Homework can bring us to our knees — “Just, will you JUST, finish it ALREADY!?” It’s hard to like ourselves as we scream, judge, blame and compare when we’ve flipped our lid. And, once we’re calm, it’s difficult to let go of the guilt. It’s crazy making stuff that we want to be SO DONE with.
Over the years, a number of parents have been concerned about their child’s hesitance to assert themselves. I wrote the tale below in 2014 with that (and a very special girl) in mind. I like to imagine living in a kingdom where our leader models assertive Confrontive I-Messages! Here’s how one such person came to be so wise.
Without a secure bond with a trusted, stable adult, kids are more prone to social media addiction. The nature of Internet communication leads to a digital intimacy that falls short of authentic, vulnerable relationships so they keep grasping for more approval and acceptance.
It's so easy to feel aggressive when we impute bad intentions to our kids -- e.g. He's deliberately NOT writing the invites to get a rise out of me. If we pause to contemplate the spins we put on kids' behaviors, we just might choose not to believe them.
He grinned down. I grinned up. Then, shaking my head in wonder, I went to my journal to record this remarkable conversation.
"Remarkable" because the old Catherine would not have known what to do. I probably would have peppered him with questions, "What's wrong? Well, have you tried approaching him again? Did you ask him why you you got that score? Have you gone over the rubric - maybe you missed something?"
While my ire was directed at Trump (and, momentarily, his wife), I drew a line at my fellow Americans. I couldn’t in good conscience put down or label almost half of my country, or presume to know what was going on in their minds and hearts.
I still believed Thomas Gordon's assertion that all behavior seeks to meet needs. Their vote was doing something FOR themselves, and not TO me, and I wanted to understand what that something was.
Starting to forgive ourselves is courageous and arduous work, and utterly necessary. We do whatever it takes to come to a place where we can accept that our child is very much hurting; then we can become a helper and try to turn things around.
There's no doubt that my children are watching.
They have tried some of my strategies -- Jake, who's 15, likes the Headspace app on my phone -- but, more importantly, they see me vulnerable and open. I don't share too much of my childhood, just what I think is appropriate for them to know. But they appreciate my admission that when I fly off the handle or fall into a defensive, mistrustful stance that my behavior has nothing to do with their inherent goodness and everything to do with my own journey of healing.
And that kind of thing happens less and less. Oh, thank goodness! Working on communication skills, tending to my inner child and increasing my mindfulness helps me to choose actions and words that fit the situation and child in front of me now, today, in the present moment.
I went back in time recently to relive parenting a toddler. While my brother and sis-in-law were in Japan, I got to take care of my niece Emma.
Since Emma lives in the US, I see her only once a year. This was her first visit to my home in Hong Kong. The P.E.T. skills helped me to establish trust and mutuality and deal with those big toddler emotions.
Last year, a friend described senior year (Year 13 in HK) as "excruciating," joking that she'd be relieved when her son, after dragging his feet for months on his college applications, finally took off. I just nodded nervously: would that be me?
Not so! I am deeply grateful I am enjoying Harrison's last year.
And then there's the Q & A session Jake held recently for my class participants . . .
I wish someone had sat my butt down and made me read Lawrence Cohen's Playful Parenting. His approach jibes well with the philosophy of P.E.T. and I've been recommending it left and right!
So where might play fit in the Behavior Window? Turns out -- all over the place.
How messy does a child's room have to be before we feel steam coming out of our ears?
That is such a personal thing.
Thank you, dear reader, for requesting a post on this very common issue. Let's start where we always do in P.E.T. with our go-to question: Who Owns the Problem?
It's imbalance of another type -- emotional and relational -- that I have always found harder to endure. An argument with a friend or a touchy issue with my child would demand a hefty portion of my attention.
I just thought maybe it’s high time I put all the Behavior Window terms in one post, with some illustrations from our family’s recent past.
Here they are from the top down -- forget about alphabetical order, we are trying to imprint this precious roadmap onto our brains!!
As parents, it may be hard to shift to this place where we give it our best shot and then it's out of our hands. We feel locked in battle and "losing" is hard to swallow.
But let's zoom out and focus on this comforting fact: by refusing to use power, we are winning a truly important war, a war for a lasting positive relationship with our children.
Even if we get the change we want, we have sent messages about our child and the relationship:
You won't do the right thing unless I threaten you.
I gave you an inch and, like always, you took a mile.
You don't respect me.
We can do confrontation better, says Dr. Gordon.
"Claudia, come here! Stand right here! You need to go up the trunk first all the way up to the top!" I couldn't keep myself from whining.
"Ok." She slid over and did as told. When she hit resistance on the first bough, though, she gave up,"I don't want to do it anymore. You do it."
And she walked away.
A while back, I got tagged on a Facebook parents forum when a friend asked what I thought of this short little video. With a young daughter herself who was already experiencing unfriending -- "You're not my friend!" "I don't like you. Go away!" -- she wondered whether her little one should practice the following handy retort.
I let them leave it at that so I could focus on the line of traffic in front of me. Inside I was swelling with pride. This is stuff I just recently learned how to do myself. How awesome is this kid's life going to be?
P.E.T. is the reason I now relish these precious 104 days of the year. Knowing what to do and how to do it has given me back a huge chunk of my life.
I thought about this fact last weekend when, in less than 24 hours, I went on quite a roll and executed a whole bunch of P.E.T. skills!
