Finding a better way to get positive behaviors by acknowledging the real reasons for them. "It Was Never Your Fault"
These are some of the most powerful words I use in coaching parents. "It was never your fault," carries a healing message to children that releases them from undeserved guilt. When children are free of guilt, they're learning, listening, and functioning well.When parents are also freed from guilt, they, too, learn, listen and function well. That's my aim, to help you, as a parent release guilt that you never deserved.
"How does that work?" you might wonder. I offer parents forgiveness because I truly believe you/they have always been doing what you knew how to do. When my kids were young, I made a lot of mistakes. If I'd had a parent coach back then, I would have loved guidance and forgiveness from a trusted professional. I think it would have made all the difference. Now that that ship has sailed, I feel privileged to be able to lead parents through Present Moment Parenting in a way I never was. I feel honored to say, "You did your best. It was never your fault when things didn't go well."
And for kids, it's the same. There's not a child in the world who doesn't want to be in close connection with their parents. After all, parents are their survival, so it makes sense that they would strive to maintain the bond. But their emotional state, undeveloped as it is, prevents them from making the bond stronger. They falter, they have meltdowns, they make their parents feel frustrated and angry.
As the adults, it's our job to realize they never intended this disruption in the closeness with us. They just lacked the brain development to control their outbursts, their refusals, and their nasty words. Once we realize that undeveloped brains is the issue, and not bratty, controlling, impossible kid, we're miles ahead of the game of healing the break between ourselves and our children.
So, what's the first step? Changing our automatic reaction to defiance from one of upset and consequences to one of understanding, calm, and listening to the underlying emotion. When we can do that, our kids feel seen, heard, felt, safe. And from there, we can gain their cooperation.
Recently I heard a quote from a parent that went: "Once I dropped the parent role and focused on strengthening our relationship, everything got better." That to me, is gold.
What do kids need? A loving, accepting, guiding presence. This enables them to learn, follow, and emulate their parents' behavior, especially forgiveness.
If you'd like more information on how parent coaching works, click here. I'd love to help you form that strong, healing bond with your children that reduces defiance, strengthens your relationship, and brings peace to your home.
To read or listen to my book, click here: Present Moment Parenting; The Guide to a Peaceful Life with Your Intense Child.
Disempowering Anxiety
Posted: October 5, 2019
Disempowering Anxiety: Empowering Adult-Child Relationships
Tina Feigal, M.S.Ed.
www.parentingmojo.com
651-453-0123
Definition of anxiety in children:
Fear where there’s no real threat.
One problem is that we’ve named anxiety, which makes it seem powerful, and somehow unchangeable. We can change neural pathways.
For evolving humans, it’s very difficult to tell when there’s a real threat and when there’s not.
It’s remarkably easy for children to land in “victimhood” when anxiety seems to run the show.
The desire to control adults becomes the default response.
Contributing factors:
- “Just wired that way”
- Autism
- ADHD
- ODD
- Giftedness
- Attachment Disorder
- Anxiety in children
- School stress
- Bullying
- Family discord
- Family separation
- New situations
- Illness
- Anxiety in children
- Sensory Processing Disorder
-Visual
-Auditory
-Tactile
-Olfactory
-Taste - Learning disability
- Parental anxiety (also “fear where there’s no real threat”)
- Perfectionism
- Time pressure
What can we do to help?
- Understand that the child is having a physiological response, not being “impossible,” “picky,” or “looking for attention.”
Decide it can be different.
What Adults Can Do
Get into the child’s experience
The only effective solutions come from understanding what he’s experiencing. More on this later …
Manage your own anxiety
- Allow room for children in your life
- Get regular exercise
- Sleep whenever you can
- Say “no” to commitments
- Plan ahead
Ask: “Will this really matter in the long run?”
Silence the “parents-should” and “children-should” voices inside.
Attunement: join the child in the present moment.
Stay with the emotion the child is having.
Don’t try to talk her out of her feelings by reassuring her.
Listen deeply.
Ask what that felt like. If the child says, “I don’t know,” say, “If I guess, will you tell me if I’m right or wrong?
Be willing to be wrong. Then just listen to the child’s true feeling.
“You’re really worried.”
“You really want me to take you to the store right now.”
“You feel very upset that you have to wait.”
Stay in the conversation with no judgment, no fixing, no fear.
Since the child will expect a “fix” or advice, he’ll ask for that in some way. Just say, “I don’t know what will happen, but I trust you will know what to do. I’m here if you need me.”
Give your emotional energy to what you want, and withhold your emotional energy from what you don’t want.
Brain Matching and The Institute of Heartmath
Adults have so much power to strengthen neural pathways for positive emotional responses.
We can change the child’s body.
Have family meetings every week.
Let the child know there will be a change in the old patterns.
Allow plenty of TIME.
Say, “Take your time,” to the child.
Realize the anxious child is saying, “See me.”
Use the phrase
“I trust you to …”
Rather than focus on what shouldn’t occur, give the child grown-up tasks. Having appropriate power decreases the need for seeking inappropriate power.
Inappropriate power:
- Opposition
- Defiance (delaying, refusing)
Appropriate power:
- Being trusted to do grown-up tasks with little or no supervision
Ways to give appropriate power:
- Ask the child’s advice and follow it. Give feedback.
- Engage the child in the care of someone younger.
- Encourage self-advocacy at school, after breaking it down and rehearsing it.
- Instead of approving of the child’s experience, plant the reference point in the child.
“You must have felt so happy and relieved when you handed the assignment in on time.”
“I can just imagine that it feels so good to be able to find your clothes after you do your own laundry.”
“Seems like you’re not getting along with your brother. What do you want to do about it?”
Ask a question rather than issue an opinion or a directive. Use “How … ?”
Our own “how” question:
How does this reduce anxiety in children?
Self-efficacy.
Non-victimhood.
Build self-efficacy by including children in your thoughts and letting them solve problems.
They become thinkers, rather than order-takers.
- Old way vs. new way
“You want to do what? You can’t go outside! You’re homework’s not done!”
“You want to go outside right now. How will that work with getting the homework done before 8?” - Mindfulness in parenting
John Kabat Zinn, creator of “Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction”
“You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.” - What adults can do
Limit technology use.
Hold regular family or class meetings.
Let the kids plan the space, the music, the snack, and the candlelight.
Let the kids’ sports and grades be their sports and grades.
Certainly support them, but over-involvement only hurts by taking away their appropriate power.
A gifted 19 y.o. who had anxiety in high school said, “Asking me how I felt never worked as I grew older.”
“Learning about my brain’s process helped a lot. I could stand outside, look at what was happening, and not be ‘in’ the anxiety so much.”
“Knowing that my brain was mis-firing with anxiety chemicals gave me power over it.”
- Strategies reviewed
You can’t stop all the anxiety from affecting your family, but you can learn to disempower it by:
- Understanding the contributing factors
- Getting into the child’s experience
- Strategies reviewed
- Managing your own anxiety
- Being in the present moment with the child
- Attuning to her current state
- Empowering her with your trust
- Encouraging grown-up tasks
- Building self-efficacy
- Strategies reviewed
- Holding family meetings
- Fostering appropriate power
- Planting the reference point in the child
- Including the child in your thoughts, asking ‘how.’
- What adults can do
The pressure is off parents today. All you need to do it listen to children. The flash cards and Baby Einstein videos are not needed. Attunement to the child is the biggest predictor of healthy attachment and adult mental health in the child.
-paraphrase from David Brooks, NY Times Journalist and author of The Social Animal
Resources
Anxiety in Teens
http://anxietyinteens.org
John Kabat Zinn
http://www.umassmed.edu/Content.aspx?id=43102
EEG Biofeedback
Tina Feigal, MS Ed, Parent Coach and Trainer
www.parentingmojo.com
St. Paul, MN
Copyright © 2019 Center for the Challenging Child/Anu Family Services
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