Posts Tagged ‘frustration with kids’
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On Spanking: Hoping for a More Sophisticated Discussion
Last week Dr. Drew Pinsky asked me to come on his show “Life Changers” to discuss spanking as a discipline approach. I ended up getting to say only a minute fraction of what I wanted to say about this polarizing discipline strategy, so I decided to share some of my thoughts here.
The parents I’ve talked to about spanking are almost always very strong in their position, but they avoid talking about it with other parents, and when the discussion begins, it’s almost never a respectful, open conversation among people who really are willing to listen to the other side.
I feel compelled to really have those conversations, so I’ll be doing more of this in the coming months, both informally at the park and on the ballfield, and also publicly in various formats. In order to get the ball rolling, what you’ll see below are my answers to the questions Dr. Drew’s producer asked me in our pre-show correspondence.
WHERE DO YOU STAND ON THE DEBATE OF TO SPANK OR NOT TO SPANK?
Anyone who’s heard me speak knows that I am really big on boundaries and on parents being authority figures. And still, I am against spanking. I think that using physical force, particularly against a child, is wrong. The idea of inflicting physical (even minor) pain on a child is unsettling to me. Beyond that, I firmly believe that when you understand how the brain works, you see that spanking is often counter-productive when it comes to teaching our kids the lessons we want them to learn.
However, that being said, it’s not really all that simple. Two particular points make the whole question about spanking a complex one in my mind. The first is that there are really good, loving parents who spank. I have friends who spank calmly and with nurturing conversations with their children regarding their discipline. They are intentional about how and WHY they do it. I know these parents well, and I’ve seen how great their kids are turning out, and how loved those kids feel. So those of us who don’t spank need to avoid the temptation to caricature parents who use corporal punishment, seeing them as out-of-control child abusers whose kids will turn out to be violent monsters.
The second point that complicates matters is that there are plenty of non-spanking discipline approaches that can be more damaging than spanking. I know that I myself have been guilty of Read the rest of this entry »
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How Much Am I Screwing Up My Kids When I Don’t Handle Myself Well?
How well do you handle yourself when you’re upset with your kids?
Me? Sometimes I respond extremely well, making myself proud of how loving and understanding and patient I remained. At other times, I lower myself to my kids’ level and resort to the childishness that upset me in the first place.
My message to you today is that when you respond to your kids from a less-than-optimal place, take heart: most likely, you’re still providing them with all kinds of valuable experiences.
For example, have you ever found yourself so frustrated with your kids that you call out, a good bit louder than you need to, “That’s it! The next one who complains about where they’re sitting in the car, has to sit in that same seat for the rest of the year!”
Or maybe, when your eight-year-old pouts and complains all the way to school because you made her practice her piano, you say, with your parting words as she departs the mini-van, “I hope you have a great day, now that you’ve ruined the whole morning.”
Obviously, these aren’t examples of perfect parenting. And if you’re like me, you beat yourself up for the times when you don’t handle things like you wish you had.
So here’s hope: Those not-so-great parenting moments are not necessarily such bad things for our kids to have to go through. In fact, they’re actually incredibly valuable.
Why? Because these less-than-perfect parental responses Read the rest of this entry »
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When a Parenting Expert Loses It: How NOT to Discipline a Preschooler
Here are some things parents say to me about their discipline frustrations:
–I feel like I just put my daughter in time out all the time and don’t know what else to do when she’s misbehaving.–I don’t feel like I have an overall theory of discipline. It’s more that I just do whatever comes out at the time. Sometimes my reaction or instinct is really good, and other times I’m being just as immature or reactive as my toddler. I just feel like I need to give more thought to it and have a plan.
–I feel disempowered. I think I’ve been told a list of things that I should NOT do –spank, yell, etc. – but I don’t know what I CAN do, other than just take a toy away. So I find myself making empty or meaningless threats (“Do that again and you’re going to be in BIG trouble!”) and then I’m just so frustrated. I don’t know what to do in the moment.
Do these parents’ comments resonate with you? I can certainly identify. I remember how clueless I felt as a new parent, and even though the stories often end up being funny in retrospect, I’m embarrassed at how I responded at times when my kids acted out.
The Parenting Expert Gets Taken Down by Her Own Reactive Brain
One day my three-year-old got mad and hit me. I guided him to his time-out spot at the bottom of our stairway, sat next to him, and smiled. I lovingly (and naively) said, “Hands are for helping and loving, not for hurting.”
While I was uttering this truism, he hit me again.
So I tried the empathy approach: “Ouch! That hurts mommy. You don’t want to hurt me, do you?”
At which point he hit me again.
I then tried the firm approach: “Hitting is not OK. Don’t hit any more. If you’re mad you need to use your words.”
Yup, you guessed it. He hit me again.
I was lost. I felt I needed to up the ante. In my most powerful voice I said, “Now you’re in time out at the top of the stairs.”
I marched him up to the top of our stairs. He was probably thinking, “Cool! We’ve never done this before. . . I wonder what will happen next if I keep hitting her?”
At the top of the stairs, I bent over at the waist, my pointer finger wagging, and said, “NO MORE HITTING!”
He didn’t hit me again. Read the rest of this entry »
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Give Your Toddler or Preschooler a Little Power (revised)
Toddlers and preschoolers see their grown-ups and older siblings doing everything so easily. It can be frustrating and discouraging for these little ones to try and try, and not be able to do what they see everyone else doing.
Knowing that self-esteem can come from being competent at something, there are several ways we can empower our toddlers and preschoolers and give them opportunities to feel capable and competent:
Let them do things for themselves.
Sometimes it’s hard for a parent not to step in and quickly do something a child is trying to do. Especially if the child is taking a long time to, say, figure out how all of the chalk pieces will go back into the box. (Sometimes I want to pull my hair out when I’m watching my own four-year-old meticulously try to fix the Velcro fastener on the back of his Read the rest of this entry »
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Magic Wand? Yeah, right. (Sometimes there’s just nothing you can do when your child is upset.)
One day my seven-year-old became furious with me because I told him he couldn’t invite a friend over to play. He stormed off to his room and slammed the door. About a minute later, I heard the door open, then slam again. I went up to check on him, and taped to the outside of his door, I saw the picture you see here. (You can see from the drawing below that he regularly uses his artistic talents to communicate his feelings about his parents.)I went into his room and saw what I knew I’d see: a big child-sized lump under the covers on his bed. I sat next to the lump and put my hand on what I assumed was a shoulder, and suddenly the lump moved away from me, towards the wall. From beneath the covers, he cried out, “Get away from me!”
Often at times like this I can become childish and drop down to my child’s level. I’ve even been known to say things like, “Fine! If you won’t let me cut that toenail that’s hurting, you can stay in pain all week!” (Sometimes I’ll throw in a “See if I care!” for good measure.)
But this particular day, I maintained control and handled myself pretty well. I first tried to acknowledge his feelings: “I know that makes you mad that Ryan can’t come over today.”
His response? “Yes, and I hate you!”
I stayed calm and said, “Sweetie, I know this is frustrating, but there’s just not time to have Ryan over. We’re meeting your grandparents for dinner in just a little while.”
After that, he returned to the familiar refrain as he curled tighter and moved as far away from me as possible: “I said get away from me!”
I reminded him of our rule about talking with each other respectfully, then I went through a series of responses, the ones I regularly talk to parents about. I comforted; I tried to use nonverbal connection like touch and tone of voice before I tried to problem-solve; I empathized; I tried again to explain. I even offered an incentive to talk: a playdate the next day. But at that moment, he refused to calm down or let me help him in any way.
The point of this story is a reality that people rarely talk about: Sometimes Read the rest of this entry »
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Mom, I Know What I’m Doing
Yesterday my eight-year-old was making a smoothie. He’s been making one every day for the last week and now takes pride in his “smoothie-making mastery.” These repeated experiences, along with the delicious products of his efforts, have made him confident in his ability, and the science of neural plasticity confirms his due confidence. The brain changes – yes, actually physically changes – from repeated experiences, so his memory has now been wired for how to make a good smoothie.
And yet, even though I know this, when I hear the blender going longer than what I think is the right amount of time – twenty seconds can be a very long time, by the way – my reaction is to step in and say, “Luke, that’s probably long enough. Should you turn it off?”He says, “Mom, I know what I’m doing. I like it really smooth and creamy, and the trick is to let it blend a little longer so the ice isn’t as chunky.”
Then I have to respond, “You’re right. I’m sorry to mess with the Smoothie Master.”
We learn best from doing. But ask yourself: Do you step in and help when your kids don’t need help? When they ask for assistance, could still do it themselves? How often do you request that they do something your way, when the way they’re doing it is fine (just different)? Do you do things for them that they could do for themselves? You probably do at times when you don’t even realize it, just like I did yesterday with my smoothie intrusiveness.
Sometimes we need to lend a hand because we’re on a schedule and we need them to finish something so we can get out the door quickly and peacefully. Sometimes we need to assist because our child is getting too frustrated and they need help. Sometimes we should step in because they need to learn the right way to do something – like when they need to learn that “flushing doesn’t actually CLEAN the toilet. You need to use actual cleaning supplies.”
But sometimes we’re stepping in because it makes things easier on us or them. And of course that’s a good reason at times, but not all the time. Sometimes we are taking over because we’re being too particular or controlling, or we underestimate them and their ability to do something or handle the struggle and frustration of working through it. Just be thoughtful about why and when to butt in, to rescue, to assist. They know what they’re doing lots of times. In those moments, the problem can be that we don’t know what we’re doing.
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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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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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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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