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?"
You CAN help your child feel HEARD even when he hasn't SAID anything. So keep on guessing and feeling your way through what might feel like a painfully awkward one way conversation. The benefits for the child and your relationship are worth it.
It took a while to get used to this new feeling of lightness. Upon waking, I would check in with myself: Wait, shouldn't I be worried about something?
With increasing frequency, the glorious, shocking answer would come back: No.
We are motivated by love. We fervently want our children to adopt our closely held values to improve, not our lives, but THEIRS. But how best to pass them on? The problem is that most parents have never had a chance to think about or practice this. That's where P.E.T. can help, but it's hard stuff.
"Who do you love more – me or the baby?" This is a doozy, right? If you say, "Neither -- I love you both the same!" will that do the trick? Probably not. Put yourself in his shoes for a short sec.
With my eldest now 16, I'm at the point where I can say that I'm dealing with stuff that's big by anyone's standards: drinking & curfew; faith v. organized religion; choosing a college; whether to take the SAT again; and sex, sexting & romance.
I once randomly pulled off the highway just to make the fighting stop!!! In retrospect, you could say my desperate act in Whereever-the-Heck, Hong Kong was actually a safe move. Children are, after all, recognized to be a major distraction to drivers.
I don't resort to such dramatic lengths anymore. Now, more often than not, my car is a moving No Problem bubble.
The mother threatened, “If you can’t walk like a big boy, I’ll remember that. No more vacations then until you can walk!” The boy continued to wail and the father had to hold him back from the stroller. The man started to whine himself, “I know you’re tired, but everyone is tired!"
At that point, we split ways so I don’t know how long passed until some sort of resolution. Just watching, though, made every compassionate hair on my body stand on end. I FELT the parents' rage and helplessness.
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!
Just a few days ago, I dropped my P.E.T. roadmap (aka the Behavior Window) and ventured into the land of Roadblocks. Even though the trip lasted just a few minutes, it's never fun losing your way like that.
The Behavior Window is the handy visual that Dr. Thomas Gordon created to help parents get to where we want to go.
He went on, "The point is, Mom, Jake always complains and makes everyone's life hard and Dad doesn't like it so he goes out and gets him a new one just to make it stop. Whereas, if I just keep quiet and act 'good,' then it pretty much sucks."
What that means, I recently explained to a good friend, is that we wait until there is no high emotion and then reach back to a painful incident and explore it. Many people, I acknowledged, would protest: "Why would I ever ruin a perfectly good day and do something like that?!"
Again, my aunt explained, "Emmett, we can't. We are leaving in the morning."
I decided to Active Listen him and then tap into his imagination: "You so wish you could come back, you really love this train! Oh, it would be so fun to live near this train!"
When I gently raised the topic of language I realized I was jumping the gun. "Mom, I don't need that right now. I need to be Active Listened. You're supposed to do that stuff later. I'm still very upset."
I didn't mind the correction at all. Not. At. All.
At the beginning of the summer, Claudia set herself to doing 20 minutes of Chinese a day and packed a fiction book and a fresh notebook for this purpose. Over one month in, she had done less than two hours.
One of the best things about teaching P.E.T. is that I get to hear the excitement and wonder in parents' voices when they have Active Listened for the first time! Parents sometimes proudly share their stories after just the first session on this skill. I'd like to think it was the superlative instruction, but I know better.
She quickly took the letter out, and then her brow furrowed; too long passed. I leaned over and saw she had failed by a couple of points.
I looked at her and she blinked and shrugged, “That’s fine. I can take it again.”
It seemed like time froze as people watched to see how I would react. If I could not get my child to say "sorry" or lower his voice or repeat what she said with "excuse me, Mommy" I would feel varying degrees of -- really, the only word for it is -- shame.
Left with little sis Claudia (10), Jake was reminded constantly of how she is so NOT his brother. When his frustration showed, Claudia noticed and engaged.
Ah, what to do with summertime bickering?
