you saw?” and he replied, “I don’t think she should have done that.”

Questions answered, his eyes left my face and he went back to his normal mode, contentedly observing the world around him and looking for exciting things to explore. I touched his shoulder in a gesture to satisfy my need for closeness after talking about something that disturbed him.

I wondered if that mom and son had resolved their differences as they got to the car. I hoped so.

Making connections through gift-giving and receiving

I don’t know about you, but every year as the winter holidays begin to creep closer, I start to have a moment of panic.

Well, maybe it is not so much panic but more dissociative in nature.

What I am preparing for is the list that is coming, the list of items that I know my children are going to be wishing for as they begin to write down all the material goods that they desire.

The panic is what creeps in first as I prepare myself to show willingness to accept these lists that they have worked so hard to create. The dissociation comes in when I want to go into denial about this time of year, how many gifts to purchase or what it all really means.

I am lucky to be in a position where I am usually able to purchase whatever my children need or to obtain exactly what is desired throughout the entire year. As a result, these lists that my children are creating seem like extra stuff that they do not really need but are developed out of the idea of the gift-receiving concept that comes with the winter holiday season.

What if things were different this year? What if gift-giving and receiving really came from the heart? Could this provide us with an opportunity to see and distinguish between what we need, want and desire?

Could we expand upon this concept to move away from the material side of the holidays and look more closely at the altruism and willingness to open to others in love?

Instead of leaving my children alone to make a gift wish list, I could spend time with them. We could look at what passions they have and then volunteer or make financial donations to organizations or charities that are aligned with their interests. We could make a decision to support only local businesses when we want to purchase items. We could spend time together making gifts or finding other ways to engage within our community.

All of this we could do without any expectation of return, which is one way of defining what it means to offer gifts.

Maybe this year will be about embracing a different side of the economy that does not involve me going to multiple stores to purchase every item on my children’s wish lists.

Instead, we are opening doors of connection, providing opportunities for me to understand what my children enjoy doing and how we can share that love with others.

This could become very contagious.

As we step outside the norm to offer gifts from the heart that involve our time, energy and money, others may see how much joy we have. They may wonder where this comes from and may experience exactly what it means when we offer service or gifts to others without any expectation of return. This could be the encouragement needed for my girls to continue doing it and has the potential to get others involved.

What a great way to form connections with our loved ones and to embrace community instead of continuing within a pattern of panic and dissociation.