Posts Tagged ‘connecting emotionally’
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If I Could Tell You Only One Thing about Discipline
Discipline is a complex and complicated subject. I could write a whole book about it. In fact, I’ve already started working on one.
But when we talk about effective discipline and how parents can achieve the results they want when they interact with their kids, it can actually be it pretty simple. If it were a math formula, it would look like this:
WARMTH + AUTHORITY = EFFECTIVE DISCIPLINE
The research is really clear on this point. Kids who achieve the best outcomes in life – emotionally, educationally, and relationally – have parents who raise them with a high degree of warmth and nurturing, or what I like to call emotional responsiveness, as well as a high degree of authority, where clear boundaries are communicated and enforced. Their parents remain firm and consistent in their boundaries, while still interacting with them in a way that communicates love, respect, and compassion. Warmth and authority are the two sides of the effective-discipline coin.
The first side of the discipline coin: Warmth
When we nurture our children and attune to their internal world, we allow them to know and believe that they are seen, heard, loved, and approved of by their parents. Then they’ll interact with the world around them based on that belief, so that their brains are wired to expect that their needs will be met in intimate relationships. On the other hand, if a parent repeatedly Read the rest of this entry »
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Do You Discipline on Auto-Pilot? (revised)
Auto-pilot may be a great tool when you’re flying a plane. Just flip the switch, sit back and relax, and let the computer take you where it’s been pre-programmed to go. Pretty great.
But I’ve found that auto-pilot is not so great when I’m disciplining my children. It can fly me straight into whatever dark and stormy cloudbank is looming, meaning my kids and I are all in for a bumpy ride. So instead, I’m always working on DECIDING how I want to interact with my kids when I discipline them.
For example, let’s talk about consequences. For most parents, when we need to discipline our kids, the first question we ask ourselves is, “What consequence should I give?” That’s our auto-pilot. But through my years of parenting, I’ve begun to significantly re-think my use of consequences.
My four-year-old, for instance, hit me the other day. He was angry because I told him I needed to finish an email before I could play legos with him, and he came up and slapped me on the back. (I’m always surprised that a person that small can inflict so much pain.)
My immediate, auto-pilot reaction was to want to grab him, probably harder than I needed to, and Read the rest of this entry »
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The Power of Touch
Did you know that a loving touch, like a hand on our arm or a warm embrace, releases feel-good hormones (like oxytocin and opiods) into our brain and body, and decreases the level of our stress hormone (cortisol)? When your child–or your mate–is feeling upset, a loving touch can calm things down and help you connect, even during moments of high stress.
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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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Ask Tina: Friend vs. Authority Figure
Q: Is it really true that I should be an authority figure and not a friend to my daughter?
A: I hear this idea sometimes, too. Something along the lines of “Your child already has lots of friends; she needs you to be the parent.” I think this notion was probably cleverly expressed by someone, and it started getting passed around as gospel without any critical examination.
I can see why parents have been advised that they should be authority figures. After all, children need structure and boundaries and to be held accountable for their behavior, and an authority figure provides these types of important limits. All of this is backed up by scientific research.
But does that mean that we have to be only an authority figure? Why this forced dichotomy? Why can’t we be both? Read the rest of this entry »
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Ask Tina: Am I Spoiling My Baby?
Q: My 2-month-old is really difficult and wants to be held all the time or he just fusses. I want to hold him a lot but I feel like I never have one minute, plus my mom is telling me that if I hold him all the time I’ll spoil him. What should I do?
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A: Being a parent to a new baby is really hard. When your basic needs like eating, peeing, showering, and sleeping are being taken away, it’s easy to feel like you’re at his mercy. Just hang in there. I promise it will be better soon. These days (and nights) are really long, but they will go quickly. And, it may be hard to believe, but you’ll likely long for the days of just holding him all day, just relishing his skin and little breath and holding his little hand.
Your baby needs you in order to help him feel safe and secure. By immediately responding to him and meeting his needs and holding him, you’re giving him the best gift possible in term of brain development and his ability to trust that he will be taken care of. Babies this age don’t have the ability to manipulate. His needs are NEEDS, not wants. It is never spoiling when we give our children what they need. Paying attention to Read the rest of this entry »
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What’s REALLY Causing Your Frustration Towards Your Kids?
Do you ever get so upset with your kids that you do something that leaves you (and the rest of the family) asking, “Where did that come from!”?
In the book Parenting from the Inside Out, Siegel and Hartzell write: “[At times] we’re not really listening to our children because our own internal experiences are being so noisy that it’s all we can hear. . . We often try to control our children’s feelings and behavior when actually it’s our own internal experience that is triggering our upset feelings about their behavior.” An example of this would be when your child is being really clingy, and instead of seeing that she’s communicating that she needs your comfort and attention, you get furious with her. Your fury is not really because of her developmentally appropriate need for you—it’s because you feel smothered because you haven’t done anything for yourself in a long time, or because you had a parent who relied on you to meet her needs, and in this moment, you feel resentment again at being needed.
So what do we do? Well, we need to pay attention to what’s going on inside of ourselves when we are upset with our children, so we can flexibly and lovingly respond to them in ways that Read the rest of this entry »
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Setting boundaries AND connecting emotionally
One thing that isn’t on the notes that we discussed is the importance of boundaries and consequences. It’s important for us to remember that connecting emotionally with our kids, joining with them, and looking at the underlying needs/emotions beyond the surface behavior doesn’t at all mean we should be indulgent. As an example, I think it would be weak and indulgent to respond to a child who’s crying and tantruming in public because he doesn’t want to leave somewhere by asking, “Are you upset? Why are you upset? It’s OK. We can talk when you’re ready.” And leave them crying and being upset, and not making them leave–giving them control over the situation. It doesn’t feel good to them or to you to allow their emotional states to dictate what is happening. A more appropriate response would be something like, “I can see Read the rest of this entry »
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