Week 6: Positive Time Together

Shared positive experiences are the foundation of good parenting.

I believe that if you teach your children to enjoy life-- and if they associate you with positive emotions and memories-- they will be much more apt to listen to you when you teach, they will be more likely to come to you with problems, they will be more likely to visit you when they're grown.

And if you take time to relax and enjoy your children, you'll be happier, you'll know them better, and you'll be more capable of offering them the guidance and direction that they need.    

It's easy to get caught up in the day-to-day barking of orders... "Brush your teeth!  Get your backpack on!  Do your homework! Eat your peas!  Pick that up!  Do your chore!  Brush your teeth again!  Go to bed!"... But it's so essential to step back and spend some fun time together.  I can't tell you how happy it makes me to have my kids look up when we're doing something together, little smiles on their faces, and say, "I love you, Mommy."

This week, the challenge is to focus on just enjoying your children.  Try to do something every day with them that all of you like doing together.  Make it something you ALL enjoy.  (For example, I hate playing cars with my boys.   To me, it's the most boring thing in the world. But I love cooking with them, playing hide-and-seek, jumping on the trampoline, reading to them, dancing with them, writing stories, drawing pictures, and going for walks.)

You don't have to do anything fancy.  And it doesn't have to take mass amounts of time.  Five minutes is often enough.  Just be together.  And be happy together.

Enjoy!

Week 5: Positive Time Outs

I believe that one of the most important life skills we can teach children is how to regulate their emotions.  My oldest has an enormous, sensitive bundle of emotions, so this has been something we have had to work and work and work and work on.

This last week (you'll notice this post is a week late!) we have been trying to focusing on reminding him to go to his room when his emotions are starting to get the better of him.

I usually try to notice when he's starting to get wound up-- before he's completely lost his mind but when he's consistently being naughty/aggressive/disobedient-- and suggest that he find a toy or a book and go to his room for some alone time.  

Sometimes he won't go on his own, but I have found that if I guide him (read: calmly but forcibly carry/lock) to his room, he'll settle down into a groove and come out much happier and better-behaved in 20-30 minutes.

I have read suggestions about helping your child create a special cozy spot where they can go to regroup. I haven't worked up the energy for that yet-- particularly since I can see anything like that getting destroyed pretty quickly-- but I think it's a nice idea, particularly for lower-key kids.

Week 4: I've Got Skills

So we've started out this challenge by focusing on keeping our interactions with our children respectful and love-based, rather than disrespectful and fear-based.

We've added a problem-solving component by introducing the family meeting agenda.  

....and this week we're going to add something that will hopefully make the above two items easier:  

Skills Training

This is basically just teaching your kids a skill you think would benefit them-- and helping them implement that skill during the week.  

Skills like: 

Respectfully disagreeing.

Respectfully requesting something.

Using manners at the dinner table.

Answering adults' questions.  

Positive time outs (going to a safe, comfortable place to regroup when upset).

Self-soothing techniques (breathing, taking a foot bath, curling up in a blanket, looking at a favorite book, playing a musical instrument, etc.)

Accepting what you can't change and changing what you can.  

Doing what you can with what you've got.

Saving money.

Planning ahead.  

Respecting others.

Showing reverence.

Sharing.

Respecting boundaries.

Focusing on one task at a time.

Completing overwhelming tasks.

Setting goals.

Identifying and regulating emotions.

Being a good friend.

Going shopping with your mother without adding to her gray hairs.

Resolving conflicts.

Managing time.  

Coping with disappointment.

Tying one's shoelaces.

Riding a bicycle.  

Making a phone call.    

Skills training is HUGE.  

As I see it, the two biggest jobs of parenthood are to LOVE and to TEACH.

So go and ahead and pick a skill for the week-- either one that all of your children could benefit from or -- if you're feeling ambitious-- pick one for each child.  

Both of my kids need to practice RESPECTFULLY DISAGREEING, so I think that's what we'll focus on this week.  

What will that look like?  

Well, first, it means we'll talk about it at our family meeting.  "Our skill for this week is Respectfully Disagreeing, kids!  I'm going to write it on our kitchen white board so we can remember it all week long!  Now let's talk about what it means to respectfully disagree."  Then I will probably do some puppet shows demonstrating both respectful and disrespectful disagreement techniques.   

I will explain to my kids that when they disagree, it is unacceptable to whine, badger, or disobey.  However, sometimes a kid has a legitimate piece of information that might change my mind about something.  Like if they're totally into the project they're working on when I ask them to empty the dishwasher.  I'm usually open to letting them finish up what they're doing before they come complete their task.  Or if they asked to make  brownies for dessert and I, not wanting to deal with the cleanup, I just quickly said, "no"-- but then they added they wanted to share the brownies with an elderly friend-- I would probably change my mind.  

So the idea is that sometimes they need to just accept no or obey, but sometimes it's okay for them to respectfully add some more information to the communication.  

My plan for this week is to begin by teaching my kids that there are three acceptable responses to a "no" or a request to do something.    

"Okay"

"Sir, yes, sir!"  

or

 "May I respectfully disagree?"  

So once that's been taught, we will spend the week practicing it.  When I catch the kids whining or badgering, I will remind them about Respectfully Disagreeing and coach them through the process if they need it.  

Your kids may not have a problem with this, so feel free to teach another skill.  

But here's the overall plan for the week:   

1.  Have a family meeting again!  Don't forget to do compliments, teach a character quality, and go over your agenda items!  Review the respectful behaviors chart.  And this time, teach a skill.    

2. Reinforce your skill all week.  

3.  Keep on keeping track of problems that need to be solved and putting them on your family meeting agenda (It's so great to say, "Hey, kids.  This seems to be an issue.  Let's put this on our agenda."  It totally helps alleviate some of my fears knowing that we're going to work together to solve the problem.)  

4.  Keep track of your points, if you feel like it.  For some reason I have an inner resistance to this--  retarded, I know, since I came up with the idea, but I think it makes me feel overwhelmed.  Feeling overwhelmed makes me shut down.  I'm very much of a take-it-a-little-at-a-time kind of a gal.  So anyway, I've switched to just trying to follow through on the focus of the week.  If the points work for you, keep using them.  If they don't-- well, don't.

5. Check in on Facebook!  

Week 3: We've Got an Agenda

Okay, ya'll!  We're going to throw down and go HARD CORE this week.  Okay, not really.  Because I can barely keep up with the non-hard-core stuff.  But this is something I've been looking forward to.  I'm hoping it rocks our mothering worlds.  We're adding an agenda.  More about that later.

Our three big focuses for this week are:

1) Hold another family meeting.  Give compliments.  Teach about your character quality.  Review the Respectful Choices chart together.  And then, get ready to do something new.  This time, we're going to introduce the agenda.  

The idea behind the agenda is that when your family encounters issues throughout the week, you write them on your family meeting agenda (a white board or paper taped to the fridge or whatever) to be discussed at your next family meeting.

Just thinking back over our week, I'd say if we'd been keeping an agenda list, we would have put the following items on the list:

1) Liam touching Soren's stuff (prevention and response).
2) Liam's incessant whining.
3) Soren being responsible for homework without nagging.  

For each item on the agenda, the family will take some time to brainstorm solutions to the issues, pick one that everyone can agree on, and then implement the solution throughout the week.  If no one can agree on a solution, the agenda item is tabled for another week.

I LOVE THIS APPROACH because it helps families work together to make family life better.  It puts everybody on the same team, working toward the same goals.  AND it teaches kids problem-solving skills.    
The aphorism that I think best applies to this approach is:  "Are you looking for blame or are you looking for solutions?"   I like this quote so much, in fact, I think I'm going to make it bigger and fancier.

"Are you looking for blame or are you looking for solutions?"

There.  Much better.

Annoy your children with the repeating of this quote and someday, much to their own chagrin, it will become a part of them and they will catch it slipping past their own lips.

(For more information about family meetings/agendas, I really recommend reading this article.)

2) Keep track of your points!  I totally failed at this AGAIN this week, but I am truly believe it will be helpful in keeping me on track and I am ABSOLUTELY going to do it this week, come HECK or HIGH WATER.

3) Check in on Facebook!  I love to read the words that spring from your lovely fingers.

Week 2: The Respectful Behaviors Poster

After snack time one sunny afternoon, I asked Soren to bring his dirty cup to the sink.  "Please put it over on my side, where I'm washing dishes," I added.  "The dishes in the other sink are clean and waiting to be rinsed."  He picked up his cup, brought it over to the rinse sink, turned it upside-down, and held it that way while it dripped milk all over a bowl I had just washed.  I was furious.  I grabbed his arm and just about to swat him on the butt and snap at him when I remembered: choose love over fear, Rach.  So instead I took a deep breath and said, "Soren, you got milk all over that bowl.  Now you're going to have to wash the bowl again."  He whined a little but put the bowl in the sink and wiped it out.  He tried to walk away at that but  I told him he needed to put it back in the other sink.  He was being all weird and whiny about that, too, which (again) angered me.  I resisted the urge to yell, took another deep breath, and said, "Here.  I'll help you."  Then I took his hands in my hands and helped him put the bowl in the rinsing sink.  His response?  "Oh!  That's where you wanted me to put it!"  He hadn't known what I meant.  

Had I not stepped back and remembered to show love to my little guy, this situation probably would have resulted in a huge scene, because that's the way these things go with him.  There would have been a big, hairy scene where I dragged him to his bedroom and he pummeled the door angrily while howling furiously.  But because I was able to step back and choose love, I was able to teach rather than punish.  He didn't 'get away' with anything and our good relationship stayed in tact.  Win/win!    

So this week we're building on our foundation of choosing love over fear by implementing our Respectful Choices Poster.  

The Chart includes: 

1) The Rules (ours are simply:  1-Be Responsible, 2-Be Respectful, and 3-Be Obedient).

2) The Flowchart (Click on the tab above.  I'm too lazy to link right now.)  

The most important part of this is simply reviewing the chart as a family every day.  It will seem repetitious and your kids will probably be all, "Mom, seriously, I get it.  Stop."  But I find that coming back to something like this every day helps everyone re-center focus and remember what we're trying to accomplish as a family. 

In the coming weeks, we'll work on teaching some of the skills that are needed in order to be able to make respectful choices with each other-- things like disagreeing respectfully, doing things even when you don't want to, using "positive time-outs," resisting the urge to give multiple chances or to nag, and other awesomely respectful things.  We'll start really focusing on those things next week, so do what you can for now-- but don't beat yourself up if you're not doing awesomely at that stuff yet.  

So without further ado:  

This week's Awesome Parenting Plan: 

1) Have another family meeting.  Introduce the Respectful Choices chart.  Teach about your Character Quality.  Give compliments to each other.  Again, don't worry about doing skills training or an agenda yet.  

2) Review The Poster together each day.  

  

3) Keep track of your points.  I totally forgot to do that this week so don't feel bad if you didn't track yours either.  Just do it this week!  Like reviewing the Respectful Choices Chart together daily, this is a great way to refocus your efforts and remember what you're trying to do as a parent.   Again, don't stress out if you're not getting tons of points.  We're focusing on one thing at a time here.  When we start to emphasize the other things, we'll all start getting more points.    

4) Check in on Facebook!  Tell us how it's going!  Me and Pam like each other, but we won't to hear about how things are going for all of ya'll too!  I don't want any more of that cricket-chirping that's been going on out there in the Facebook-o-sphere.  

When Soren's Soul Leaves His Body

After work today, I went to pick up the boys from my parents' house.

First I greeted my kids, who were watching TV (Liam) and playing on the computer (Soren).  I knew prying them away from their screens wouldn't be pretty, so I told each of them that we would be leaving in about 15 minutes so I could make it home in time to go to Relief Society at 7.  I visited with my parents for a bit...then gave both the boys a 5 minute warning.  After 5 minutes elapsed, I told them both it was time to go.  I got Liam out to the car pretty quickly but Soren was a whole 'nother ball of wax.   He was on the computer and there was no way in the devil's own palace that he was going to get off.

I started by trying a little humor.  Soren and I  do this thing where I'm like, 'I'm going to sing until you do the thing I just asked you to do!' and he hurries and does it because he thinks my songs are annoying. I started singing-- "Ooooohhhhhh, I love to go home!  To get ready and go hooooome!" and he got off the computer-- but only to angrily try pushing me out of the room.

So then I tried to see things from his perspective.  I could relate to not wanting to stop doing something I was enjoying, so I said to him, "Soren, dude, I know you want to stay here and play on the computer.  It stinks to have to stop doing something when you're having fun.  But we need to go home."

His response?  An explosive "NO!"

I could see that he was beginning to get agitated-- and that (dear Lord) he was on the verge of doing this thing that we refer to as "Soren's soul leaving his body"-- so I tried to be as calm as I could be to counteract his agitation.  "Honey," I told him, "We need to go."  He tried to run back to the computer so I grabbed him under the armpit to guide him out.  "Shhhhh.  Let's go."  He started flailing around. "Shhhh, Soren," I said.  "Calm down.  It's okay."  I tried to pick him up to hug him but and he just thrashed around some more.  I wanted to be able to just pick him up and heft him out to the car, but 50 pounds of angry muscle and bone are super hard for me to manage for that sort of distance.  I didn't think I would make it without getting seriously injured en route.

"Honey," I finally said, "if you don't come with me right now,  I'll have to have Daddy come pick you up on his way home.  If that happens, you won't be able to play the computer at Grandma's house for a long, long time."  He hit me a couple of times, hard.  "Oops," I told him.  "That's one month without computer at Grandma's." He kicked me.  "Oops," I said.  "That's two."   He headbutted me.  "That's three months.  Do you want to make it four?"  I bundled him up in my arms so he couldn't hit, sat down with my legs over his legs so he couldn't kick, and said, "Honey, shhhh, it's okay."   But he just thrashed around and shouted, "No!  I'm not going!"  I felt powerless and frustrated.  When he gets into a state like that, it's like nothing can reach him-- thoughts of consequences, loving words, nothing.  He's essentially gone-- replaced by a wild little animal.  Add to that, I was worried about Liam, who had been waiting outside in the dark while I'd been wrestling his brother for the past five minutes.  So I finally just said, "Okay, Soren.  I have to go.  Daddy will come and get you and there will be no computer at Grandma's house for a year."  And I left.  When I was in my car, I called Abe, who was on his way home from work, and asked him to come get Soren.

I cried a little on the way home.

By the time Abe got home with Soren, I was heading out the door, but later Abe sat down with Soren and talked through the situation with him.

So my thoughts on the incident:  

-A year sounds like a ridiculous amount of time.  Do you think that's excessive?  My reasoning was that maybe his brain will be better able to handle transitions when he's older (this isn't the first time we've had an incident like this), but maybe I should cut it back to six months.  Abraham thinks I should stick with what I said originally.  Thoughts on that?

-I feel really good about how calm I was through the whole encounter.  I think that's core for Soren, so that he can focus on HIS behaviors, rather than on how mean Mommy was when she freaked out and screamed at him.

-My biggest FEAR in situations like that is that Soren is going to keep on responding to disappointment like this-- but that it will become scarier and more dangerous as he becomes bigger and stronger.

-Do ya'll have any other thoughts on how that situation could have been handled more gracefully/effectively?

(For an awesome cartoon story about another time when Soren's soul left his body, click here.)

Love and Fear in Parenting

Welcome to the very first week of our parenting challenge!

You know how I mentioned earlier that I did this mostly because I have a tendency to get distracted and wander off?  I was totally already doing that.  I made the blog, I made the charts, I made the plan...and then I was all, "Too hard."  So I'm really glad that we've set this up so that I kind of have to do it.  It really is going to be awesome.

So I just finished reading a book about parenting kids with attachment disorders.  Not that I have a kid with an attachment disorder.  It's just a subject that has intrigued me since I first learned about RAD-- how do you raise a child whose mental and emotional development has been severely disrupted by abuse and/or neglect?  How do you heal wounds that cut so deeply into a child's core identity and ability to connect with others?   Parenting a kid with an attachment disorder-- that's hard core stuff.  It's like Extreme Parenting.  I think regular parenting is tough, so Extreme Parenting-- it's fascinating to me.

But I digress.

The book had a lot of good stuff in it for those of us with non-attachment-challenged children.  Beyond Logic, Consequences, and Control is written by two clinical social workers who suggest that there are only two primary emotions:  love and fear.  Every other emotion we experience-- anger, joy, frustration, exhilaration, depression, contentment, anxiety, courage-- is an offshoot of one of those two emotions.

They suggest that to be a successful parent the two most important things you can do are:

First, identify fear as the motivator in your child's problematic behaviors and help them replace it with love.

In our family, the big behavior problems we have right now are whining/badgering, disobedience, and inter-sibling violence.  Whining, badgering, and disobedience I can see as potentially being rooted in a fear of not having enough or in missing out on something.  When Soren says, "I'm not going to clean my room!" it could be because he's overwhelmed by the task and/or he's worried that all the time he spends cleaning his room could have been spent doing something fun and exciting.  When Liam says, "I want gummy bears...I want gummy bears...I want gummy bears...I want gummy bears," it could be because he has this childish sense that gummy bears are essential to his happiness and that if he doesn't get them, he won't be able to be happy. And with violence-- well, now that I think about it, Soren usually physically attacks Liam when he feels threatened by him-- Liam's touching his stuff or teasing him or getting into his space.

So as a parent, say the authors, it's important to respond to the child's fear, rather than the child's behaviors-- and then later, when the child is calm and regulated, you can coach them on making better choices.

Jane Nelson, author of Positive Discipline, always says that children do better when they feel better.  It's true.  When you feel loved, loving, and happy, are your behaviors more likely to be positive and productive or negative and destructive?  How about when you feel anxious, unhappy, unloved, and unworthy of love?

We want to motivate our kids with love, not fear. This brings to mind the scripture:

"There is no fear where love exists.  Rather, perfect love banishes fear, for fear involves punishment, and the person who lives in fear has not been perfected in love."   

1 John 4:18

Second, identify fear in your reactions to your child's problematic behaviors and work to replace it with love.

I didn't realize until I read this book how fear-based my parenting can be sometimes.  My kids' naughty behaviors trigger a lot of fears in me-- particularly the fear that I'm inadequate for the task of mothering and the accompanying fear that my beautiful, precious children will grow up to be bad people-- and it will be all. my. fault.  That's a pretty weighty load of fear to be hefting around.  Especially considering that one person's fear feeds another person's fear in interpersonal interactions.

The authors of the book emphasize that a child having a fearful reaction (say, throwing a tantrum) triggers a fearful reaction in a parent (who then precedes to get frustrated, yell, and punish).  And of course the prospect of punishment from a parent increases a child's fear, which increases their fear response, which accelerates their bad behaviors, which increases the parent's anger.  But if a child has a fear reaction and a parent responds with love, the loving response can help calm the child, and the situation will de-escalate.

So again, it's important to address the child's fear first-- and then later, when they're calm, teach them the skills and behaviors they need to use in the future.

So this week in the 12 Week Parenting Challenge, the big Parenting Emphasis will to simply watch for fear in your interactions with your kids and work to replace it with love.

This week's Awesome Parenting Plan:

I don't want this to be overwhelming to you AT ALL, so we're just doing a little at a time each week.  Today you're going to look at the parenting tracking chart and think you can't do it all.  That's because you can't. (If you can, don't tell me about it, because I want to continue liking you.)  For this week, don't worry about The Respectful Behaviors Chart or Kindness Elves or Nipping Behaviors in the Bud or Eating Dinner Together or Doing a Daily Celebration or anything else besides the things listed below.  If you're doing the other things already, that's awesome.  Give yourself those points.  If you see something simple you can add in without stressing yourself out, do it.  But otherwise, take a deep breath and just do the following:

1) Hold a Family Meeting.  Introduce the concept.  Give compliments, talk about your plans for the week, and teach about your Character Quality for the week.  Don't worry about doing skills training yet.  Don't worry about doing an agenda yet.  Just do the meeting

2)  Look for fear/love in your interactions with your kids.  When your children are whining, take a second to think about how the world might seem from their perspective.  Cultivate a little empathy and compassion for them.  Then get down on their level and say, "I know you think that not going to McDonald's today will take away all of your happiness forever.  But I promise it won't.  I love you and want you to be happy and would never do anything that would keep you from being happy forever."  And see what happens.  My guess is that your kids (if they're at all like my kids) will keep whining.  That's okay.  Just keep doing whatever you've been doing in response to whining.  We'll get to that later.  For now, let's just focus on identifying fear-- your child's and your own--and working to replace it with love.

3) Keep track of your points-- but don't be discouraged if you don't get many!  I'm sure not going to.   Plan on giving yourself ZERO points for a lot of the things on the chart this week.  That's okay.  We're not there yet. We're just tackling one thing at a time here, ya'll, and I think that doing a meeting and reinforcing a character quality during the week is going to be plenty.  Don't worry about going over the poster or doing magical goodness fairies or eating dinner together.  Plus, the lower your points are in the beginning, the more impressed you'll be by your progress later on.

4) Check in on Facebook!  Tell us how it's going!  Tell us how your Family Meeting went!  Tell us about which character quality you're working on!  Tell us about fear and love in your interactions with your kids!

And remember this quote from Beyond Logic, Consequences, and Control: 

"Fear sees problems.  Love sees solutions."