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Parenting is Not for the Faint of Heart

So, let’s talk a little about parenting.  First off…it’s no joke!  I have children and I have helped with a ton of kids in my lifetime.  What I’ve gathered in wisdom is what I can witness to, and what I’ve studied in books has helped me in clarifying what is really at work in those little minds.  I would recommend the books “The Whole Brain Child” and “No-Drama Discipline” (along with their respective workbooks) by Drs. Dan Siegel, MD and Tina Payne Bryson, PhD.  These are great resources for parents with no background in the way the brain works and even for parents who do have this background.  It gives a better understanding of the what’s, why’s and how’s on the things we see our children doing. These books also give some tangible methods to use with our kids.  I’m not going to go into those in any detail here, since these lovely scholars have already done that.  So, you’ll just have to get these books.  Look at me, making recommendations with no affiliate payment for such a great plug.

Instead, I want to give you three principles to bring to your parenting.  I may flesh these out in later blogs if I get enough interest, but for now, let’s stick to these three.

1. First of course is self-care. “Doc, alright already with the taking care of myself first.”  I know, I know…you’re tired of hearing me harp on self-care. Well…too bad.  This principal is just that elementary to all we do in life.  And within our relationships, self-care is of chief importance. I’m not sure if I have spoken of the piggy bank metaphor before, but it applies here.  The idea is that we are a piggy bank.  Change goes in when we care for ourselves and our relationships, like when we have that great first cup of coffee in the morning before the kids wake up or when we have a night out away from the kids.  Change gets cashed out when things are needed, like when we have to be an adult, parent our kids, or not flick off the driver that just cut us off in traffic (this may fall under being an adult, but I felt compelled to give this its own category). Confused yet?  Ok, let me try to explain this a bit more.  You are a finite resource, meaning there is only so much of you to go around.  If you are not filling that resource back up with self-care, its depleting your piggy bank and you can only bring the change you have to pay for the hard things that are always happening in parenting.  If you have no change left, what happens is you regress into your back-up generator.  “What’s that Doc?”  It’s those instinctual behaviors and feelings that come from our fight/flight system in the brain.  If we are tired when our kids act out, we are much more likely to give them a tablet and retreat from the chaos or get in their face yelling and commanding they behave differently.  This is why it is important to take care of yourself so you have more energy to take a minute, regroup when the kids irritate you or act out of turn, decide how to address the situation, and then do that thing.  Without this energy in your reserves (put there through your own self-care) there is no number of cute things I can teach you that will help you with your parenting. No reserves…no ability to use those cute things.
2. Secondly, there is the matter of time. Time is also a finite resource, as I have spoken of in an earlier blog.  If there are so many hours in a day and so many things that need to be done, we will inevitably start to run out of time for good parenting if we don’t save time for ourselves (see #1) and for our kids. I’m going to tell you a trademark secret as a therapist for children.  You know what the single most valuable tool is when counseling kids?  Time.  The kind of time that is short in duration (only an hour tops) but high in quality.  I spend an hour a week, when I am doing therapy with kids.  And during that hour, I am giving my full attention to this child.  I am letting them do whatever it is that they desire, with what is available in my office.  When I first start to see them this lasts the whole hour, setting the stage to build a strong relationship them and I. Once a child is comfortable with me, I start to incorporate therapeutic activities. Even so, I am still allowing the children to set the time table for when we do things that they want and when we get to the therapeutic activities. Have you ever given your children a full hour of your undivided attention?  I’m not talking about an hour of your time while you are also doing something else like cooking dinner, looking at your phone, or watching TV. I mean a whole hour where they are the sole focus.  It’s amazing what just this time does.  And remember the piggy bank metaphor, well guess what…this time spent is coins in the relationship piggy bank between you and your kid.  This means when you have to cash out (usually by taking some sort of disciplinary action) that you will have the change needed to do so, without harming the relationship.  What generally happens when we run out of coins in our jar, is that we start to disconnect from our kids and then discipline of any kind becomes harder and harder, because the kids stop caring what we are asking of them…dare I say it even seems like they ignore us, or even worse, hate us.  Now, the single most important part of this step is that you are spending this time with your child NO MATTER WHAT.  It doesn’t work if it is contingent on them behaving well.  Your positive attention goes a really long way, but if you make it contingent on their behavior, especially with kids under the age of about 10, kids will automatically see your lack of engagement when they are bad as a non-verbal communication that they are not good enough as a person.  Let me say this again, they will look at your pulling away from them when they have acted poorly as meaning they are broken in some way.  This is the single most damaging behavior between child and caregiver that I see, and it’s so subtle.  We think that what we are saying is that we don’t like their behavior, but what our kids hear is that we don’t like them.  So, step two: spend quality time with your kids (doesn’t have to be long), in a one on one environment (this is especially important in families with multiple children), and that this time happens no matter what (ok…so this may have to pass my Mom’s test of “Is anyone bleeding or dead?”…if the answer is “No”, then this time should be spent with your child no matter what).
3. My third step is more about looking inward and deciding what kind of action you really are planning to take with your child. The books I reference above are great at coaching you through ways to do this, so I will just give you the gist here.  This step is about being sure you know what it is you are trying to do with your child through this interaction. So much of the time, we do what we know without thinking through what outcome we are looking to accomplish.  For example, if your child is whining and you are responding, what is truly your intent?  Are you wanting them to stop? Most likely, yes, but what else is your intent? Is it to punish them?  Is it to teach them not to do this again?  Is it to vent your own frustration with that intolerable behavior?  Be sure to really know what it is that you are trying to accomplish and then align your action with this.  So, in this example of a child whining, if what you really want to do is keep them from doing this in the future, I would suggest using this as a teaching opportunity. Get down eye to eye with them, tell them the whining is not acceptable, and then recite a line you would like them to say instead, using the vocal tone you want them to use.  This teaches a new thing for them to do and just like any newly learned skill for any of us, your child will need you to repeat this teaching lesson several times before you will see them start to use it on their own. Now, often what I hear parents tell me is that they just want the kids to stop. Believe me, I appreciate that; yet, if all you say is “Stop”, what you are actually asking your children to do is to have another way to deal with their frustration (the emotion which is most likely when whining shows up). Guess what?  They don’t know any other ways.  So, if your intent is really to make them stop, you will want to give them a replacement coping or communication skill or you will be going around and around on this with them.  Sound familiar?  So, in summary this step is about more closely examining what you want to accomplish, and then cashing in your coins accordingly to be able to come up with your own energy to do what needs to be done to accomplish this with your child. See how I did that?  Looped back around to self-care again.  “Doc, okay, okay, we get it already!”

I challenge you this week to take a look at how you are doing with these three steps and then try your best to improve in any areas that you see need it. If you are great with all these steps, I would look in the mirror…you just might be a Unicorn. Just sayin’…

Let me know if you’d like to see more on parenting.  There are so many ways to go with this topic, and I would be interested in hearing about your thoughts on this.