Parenting Blog

This is Part 4 in our series on Nurturing Yourself while Raising Your Child.

"The only way to help our child is to do the work ourselves. Our child needs a guide through the tsunami." – Leslie Potter, Purejoy Parenting

Life has a way of doling out lessons that we didn't ask for, but that help us develop more wholeness. When we resist those lessons, they land in our lap again in exaggerated form, until we finally tackle them. 

Children are often our greatest teachers.  Part of self-care is enjoying the lessons they teach us about joy and living in the moment.  Another part of self-care is using our child's unerring instinct for pushing our buttons to help us locate those buttons and heal them.  As Bonnie Harris, the author of When Your child Pushes Your Buttons, says, those buttons were installed in our own childhoods.

I'm not suggesting you'll be grateful to your child every time he pushes your buttons.  But you've retrained yourself to see his big emotions as an opportunity for healing, right?  So are yours.

When tempers are fraying at your house, who has the power to calm the storm?  You.  But you can't do that if you're in a state of emergency.  Unfortunately, many of us live in a state of emergency.  Every time our child melts down, or doesn't do what we request, or won't go to sleep, we start hyperventilating.  We think we MUST do something or the world will fall apart.  So we rush in, sirens blaring, and instead of a minor squall, we create a tsunami. That's no way to parent.  And living that way is guaranteed to increase your stress level and rob you of joy. 

There's an alternative. Notice when we're losing it, and restore ourselves to equilibrium, so we can make our parenting decisions from a wiser place.  I'm not for a moment suggest you shouldn't set limits on your child's behavior.  I'm suggesting that we can gradually use these episodes when our child pushes our buttons as an opportunity to inactivate them. (Preferably the buttons, not the child.)  How?

1. Control you, not your child. Your child isn't "misbehaving" because she's out to get you.  She's still learning and her brain is still developing, so she relies on you to regulate her.  If she's "acting out" she's asking for your help. You can't help her if you're triggered. Resist taking any action while you notice your own emotions and melt that little knot in your chest that's so upset.  Once you restore yourself to a state of calm, your child will be much more reasonable.  If she's not, go on to #2.

2. Create safety.  When you're fully, kindly, attending to your child, he feels safe to show you his feelings. Whether your toddler is tantrumming or your ten year old is shouting, what your child needs is for you to listen. Ask him to tell you more.  If those big feelings trigger you (join the club!), remind yourself it isn't an emergency and breathe your way through them. If you always get triggered when your child is emotional, do some work to excavate those buttons. 

(Wondering how your child will stop tantrumming or shouting if you "reward" him by listening?  If he feels heard, he won't need to shout.  And ultimately, kids learn emotional regulation from our modeling. Of course you set limits, but you can do that with compassion so you create emotional safety at the same time.)

3. Work on yourself.  If there's any issue with your child that's ongoing and makes you feel stuck, try this.  Stop focusing on your child and focus on yourself.  Write in your journal.  Vent to another parent.  Surface your childhood connections to this issue.  As you unlock your own turmoil and breathe through your feelings about this issue--without taking action--you release the stuck place in yourself.  Somehow, that begins to change your child. 

Please note that I am not suggesting that you're creating your child's problem, only that your reaction to your child's behavior may be worsening it.  And I'm not suggesting you ignore your child's bad behavior.  In fact, your child is misbehaving in the hopes that you'll step in and help him. But he already knows he's misbehaving, so you don't have to teach him he's wrong.  You have to help him be able to do better, and want to do better.

The paradox is that we assume the child is creating the problem, but when we work on our part of it, the problem always diminishes.  Is that because we're in a spiritual relationship with our child, and they bring us the issues we need to heal inside us?  Or because once we come to peace with the issue, we're available to help our child instead of adding fuel to the fire? Or because when we can accept our child fully, we create enough safety for her to soften her heart? Or simply that once we stop pushing our child to be different, she's free to stop resisting and change?

Regardless, once we melt the tangle in ourselves, our child so often makes a breakthrough too.  We both heal and grow. So today when your child pushes your buttons?  Say thanks, at least in your mind.