Kids, Parents, and Power Struggles

by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka

  Building a healthy relationship with your child begins with the choices you make each day.

  When you take the time to listen to your child, instead of brushing her off, you are building connections.

  When you respond in a manner that validates her feelings instead of invalidating them, you are teaching her to be caring.

  When you help her to choose appropriate actions, you are helping her to be more competent.

  If you find you can be that emotion coach for about five minutes, and then start slipping into the role of the intimidator, don’t give up! Read on, and I’ll show you how to increase the odds of keeping your cool, even when the kids are losing theirs.

  * * *

  Coaching Tips

  Connect instead of disconnect.

  Assist instead of taking over.

  Listen rather than lecture.

  Stop firmly rather than grabbing or jerking.

  Help instead of abandon.

  Explain instead of force.

  State rather than shriek.

  Smile more, frown less.

  Think about your relationship in the long run.

  Start with a single step.

  THREE

  Bringing Down the Intensity

  you’re the Role Model

  “Never let Mommy brush your hair when she’s mad at Daddy.”

  —Family Circle

  At Putnam Elementary in Minneapolis, the staff were concerned about the number of suspensions for defiant behavior and decided to take action. They were not going to tolerate more disruption but instead wanted to train the students and themselves to handle confrontations more effectively. They realized they had to begin with themselves.

  One teacher pledged to control her voice when she got angry. Another vowed to listen carefully to every child who came up to her in the morning. A clerk decided to try to change physical posturing that could be intimidating to the children. A third-grade teacher promised to try to keep her voice low and calm when she was challenged by a child. These simple goals, along with a lot of hard work, cut the number of suspensions from three hundred two years previously to seventy-two!

  Learning to express strong emotions, like anger and frustration, respectfully and selectively is learned behavior. You don’t have to be a victim of your emotions. You can choose your response. You don’t have to react. And as you make those choices, your children are watching and listening. You are their role model, teaching them with your words and actions what adults do when faced with a rush of powerful emotions.

  Understanding the Physiology of Anger

  Wrestling with our own anger means taking on Mother Nature. Anger isn’t just about free-floating emotions. It’s physiological. Our bodies are actually finely tuned “reaction machines.” When confronted with threatening or frustrating situations, stress hormones surge through our body, triggering the brain to be ready for “fight or flight.”

  If you pay close attention, you can actually feel the stress hormones collecting in your body. The reaction is cumulative. Wake up in the morning thinking about all the things you have to do, and the stress hormones start to flow. Your teeth and hands clench. Neck muscles squeeze your spine. Shoulders tighten. Arms ache. Your body is on alert. The gates are open. When your child refuses to get out of bed, more stress hormones march into your bloodstream. You can feel the tension rising, and you urge her to hurry. It’s when she asks you to help her find her notebook that you lose it. Suddenly, seemingly without warning, her simple request turns you into a shrieking shrew. The stress hormones have built to volcanic proportions. You blow.

  Sometimes it doesn’t take three or four cumulative events to transform you into a human volcano. If you’re surprised or threatened, a rush of stress hormones can send you over the top with one swoosh! Caught off-guard, you can easily find your response on autopilot. You stop thinking and just act. Afterward you feel repentant. You know that on any other day her request wouldn’t have fazed you. You’re not even sure what happened or how.

  You’ve been emotionally hijacked. Your stress hormones have created what’s called “neural static.” You can’t think straight, much less see this situation as an opportunity to connect with your child and teach her how to work with you. Instead you react instinctively and reflexively. The intimidator takes over.

  Recognizing the Instinctual Responses

  Learning to recognize when you’re “reacting” rather than thinking is the first step toward choosing a different response. There are four common instinctual reactions. Think about which ones are most typical for you and your child. What do you do when you get upset and you’re not thinking?

  Striking Back

  When you feel threatened, you might find yourself attacking right back. You want to smack someone or something! Even when you’re able to quell the urge to physically strike out, you may let loose with words that escalate into full-fledged name calling or a shouting match.

  Giving In

  The opposite of striking back is giving in. Exhaustion drives you. You cannot bear to deal with another angry outburst, so you give in or let your child off the hook. The trouble with giving in is that later you feel as if you’ve been had. Your child just keeps pushing, asking for more as he tries to find out where the limit is. Resentment grows until ultimately you have taken more than you can bear. That’s when you find yourself moving from giving in to striking back.

  Shutting Down

  Sometimes when that rush of adrenaline hits, you literally shutdown. Flooded with emotion, it’s as though you were a deer caught in the glare of headlights, unable to respond or perform. You can’t think. You feel helpless. Your greatest fear is that there is nothing you can do to make things better.

  Breaking Off

  The fourth instinctual reaction is to throw up your hands and emotionally break off your relationship with your child. You might say, “I just can’t deal with you!” “I don’t want to be with you!” or “Maybe you should find a different parent or family!” It could be hours or days of silence. No matter whether the breakoff is verbal or silent, to your child the message is clear: I don’t like you. I don’t want anything to do with you. I can’t think of anything about you I ever liked. I wish to sever this relationship.

  These instinctual reactions tear apart relationships. They bring up a host of hurt feelings, leaving you feeling lousy and your child feeling angry and resentful. The emotional costs are great. Rather than finding a way to work together, you’re pushed apart. Fortunately you can learn to stop reacting and instead to respond deliberately, with careful and full consideration of the situation.

  We can decide even in those difficult moments to choose responses that connect us with our kids instead of disconnect us. These responses allow us to step back, collect our wits, and see the situation more objectively and sensitively. Our goal isn’t to suppress, muffle, stuff, deny, or bury our feelings, but to express them more selectively. As we do it we are teaching our kids how to express their strong emotions respectfully and how to manage their intensity.

  There are four basic ingredients to managing those strong feelings:

  Changing the frame

  Setting standards

  Monitoring your feelings

  Learning effective strategies

  1. Changing the Frame

  When my son was thirteen, he got a new mountain bike with a black racing helmet and gloves. It was the most magnificent bike I had ever ridden: The gears flipped with a quick twist of the thumb, precisely snapping into place; the suspension system smoothed the “bumps” out of the ride. One night, my daughter had a soccer game at the high school. I told my husband I wanted to ride the bike over to the game and that I’d meet him there. I didn’t notice that my son dashed out the front door before I’d even finished my sentence. When I got into the garage, he had the bike in hand and refused to give it to me. I admit I tried to grab it from his grasp. It didn’t work. By then he had a good thirty pounds and three inches on me. Fluste
red, I declared, “Joshua, in our family we share.” He didn’t budge. Nasty thoughts flashed through my mind. I’d raised a selfish kid! He was spoiled and self-centered. Then guilt struck with thoughts like, I’m a lousy mother—a failure. I stomped back toward the house. “Are you going to get Dad?” Joshua asked. I didn’t want to admit it, but I was!

  My husband had heard the entire exchange. “Don’t look at me,” he said. “I’m not getting involved.” I huffed.

  “What would you tell a parent in the same situation?” my husband asked. I paused long enough to grumble, “That there’s a reason, go and find out what it is.” I marched back out to the garage. “Joshua,” I demanded. “Why won’t you let me ride your bike?”

  “Because, Mom,” he answered. “What thirteen-year-old guy wants his mother riding over to school on his bike, with his helmet and gloves? It would be so embarrassing.”

  A bubble of awareness trickled to the surface of my brain. I hadn’t thought of that! A sigh escaped from me. I wasn’t raising a selfish kid. I wasn’t dealing with a major character flaw. He did have a reason. One I could actually empathize with. This awareness changed everything, including the tone of my voice and the posture of my body. I stepped back and simply asked, “How could we make this work?” We came up with a solution. I did ride the bike. I just used my own helmet and gloves and promised not to lay the bike down on its derailleur. Reframing the situation diffused my anger. It allowed me to reconnect with my son, end a power struggle, and begin problem solving.

  Changing the frame works because every message or behavior is subject to our interpretation of it. If we assume our child is out to get us, or is a bad kid with severe character flaws, our intensity spirals. We can’t think clearly. We stop listening and lose the opportunity to understand his point of view. If, instead, we change the frame and see that his behavior is an attempt to do the right thing (but he doesn’t know how), or that he has a reason for his actions (he isn’t just trying to irritate us), then our intensity will diminish. We’re willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and try to resolve the conflict. We become partners rather than adversaries.

  In class when I told this story, Jeff shook his head and started chuckling. “You should have been with us last Saturday night,” he said. “We went to a party at a friend’s home. About eight o’clock it was discovered that a four-year-old had gotten locked in the bathroom. The child’s mom and dad ended up in a big fight. The mom was furious that the dad let the kid go to the bathroom by himself. My five-year-old son listened and watched the entire encounter. Finally, he whispered to my wife, ‘I locked the door.’

  “My wife was horrified. ‘That’s the meanest thing I’ve ever heard,’ she shouted at him. ‘We’re leaving!’ With that she grabbed him and our coats and demanded that we go. As we got into the car, I said to him, ‘Mark, why did you lock the door?’ Tears trickled down his cheeks. ‘I thought I was helping him, Dad. I didn’t know he couldn’t unlock the door.’

  “My wife groaned as her face flushed red. She’d assumed he’d done it maliciously, but instead he was trying to give the kid a little privacy!”

  So the next time your child acts up or refuses to cooperate, tell yourself that there’s a reason. Your child isn’t intentionally out to drive you wild, be bad, or act lazy. There’s a feeling or need that’s fueling this behavior that he doesn’t know how to express more appropriately. Changing the frame will make it much easier to keep your cool.

  2. Setting Standards

  If you’re going to choose another response, you have to know your target. Like a thermostat set at seventy-eight degrees, you have to know what you’re shooting for, what your goal is. What words and actions are you going to stop yourself from saying or doing even when the stress hormones are pounding through your head? Clarifying your standards is the key to managing strong emotions. If you don’t have standards, or are confused about them, you can’t choose a different response, anything goes.

  My standards may be very different from yours, but that doesn’t matter. What is important is that you examine your standards, clarify them, and make sure they’re standards you want to be true for both you and your child today and forever.

  In class I pass out index cards to record our answers to the following questions:

  In what ways did the adults in your life express anger that you would like to avoid?

  In what ways have you seen other people express anger that you would like to avoid?

  We then toss the completed cards in the middle of the table for anonymity.

  Clarifying Standards Helps You Keep Your Cool

  It’s David, energetic and vocal, who begins reading the index cards. “Shut up or I’ll give you something to cry about.” Others groan. “That was a favorite of my dad’s,” he adds. “My ex-husband, too,” Nancy comments before she flips over the card she’s pulled. “Threats,” she reads. “Whenever I hear myself start to threaten my kids, I hear the exact words and tone my mother used. It isn’t something I want to repeat.” “Shaming,” Pat offered. “Our family’s been big on shaming. “I’ve got that one, too,” Lisa acknowledged, “along with badgering.”

  “Let’s talk about hitting and spanking,” I said. “Do you want your child to hit you when she’s angry?” I asked.

  “Of course not,” they all said.

  “Are you willing to set no hitting as a standard for yourself?” Bodies shifted in chairs. I didn’t wait for an answer. “What about swearing? Do you want your fourteen-year-old to call you a vulgar name?” I asked. Heads shook vehemently. “Are you willing to stop swearing when you’re angry?” I continued.

  It was Helen, a tiny, petite woman, who squirmed in her chair and remarked, “This is getting really tough.” “Yeah,” Joel agreed. “I mean, of course I’ve got standards for my kids’ behavior, but I never thought about standards for myself.”

  The reality is, kids don’t just learn from what we say or tell them to do. Our example is much more powerful. You can’t get a five-year-old to stop swearing if that’s what the adults around him are doing. You set the standards with your behavior. So if you swear or hit when you’re angry, kids learn that’s what adults do when they’re upset. As they grow they’ll test out those behaviors to demonstrate how grown up they are.

  In class we often get into heated discussions about swearing. Many parents admit they swear when they’re angry. They don’t care if their kids do, too. Initially I was hesitant to say that I didn’t think it was a good idea. I thought I might be placing my values on others. But then I discovered the research that found swearing easily escalates into emotional and physical abuse. Swearing also masks feelings and prevents us from developing the vocabulary to communicate emotions clearly. The opportunity to connect and communicate on a deep, personal level is lost in a barrage of vulgar language. So if swearing is a common practice in your family, take a look at it. Do you and your children recognize the emotions you’re experiencing? Are you able to name them, or are swear words used to mask them? Does swearing escalate to more violence in your home? When you speak respectfully to your children—even when you’re angry—they learn you can be angry and still think about the words you are choosing to use.

  Reaching to draw a card, Barb, an energetic and vocal member of the group, suddenly paused and asked, “Is it ever okay to yell? In my family if you tell us not to yell, we’ll have nothing to say.”

  Barb’s question was a very good one. “It isn’t as though you’ll never yell,” I explained. “In fact, you’ll want to be passionate about your standards. This is where you hold the line. But you’ll want to save the screams for the really important things so your kids will listen. If you’re yelling all of the time, your kids become parent-deaf. You want your shout to mean something to them. If it’s saved for the big things, they’ll know you are very serious.”

  There’s also a big difference between a loud, wordless humph of frustration or a single statement like “Cut it out,” and a harsh na
me-calling, shaming, “‘you-stupid-little-jerk” shriek. That’s the kind of screaming that disconnects us from our kids.

  Examining our standards does not mean establishing sainthood. We’re not expecting that we’ll never yell or threaten our kids again, but it means we’ll try harder to stop the responses that tear apart our relationship.

  Sorting out the Mixed Messages

  Clarifying and feeling confident about your standards can be challenging, because we sometimes get mixed messages about what our standards should be. “What are those conflicting messages you get?” I asked my group one day.

  Kathy interjected, “My mother-in-law says if I’d just give him a good swat, he’d behave. Sometimes I can’t help wondering if she’s right. I was spanked, and for me it’s a real natural response. It’s awfully hard to try and change.”

  Nancy frowned as she listened. “I don’t want to threaten and hit, but how do I justify it when last week I heard my ex-husband say to my son, ‘Shut up or I’ll give you something to cry about’ and it worked!”

  It’s true that fear and intimidation will temporarily stop behaviors. But the question always becomes, At what cost? Do these strategies lead to a healthy relationship with your child? Do they enhance your child’s emotional intelligence, or do they damage the relationship, limit your child’s development, hurt self-esteem, and ultimately lead to anger and hostility?

  The conflicting messages from others can be very powerful, making you feel uncertain about your responses and unable to make decisions. That’s why you have to look at the standards and clearly decide what behaviors you want to stop.

  Make a promise to yourself. Even better, write this down and post it on your refrigerator: “Next time I’m angry, I promise myself that I will not…” You fill in the blank. If you’ve decided you won’t strike your child, call her names, or threaten to leave her no matter how angry you are, your decision will help you to stop yourself even in the worst moments. You’ll no longer be that coconspirator in a tantrum. You’ll be the adult choosing a more deliberate response and modeling for your child how to keep your cool.