\nI want to share with you my favourite piece of parenting advice. I am generally cautious about preaching about my parenting approach here – what works for me won’t necessarily work for you. But this is such a universal technique, and so useful, that I wish everybody knew about it. Again and again, when I hear arguments and raised voices between kids and their parents – at preschool, at other kids’ homes, or just random strangers in the street – I wish there was some way I could tell those parents about this.\n<\/p>\n
\nWhen a child tells you what\/how she feels about something, listen and acknowledge.<\/b>\n<\/p>\n
\nThat’s it. And it is amazing how many fights, quarrels, breakdowns and tantrums can be avoided using this simple technique.\n<\/p>\n
\nConsider this scenario, variations of which I have experienced repeatedly, sometimes as a participant and other times as an observer. The kid has spent Saturday afternoon at a friend’s place. You now turn up and say it’s time to go home – grandma will arrive soon to have dinner with you. The kid has had a lot of fun and is not at all interested in going home.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe kid says, naturally: “I don’t want to go home! I hate having dinner with grandma!”\n<\/p>\n
\nNow as a parent you could do a number of things.\n<\/p>\n
\nDeny the feelings.<\/b> “Of course you want to go home – you love being with grandma!”
\nForbid the feelings.<\/b> “How can you say that about your grandma? Never say anything like that again!”
\nCajole and bribe.<\/b> “Come on, we can have ice cream after dinner!”
\nDistract.<\/b> “Oh, look at that cute dog – shall we see if it is going our way?”
\nTry to fix things.<\/b> “Well, why don’t you invite her to our place for tomorrow morning?”
\nAppeal to reason.<\/b> “Well, we have to go home anyway, because grandma will be there waiting for us.”
\nPhilosophize.<\/b> “That’s the way life is, you know, everything comes to an end at some point.”
\nRidicule.<\/b> “Well, you can’t stay here all night!”
\nDiminish the feelings.<\/b> “Don’t worry, you’ll see your friend soon again.”
\nIgnore.<\/b> “I don’t care, we’re going home anyway.”
\nThreaten.<\/b> “Stop whining right now or you’ll never come here again.”\n<\/p>\n
\nSome of these responses may work sometimes, more or less effectively. Others may give you the feeling that you’re doing your job as a parent, but are unlikely to actually be productive in any way. I’m sure you can imagine what your kid would reply to any of these – and it probably isn’t “you’re right, Mom, let’s go home”.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe next time, try this instead:\n<\/p>\n
\nKid:<\/b> “I don’t want to go home! I hate having dinner with grandma!”
\nMom:<\/b> “You really don’t feel like going home now.”
\nKid:<\/b> “No! We were having so much fun with Elin just now!”
\nMom:<\/b> “You really enjoyed playing with Elin today.”
\nKid:<\/b> “Yes – and you came just as we were preparing a treasure hunt!”
\nMom:<\/b> “You had something great planned and I came and interrupted you.”
\nKid:<\/b> “Yes, and we even had the maps all ready. Here, look, this is my map and this is Elin’s.”
\n…<\/b>\n<\/p>\n
\nAnd by this point, or maybe after two more turns, the situation has usually been defused. The kid has gotten a chance to express her disappointment and frustration. She can now let go of those feelings and move on.\n<\/p>\n
\nIt sounds silly. It seems too simple to work. But it really does – assuming that you do it for real and don’t just pretend to listen to their feelings. Serving canned responses will sound fake and the kid will pick up on it.\n<\/p>\n
\nI learned this technique from How to Talk so Kids Will Listen and Listen so Kids Will Talk<\/i>, a great book that I would recommend to all parents. It’s got other useful tips, too, but this is the one that I’ve benefited most from. Do read it.\n<\/p>\n
\nIn fact I think it’s time I re-read the book myself, again.\n<\/p>\n
\nFind the book on Amazon UK<\/a>, Amazon US<\/a>, Adlibris<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I want to share with you my favourite piece of parenting advice. I am generally cautious about preaching about my parenting approach here – what works for me won’t necessarily work for you. But this is such a universal technique, and so useful, that I wish everybody knew about it. Again and again, when I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-parenting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4009"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4009\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4016,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4009\/revisions\/4016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}