Posts Tagged ‘parental anger’

• Common Discipline Mistakes Made by Even the Best Parents: Part 2

  Date: 2012.03.15 | Category: Parenting | Response: 8

   

  [This is a revision of the second article in a two-part series.  Click here to see the first four mistakes.]

   

  Here are more discipline mistakes made by even the best-intending, most well-informed parents, along with practical suggestions that might come in handy the next time you find yourself in one of these situations.

  Common Discipline Mistake #5:  We get trapped in power struggles.

  Everyone says to avoid power struggles.  But no one seems to tell us what to do once we’ve gotten ourselves into an inevitable one.  And when our kids feel backed into a corner, they instinctually fight back or totally shut down.  So here are three ways to help you get out of those lose-lose power struggles you sometimes find yourself in.

  A.  Give your child an out or a choice that allows her to comply with your expectations, while still saving face:  “Would you like to get a drink first, and then we’ll pick up the toys?”  The phrase “It’s your choice” can be a powerful tool to wield, since it gives your child some amount of power, which can often diffuse stand-offs.  So maybe you ask, “Would you like to get ready for bed now and read four bedtime stories tonight, or play 10 minutes longer and read two stories?  It’s your choice.”  (If she chooses fewer stories, it’s a good idea to remind her several times before story-time about her choice.)

  B.  Negotiate:  “We’re not really getting anywhere here, are we?  Let’s see if we can figure out a way for both of us to get what we need.”  Obviously, there are some non-negotiable issues, but negotiation isn’t a sign of weakness; it’s a Read the rest of this entry »

  

• On Spanking: Hoping for a More Sophisticated Discussion

  Date: 2012.01.29 | Category: Parenting, The Brain | Response: 0

  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 »

  

• How Much Am I Screwing Up My Kids When I Don’t Handle Myself Well?

  Date: 2011.10.25 | Category: Parenting | Response: 16

  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 »

  

• When a Parenting Expert Loses It: How NOT to Discipline a Preschooler

  Date: 2011.07.26 | Category: Parenting, The Brain | Response: 17

  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 »

  

• Do You Discipline on Auto-Pilot? (revised)

  Date: 2011.05.31 | Category: Parenting | Response: 14

  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 »

  

• What’s REALLY Causing Your Frustration Towards Your Kids?

  Date: 2010.06.14 | Category: Parenting, The Brain | Response: 13

  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 »

  

• The Parenting Hall of Shame: Now Accepting Members

  Date: 2010.05.31 | Category: Parenting, The Brain | Response: 13

  “My young son was screaming for 45 minutes and I didn’t know how to comfort him.  I finally screamed back, ‘Sometimes I hate you!’”

  “My son was two and scratched his baby brother’s face so hard that he left marks.  I spanked his bottom, like five hard swats.  Then I left the room, walked down the hall, turned back around and spanked him probably five more swats again.  I screamed at him so loud, I terrified him.”

  “After I had told my daughter to watch out for her little brother running in front of the swing, she almost swung right into him.  I was so mad that even in front of other people at the park I said to her, ‘What’s wrong with you, are you stupid?!’”

  These are some pretty awful parenting moments, aren’t they?  These “lash-out moments” are times when we’re so out of control that we say or do something we’d never let anyone else say or do to our child.

  But, actually, the confessions above come from good parents whom I know personally.  Like the rest of us, they lose it from time to time and say and do things they wish they hadn’t.

  Can you add your own lash-out moment to the list above?  Of course you can:  you’re a parent, and you’re human.

  And I can add one of my own.  It’s a story I often tell when I’m giving one of my talks on parenting and the brain.  It’s a long (and in retrospect, hilarious) story that ends with a horrible moment when my 4-year-old sticks out his tongue at me and I Read the rest of this entry »