Nobody’s perfect; we all know that. But it would appear that the best way to motivate children and get them to modify their behaviour is by paying less attention to their mistakes, not more. Research consistently shows that by focusing on what we’d like to see kids do, instead of what we’d like to see them do less of or stop doing altogether, we will not only get the behaviour results we want, but that they’ll also feel better about themselves and us.

The struggle for parents is that we tend to notice the mistakes so much more efficiently than the stuff that’s going well. I read somewhere that one of the reasons that “no” is so often a word that toddlers say is because as they’re learning language, it’s one of the words they hear most often. I don’t know if it’s possible to prove that one way or the other, but it is worth considering. How often do we say “no” to our children? Or put another way, how often is our attention and focus on the negative, rather than the positive?

Mistakes are hard to avoid. Sometimes we can’t even know that we’ve made a mistake until we’ve tried it out and taken a look at the results we got. We need to instil in our children that mistakes are fine, that we all make mistakes, and that there are very few mistakes that lead to truly disastrous consequences. What matters more than avoiding mistakes is gaining the courage to be imperfect, as Rudolph Dreikurs would say. Children need to develop the internal strength to acknowledge their mistakes, and move forward from them.

While our initial reaction may be to spend a great deal of time focusing on the events and decisions that lead up to the mistake (“What were you thinking?”, “Why would you do that?”, “What have you done?”, “Didn’t I just tell you to be careful?”), that will get us nowhere. We tend to believe that punishment is the best way to discourage a certain behaviour, but research consistently proves that to be a false belief – and perhaps you’ve noticed as much in your own household.

What works better is focusing on where to go from here, and what we do now that the mistake has been made. Looking at what can be done now gives our kids concrete solutions that they can act on to overcome feelings of guilt, shame, or embarrassment, and it helps them to develop the courage to try again. They start to build a list of times when they made mistakes, but then were able to overcome them.

And the truth is, as adults we know that once a mistake is made, it’s done. At that point, all the questioning and yelling and frustration in the world isn’t going to be able to undo it, so what’s the point? Questions, yelling, and frustration also don’t help our children to learn from their mistakes and feel confident that they can avoid them in the future, so we need to focus our efforts on not doing what we know doesn’t work, and change our approach to something more effective.

Here’s a quick plan for dealing with mistakes: demonstrate through your approach that mistakes aren’t the end of the world (i.e., avoid criticism and judgment), work together to find out where things went wrong and what could be done in the future to avoid the same mistake again, work together to find a solution to the current problem, and encourage your child to try again. Remember: the courage to be imperfect!

Who among us did not hear that as a kid?  And who finds themselves saying it to their own kids now?  Children can really wear you down, and some of them are more persistent than others — even after a reasonable “no”, they still keep harping and nagging until they break through your calm attitude and leave you barking these four words. 

The problem with “because I said so” is that it sends the message to the child that you don’t really care about his point of view, that when it really comes down to it, what he thinks and feels is not really important compared to what you want.  It makes it tough for him to take you seriously when you tell him that you want him to come to you with his problems or his desires, because he doesn’t really believe that you’ll listen to him anyway.

You may end up with compliance, at least for a little while, by using the “because I said so” strategy.  But in the long run you risk damaging your credibility when you tell your kids that what they think matters, you may set them up to be taken advantage of by authority figures, or they may get angry, secretly rebel, and stop concerning themselves about you and what you say.

This doesn’t mean that children should be allowed to do whatever they want.  As a parent, you have a legal and moral obligation to keep your kids safe and to look out for their best interests.  When it comes to issues of safety, legality, and morality, you need to reserve the right to limit your children’s activities.  But instead of just resorting to “because I said so”, let your kids know (in age appropriate terms, of course) what your concerns are and that if they can find a way to really address all of those concerns in a way you both feel good about, that you’ll reconsider.  (Barbara Coloroso describes this idea by using the phrase, “Convince me” with kids.)  This isn’t a blanket acceptance of what they’re doing or a suggestion that under any circumstances you should be forced into doing something or letting your kids do something you don’t feel comfortable with — it’s a way to teach critical thinking and problem solving skills that they’ll be able to use over and over again in their lives.  We need to practice these kinds of behaviours for them to become natural and second nature, and kids can’t go wrong with the ability to identify a problem, consider the options for overcoming the problem, and presenting these options to the involved parties.  And it keeps you out of the dog house in having to fight with your children over “because I said so” over and over again.

Patience is an elusive concept for parents. It can either be something we have (or don’t – as in, “I don’t have a lot of patience for that behaviour”), something we are (or aren’t – as in, “I’m not very patient with my kids”), or something that describes our personality (as in, “I’m not a very patient person”) . But, whatever it is, for most parents, it’s a lot like money: there’s just never enough to go around.

Is it possible to increase our patience? Absolutely. Our impatience springs from a series of thoughts and feelings that we have about a situation; if we change our thoughts and feelings, we can change our level of patience.

When something happens, we instantaneously judge it as being either good or bad. We decide that it’s a bad thing that milk was spilled on the floor or a good thing that our child brought home a report called filled with B’s, but these things are actually neutral in themselves. How we view them is what gives them their emotional charge. Once we’ve reached a conclusion about an event, we then have a feeling that is in line with our thought. If we decide that it’s good to earn B’s on a report card, we’ll feel happy/proud/ecstatic/celebratory or another positive emotion. But the opposite is also true; if we decide that it’s bad to spill milk, we’re more likely to feel impatient/angry/resentful or another negative emotion. Our impatience doesn’t come from nowhere, so the first thing we need to do in order to increase our patience is to become aware of how we assess these situations. The second thing is to not let our negative thoughts control how we respond.

Sometimes it’s our expectations, not our children, that lead us astray. At different times in their lives, it is developmentally appropriate, for example, for our children to refuse to cooperate, throw their food on the floor, insist on doing everything (or nothing) for themselves, and act out many other behaviours that range from annoying to obnoxious. The key to increasing our patience is to remind ourselves that this is a developmentally appropriate behaviour and not an attempt to drive us around the bend. If we can keep in mind that our children are not purposely pushing our buttons, it becomes easier to take a deep breath and ask ourselves, what do I want my child to learn from this situation? Because that’s what every interaction with our children is: an opportunity for them to learn. If we let our impatience get the best of us, we may, perhaps, inadvertently teach our children that we are likely to yell when they ask what to them seems to be a perfectly reasonable question. And if that’s the lesson, how quickly do you think they’ll decide just to stop asking questions altogether?

But what about those times when they really are pushing your buttons on purpose? These are still opportunities to teach and learn. How you handle these situations teaches your children more than just how to make your face turn purple. It also models for them how to handle frustration, disappointment, and anger. In these situations, look behind the behaviour for what is motivating it, and address that aspect first. If misbehaviour can be viewed as a misplaced attempt to fill a need your child has, remaining patient will be a key part of getting to its root, meeting the need in a healthy way, and avoiding the misbehaviour in the future.

When you start to see red, take a breath and ask yourself, how can I turn this situation into a positive opportunity for my child to learn? If we look at those experiences in our lives that cause us grief not as hassles or obstacles, but instead as tasks to be completed and lessons to be learned, it becomes easier and easier to increase our patience and become a more patient person. It’s all in the way we look at it.

How do you handle a child who doesn’t take “no” for an answer, but instead quietly goes to the other parent and asks the same question?

Kids can be crafty, especially when it comes to getting what they want.  And this can be challenging when you and your partner or ex-partner don’t share the same parenting philosophy.  But kids need consistency and predictability in their lives, and they do best when they know they can count on their parents to say what they mean and mean what they say. 

Plan A is that you and your (ex-)partner have a unified parenting approach, one that you can both feel good about and can maintain even when your partner isn’t around.  If that’s not possible, at least agree with your co-parent that the two of you will discuss major (and perhaps not-so-major) decisions as required.  Share some across-the-board rules with your kids that everyone in the family abides by.  And don’t hesitate to let your child know that you’ll need to discuss her question with Mom/Dad before you commit.  If you make that your go-to response, it won’t take long for her to realize that her old strategy isn’t so effective anymore.

We spend a lot of our time as parents trying to “make” our kids do things. Whether it’s making them hurry up, pick up after themselves, be polite, or make the bed, a lot of focus is put on what we want our kids to do, and how we can get them to do it. The unfortunate reality is, though, that we cannot make anybody – including our kids – do something unless they consent to do it. The best we can do is set up an environment that encourages them to do whatever it is we’d like them to do, or set up an environment that makes not doing the task less desirable than doing it.

This notion can actually be quite freeing. We are no longer on the hook for our kids’ behaviour – that’s their job. We may have been putting a lot of effort into managing and owning responsibility for their behaviour, only to be disappointed and frustrated. So we can now let go of the expectation we have of ourselves that we are somehow – or should be – in control of what our kids do, and that we have failed by losing that control. In this relationship with our kids, the only thing we have guaranteed control over is how we behave.

So it’s important that, instead of spending time worrying about how we’ll get our kids to do what we want them to do, we spend time figuring out what is in our own best interests and then doing that. We can, for example, nag and argue and fight with our kids about picking up their own laundry, and then, perhaps, resort to picking it up ourselves so that it can get washed. Or, we can let our kids know what we will do: we’ll wash only the clothes that are in their hampers, and if something is left on the floor – such as, say, a soccer uniform – it will remain unwashed until it gets put into the hamper and laundry day comes around again. This might mean that someone will have to wear a dirty soccer shirt to a game, but then, that is the choice of the kid. When kids know what the outcomes of two courses of actions will be (clothes in hamper = clothes get washed, or clothes on floor = clothes don’t get washed), they can make an informed decision about how they will behave, and then they are on the hook for the results.

We need to get used to understanding the limits of our own authority. While we can insist that we won’t take our son to his soccer game unless he changes his clothes, we can’t make him care about wearing a clean uniform. That will come organically after he wears a dirty shirt for a number of games in a row and he gets told by the coach or by a teammate that he’s not welcome back until he smells better. Life is about priorities. And while you can’t force your priorities on your kids indefinitely, they will hopefully adopt them as their own once they have the opportunity to fully appreciate why those priorities matter.

By deciding what you will do, letting your kids know in advance what that will be, and then following through, kindly and firmly, you teach your kids a number of important lessons. First of all, you demonstrate that you mean what you say and you will follow through. You also let kids know that they can influence the results through their own choices and behaviour. And they learn that they have the skills to deal with both good and bad results.

All this, and you’ll never have to nag again.

While I was at the conference in California (just got back last night!  And had a great time…), I was reading a little poll in Today’s Parent magazine’s December issue.  I thought it would be interesting to post the poll and the results here:

“We asked: What do YOU want to do in 2010?

37%   Yell less.

25%   Be more active as a family.

14%   Make more time for myself.

8%   Spend more time with my kids.

6%   Eat more dinners as a family.”

What this tells me is that a lot of us are struggling with a yelling addiction.  (And the rest of the poll tells me that we’re feeling a serious time crunch in almost all areas of our lives…but that’s a discussion for another post.)  So I thought I’d share some ideas for cutting back on the yelling, and getting the new year off to a pleasant/relaxed/quiet start.

Let’s start by having a family meeting.  There’s just nothing that can’t be helped with a family meeting!  Talk about what happens when you yell — dollars to donuts your kids don’t like it any more than you do — and ask for their cooperation in cutting yelling out of your home, for everyone.  If you’ve got some situations that typically lead to yelling, like getting out the door in the morning, or bedtime, or when the kids are fighting, use those specific examples to problem solve other ways to handle the situation.  Let everyone take some responsibility for making the situation better, doing whatever they can to contribute to a sense of calmness and cooperation.

Plan ahead.  If you need to get out the door at a certain time, well before your departure time, ask your kids for their cooperation and think about ways everyone can help to make things run smoothly.   Knowing when you’re likely to blow up, whether that’s a certain time of day or when a specific situation occurs (or doesn’t), can make it easier for you to plan ahead for yourself with some strategies like being prepared, giving yourself lots of time, practicing deep breathing, or deciding what you will do.

And speaking of deciding what you will do…  Too often, part of what we’re yelling is threats and punishments to kids who aren’t listening.  The problem with this strategy is that if the yelling worked, you wouldn’t be looking to cut it out of your tool box.  So, since trying to spur your kids to action by telling them what you’re going to do to them isn’t working, a better option might be to simply and calmly tell them what you’ll do yourself.  Instead of, “If you don’t get out that door in the next 30 seconds, there will be no video games for the rest of the day!”, try, “At 8.00 I’m going to get in the car and take all of you to school.  If you aren’t ready to go, I have faith that you’ll be able to make due for the day.”  No raised voices required.

Naturally, it’s harder to keep the yelling and the temper under control when you’re stressed out, overtired, or in a similarly negative frame of mind.  It’s important to take care of yourself and focus on being healthy, which sets a great example for your kids of how not to lose their cool, too.  If you have a co-parent, don’t forget to rely on him or her to help when you’re about to explode; sometimes seeing your partner about to lose it gives us the ability to stay calmer ourselves and take over to avert a potentially loud response.

Here’s to a calm 2010!

Learning to manage their emotions is part of the job of being a child.  But when those unmanageable emotions involve anger and aggressive outbursts, it takes a bit of a different approach than learning how to be patient or share.

If we’re honest, we can sometimes recognize that our kids pick up some not-so-great habits from us.  Whether it’s nature or nurture, we often see reflected back to us behaviours that we aren’t so fond of in ourselves.  Remembering that parents set the tone in the house, ask yourself if one of the first ways to help your children is by being less reactive and have fewer loud words and/or outbursts yourself.  Modelling is a pretty powerful way to teach children how to handle stress — this falls into the “do as I say and not as I do” category if you find yourself struggling with some of the same challenges as your children do.  Less yelling in general, more deep breaths and decreasing the stress and tension in your house will all help your kids avoid some of those struggles.

But that may not be enough.  There isn’t necessarily a “magic bullet” for solving anger issues in kids; it’s a problem that involves a combination of personal temperament, environmental influence, stress and anxiety levels, verbal skills, and any other elements that go in to the mix, so the solution may require changes and tweaks in lots of different areas.  Chat with your family doctor to see if she or he can offer your child some suggestions. 

If changing the tone and the way you react yourself doesn’t have enough of an impact, having your child meet with a therapist for a few sessions might be called for.  Play therapists who specialize in working with children can play games and do exercises and activities with your kids designed to teach them the specific coping skills they can use when their temperatures start to rise.  And because you’ve already created a family environment that is designed to help your child stay cool, you’re all good to go when he or she comes home and needs to test out these new strategies.

We’ve talked before about how important encouragement is for kids. It contributes to healthy self esteem, it fosters courage and a willingness to make a mistake but try again, it puts the emphasis on how our child can make his own interpretations matter most instead of relying on the input of others, it helps kids to feel as though they matter and belong… The list goes on and on. And while we’ve also spent a lot of time talking about some of the ways to encourage but not praise (like focusing on the effort not the result, and asking her how she feels about her performance instead of telling her what you think), I thought that maybe we’re ready for some advanced, out-of-the-box ways of encouraging our kids. Here are some ideas…

· Timing: sometimes children are receptive to encouragement right away, and it can help them shake off misbehaviour as it’s happening, but sometimes everyone needs a cooling off period before you can really get through to one another. Experiment to see what works best in your family.

· Acknowledge Improvement: when it seems as though none of what you’re asking is that hard, it can be frustrating and exasperating to have to deal with baby steps. But if we can recognize that our kids are trying, and acknowledge their improvement, they will be motivated to try again and reach just a bit farther this time.

· “Catch them being good”: Kids learn better through positive reinforcement than they do through any other method (including punishment). Use this awareness to encourage your kids by pointing out what’s already working, and leave it at that. Get used to not adding “…but…” after each of these conversations.

· Make one-on-one time a priority: nothing matters more to your kids than your undivided attention. Nothing. So give it to them.

· Practice good communication: It is extremely frustrating to be reprimanded for not meeting the mark after you’ve tried your best after only receiving vague instructions. Keep this kind of miscommunication from happening by being very clear in your directions and expectations and checking in with your kids before you send them off to make sure that you’re both on the same page. It can be very discouraging for a child to be scolded for not doing something when the real problem is the expectation: when you say, “Please take out the garbage,” and he agrees, you’re thinking “…in the next 60 to 90 seconds” but he’s thinking, “…sometime before I leave for school in the morning”. Get that all out in the open before you end your conversation.

· Forget the Jones’!: it can happen that you will feel discouraged yourself in the face of peer pressure from other parents or disparaging remarks from people like your own parents. You know what’s best for you and your family, and you know that sometimes thinking big picture means making choices and taking actions in the now that seem to be the opposite of what everyone else is doing. Take a deep breath, stick to your guns, and use some of those encouraging phrases we’ve discussed (“You can do it”, “I know you’ll make the best choice for yourself”, “I have faith in you to solve this issue”) on yourself!

Good communication is important in a family, but sometimes we get stuck when we’ve shared what our issues are, and the person we’re sharing with has a different view.  Now what?  At this point I recommend using some specific problem solving steps; the ones I use I’ve adapted from The Winning Family by Louise Hart.  (The book isn’t easy to find new, but you can borrow it from the Oakville Library, if you are so inclined.)

1. Identify and define the problem or conflict: what is really the problem? What exactly is wrong? Identify the problem without blaming. Be aware of everyone’s feelings and needs

2. Brainstorm for possible solutions: express and record all ideas as fast as you think of them. Sometimes the craziest, wildest ideas become the best with a little fixing up. No judgment or discussion should be allowed while brainstorming.

3. Evaluate the alternatives: look at the consequences of each choice. Would it solve the problem or make it worse? Work together to find a solution acceptable to all parties. Help your child see that give and take is necessary for a win-win solution.

4. Choose the best solution: given the reality of the situation, what choice appears to be the best one for the moment? Help your child realize nothing is carved in stone and that he can change his mind later if the solution he chose isn’t getting him the results he would like

5. Implement the solution: what changes need to be made? What will he do? When will he do it? For how long? Decide when to evaluate how it’s working.

6. Follow-up evaluation: assess the results. Is the situation better, worse, or the same? If it is better, does he want to continue doing what he’s doing? If worse, consider another solution from the brainstorming session and implement it. Be persistent until the problem is resolved.

Good communication tools will get you so far; these problem solving steps can help you take those final steps in finding a resolution to the problem and coming together as a family.

My friend Wendy just sent me the link to this article on the Parenting Pink web site, for parents of daughters, and it’s fantastic.  And I don’t think you need to have a daughter to find these statements helpful — they’re great for sons, too.  Great find, Wendy - thanks!