Parenting Blog

“My feeling is it is almost always best to err on the side of mercy and love. There are many parenting ‘mistakes’ that can be ameliorated by lots and lots of love, and the feelings of security it can bring. I also believe that I sometimes need some mercy and love myself.” -- BarelyKnitTogether

Humans have somewhere between 10,000 and 70,000 thoughts per day. The majority of these thoughts are “negative.” Our minds, doing their job of trying to protect us, constantly compare, judge, find fault, and warn.

The information they give us is often valuable.  The nitpicking isn’t.  All those negative thoughts are what create your anxiety, upset moods and mommy or daddy tantrums. In fact, our minds’ negativity is downright destructive.

It’s our job as grownups to keep our inner critics from running our lives.  We can start by noticing all those subtle inner critic attacks.

Today, just notice every time your inner critic comments. Are you criticizing yourself?  Your kids?  Your partner?  Life?

Does that really help anybody change? (Hint: When we feel attacked, we defend.  Our natural desire to cooperate vanishes.)

Does your inner critic help you feel more relaxed, empowered, loving?

Does your inner critic help your kids feel more loved, secure, open, eager to please?

Why not kiss your inner critic goodbye?

Why not offer your family – and yourself -- some mercy and love?

You might make miracles.

"The importance of the parent-child relationship is above everything else in parenting. If you work on that relationship, over behavior, that will win in the end. You may not get the behavior in the short term but in the long term it's that bond that keeps kids safe and emotionally healthy." -- Judy Arnall

I'm not a good listener by nature.  In fact, I'm impatient.  When I started my training as a psychologist, I had to work hard to keep my own mouth shut so I could really hear what my client was telling me.  Often, the most important information came out camouflaged, between other comments.  We all do that when we share our most vulnerable feelings. 

Kids are no different.  The feelings they're having a hard time handling pour out as what we usually consider bad behavior.  That tantrum my son had in front of the relatives at age three?  He felt I had betrayed him by not listening to his needs, doing instead what was socially acceptable. (He was right.) That time when she was twelve and started screaming at me?  She was all tangled up inside and trying to tell me about it, and I was too distracted to listen.

If we're lucky, our kids give us a second chance to listen -- by losing it!  If we respond by shutting them down -- yelling, punishing, giving a timeout, sending them to their room to "calm down," even demanding respect in that delicate moment -- we give them the clear message that they're on their own with those scary feelings.  If, instead, we can train ourselves to pay attention to "bad" behavior as a red flag, we:

1. Model self control and anger management (and we all know kids learn from what we do, not what we say.)

2. Help them develop emotional intelligence so they learn how to handle their own feelings.

3. Strengthen our bond with our child by showing up to help them when they most need us.

4. Give them the tools they need to minimize these kinds of upsets as they get older.

5. Earn their respect, so they're more likely to be respectful to us in the future.

Why not try it?  Next time your child signals distress by raising her voice, just stop. Drop everything else. Take a deep breath, and listen, staying as calm as you can.  Remind yourself not to take this personally. Try to see it from her perspective and empathize. Later, when everyone's calmed down, you'll find your child completely amenable when you make a gentle suggestion about the respectful tone you expect to be used in your house (or whatever other expectation you need to set.)

By the time your kid's a teen, he'll amaze others with his emotional stability.  He'll even amaze you, by intervening in a nurturing voice to help you calm down when YOU lose it. In a teenager, that's what I call a miracle.

“Here’s something that fear will never tell you.  You don’t have to feel this way. Fear only tells you about fight or flight.  It never tells you that the mountain in front of you is of your own making.” -- Guy Finley

"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom." -- Viktor E. Frankl

Zen Buddhism says mindfulness is the path to peace and enlightenment. What’s mindfulness? Paying attention to your experience in the present moment.

When we pay attention to our actual experience, we notice how our minds often interpret our experience through a lens of fear that creates stress. That stress triggers us to react in ways that make everything worse. We're constantly making mountains out of molehills.

What if you could respond to stressful times with your kids without getting stressed?  Believe it or not, you can. It just takes a little practice. Here’s how.

1. As soon as you feel your hackles rising, stop. Just stop.  This is the hardest step, but the most important.  When you bring awareness to the present moment, you stop reacting automatically.  You give yourself a choice of how to respond.

2. Breathe deeply.  Shake the tension out of your fingertips, blow it out of your mouth, whatever works for you to shift your physical state from fight to calm. I say "Thank you for giving me this opportunity to grow,"  and it calms me right down. Whatever works for you.

3. Once you’re calm, ask yourself: Is there a real problem involving physical danger happening right now, this very moment? Or am I experiencing anxiety, negative thought patterns, catastrophic scenarios? (99% of the time, that's the case.)

4. Notice what thought(s) are in your mind that are producing your stress.

5. Ask yourself: Is this thought absolutely true? (e.g., Is it really true that the baby will just keep crying all night and I won't get to sleep at all? ....Will my son absolutely become an axe murderer because he hit that kid on the playground? ....Will my daughter absolutely fail in school and life because she got this bad report card? ....Am I really a complete failure as a mother because my children are once again screaming at each other?)

6. Ask yourself: Are there alternative ways of viewing this situation that would be not only less stressful, but more useful in meeting my needs and goals? (e.g., The baby probably won't keep crying, and I can take this one moment at a time and just breathe through it, and I can trade off with my spouse so we each get some sleep.......My son is only three, and he was frightened; I can help him learn to handle his feelings more constructively.......My daughter's bad report card means we need to change our evening routines to work with her more.......I am doing the best I can as a mother and all siblings fight, but I do want a more peaceful home; I think I'll read that book on sibling rivalry."  Notice that none of these views involve yelling at your child or berating yourself. Once you calm down and accept the situation, there is always some way to claim your power to change the situation.

Sound hard?  Like any other skill, it takes practice. At first, just catching yourself in time to notice your mind running away with itself will feel impossible most of the time. But if you keep working at it, you'll find yourself laughing as you notice your mind's catastrophic thinking. ("I'm really about to lose it with my three year old because I think I have to prove who's boss?!")

The miracle is that once you bring awareness to that moment, you have the choice of how to act.

“Before the plane takes off, the pilots have a flight plan…but during the course of the flight, wind, rain, turbulence, air traffic, human error, and other factors act on that plane…90% of the time the plane is not even on the prescribed flight path...During the flight, the pilots make constant adjustments to get back on track. The flight of that airplane is the perfect metaphor for family life…it doesn’t make any difference if we are off target or even if our family is a mess. The hope lies in the vision and in the plan and in the courage to keep coming back time and time again.” – Stephen Covey

You may have noticed that you aren’t perfect. That sometimes you aren’t the parent or the person you want to be. Welcome to humanity.  Sometimes you blow it.  We all do.

The bad news is that even if we’re committed to showing up with love for ourselves and others, life happens. We get disconnected -- from our spouse, our child, our own deepest guidance. There’s no magic that keeps us on the right path. In fact, all relationships are a constant series of connections and disconnections, missteps and course corrections.

The good news is that the journey of our life is woven from the individual steps we take every single day. The faster we notice those actions that are taking us in the wrong direction, the easier it is to course correct.

The even better news is that our sincere course corrections actually strengthen our relationships. Every time you re-connect with your baby or child, you teach trust. Every time you choose love over anger, you role model forgiving yourself and others. Every time you reach across a divide between you and your loved one, you testify to the boundlessness of your love, your commitment that "There ain't no river wide enough" to keep your love from getting through.

So don't worry about having been on the wrong path. Start where you are, and course correct. How?

1. When you make a mistake. Join the club! Greet it as an opportunity to learn and change, rather than beat yourself up. You'll find it's a lot easier to stick to your plan to do better when you let go of the tears and recriminations and focus instead on forgiving yourself. Like our kids, we do better when we feel better.

2. When you don't know how to get through to your kid.  Consider that he may be feeling disconnected from you. That's often the source of kids' misbehavior.  Before you worry about correcting his behavior, find a way to reconnect.  Appreciate something very specific about his behavior. Do something nice for him. Play with him, focusing all your attention. Seize every chance to snuggle, listen and empathize.

3. When you need to help your child course correct.  It's completely possible to deepen your connection with your child while helping her course-correct.  In fact, that's what inspired parenting is all about.  Misbehavior is your child's way of signaling that she needs your help. That's why conventional discipline doesn't produce emotionally healthy kids who are naturally considerate and responsible -- because it weakens the parent-child bond. The secret? Set all limits with empathy.

4. When you don't like the path you're on. There's no reason to keep going in a direction that's taking you away from your desired destination. Luckily, when we change, the world around us somehow transforms too. Start by making sure your cup is full, so you have the inner resources to show up as your best self. Then, whenever you notice a misstep, just stop.  Breathe, say thank you for the awareness, and change course. Two steps forward and one step back still takes you where you want to go.  Pretty soon, you'll find yourself in a whole new landscape.

I had an Aha! Moment recently when I received this letter from a reader:  "Dr. Laura, I appreciate all the emails about how to stay calm and inspired. I find they really help.  But what about those times when my kid does something really awful -- and deserves what's coming to him?! Won't he misinterpret it if I stay calm then? How do I teach him a lesson?" – Claudine

Now, because we do a better job when we’re calm, rather than frazzled, I do talk a lot in my daily inspiration emails about how to manage our own moods and emotions. I tell parents that we need to take care of ourselves so we have something inside to give our kids.

But this letter made me realize a basic fact about human emotion.  When we’re right, and the other person is wrong – and let’s assume for a moment that in this case, this is a fact, not just our opinion --- we WANT to let the other person know that. If they blew it, did something awful, don’t they deserve what’s coming?  And if it’s our kid, it’s our job to teach them. Shouldn’t we be showing them how upset we are? How else will they learn their lesson? 

Well, let’s double click on this.  Maybe we should start by thinking about how people learn lessons. What happens when you really blow it?  Let’s say you get a parking ticket. Or somehow lose your credit card as I did this week.  Or forget something really important at work, that endangers your job.  Does it help when your spouse or boss yells at you?

If you're intent on punishing your child, you'll be interested to know that research shows kids don't behave better when they're yelled at or punished.  Like the rest of us, kids who feel threatened go into "fight" or "flight" mode. Learning shuts off.    Eventually, if it becomes a regular occurrence, they develop new negative behaviors -- lying, sneakiness, tuning us out, disrespect. So when we yell at or punish kids, we don't prevent a recurrence of the behavior.  In fact, we lose influence with our kid.

I'm not suggesting you just let your kid continue doing whatever is driving you crazy.  I'm suggesting you adopt a strategy that will actually change his behavior.  I know it isn't as satisfying as yelling when you're angry.  But long term, it's a lot more gratifying in every way.

So, (you guessed it!) start by calming yourself down.  Then:

1. Meet your child's deeper needs. All behavior comes from the attempt to meet basic needs. What's causing this problem behavior? Is it a need for more connection from us?  More control over his life?  More recognition?  A more orderly, peaceful home? Clear limits? More sleep?

2. Help your child develop a competing impulse. For instance, If she wants to clobber her little brother, strengthen their relationship so she feels more protective of him.  (And in the meantime, be aware that pediatricians say never to leave a child under the age of five alone with a little one.) If she lies to you, explain that every lie cuts a cord in her relationship to you.  (See how much more effective these strategies are than yelling?)

3. Help your child develop a new habit. If you want her to remember something, whether it's her jacket at a friend's house or brushing her teeth, adopt routines to insure she develops the habit.

 4. Work with your child to find a win/win solution.  This is where you get your own need met, by making things different. Tell your child his action upset you and you want to work together to make sure it doesn't happen again. It's the recurring problems that most often push us to the breaking point, so it's worth solving them. And the only kind of solution that reliably lasts between humans is one that meets the needs of both people.  No, you're not giving in. You're not backing off your own need, remember?  You’re getting your own need met, AND teaching your child how to have a good relationship with another person – by finding win/win solutions.

5. Wait.  Most problem behavior, from dumping his milk on the floor to missing curfew, is age-appropriate.  You'll be pleased to know that by next year he'll have outgrown whatever problem behavior is driving you crazy -- and will have found several new ones!

The Aha! For me in this is that ALL of us want to be right.  That’s the way the human brain works.  But when we insist on being right, it means the other person has to be wrong.  And when someone feels wrong, they’re on the defensive.  That’s fight or flight.  It means learning shuts off.  So if we insist on being right, our kid CAN’T learn a lesson, and we're sabotaging both ourselves and our child.

t's fine to show our kids we’re upset, as long as we don't attack them.  But instead of modeling temper tantrums, we can model healthy emotional self-management.  Rather than railing against our kid, we take responsibility as the grown up.  We work with our kid to solve the problem. Yes, our kid learns lessons -- the most important ones!  That’s the kind of parenting all kids deserve.