Do you have a hard time not taking your child's behavior personally?Do you get upset when your kids refuse, protest or tantrum about the limits you set?
Do your kids become inconsolable when they don't get what they want?
The first five years are a remarkable time in a child's life.
They're also quite challenging for parents as children grow from helpless infants who are entirely reliant on their caregivers to thoughtful, autonomous, and independent young people.
Communicating with small children can be exhausting, so I want to share a little secret with you...
Practice acceptance.
Just because your child gets upset does not mean that your limits aren't respected or that you need to be more firm.
Children need time to adapt to their frustration, sadness, and disappointment and they need us to remain compassionate while they work through their distress.
If we react to an upset child with impatience, punishment or anger, lessons are missed and teachable moments are lost.
Why?
Because discipline ideas that are punitive or include threats of physical or emotional disconnection shut down the thinking centers of the brain and keep young children stuck in survival mode.
They don't get to practice coping in healthy ways. This eventually affects their tolerance for everyday stress and challenges.
If you find yourself -
- bristling at your child's behavior
- resorting to threats
- getting angry the moment you hear, "No, I won't!"
- then you might also have a low tolerance for stressful situations.
But you don't have to stay stuck there.
You can build your resilience by changing the way you think and speak and identifying the negative patterns that create a sense of disconnection between you and your kids.
I have identified four dangerous perpetrators of negativity in our family relationships.
These habits are well-ingrained and often unconscious - infecting our family dynamics, stealing our peace, and damaging our influence.
When we respond to conflict or disagreement using one of these four perps - children learn to be on guard, alert, and ready to defend - the exact opposite what they need to experience to learn from their mistakes.
In this TEACHable Moments video, I'm sharing 5 essential rules for communicating with young children.
Conscious parents frame conflicts as challenges to be met rather than behavior problems to be punished. (Tweet it!)It's important to remember the sensitive and strenuous phases of development and choose to work with those stages instead of against our kid's natural state.
Wondering about development and how it influences behavior? Check out the ABC's of Conscious Parenting.
After you watch, be sure to leave me a note in the comments and share your language re-frame.
Thanks so much for watching and for sharing and please remember, it's about being conscious - not perfect!
Talk soon,
Lori
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