Posts Tagged ‘feelings’

What To Do When Your Kid Behaves Badly

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

It’s been awhile since I’ve had to figure out how to respond to a real physical conflict between my daughter and a friend. Last weekend, I got my opportunity!

We have the most amazing and dear neighbors who moved in this past Fall. It was such a blessing to us because we live in the country and scheduling play dates for our kids is not always easy. I really missed the days when kids could knock on the door and ask to play after school.

Really, we couldn’t have lucked out more than we did with our new neighbors. Not only were they just down the gravel road from us, but the genders and ages are perfect for our kids. They have a 7 year old girl and a 4 year old boy – just like us!

Once we established that the ages were a match we scheduled some after school play dates and discovered that the little group was very compatible. It’s been so much fun for us, as parents, and for the kids to have a connection so close by to another family.

Last weekend, all went fairly well on a typical play date at our home. The children played until their dad came to pick them up. Unfortunately, my daughter’s assertiveness turned into aggression toward her friend and in an effort to get her playmate to be quiet in their secret hiding spot, she smacked her with a broom out of frustration. Her friend wasn’t at all happy and she pushed my daughter and ran to her car to go home. To make matters worse, all of this “went down” outside of parental vision.

I’m thankful for my daughter’s fearless honesty and her desire to be forgiven. The whole story spilled out in a tumble of tears and remorse. I held her and companioned her through her feelings and her choice in expressing her anger with her friend. I know that many parents may believe that these incidents happen and that they just need to be patted away or scoffed as typical kid stuff. I wholeheartedly disagree.

These moments when our children are most troubled by their own moral choice is a great teachable moment in their life. How we confront our fear and embarrassment when we do something that is not kind or appropriate is a big life lesson. I explained to my daughter that I would call our neighbor’s and check in on her friend to see if she is alright and to find a time that we could all talk about what happened.

Of course, she was really scared and upset that I would call and talk about what she did. As my child’s spiritual mentor, it is necessary for me to help navigate through these scary and challenging moments for her. I assured her that no one was angry with her but that it is important that we let their family know that she is sorry for what she did.

So, I called and spoke to our fantastic neighbors. They shared that their child was very shaken and upset and not ready to talk about it. We agreed to hold off on a face-to-face meeting until the next morning.

An incident like this may not physically or emotionally affect your child, but for many it will. My own daughter was very stressed, anxious, and worried. To release her anxiety, we held her while she cried. The next morning we talked about our scheduled visit and she cried again.

With much reluctance she came with me and we sat together on the couch – the two moms and our daughters.

Me: “Girls, no one is in trouble. Something happened yesterday before you left and we want to talk about it. I. shared with me that she felt frustrated that you were talking when your dad came to pick you up because she wanted all of you to hide together so he wouldn’t find you. You were so excited that you kept talking and that’s when she hit you with the broom. What is your understanding?” [I'm looking at our neighbor's mom].

Neighbor’s Mom: “Yes, that sounds right. The girls were hiding and my daughter was very excited and didn’t stop talking and I. got nervous that they would be discovered so she hit her with the broom.”

Me: “Did we get the story right, girls?”

Both girls nodded, mine tearfully and burying herself into my side.

Me: “What would help make you feel better about this problem?” [I'm looking at my daughter's friend.]

Neighbor Child: “A sorry.”

My daughter: “I want to go home.”

Me: [Gently and with empathy]. “Okay, I., I know this hard; your friend needs to hear an apology. We want her to feel safe and happy again. I think it will help you too. We can go home as soon as you can tell your friend something from your heart.”

We waited a bit in a friendly silence, giving my daughter the space to have the courage to apologize. It was definitely not an easy moment for her. And then…

My daughter: [With unsolicited eye contact, gentleness, and conviction]. “I’m sorry P.”

It was a very sweet and honorable apology and her friend responded graciously with a “thank you.”

Within a few minutes the girls were laughing and having fun again and the incident was behind them. Later, in the car, my daughter confided in me and said, “Mom, that was really embarrassing.” I nodded and replied, “I know sweetie. I’m so proud of you for showing so much courage in being honest about making a mistake and facing your friend to tell her you’re sorry. That was really brave.”

I believe I’m just at the beginning of a new stage with my daughter. There are new challenges for us and I’m having to dig deep for a new level of compassion, self-discipline, and understanding myself.

Tags: choices, communication, companioning, consequences, discipline, fears, feelings, listening, self-discipline, teaching
Posted in discipline | No Comments »

Snowy Days

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

This has been a rough week here for the Peirce kids. We live in North Carolina and the last time we saw this much snow was about 6 years ago.

It started to snow last Friday night just at the tail end of my son’s 4th birthday and it didn’t stop snowing until Saturday afternoon. It was a magical morning for the children and we had so much fun romping in the snow for just a bit.

It would have been great fun to stay out longer but we’re just not very equipped for snow here in Chapel Hill. We had our rain boots and soft, inadequate mittens, layers of pants (no snow pants), and several pairs of socks. Obviously, we got cold very quickly!

The children did well Saturday and Sunday. But then the news came…school was canceled Monday, then Tuesday, and then…Wednesday too. It didn’t take long for there to be lots of tears and frustration from being together in tight quarters for way too long!

Fortunately, I was preparing for my Managing Mommy Anger tele-class and had every opportunity to practice keeping my own cool! Something I am learning again and again when there are sibling squabbles is to allow both parties to be heard. It’s tempting for me to interrupt or correct the tale being shared about the altercation. I bite my lip and focus on listening.

I sit down and invite both children to sit with me, to tell their side of what happened. After tearful sharing, I nod and invite them to share what they would like their sibling to do that would make them feel better. Encouraging them both to problem solve has been an interesting journey. Sometimes it ends in uncontrollable laughter or an angry demand or complete indifference. Just providing the space and a listening ear seems to diffuse the drama.

I have to admit, I’m really grateful snow days are few and far between! How are you and your little ones managing cabin fever?

Tags: Children Under Age 7, communication, discipline, feelings, listening, self-discipline, teaching
Posted in sibling rivalry | 1 Comment »

What To Do When Your Child Sucks Their Thumb or Clothes

Monday, January 25th, 2010

Question From L.:

My 4 year old son has recently started chewing the neck of his shirts until they are saturated with saliva throughout the day (I can’t connect the behavior with any particular situation). He has also started putting his fingers in his mouth or sucking his thumb, but only when I read to him. We’ve tried to say “a dry shirt is a happy shirt…”, but this doesn’t really help him to stop and we are concerned that it is just bringing attention to a behavior that we’d like to see stop. We just ignore the fingers/thumb in the mouth. I’ve also tried talking to him about feelings, “sometimes we worry….”, but he doesn’t acknowledge any of these feelings. Thoughts? or am I the one that just needs to stop worrying?

Thanks, L.

Raelee’s Suggestion:

Hi L.,

These self soothing behaviors result, as you intuitively felt, from pent up feelings. Feeling safe to express and release stress and tension is a skill for all of us to master. I know as mamas that we strive to model this as best as we can, but it can be a challenge.

Ultimately, your 4 year-old needs to channel his need to relieve his stress and tension (something we all have on a daily basis) through crying or tantruming or raging. I know that this kind of behavior can be very stressful for a parent. I’m learning more and more how critical it is for us to recognize crying as a way young children “discharge” their stress.

Yesterday, for example, Keaton, my own 4 year old, wasn’t feeling well and being “off” was causing him a lot of stress. I knew that sleeping would be key to him feeling better and so I gently but firmly, without yelling or even feeling anger, held him on my bed in my arms until his tears and rage about taking a nap subsided into sleep. He tantrumed for 30 minutes, all the while I validated him, “I know you’re really upset and angry that you need sleep to get better. You want to play and you don’t want to rest.” I was very detached from his emotions – they were not triggering my anger or frustration – I was just present, knowing that he needs to release this pent up stress in order to get it all out. He woke up from a deep nap and had a wonderful, peaceful evening, renewed.

Last night, I felt really overwhelmed and hurt by an extended family situation. Usually I would distract myself from the stress of the day and choose to eat for comfort or just go to sleep. But I allowed myself to be present with my feelings about things and I allowed myself to have a really good cry until I had no more tears (obviously, this was not in the presence of my children). I woke up this morning feeling so much better!

Depending on how much your son has to discharge (one only can cry so much if allowed to completely let it out), he may tantrum (crying, being upset – not hurting himself, you, or property) for up to 90 minutes or less. To allow him to actually release and let go of the thumb and collar sucking, it would require allowing him to discharge.

Don’t yank out his thumb or his collar. Tap his thumb and see if he would be comfortable with you slowly pulling it out while saying, “Sweetie, you don’t need this, it’s okay to cry or be upset sometimes.” Sometimes just communicating and doing this will allow him to start discharging. If he would let you hold him while crying, that would be great, but sometimes by 4 that’s not possible. Stay with him and validate his feelings as he lets out his tears. If it triggers anger to hear him raging, you can see if you can allow yourself to cry rather than yell or start to feel controlling. It’s okay to discharge together.

This could be an option of getting him to let go of these stress outlets and for him to understand more how his strong feelings are okay and acceptable. I know it sounds a bit odd and even stressful. However, I have to say, that since I’ve been practicing this with Isabel and Keaton and myself, there is less whining and edginess in general. The kids cry when they need to in a way that isn’t so explosive as it had been in the past. It feels like we’re coming into a balance.

If ignoring it seems like a better way for you right now, that’s fine too; you may need to build up to this approach. Delaying his need to discharge may mean that he may give up the collar and thumb sucking eventually but that pent up stress and tension manifest in other ways as children get older – usually other negative behaviors. It would be a great advantage to you and to him if you could think about this idea of discharging now, rather than later.

Need More Information? Read this article about Understanding Your Child’s Feelings at Parenting With Presence.

I hope this is helpful.

Warmly,

Tags: Aware Parenting, Children Under Age 7, communication, feelings, fortitude, intention, self-discipline, tantrums
Posted in tantrums and crying | No Comments »

Part 2: Getting Wee Ones to Sleep

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

Ever noticed a lot of upset in the late afternoon before dinner and bedtime? You may have had a wonderful day with the children, a few snafoos, but for the most part, a pleasant day. Late afternoon, just before dinner and what occurs? Crying over little things – it might be a broken crayon or big sister sat at the dinner table first…

Crying and tantruming are not behaviors parents are comfortable with in their children. From the time our children were babies we’ve been taught to soothe them as much as possible, to eliminate crying, to fix what is wrong.

I invite you to explore the possibility that by eliminating the release of tension and stress that crying allows our children, that we are ultimately encouraging more whiny, demanding, unsatisfied, frustrated, and angry children.

Think about stress and anxiety for a minute. As a culture do we release our stress and anxiety in healthy ways? The Biggest Loser is one of America’s favorite shows. America is facing an obesity epidemic. So, it’s clear that food is one way we may be dealing with our feelings. Anti-depressant usage among adults, teens, and children are at an all-time high. We are seeing more and more high profile celebrities becoming diagnosed as sex addicts. Alcoholism and illegal and prescription drug use continues to be another way individuals cope with their emotions.

What does all of this have to do with getting your young children to sleep?

Everything.

Understanding how young children express their feelings is important knowledge for you to have as a parent so you know how you can begin creating healthy and safe ways for your child to express happiness, sadness, and even anger.

Author and parent educator, Aletha Solter explains that “there are 4 primary ways in which children cope with stress:

talking,
symbolic play,
laughter,
and crying (including raging).”

Young children will use symbolic play, laughter, crying & raging as their initial stress-release tools and as they mature, they will talk more about their feelings.

Certainly, parents encourage their children to laugh and play and talk to release energy and stress. However, parents are not as comfortable with their child’s crying and raging because there is a false belief that their child will feel better if they would only stop crying.

“Children will not feel better until they have been allowed to cry and rage as much as needed.” ~ Aletha Solter

Okay, I know what you’re thinking here. You’re thinking, “are you crazy? I’m not going to let my kid scream his head off because his crayon broke.”

Whining, frustration, hitting, biting, defiance…hmmm…is it not interesting to think that these negative behaviors are linked to a child’s pent up stress? Let’s think about this as it applies to your own life. You’ve had a horrible day, nothing is going right – your computer crashed, your car won’t start, you feel a head cold coming on, then, your 3 year old is joyously running through the house with a full glass of milk and spills it all over the couch. You hit a wall on a day like this when you just explode – you, in a very real way, have your own tantrum.

Well, young children, even when a day has gone well (from our perspective), are experiencing stresses and anxiety. They’re learning new things, short separations from their caregiver, over-stimulation from an outing or from media, experience an undesirable consequence, lack of attention, illness, getting hurt…

You do the best that you can to create a stress-free, simple childhood for your kids but the sources of your child’s stress are not always easy for you to detect. You don’t know until a crying jag or tantrum that a change in routine or a new friend could have caused your child anxiety or stress.

So, a typical time of the day for your child to release these tensions through, specifically crying, is between 4pm-8pm. Instead of punishing or shaming your child for crying, let it run its course. Accept the crying as part of the release. Respond in a way that allows the child to fully release. Once you’ve met their basic needs, recognize that allowing crying to occur will bring better, less restless sleep. You want to your child to release feelings through healing tears. Firm, but loving holding is a great way to help your young child to let go. It’s much more comforting and nurturing than sending your child to their room or to the corner for a “time-out.”

From Parenting With Presence:

“I prefer to support my nearly three year old daughter to vent her feelings daily, often in the evening before she goes to sleep. When she doesn’t have a cry for three or four days, she starts showing that she has unexpressed feelings. She takes a long time to go to sleep even when she is tired, and moves a lot during the night. During the day she seems agitated, gets easily frustrated, and avoids being close. On the other hand, when she has a cry every day or two, she easily goes to sleep lying beside me when she is tired, is relaxed throughout the night, and happy and alert during the day. She concentrates for long periods and enjoys cuddles and closeness. Time and again the differences reassure me that crying in my arms contributes significantly to her daily well-being.”

Do you have questions about this theory? I will be sharing with you more about it and how it can support your intentional mothering ways.

Tags: Aletha Solter, Aware Parenting, Children Under Age 7, discipline, feelings, sleep, tantrums, toddler
Posted in Uncategorized, sleep | 3 Comments »

Part 1: Getting Wee Ones to Sleep

Monday, January 18th, 2010

There are 4 critical areas that need a parent’s attention and appropriate response when it comes to bringing out the best in our children: rhythm, sleep, nutrition, and media exposure.

For many of us in the noble mother community we adhere to the principles of attachment parenting.

Many families have found that a period of co-sleeping works well for establishing good sleep from the beginning.

For some, however, it isn’t an easy formula. There is sleeplessness and overwhelm around the bedtime routine and sleeping habits that evolve as our babies turn into toddlers and preschoolers.

Mamas wonder if they have done more harm than good, especially when their wee ones sleep restlessly and night waking becomes a pattern well past the first year. Many parents share that they intuitively feel that sleeping with their baby worked for a time and then evolved into something that stopped working well. These mamas don’t want their baby to cry by themselves but sometimes sleep is not coming easily for anyone in the house using the sure-fire tools of nursing on demand and co-sleeping.

At the time of my first baby it seemed there were two camps of opinion – co-sleeping and cry-it-out.

I remember the stressful, sleepless nights when my daughter was 9 months old. She would wake every 30 minutes to nurse, to be re-settled into sleep. I felt so overwhelmed and exhausted. Motherhood was not a joy, it was an endless chore. My lack of sleep dulled every experience with her. I craved sleep. I was just trying to survive.

“We live in a society that puts a lot of value on independence. This may be fine for adults but is not as fine for babies. It often leads us to expect babies and small children to be more independent than they are biologically ready to be. It also puts a lot of pressure on parents to push their children toward independence even when they are small babies and toddlers.” ~ AP FAQ Quote

Clients frequently contact me for parent coaching support to help them find a nurturing way to get their children to sleep better.

If I could go back in time and do things better with my own two children around sleep when they were babies I would. I’ve learned so much about development, expectations, needs, and emotions from both Waldorf and Aware Parenting philosophies.

Of course, from Waldorf, rhythm is critical to helping children sleep well. I can say that I was very predictable at bedtime for my children but naps were challenging, with my first especially.

The biggest key to better sleep is in the Aware Parenting philosophy. It’s very important for a new mother to know the different needs of her baby. Babies sleep when they are tired, play when they want to learn, eat when they’re hungry, and cry when they need to release stress.

Babies, toddlers, and even preschoolers can become over-stimulated easily, especially in our culture today. We have so many lights, sounds, smells, and temperature changes for a little body to take in.

Looking back, it is very clear to me that my first born, who was born via C-section, was never allowed to heal from her birth trauma through crying. She was a very fussy baby for me and I did what any new mama would do, I nursed her, jiggled her, swayed her, rocked her, and walked with her to get her to stop crying.

Once a baby’s needs of hunger, cold/hot, sleep, and diaper changing have been met, moms can allow their baby or young child to cry to release their tensions from the day, birth trauma, or over-stimulation.

Babies and young children should not be left alone to cry.

Crying-in-arms or companioning your child through their emotional release is the goal. With a baby or child who has never been allowed to cry their tensions or stress out, this can be a challenging time for both child and parent. We don’t like to hear our children crying.

A fussy, whiny, or agitated baby or child is showing signs of needing to release stress. Offering this young child the opportunity to nurse or to use a pacifier, is just shutting the needed stress release down and restless sleep will, more than likely, result.

I highly recommend that you read a full-length article on this topic here. We will continue to explore getting young children to sleep more in Part 2: Getting Wee Ones to Sleep.

Tags: Aletha Solter, Aware Parenting, bedtime, birth, Children Under Age 7, choices, development, feelings, independence, napping, rhythm, sleep, tantrums, Waldorf
Posted in sleep | No Comments »

Day 11: 12 Days to Stop Yelling

Thursday, December 31st, 2009

We are almost to the end of our series and it is my hope that it has given you some great food for thought and reflection!

My goal in presenting these posts to you has been to inspire you to become more mindful when communicating with your little ones.

It would defeat the purpose of this series if you have become inspired to communicate more effectively only to become even more overwhelmed by feelings of guilt when you slip back to yelling.

Day 11

Be accountable but don’t beat yourself up with guilt when you make mistakes.

The big reason I don’t want you to feel guilty is because moms who are riddled with guilt become more permissive as parents.

“Permissive parenting leads to the creation of demanding, willful, oppositional children. Stop the cycle by truly forgiving yourself. Forgiveness takes place in three steps, which I call the ‘three R’s of forgiveness.’

First, recognize and accept your feelings. Tell yourself, ‘I feel angry and anxious, and that’s okay.’

Second, reframe the experience. Forget about finding a good guy and a villain. Admit that, given your state of mind, you did your best and so did your child.

Third, request help. Calmly ask your child to work with you in forging new patterns of behavior. Here is an example of what you might say: ‘Last night at bedtime, I screamed at you and spanked you. I did those things because I lost control, not because you are bad. Sometimes I think you want to be my boss. I am your mother and I am in charge. I am going to be a better parent. I am going to work on expressing anger differently – with words spoken firmly’” (Becky Bailey, Easy to Love, Difficult to Discipline).

You’ll never be the perfect mother. Your child won’t ever be the perfect child. Mistakes allow us the opportunity to grow. Shedding the guilt around making mistakes, forgiving yourself of your transgressions, and making a concerted effort toward mindful communication are all steps in the right direction to becoming more of the mom you want to be.

Tags: assertiveness, Children Under Age 7, choices, communication, consequences, discipline, feelings, integrity, intention, listening, Self-Care, self-discipline
Posted in 12 Days to Stop Yelling | No Comments »

Day 8: 12 Days to Stop Yelling

Monday, December 28th, 2009

Today’s post is connected to our 12-Day Challenge to Stop Yelling.

Obviously, it’s no secret that many parents resort to yelling because they believe their child is behaving inappropriately. If your child is behaving inappropriately, your child is communicating to you they are having a problem.

Remember, “All behavior is communication.” Your child is making choices throughout her day. Some moments she is making good, acceptable choices and in other moments she is making unacceptable choices.

Most of you in the Noble Mother community may relate to the idea of “sliding.” Some days you feel like a patient saint and you live up to your own expectations of being gentle and reasonable and you handle your child’s daily positive and poor choices with ease and confidence.

Other days you feel like everything your child does is wrong and inappropriate and you can’t help but lash out in anger and frustration through yelling, threats, and even a swat. You feel like a terrible parent on those days and feel like you’re failing yourself and your children.

Listen, everyone has had those days! You’re not alone. Your desire to parent effectively and consistently is evidence that you are a parent who is absolutely capable of making different choices on those particularly challenging days.

Day 8

Recognize that you have a positive or negative choice to make when your child makes a poor choice.

When children do not feel heard they will often become louder and even more dramatic. This is why if you choose to yell at your child, it can only make things worse. Just as you are losing control and slipping into your emotional brain, they are doing the same. Once a human being is in their emotional brain, they are capable of doing and saying things they don’t want to do or say.

If you’re reacting, you’re not helping.

The first thing to do when your child’s behavior shocks or disappoints you is to immediately ask yourself these questions:

“What is her behavior trying to tell me? What is she trying to tell me that she can’t?”

There’s something that your child is feeling or thinking that is literally preventing her from behaving well. Now, the reason your child is misbehaving, or making a poor choice, could be based in a developmental stage or a temperament characteristic that you are not understanding. The reason could be emotional, physical, or neurological.

Unless your child is trying to get your attention, she may not be misbehaving on purpose. Many times children make a poor choice because they just haven’t had enough experience in the situation to choose wisely. Let’s remember that parents often have unreasonable expectations of young children.

Parents expect positive behavior from young children in the following situations, for example:

-Shopping at a mall or store, sometimes during a meal, nap, or bedtime
-Knowing how to share or take turns with other children
-Knowing how to appropriately respond when another child behaves oddly (e.g. takes their toy or hits them)
-Playing a game with rules
-Any evening event that goes past their bedtime
-When a parent reinforces a limit (e.g. cookies after dinner, story after bath, seat belt buckled, sit down to eat, etc)

Most young children will display negative behavior in the above circumstances.

Respond Effectively When Your Child Chooses Poorly:

1. Make a conscious effort to maintain self-control so that you can stay in your thinking brain which will allow you to remain calm and it will influence your child to be too. Decide that you will only use your mouth for deep breathing!

2. Does your child’s poor choice call for a natural consequence – the idea that your child would learn from her mistake if you simply allowed the consequences to occur?

For example, your 4 year old leaves her shoes outside and her natural consequence – she has to wear a different, less preferred pair the next day because she can’t find her favorites.

3. Does your child’s poor choice call for an imposed consequence – the idea that your child has behaved outside of your pre-established limits or boundaries? This can be very difficult for parents because they do not like that their child may experience a negative emotion as a result of the consequence. For example, your 5 and 3 year old are squabbling over toys and your 3 year old resorts to biting her older brother when she’s frustrated while your 5 year old hits. Both children are miserable and you are ready to lose it.

Since you’ve already established with your kids that biting and hitting are not allowed, you enforce the consequence that each child will play separately or you will remove the toy causing the friction. In this specific scenario, you also realize that they are two young to play unsupervised and that you will have to create play areas that are closer to you until you see that they understand how to take turns, share, and otherwise negotiate better.

Life is about making choices. “To be powerful learning opportunities, children must be allowed to feel the consequences of their choices” (Becky Bailey, Easy to Love, Difficult to Discipline). Knowing how to immediately respond well, may help you make a better choice too.

Let me know how things are going, mama.

Tags: Children Under Age 7, choices, communication, consequences, discipline, feelings, intention, listening, logical consequence, natural consequence, self-discipline, tantrums, teaching, toys
Posted in 12 Days to Stop Yelling | No Comments »

Day 7: 12 Days to Stop Yelling

Saturday, December 26th, 2009

I don’t think you can ignore the idea of exploring what you believe about expressing anger when you’re trying to stop the habit of yelling as a discipline strategy. Obviously, parents yell out of frustration and anger. You would probably agree with me that our society doesn’t seem to be very well versed in having a healthy perspective on anger.

As a child, you may have repeatedly watched your own parents explode and yell and maybe even become physically aggressive with you out of anger. It is not unusual for you to be using the same aggressive reactions that your parents used with you, on your own children.

Part of your work toward yelling less or using more effective discipline is to understand how you can appropriately express anger. It isn’t realistic to believe that you will never be upset or angry when your child behaves inappropriately.

Day 7

Learn to appropriately express anger. Your children under the age of 7 are learning so much from you about the world through making mistakes, creative play, and imitation. Who are they imitating? You! Anger is an emotion and you want to be able to model how to handle strong emotions to your children.

The first place to start in learning more appropriate expression is to be sure it’s really anger you are feeling. Could you be masking another feeling? If you were punished for being emotional or even labeled “sensitive” or “a drama queen” growing up, you may be using anger to cover up your real feelings of being hurt, frustrated, disappointed, or afraid.

I read a lot of books and blogs and take pages of notes on things I love. Unfortunately, I can’t give credit to the person who came up with these 5 steps because it isn’t in my notes. If you know who you are – please reveal yourself – they’re great tips to follow once you’ve discovered that you’re truly angry!

1. When you are upset, say so in an upset or angry tone of voice.

Let your whole body speak the message in a straightforward, assertive manner-not aggressively or passively. Say what you are feeling in a firm voice. Your tone can convey anger without a loud scream or a shaky whisper.

2. Tell your child your feelings.

“I am angry!” It is critical that your body and mouth are saying the same thing. To grab the coat and throw it on the floor and say that you are not upset about anything is passive aggressive. To say in a soft whisper that you are angry is to not involve your body in delivering the message. In fact, if you quietly say you are angry, anger is probably masking another feeling.

3. State your belief out loud but avoid killer statements.

“I believe each one of us needs to pick up our own dirty clothes and put them in the laundry basket.” Avoid comments such as “You never pick up your clothes.” “You are such a slob.” These killer statements only attack the other person.

4. Close the time gap between the hurt and the expression of that hurt.

Give direct feedback. Tell her what she has done. “This week I have picked up your crayons and paper every day. You dump them on the living room floor and leave them there.”

5. State what you want.

“I want you to pick up your crayons and put them in the box and put the box in the drawer.”

Write these 5 steps on a sticky note and hang it up on your mirror for practice! Let me know your struggles and triumphs as you retrain yourself during your fitful moments.

This post included in Real Life’s Your Life Your Blog

Tags: Children Under Age 7, choices, communication, feelings, intention, rhythm, Self-Care, self-discipline, simplicity parenting
Posted in 12 Days to Stop Yelling | No Comments »

Posts Tagged ‘feelings’

What To Do When Your Kid Behaves Badly

Snowy Days

What To Do When Your Child Sucks Their Thumb or Clothes

Question From L.:

Raelee’s Suggestion:

Part 2: Getting Wee Ones to Sleep

Part 1: Getting Wee Ones to Sleep

Day 11: 12 Days to Stop Yelling

Day 11

The big reason I don’t want you to feel guilty is because moms who are riddled with guilt become more permissive as parents.

Day 8: 12 Days to Stop Yelling

Day 8

Day 7: 12 Days to Stop Yelling

Day 7

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