Tag Archives: discipline

Family

Hot Button Issues

I find it hardest to be a good parent in the face of my children pushing my “buttons”.

It’s like a heat-seeking missile that targets my biggest annoyances and makes full impact, totally exploding them. My children each carry around a box with a big red button on it, pushing it at random and sometimes totally insane moments.

We are on the verge of leaving for a beach vacation and my boys are running through the house screaming (I swear they pierce the innermost workings of my ears). We are driving to the movie theater to see the very film they have been begging to see and they start bickering in the backseat. In the middle of things that they enjoy, things they desire, things that are meant for their benefit, they start detonating bombs and pressing buttons left and right. It doesn’t make sense, right?

I haven’t found the answer to this problem. I haven’t come across the magic solution in any of my studies or experiences. Most of the time I just try to bite my tongue and take deep breaths. If I can, I put either them or myself in a time-out.

I try to remember that my goal is to teach my kids how to be considerate, respectful, responsible, and honest. It’s not about me. It shouldn’t be about my buttons. I don’t want my children to merely learn how to manipulate mom.

Right now, I’m trying to work on some sort of mantra that I can chant in times where it feels like my blood is boiling beneath my skin. It really does help to have some handy phrase to repeat inside your head to direct yourself. It counters all the junk thoughts that pop up without permission, all the knee-jerk reactions that attempt to dominate the situation.

At the same time that I work on keeping calm, I also work on de-sensitizing my buttons. I do some digging around inside my noggin to see why it is that these particular issues mean so much to me. Is there some rule in my head that my kids are violating? Maybe I need to rewrite the rule. Is there some unresolved stuff floating around inside me that my kids are triggering? Maybe I need to search out those issues and deal with them without involving my kids.

My focus needs to stay on parenting for my kids’ sake, not my own. The goals that I want to teach my kids are priorities, but they need to remain teaching priorities rather than hot buttons.

So, here’s one blog post that doesn’t have a solution worked out for you. But, that’s life. We are all working on being the best that we can be, where we are at, in this particular moment. I’ll let you know if I ever find that magic solution to either getting your kids to leave your buttons alone or to throwing out the buttons altogether.

Family

I Brought You Into This World…

…and I can take you out of it.

How many times have you wanted to say that?

Especially in the face of Defiance. Deception. Disrespect. The three fastest roads to wanting to strangle your kids. Unfortunately, there is no way to totally obliterate the big D’s from our kids. We can only put seat belts, air bags, caution signs, and guard rails on our own behavior to prevent a complete parental meltdown when faced with them.

Let’s face it. Parental meltdowns solve nothing. We say and do things in the extreme. We change the focus from the kid’s bad choice to our mega-outburst. That only teaches kids to avoid setting their parents off, rather than the detriments of continuing in their behavior.

We want to keep the focus on the kid’s choices and the consequences of those choices. We want to provide a learning opportunity that sinks deeper than the epidermis. We want them to succeed in life, not in ducking our wrath.

So, what do we do? Well, time-outs work.

Oh, I mean time-outs for yourself, not your kids.

Seriously. You need to find a way to keep your cool. Losing it will only lose the teaching moment. When you face a situation that leads you down one of those roads to strangulation, put yourself in a time-out by telling your kids that something will be done about their behavior, but not now; you will talk to them later about it.

It’s that easy**.

**By easy, I mean an extreme challenge of your self-control.

Delaying consequences is a great seat belt on your behavior. Mama and Daddy time-outs are great air bags. Use them to give yourself time to breathe deep, re-engage your higher reasoning skills, call in reinforcements for additional opinions about addressing the issue, and to regain your rational, calm self.

Next, watch for your caution signs. One of the caution signs that I have worked to ingrain into my psyche is the question, “Do I want to make him feel bad or do I want to help him succeed?” What would your caution sign to yourself say? What hits home for you? Figure it out and then drill it in. Write it down everywhere. Say it to yourself multiple times a day. Make it your new parenting mantra. Think about it in good times, in irritating times, and in lose-it times. Put one of those blinking yellow lights on the top of it.

After that, you need to locate your guard rails. What will keep you on the straight and narrow? Maybe it’s your spouse. Maybe it’s your mother. Maybe it’s your best friend. Maybe it’s prayer. Who can hold you accountable? Who do you answer to? That is your guard rail. Respect it. Use it. It will help you stay on track to being a more effective parent.

Resolve now to no longer lose it with your kids.

Resolve now what your new response will be to the big D’s.

Resolve now to put on your seat belt, engage your air bags, watch for your caution signs, and respect your guard rails.

You can’t obliterate defiance, deception, and disrespect, but you can go after them with a much more effective game plan than parental meltdowns.

Family

Journey to the Center of a Child’s Mind

One of my favorite pasttimes is watching my kids interact with their environment. It is fascinating to see what draws their attention, what furrows their brow, what brings forth a smile or a chuckle, what causes their bottom lip to pucker up. It’s hard to imagine how a small child’s mind processes and interprets all the stimuli they experience every day.

But, that’s just the enjoyable side of my musings. I often have the same sentiment in response to their negative behavior. I see the toothpaste that my son dispensed all over his room and wonder, ‘What was he thinking?’ I witness my two-year old kicking sand in a little girl’s eyes and cannot figure out why that seemed like a thing to do.

While some of these things bring a smile to my face, other things bring a snarl. I see what they are doing and interpret it in my adult mind and pass judgment as to whether it is a good thing or a bad thing. If I don’t understand and cannot relate to what they are doing, then I end up assigning it a ridiculous score. This score is expressed in the volume and tone of my voice. If it is mildly ridiculous, like my son’s rearrangement of my cooking utensils, then he receives a low volume, annoyed tone. If it is highly ridiculous, like my other son’s decision to crawl through the doggie door to the garage and then open the garage door, then he receives a high volume, irate tone. Unfortunately, this system isn’t very effective in actually teaching my children anything about decision-making and responsibility; just in achieving various scores on mommy’s ridiculous meter.

I know this doesn’t work. But to do anything differently, I need to start with how I interpret my children’s behavior. Taking a moment and realizing the disservice that I am doing to my children by jumping to conclusions and then being confident in my knee-jerk assessment is earth-shaking. It dissipates my anger and makes me wonder how else I could react to the things my children do.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I will never find toothpaste in my carpet something to smile about. Nor will I chuckle as my son kicks sand in a poor girl’s eyes. But perhaps I don’t need to lose my cool either. Perhaps I don’t need to assume that because I wouldn’t do it and I would prefer they not do it, that my children share in my adult reasoning. Perhaps I can regard them as the children they are and with the child brains they have.

From this space, I can remain calm. From this understanding, I can find common ground. From this perspective, I can find empathy. And empathy makes all the difference in whether my parenting is authoritative or authoritarian. Many of us had the authoritarian parent, maybe you referred to them as a bully, a dictator, or just a mean ol’ jerk, but you know this kind of parent. This parent jumps to conclusions, won’t listen to your point of view, believes their way is the right way no matter what, and expects you to jump when told to jump (don’t even consider asking how high because questioning is disrespectful). And it leads to a child’s rebellion. Whether it be overt or covert, rebellion is still rebellion. It is defiance and resistance and rejection of all that the other person says and does.

I don’ t want that for my child. I don’t want to be that type of parent. So, what to do? Swing to the middle of the parenting styles and aim for authoritative. It is balancing having a relationship with my child and having boundaries, rules and discipline. It is being a loving authority figure. It is following in the parenting footsteps of our own Heavenly Father. If I can tap into the empathy, I may be able to understand somewhat where my child is coming from, how that way might be errant, and how I can influence my child’s reasoning and behavior rather than just shutting them down in a judgmental or angry fashion.

So, instead of losing it when I find the toothpaste art, I can see how a 4-year old might find it fun to use this blue gel as finger paint to add color to his room, and from this place do some teaching on the drawbacks of this activity, some appropriate alternatives, and on how to clean up toothpaste from multiple surface types. All are valuable life skills that I would have short-circuited with my knee-jerk, top-of-my-lungs, snarly-faced, “What were you thinking?!” My goal now is to take a trip through a child’s mind and see how my adult mind can coach it into the reasoning skills that he will need to be a successful adult himself.