Beware of angels
In almost every family, there is the ‘good’ child. The angel child who, especially compared to other family members, requires the least attention, boundaries and direction, who is caring about others, who helps, who does well at school, who is sensitive and follows rules. The ‘easy’ one.
Be aware of this child. Sometimes they are the most vulnerable, in that they can pay the emotional price of being the ‘invisible’ child, the one with no expressed needs. See angels for who they are. Consider whether they are paying any price in the family and do something about it. See their core needs, give them your time and attention, and let them break the rules from time to time so that they can explore their identity and grow.
Mind the gap
Some children bring out the best in their parents and some press all their buttons. If you feel that your personality clashes with your child’s, the key is not to let them interpret this as being a less-favoured child.
Once you acknowledge you have some personality issues with a child, make enough time to bond by being alone with him or her. Find the bridges between the two of you. What do both of you like doing? Which hobbies do you share? What does this child like doing that you admire or appreciate?
Do it together! It might be a cookery class, a photography course, some sporting activity, or learning a new musical instrument. Build new opportunities for communication. Give them the chance to impress you, to be acknowledged and, mainly, to feel connected.
Older angst
Two tips, seemingly in contrast to each other, are for older children in a family.
Talk with your older child about the meaning of being the older sibling. Being the older one may mean more responsibilities and privileges. Also, because he is big, his little sister looks at him as a very important person in the family.
Let your older child be a child, not an adult. Saying ‘You should know better!’ or ‘You need to show an example!’ only builds resentment.
I remind parents that when their first one was four years old he seemed so big, but when the third one reached four, he is still the baby! It’s our perception of the age, not the age itself, that we react to.
CHAPTER 16:
PARENTAL AUTHORITY
There are no facts, only interpretations.
- Friedrich Nietzsche
What is your parenting style? Are you too strict? Too soft? Do you feel you have authority? Or do you feel your children are holding the family’s steering wheel? In this chapter you will find some ideas about constructive authority and how to achieve that.
Safe means sound
Your task is to become a confident and safe parent so your children’s confidence and self regulation can flourish. By being confident and safe – that is assertive without negativity (blaming, shaming, judgement) – then your child’s big emotions can be contained and modified.
This is especially so when they challenge you and you are at risk of being over-emotional and reactive. You have a bigger goal. You’re going to use it as an opportunity to share your core values. I will share with you one example.
One afternoon, arriving home after school pick-up after shopping in the local small supermarket, my daughter (then aged five) said she was going to be busy in her room. I was pleased to have several minutes alone to organise things around the house before discovering that there was a reason for her request for privacy. Apparently, she had taken a small package of sweets from the shop and put them in her pocket.
As you can imagine, I was very surprised and embarrassed. I took two deep breaths and said quietly, ‘We don’t take things from a shop without paying for them. It’s called stealing. Now we need to do something kind for the shop-keeper to say sorry and we will give back the sweets and pay for them.’
With no argument, she said, ‘I’ll make him a card, but I don’t want to go and give it to him.’ To which I replied:
‘I’m not happy about that. But I agree to take the card for you this time. If it happens again, you will need to do it.’
She made a lovely card with a drawing and the word ‘Sorry’. I went to the shop (hoping not to be seen by anyone I knew), apologised and paid. The man was so touched that since then he has welcomed my daughter with pleasure.
Trust yourself
Our parents made mistakes – but they did it with confidence! In the past, when the children were not the ‘focus’ of the family, parents often acted without knowing, but with authority. Today, I hear parents act in a way that they know is productive, but with hesitation and doubt. There are far too many advisors around for parents now – TV and radio shows, newspapers, books, family members and therapists. All this advice can be overwhelming, and can take over their intuition and undermine their confidence. ‘Experts’ frighten parents with the prospect of causing unhappy childhoods, and we are concerned about what they say, yet at the same time we look to them for the answers, as people who ‘should know best’.
In the past, if children were fed and dressed, that meant their parents were good enough. Today, the standard of ‘good parenting’ is very high. The attempt to be better parents often results in the lack of boundaries. When you hesitate and are in doubt, you create anxiety in your children. In their experience, if you, the adults, don’t know what to do, then who does? When children are in charge, it feels overwhelming, and ends in anarchy; a child who feels ‘in charge’ of a parent is more likely to experience high levels of anxiety and aggression. This, in turn, fulfils your unconscious fears.
Read, listen to advice, explore options, but then let your intuition guide you. Whatever makes sense to you, and you decide to do, do it with confidence.
Make a mantra
Positive thinking in challenging times might mean changing your view or fantasy about what it means to be a ‘good parent’. Take the time to create a mantra for yourself, then write it down in several places and read it aloud to yourself whenever you need to. Examples of mantras I have heard over the years include:
A good parent is not a parent who does for their children, but a parent who enables their children to do for themselves.
A good parent is a not a parent who is never angry, but a parent who expresses anger without hurting their child’s soul and mind.
As a parent I’m aware of my feelings and take the time to think how to react.
It’s a stressful time. It will pass and all will be okay. See the opportunity and try to relax and let go.
I’m a ‘good enough’ parent! Breathe! What would an ideal parent do now?What’s your mantra?
With the baby we gave birth to guilt
‘We can’t do that!’ said the parents in front of me when I suggested they reduce some of their children’s time on computers. ‘We come back from work late, everyone needs to chill out and we don’t want to start a “war”. They don’t see us enough anyway.’ Welcome to guilt!
Many parents who come to me don’t realise that what’s behind most of their actions are their feelings of guilt! They think they were not present enough when their children were babies; they didn’t hold them enough; they weren’t good at placing boundaries or splitting their time between their children; they didn’t like their personality; they missed a school play; they were late collecting them from school; and so on.
And what happens then? Usually, the parents want to compensate in some way. How? By giving over their abilities emotionally, physically or financially (e.g. gifts and afterschool clubs). And when parents give above and beyond their abilities they are likely to explode!
And what happens then?
Yes, you’re right! They feel more guilt! They feel disappointed in their children and themselves, and the cycle starts again.
If you need to change something in your lifestyle to bring more balance, do that. We all need to create a new image for ourselves as a ‘good enough’ parent (phrased by Winnicott), which helps bring abou
t balance between our needs, our children’s needs, and our relationship’s needs. But when you come home, leave guilt at the door.
Method to the madness
From early on, children know what they need to do. They are designed to develop. Let’s think about babies of six or seven months old. They can’t use their hands and fingers to explore objects; they can only hold them, not stroke, push, pull, or explore. However, they can control their mouths, tongues and lips – at that age their mouth area has more nerves per square millimetre than in any other part in their body. So if they want to know about an object (is it soft, solid, noisy, tasty, wet, round or square) they will put it in their mouth.
When parents complain that their baby puts everything in their mouths, I tell them that it is not only a natural exploration, it also shows development and growth and an interest in the world around them. The more they experience with their senses, the more they learn. Instead of being worried, the parents then understand that the baby is in the process of learning. So don’t disturb them!
Knowing when to relax boundaries
Providing boundaries for children is an act of love. Boundaries are the way to transform your values into day-to-day life. You do need to choose your priorities, however. We can’t expect to impose too many rules and limits and expect a relaxed and happy family life. You and your partner need to choose what is most important for you. Ask yourself why the measure you are thinking of is important, and concentrate on that. We can’t fight with our children all day long about every aspect of life – hygiene, education, persistence at sticking with afterschool clubs, respecting others, hairstyles, clothing and tidying up.
An essential and perfectly ordinary part of growing is about exploring the boundaries. For example, one of my children is ‘the good girl’, and she has a strong sense of fairness. She is so ethical and ‘by the book’ that she sometimes puts her needs last. I remember the first time her teacher asked to talk with me. She said my daughter did something ‘naughty’ (I hate this word but I bring that up in a different tip). The teacher saw the big smile on my face! If she only knew how hard I’d worked for my daughter to do something ‘outside the rules’ she would understand why I saw this as progress. You know your child. You know whether you need to relax or to strengthen your boundaries.
Let the challenge be your lesson
When a client says to me ‘I have a problem with my child’ I gently rephrase it to ‘You have a challenge with … and this challenge also invites opportunity. What is the opportunity?’ Can you see the difference in viewing the situation this way? Turning a ‘problem’ into a ‘challenge and opportunity’? The first invites stuckness, the latter invites growth. When you experience tension in your family, the universe sends you a message: something in the challenge is here to tell you something about your child, or you or your relationship.
The reality is challenging, so you will stretch outside your comfort zone. The difficult situation is not necessarily a bad thing. If you’re not frightened by it, and you are prepared to invest effort and faith, you are investing for the long term in yourself and your relationship. When we’re able to contain our challenges and strong feelings and see things with clarity, we can understand the patterns that created the challenging situation. Then it will be clearer to see where and how we want to progress and grow. How do we get there?
You can start by writing down all the things you know about the challenge. Add your feelings around about it as well. Ask yourself ‘Is there more to it?’ and keep writing. Explore your main motive and thinking. When did you develop this way of thinking? Thinking about this challenge, what is your opportunity for growth? Reflect and let yourself wonder. It will become clearer.
Raise your words not your voice
Raise your words, not your voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder
—Rumi
When listening to a speech by the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, I noticed that throughout he spoke in a very soft voice, almost whispering. There is something healing and calming about people who speak in low tones. I brought this idea back to my parenting course and challenged the parents to lower their voices with their children, especially when they want to be heard but don’t feel their children are listening. Something very interesting happened. They reported back that the lower their voices, the more their children listened to them. Whenever they raised their voices, the children talked over them, or continued with their own activities or reacted uncooperatively. If you ask your child to clear the table, and it looks like you are being ignored, you may in the past have asked three times then shouted your request again or become angry. Now you have another option, to whisper several words: ‘The table please’. Whispering doesn’t mean giving in – I can whisper with an assertive attitude and confidence. When you whisper that way, children will, in most cases, automatically give you their attention.
What I love about this idea is that when I lost my voice after a cold, my children not only whispered back, but they became quiet ‘within’ so they were able to hear and cooperate.
What do they want to tell us?
I hear it all the time: ‘My child wants sweets all day … My children want gifts from their dad when he is away … My daughter wants me to buy her more and more clothes … My son wants me to play with him all the time … My boy wants a TV in his room’.
It reminds me what Haim Ginott, a clinical psychologist and author, used to say: ‘Is it what he needs or what he wants? A child has many real needs which can and should be satisfied. His wants are a bottomless pit’.
It’s impossible to expect parents to think about the need behind every child’s request. Yet it may be beneficial for them to do so, especially if there are repetitive complaints from a child, and it can help you understand your child. The child who wants a TV in his room may need more privacy, or a sense of control or independence. All of this be fulfilled without a TV in the room, through open discussion, acknowledgment, validation and space to explore other options.
A child who wants sweets all day might need a moment of devoted attention, or may need boundaries, or help with self-regulation. So the next time you hear ‘I want ...’ try to identify the hidden need, and react to that.
The sign for restart
If you are like many parents who attend my workshops, you notice the lack of boundaries or authority when you’re in the middle of a power struggle.
You ask your child to do something, and they refuse, or do the opposite. You try to say it again with more certainty, but it makes no difference. You might give up and move on, or keep asking or demanding that they obey. You might raise your voice, your intensity, or change your body language – your child does the same.
In such situations, to keep demanding doesn’t add to your sense of authority.
Knowing that some things that you say and do add more flame to the fire, while others help to change the energy, is one piece of the solution.
Another part is to understand that your actions don’t necessarily need to be at that same moment.
Saying something like:
‘I’m not happy about what’s going on here (or name the specific behaviour without talking about the child in order to create distance to think about the issue). I need to think about it and we will talk later on/tomorrow’.
And leave the space.
It’s like giving yourself the opportunity to pause and restart. In this way, you don’t get stuck in a specific reaction within the power struggle. You give yourself time and space to think when and how best to react in a conscious way. Then you are not only modelling self-regulation, but also re-building your authority.
Remember this is not a one-solution-fits-all situation. It’s an ongoing experience of learning about you, your children and your relationship.
CHAPTER 17:
PARENTS AS A TEAM
“The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother, and the most important thing a mother can
do for her children is to love their father.”
- Unknown source
Having parents that work collaboratively in their parenting is vital for raising healthy, confident and happy children. What follows below are a few tips and suggestions to empower you as a team, whether you are married, in partnership or divorced.
Together as one
Is this scenario familiar to you: Your partner says something to your child that you disagree with and you hold back your reaction. But then your upset child comes to you complaining or blaming your partner for the injustice that happened, and you lose it and tell your partner off in front them?
I know parents who do this all the time. They mistakenly believe this is for their children’s benefit – that they are protecting them. What they don’t know is that:
Many children know exactly how to manipulate the situation to get what they want.
Even when that’s not the case, challenging your partner’s word or decision in front of the children not only weakens their authority in the family, but it actually weakens yours as well.
Most of the time, holding your reaction and supporting your partner in front your children will give two important messages:
The first message is for your children – that you and your partner are one. This makes you, as parents, stronger. It also helps your children in the long term, as they will be less anxious or stressed to be the cause of any conflict.
The second message is for your partners – that you trust their judgement and support them, and if anything else needs to be said you will express your disagreement and values when you are by yourselves. By doing so, you are already one step closer to working as a team. Your partner will appreciate this support and will be much more likely to consider your opinion.
Small Steps to Great Parenting Page 15