6 Ways to Parent Wisely (Especially with Challenging Kids)

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As backed by numerous research studies, your ability to effectively model the following skills for your child will help you strengthen your relationship with him or her:

  1. Manage your difficult emotions. Your ability to identify and reflect on your feelings without acting on them immediately is critical to healthy relationships. When you react impulsively to your negative emotions, you increase the likelihood of saying something to your child that you might later regret. You are also more likely to be punitive, which also ruptures your connection to your child. I’m not suggesting that you absolve your child of responsibility, but I am suggesting that you hold him or her accountable in a thoughtful way.
  2. Appropriately express your emotions. Your capacity to experience, reflect, accurately label and effectively communicate emotions helps your child develop the same capacity. In fact, I think it is accurate to say that one’s ability to process and communicate feelings is fundamental to any healthy relationship.
  3. Listen carefully to your child. Take the time to listen to your child’s feelings and understand his experiences. It is important that you not impose your interpretation of his experience. Try to understand experiences from his perspective. The more time you take to listen to his feelings and help him label these feelings, the better he will become at managing difficult emotions over time.
  4. Problem-solve with your child. When challenging situations arise, it is helpful if you can problem solve with your child about how to address whatever the situation might be. This is how your child develops better problem solving skills. It is particularly helpful when you can anticipate difficult situations and trouble shoot with your child in advance.
  5. Maintain perspective on your child’s development. Brain development and emotional maturity is a process that takes time. While we cannot force the brain to develop any faster than nature will allow, we can remove impediments to brain development and emotional maturation. For example, if your child has poor impulse control, you will not find a punishment that makes him less impulsive. You can, however, identify situations where he is more vulnerable to more impulsive behavior and together come up with strategies for maintaining self control in those situations. In addition, if he does behave impulsively, you can discuss his behavior with him and have him take responsibility for his actions. Keep in mind that the brain’s breaking system responsible for filtering what is said and done will not fully develop until he is between 25 and 30 years of age.
  6. Adjust your expectations of your child and yourself. It is important that you understand your child’s strengths and challenges when setting appropriate expectations. Avoid using, age, grade or comparisons with sibling or peers when deciding on what your child should be able to do. Every child is unique with his own rate of development. There is no formula for setting and maintaining expectations other than listening to your child and trial and error.

 

 

5 Point Parenting Plan To Relieve Holiday Stress

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Talk to any parent: The holidays bring out the best and worst in families. As parents of children whose emotions are running high, you may find yourselves struggling to keep the spirits bright. Here are 5 helpful hints for a happier holiday with your kids.

1. Remember, all children struggle with processing strong emotion. Every child learns to regulate their emotions at a different pace as they mature. In the meantime, they look to you to help them quell anxiety, so try to stay as steady and patient as possible even in the face of an eruption. If you lose your composure, your child is left feeling like no one is in control and this can heighten the intensity of a meltdown.

2. Begin by helping your child label the feelings she is experiencing. If you can put language to feelings, it helps her to  make sense of her experiences and calm down.  She will also feel that you care about her and are trying to understand.  Be sure to do this before her feelings become too intense.  Problem solving when feelings are too strong may only aggravate the problem.

3. Identify situations where your child is more vulnerable to experiencing strong emotions and losing self-control. Plan for these situations in advance. Explain what is going to happen, what emotions she may feel and how you will support her, as well as what she can do for herself to keep calm.

4. Be tolerant of your child’s feelings. That doesn’t mean let him be inappropriate or destructive. Reassure your distraught child that you are going to listen to him, but he first needs to get his feelings under control with your help. He needs to be able to discuss his feelings in a respectful manner.

5. Once emotions are under control, you can make every effort to understand the experience from your child’s perspective. Taking this approach does not mean you agree with your child. It simply means you are trying to understand how he experienced a situation and what meaning it took on for him.  Efforts invested in this process will also create more space for you to offer alternative explanations and perspectives on the situation.