Parenting Blog

"Do you run through each day on the fly?  When you ask "How are you?" do you hear the reply?
When the day is done do you lie in your bed with the next hundred chores running through your head?
You'd better slow down. Don't dance so fast. Time is short. The music won't last.

Ever told your child, "We'll do it tomorrow"  and in your haste, not see his sorrow?
When you run so fast to get somewhere, you miss half the fun of getting there
When you worry and hurry through your day, it’s like an unopened gift...Thrown away.
Life is not a race.  Do take it slower.
Hear the music
Before the song is over."
-- Dr. David L. Weatherford

Most people with grown children say they wish they'd been closer to their kids.  Most parents of teens say they wish they'd had more "important" conversations with their kids when they were younger and more willing to listen to their parents' views.

It's never too late to repair and rejuvenate your relationship with your child.  And it's never too early to start building the kind of relationship with your child that you'll both treasure for the rest of your lives.

How?

1. Place a premium on relationships in your family.  Make it an inviolate rule to turn off your cell phone when you're with your kids.  I promise the world will not fall apart and you can check your messages later.  Have dinner at the table where you can talk with each other rather than in front of the TV.  Make Friday night into Family Game night and have fun together instead of sitting in a darkened living room or movie theater watching a screen.

2. Every child needs "connection time" with each parent, each and every day.  With toddlers, connection time is floortime, when you get down on the floor with them, in their space and in sync with their energy level, and connect in their world, whether it's building a train track or playing pretend.  When they're ten, connection time will probably take the form of snuggling with them at bedtime while you chat about their day at school or their favorite song.  The point is to give each child at least fifteen minutes of unstructured, non-directive time to connect physically and share what's on their mind, every single day. (Those nice things you do with them like bake cookies or help with homework are structured time, so they're great but don't count toward connection time.)

3. Remember the 5 to 1 ratio.  Try as we might, all of us sometimes have less than optimal interactions with our children. Research shows that each interaction that leaves anyone feeling bad requires five positive interactions to restore a positive valence to the relationship. These can be little – a warm smile or a pat on the shoulder – as long as you make sure they have a positive impact.

"The model of parenting most of us grew up with was authoritarian parenting, which is based on fear. Some of us may have grown up with permissive parenting, which is also based on fear. Authoritarian parenting is based on the child's fear of losing the parent's love. Permissive parenting is based on the parent's fear of losing the child's love. Connection parenting is based on love instead of fear." -- Pam Leo

Parents often ask me what to say to get their kids to listen.  The answer is not in our words, but in our attitude.

Your connection with your child is the most important part of parenting. Kids only cooperate because of who we are to them. Without a good relationship with your child, it’s almost impossible to parent well. A close bond not only makes our kids want to please us, it gives us access to our natural parenting know-how.

Most of us find it easy to connect with our kids when things are going well.  But when our child does something we don't like, we assume we have to withdraw our love to correct them.  Actually, when kids act most unlovable is when they most need our love. 

If you can first find a way to join with your child, to connect before you correct, you'll be amazed at how much less you have to correct.  When kids feel the connection with us -- and don't feel attacked -- they listen more, and they want to please us.

How?

• Stoop down to her level and look her in the eye before you tell her she can't take another child's toy.
• Listen to his tale of woe about what happened at school and acknowledge how upset he is before you tell him the teacher called you.
• Put your hand on her shoulder and tell her sincerely how much you loved the way she played that piano piece yesterday before suggesting that she go practice.
• Check in about how his day was before you remind him to do his chores.
• Before you talk with her about that fender bender, first make sure she knows how relieved you are that she wasn't hurt.

My Aha Parenting moment this week came during a dinner party.  A conversation about the recent furor in the New York TImes and on NPR about Alfie Kohn and timeouts led to a discussion of discipline methods, including spankings. I felt compelled to point out that both timeouts and spanking are punishments, not discipline.  Discipline means “to guide” and there are more effective ways to guide kids than punishment.  As always in these social conversations where no one has hired me as their parenting expert, I tried to walk the line between saying what I think --  punishment gets in the way of raising cooperative kids -- and making other parents wrong.  I do understand, after all, how a parent can feel at the end of her rope and use a timeout.

“But how do you get them to behave, then?” asked a friend of mine – a doctor and the father of two teenage girls.  I suggested that building a good relationship with your child makes most discipline unnecessary. A good relationship with us is what makes kids want to behave.  After all, kids behave to please us, and because making the choice to behave gives them more satisfaction than misbehaving, at least as they get older.  Much the same reasons that adults choose to behave!

My doctor friend grinned impishly.  “Relating to kids is a lot of work,” he said. “And life is busy.  So you could think of punishment as a labor-saving device.”

We all had to laugh.  But that was my Aha Moment.   Because I realized that on some level he’s right.

I think the dirty secret of parenting is that we punish because it’s the easy way out.  When our child does something she knows is off-limits, our immediate impulse is fury.  We want to teach her a lesson she won't forget.  And as her parents, that's our job, right?

But cracking down at the moment when you and your child are both upset always backfires. When humans are in the flush of anger or fear, the learning centers of our brain actually turn off, so kids simply can’t learn when they’re being punished, even if they wanted to – which they don’t! So punishment is never an effective way to teach kids. A teachable moment is only teachable if the student is actually ready to learn.

So why do we continue to punish?  Because it’s a labor-saving device.  Not only is it easier than talking with our kids, being patient, and working to build a truly close relationship.   It’s also much easier than taking responsibility for our own anger.  

Anger is a defensive stance against emotions we don’t want to feel:  fear, sadness, hurt.  When we get mad at our kids, there is always something under it.  Did he wet the bed again? That triggers our fear that we’ll never solve this problem, he’ll be wetting the bed in high school.  Did she clobber her little brother and then lie to us about it?  She’s a pathological criminal in the making, or worse yet, she takes after her no-good father who ran off and left us. Was she rude?  That hurts! After all we’ve done for her?  Or it reminds us how our own mother smacked US if we were rude – so we feel like our kid’s got it coming.  

In all of these cases, we COULD be brave enough to notice our own emotional baggage that’s coming to light, and use the opportunity to heal it.  But that’s a lot of emotional work.  So instead, we get angry.  The best defense is a good offense.  We direct that energy outward at the obvious target, the kid who's triggering the anger. Punishment is indeed a labor-saving device.

I can hear some listeners thinking, “But sometimes the child needs correction!  It’s not all our own baggage.”  And yes, that’s absolutely true.  But the correction that works with kids is always most effective when it comes from love, not anger.  In our calm moments, every parent knows that.

We all get frustrated at having to give our child the same reminders, day after day.  Some of that is unavoidable:  We help our kids create positive life habits by ensuring, over and over, that they brush their teeth, hang up their jacket, and put the homework in their backpack.  That's just part of the parents’ job description, best accepted with a smile.

But the bigger challenges, like rudeness or hitting, aren't taught by "reminders."  Those are solvable only by going to the core of the feelings driving your child's behavior. When kids choose not to behave as we’d like, there’s a reason. It may not be what you would consider a good reason, but there’s always a reason.

If you can see the situation from your kid’s point of view, you’ll see the deeper issue behind his behavior, whether he’s exhausted and hungry, or swamped with desolation because the new baby is always on the lap that was once his.

Once those deeper issues are attended to, you can remind your child that his behavior isn't how your family treats each other, and brainstorm how he'll handle such a situation in the future.  Parents who love unconditionally guide their kids and set limits, but they stay emotionally connected while they do it -- both through the upset, and through the teaching that follows later, once everyone is calm -- sometimes hours later.

Showing up this way teaches your child emotional intelligence.  It’s truly healing for both of you.  You might even say that this is the real work of parenting.

That means, though, that we don't have the luxury – or the right -- to discharge our anger at our child by punishing.  Will you get angry?  Sure, as long as you're human.  Can you learn now to take a deep breath and a few minutes for yourself, instead of unloading your anger on this small person entrusted to your care and guidance? Then you'll be able to show up as a real teacher for your child, and help him process his upset constructively.  In the end, relating this way IS a labor-saving device, because it actually changes your child’s behavior. Research shows that punishment doesn’t.

If you make your teachable moments into learnable moments, your teaching will stick. And your child will get something even better than the lesson about behavior. The skills for emotional self-management -- and the unshakable conviction that he is wholly and unconditionally loved exactly as he is, including all those messy, passionate emotions that make us human.

Is it more work?  Maybe, in the moment.  But in the end your kid thrives, and you’re a happier parent.  So my Aha Moment?  The real labor-saving device is Love.

"No amount of 'parenting skills' can make up for the lack of a close parent-child relationship. Kids accept our guidance because of who we are to them. Without that relationship, it’s very hard to parent. A close bond not only makes our kids want to please us, it gives us access to our natural parenting know-how. Welcome to the work of parenting.  But it's where the rewards are, too." -- Dr. Laura Markham

We've almost completed the ten steps of Heal Our Ability to Love Unconditionally.  Step Eight is:

Deepen your connection to your child so you always see things from his or her point of view.  Your unconditional love will flower.

Loving our kids unconditionally means we accept and appreciate our child -- this separate, increasingly autonomous, immature, sometimes challenging person -- without needing to make him into someone other than who he is.  It means we SEE who he is, and love him in the way that he can best feel our love -- which is different for every child.

To do that, we need to see things from our child's point of view.  But to meet his long-term needs rather than just his immediate wants, we also have to provide appropriate parental leadership.  How do we do both? 

1. Cultivate deep connection.  If you stay deeply connected to your child, you'll automatically see things from her point of view.  Then all this becomes natural. Instead of having to bite your tongue when your daughter is rude, you'll feel her pain and know that something must be very wrong for her to be rude to you like this.  You'll know that your child doesn't take in your love when you say it in words, but feels deeply loved when you cuddle or hold her.

2. Stay connected when your child is upset.  Instead of giving your child the message that her strong emotions are too scary for you to handle by sending her away "to calm down," stay with her, and stay connected.  Let her rage or grieve.  Empathize and validate her feelings without adding to the drama by losing your own calm. We don't help our child by having a meltdown along with him. Our job is to empathize but provide a steady shore, not to flail in the water alongside him.

3. Make sure your child knows you're on his side.  That doesn't mean giving him everything he wants.  It means saying Yes whenever you can, and validating his feelings of unhappiness when you have to say No.  Children can accept not getting what they want in a given moment if they get something better -- complete acceptance and appreciation of who they are, including those sometimes difficult, messy emotions and desires.

Being close to your child takes work. But it's your child's emotional foundation. It's also the foundation of the close relationship you're hoping for once he's an adult. The rewards, at every step along the way, come from connection.

Loving unconditionally means it's not all about us. It's all about love.

"The truth is that so many of the parenting techniques we have used or that were used on us as children are actually based in fear, not love.  They are fear-based techniques disguised as love.  Motivating children to behave or to respond appropriately to parental requests using sticker charts, point systems, consequences, or removal of privileges is about fear, not love."  -- Heather T. Forbes

We usually justify fear-based parenting practices by saying that kids need to learn lessons.  But kids already know what the right thing to do is.  If they don't, then teaching is in order, not punishment. 

If your child knows what's right but doesn't choose to do it, then what's stopping him?  Often, disconnection.  When kids feel connected to their parents, they find it easier to regulate themselves. What's more, they WANT to choose what will please the parent. They feel good, and they make choices that will keep them feeling good.

That's why fear-based parenting techniques don't work.  They make kids feel worse about themselves, and more disconnected from us.

When in doubt, take a deep breath and connect.  Later, when everyone's calm, there will be plenty of time to teach.