Posts Tagged ‘communicating with kids’
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Ask Tina: My Child is Lying to Me. How Worried Should I Be?
Q: My almost-five-year-old son is starting to lie. I’m worried that this is starting a terrible pattern, and I don’t know how to handle the situation. I’m just really upset because I’ve always stressed how important it is to tell the truth.
A: First, take a deep breath. This isn’t anything to worry about. Most kids tell fibs at this age. In fact, lying is developmentally normal and is actually evidence of a developing conscience and moral code. He knows what he’s done is wrong, so he lies to avoid being bad or to avoid getting in trouble or losing your approval.
So now, let’s talk about how to respond. When I know my son is lying, I try not to say ,“I don’t believe you.” Instead, I say, “Why don’t you take a minute and think about what really happened and then tell me again.” Sometimes I also say, “It’s really important that you tell me the truth and tell me what really happened so I can believe you when you tell me things.” For smaller children, it’s even OK to sometimes simply say Read the rest of this entry »
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From Black and White to Technicolor: Helping Your Child Express A Wide Range of Feelings
“How was your day, sweetheart?” We all know the answer we’re going to get when we ask our child this question: “Fine” (or, if we’re lucky, “Good”).
Likewise, if we are trying to teach our child empathy, and we ask, “How do you think that made your sister feel?” we will most likely get an obligatory, half-hearted reply: “Bad.”
One reason we get these monosyllabic responses is probably that our kids aren’t emotionally invested in this particular conversation. Even if they were, though there’s another factor that often keeps them from going into the complexity of a particular emotion: they haven’t yet learned to think about their feelings in a sophisticated way that recognizes the varied and rich emotional life within them.
As a result, they don’t use a full spectrum of emotions, and instead paint their emotional pictures primarily in black and white. So we typically don’t hear, “I felt really proud of myself when I hit the winning shot during PE, but I was disappointed with how I did in Science, and I’m irate about what Sarah did at lunch.” And we don’t hear, “I think that made my sister feel belittled, and that I don’t care about her.” Instead, we hear “Fine” and “Bad.”
Ideally, we want our kids to recognize that there’s a colorful rainbow of rich emotions within them, and to pay attention to these different possibilities. Without this awareness of what’s going on in their right brains, they’ll be trapped in black and white, like the old TV reruns. When they have a full emotional palette, they are able to experience the vivid Technicolor that a deep and vibrant emotional life allows.
Making a child aware of the emotional rainbow that exists within them is one of the best ways to help connect the left and right hemispheres of their brain. When they come to understand their own mind and the minds of others, they can then move beyond a black/white assumption that feelings are good or bad, happy or sad. Instead, they can begin to understand the broad spectrum of emotions they experience, and learn to name and express them. Once developed, these skills will last them a lifetime.
When we promote this type of horizontal integration in our kids, Read the rest of this entry »
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Sick of Time-Outs?
[Update: I've spelled out some of my main reasons for not being a fan of time-outs here.]
There are far worse discipline tactics than time-outs, but I think that there are some alternatives that can be better in certain situations. Few children actually use their time-out time to reflect or calm down; in fact, it can even cause them to get more upset, depending on the child. I prefer some other approaches that require my kids to get more practice using the problem-solving, empathetic, choice-making part of their brains:
- A “re-do.” One way I do this is by saying “Stop, please. Now go out of the room and Read the rest of this entry »
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Do You Discipline on Auto-Pilot?
When your child needs to be disciplined, how do you decide what to do? Do you decide, or are you just going with what you always do? Are you disciplining on auto-pilot? Most of the time, when we need to discipline, the first question we ask ourselves is “What consequence should I give?” Instead, I’d like to encourage you to begin asking three different questions:
1. Why did my child act this way? If we look deeper at what’s going on behind the behavior, we can often understand that Read the rest of this entry »
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Be Thoughtful About How You Gush
The way you praise your child influences what theories they have about themselves. Stanford professor Carol Dweck has done some very interesting research showing real problems with constantly telling our kids things like “You are so smart!” or “You are a good artist!” The problem is that statements like these make our kids feel that they do well at things because they were born good at things—that that’s just how they are. In other words, they believe that their intelligence and talents are “fixed.” The danger with this type of thinking is that kids may avoid challenges, or give up more easily, or feel bad about themselves when they don’t do well at something right away, deciding that they just aren’t smart (or artistic or athletic or whatever) enough—that they just don’t have what it takes.
On the other hand, Dweck discovered that children who are told that they do well because they Read the rest of this entry »
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Domestic Violence and Girls – What you should teach your daughter
Many parents never talk to their daughters about domestic violence and partner abuse.
Why not?
For some, it’s because they don’t think it could happen. But research shows that it’s irresponsible to think that any young woman is immune to partner abuse. In fact, while statistics vary, estimates indicate that as many as half of women will be victims of domestic violence at some point. So please don’t say, “It couldn’t happen to my girl.”
Other parents avoid the subject because they feel they simply don’t have enough knowledge to know how to address the situation. So let’s talk about some ways you can arm your daughter against an abusive romantic relationship.
Teach her that she’s a strong, competent individual.
Build your daughter’s sense of self-worth and confidence. You can do this in many different ways: give her opportunities to Read the rest of this entry »
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Preventing Sexual Abuse: It’s Time to Start Talking
[Update: I recently discussed this subject more fully on the web show I co-host, "The Intentional Parent." Click here to see the episode.]
Some friends and I recently discussed a news story about a little girl who had been abducted from her home, sexually assaulted, and murdered by a registered sex offender. As we talked, it was apparent that we all struggle with whether, when, and how to talk to our small children about sexual abuse. Because it’s such a difficult thing to think about, and because we’re typically not very educated about sexual abuse ourselves, we often feel unsure about how to approach the topic with our kids.
But we really have to. Silence puts them at risk.
So let me give you some quick information about sexual abuse in general, and then I’ll make some suggestions about proactively preventing it. It’s our job to empower our kids against sexual abuse, and knowledge—both our own, and theirs—is crucial.
Factors Associated with Child Sexual Abuse:
- Perpetrators: Though we all fear a stranger grabbing our kids and molesting them, Read the rest of this entry »
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Taboo Subjects: Are There Topics You Should Avoid with Your Kids?
Sometimes we aren’t sure if and when we should talk to our kids about something. For many parents, subjects related to sexuality, race, and other uncomfortable topics can fall into this category. I was talking to someone the other day who said she’d never want to talk to her kids about masturbation. This post isn’t at all about the particular topic of masturbation—it’s about an important parenting issue.
When our kids are developmentally ready for a particular topic, and/or they could be exposed to it at school or somewhere else, parents should open the door to conversation about the topic. Let’s continue with the topic of masturbation for argument’s sake. For sure by junior high, if not before, Read the rest of this entry »
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Do your kids tune you out?
Do you find yourself repeating something over and over? Funny how our kids can tune us out so easily and so consistently.
My best suggestion is to stop what you’re doing and focus on the situation. I usually find that the reason I’m repeating myself is because I’m preoccupied with other things and not following through immediately when they don’t do something right away. By the time I notice that they haven’t, for instance, put away the legos like I asked them to, they’re already distracted and on to something else, and then I get mad.
Of course I wish they’d just do what I ask, the first time I ask it. But I can prevent having to repeat myself so much and feeling so much frustration if I do the following: Read the rest of this entry »
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