Parenting Tip - Focus on the Positive!

A friend talked to me about one of her daughters.  She was worried about this child, who seemed to get mad, stay mad, refuse to talk about her feelings or problems and said negative things to her brother and sister. As my friend worried about the situation, she became more and more fearful and envisioned this daughter as a teenager experiencing a multitude of anger issues and acting out behavior.  This mom was scared and didn't know what to do.

Then a couple of days later, my friend related how she had suddenly "come to her senses."  She thought about her daughter and all the great characteristics and talents she had.  She remembered how her daughter loved to be active and liked to play outside or go on walks.  She remembered how her daughter was constantly playing the piano and enjoyed playing church songs.  She remembered how funny her daughter was and how thoughtful she was.  She remembered that her daughter had come home from school one day saying she needed to choose a new friend because her present friend was mean and said bad things to other kids.

This mom had been distracted by her daughter's immaturity on one level and had forgotten all about  the other wonderful traits she had.  As she focused on the negative aspects of her daughter's personality, the negative was all she could see.  But as soon as she started to focus on the positive characteristics of her daughter, my friend said she felt relieved, light hearted and saw many, many good qualities in her daughter.

She started inviting her daughter to run with her, since she had keyed into the fact that her daughter needed and liked physical exercise.  She started complimenting her daughter on her piano playing, and started giving her hugs and more positive attention.  And this daughter flourished--because her  mom focused on the positive instead of the negative.

Thanks for reading,
Cathy
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Parenting Tip - Stop It!

I recently saw an old clip of Bob Newhart.  His patient was telling him that she was terrified of being buried alive in a box.  She went on and on about her fears and how they were restricting her activities and causing her problems.

Bob then replied that he could cure her with two words:  STOP IT!  He told her to stop thinking about being buried alive.  Stop thinking about her fears.  That was it.  Case closed.  She would be cured if she would just STOP IT. Well, naturally, she wasn't sold on his advice.

This made me think about how many times I would tell my children to stop it.  Stop being so noisy, stop leaving your clothes on the floor, stop fighting with your brother, stop complaining.  You get the idea.....But did it work?  Did they STOP?  No, of course not.

I think that in order to stop something, you have to start something else.  You have to replace the wrong behavior with a better behavior.  Instead of telling your child to stop being noisy, ask him if he can whisper quieter than you can or ask him funny questions in a whisper so he has to listen carefully to hear you.  Instead of telling your children to stop leaving their clothes on the floor, tell them to start hanging them on the spiderman hook you just bought and hung up or start putting their dirty clothes in the flower laundry basket in their room.

If you're in the car, instead of telling your children to stop fighting, ask them to start counting how many white cars they see driving down the street.If you're home and they're fighting, ask them to count how many windows are in your whole house.

Get it?  Distract them from the wrong thoughts, behaviors and actions and give them new actions, thoughts and things to do.  You can't take away something --without replacing it with something else;  that would be negative space, a black hole, a void.

It works for adults too.  I'm going to STOP wasting time on the computer.  Instead, I will make a list of things I need/want to do and look at the list when I have a few moments to kill.

So my advice, Bob Newhart, would be to START IT! 

Thanks for reading,

Cathy

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Parenting Tip #56 Older siblings helping younger ones

I know of a family with seven children, four of whom I give piano lessons to. The oldest daughter, is in college, and the youngest child is almost 2 year old. The Mom homeschools her children, the boys are active in scouts, some of the children play two instruments, and well, they live a busy life—especially the mom!

As I was talking to the mom this week, she mentioned something she has started doing that I wished I would have done when I was raising my children. She has paired up two of the older children to help her teach their younger siblings. For example, the 12 year son, who plays the piano very well, is helping his 8 year old brother practice the piano and the 10 year old son is helping his 6 year old sister with her reading. She is finding that not only does the younger sibling benefit, but the two older ones do too. As they teach, they are reinforcing skills and knowledge of things they already know, but are now really internalizing that knowledge for themselves. She said she had to be careful who she paired up, because, as we all know, some age groups and children don’t work well with each other. If she paired up her 10 and 8 year old sons together—sparks would fly.

This is an example of one of the benefits of having a large family. The older children can help their younger brothers and sisters and relieve the mom of some heavy stress.

So let’s brainstorm some other ways parents can pair up children to help each other. What about cleaning? If you asked your 6 year old to help the 3 year old put away the dishes from the dishwasher, you are helping your 6 year old learn leadership skills, giving her bonding time with her brother and getting a chore done all in one. Now if you asked them to clean the bathroom---you may end up with a bigger mess than you want. So you might need to think through what job you want done and who to pair up.

Okay, now let’s think about getting ready for bed. I don’t like competition, but what if you paired up two sets of your children to get dressed for bed (with teeth brushed and whatever else you add), and the set who got ready first could pick which story to read and the set who finished second could pick the song to sing.

Wow, I’m really getting into this. It almost makes me want to go back and parent my children again when they were younger. Almost.