It all tends to get muddled because of the paradox of wanting our children to be independent and successful, but also safe. These are normal ambitions and we tend to beat ourselves up when we see things not working as we think they should.

Some parents give too little – they push independence too early, they force activities and structured learning on to their kids too soon and they display little empathy (few hugs and little true listening). These parents usually think their children are confident when it’s all really bravado – the kids are sad and are actually quivering in their boots. These are the children who are likely to be nasty with language or use exclusion as a form of power with friendships. ( In other words: they’re most likely to be social bullies.)

Other parents give too much help. They prevent their children from doing things because they don’t want their children to be hurt in any way, but don’t know when to say, enough – now do it yourself. They struggle to say a simple, No, and stick with it and more likely to resort to bribery to get what they want. While the first group of parents tend to assume all tantrums are Power Tantrums, this group tends to assume all tantrums are Distress Tantrums. The children which result from this approach (after the age of four or five – as temperament is more likely to dominate before then) are the ones who seem a bit wimpy and pathetic and who show they are easily overwhelmed emotionally.  They’re obvious targets for the first group. (In other words: they’re most likely to be socially bullied.)

There is a key question I recommend, which I use frequently and I begin using when the boys were a year old – 18 months. They might not understand or respond to begin with, but it doesn’t take long before they can and before you know it – they can use it accurately too .

Can you manage or do you need help?

As part of this strategy, assume they are going to get it wrong some times. Assume they will get it wrong often, during the first couple of years. And just step in and help them fix the mess/pain/embarrassment. Take them to the emergency department if you have to. Calmly. Without a lecture. They need to do the thinking…the processing…the learning. It’s much harder for them to do that if we’re yabbering on in the background.

The first group of children I spoke about assume they can do things and don’t/won’t/can’t ask for help. The second group of children assume they can’t do things and often don’t/won’t/can’t attempt things.

It actually doesn’t matter if we know they can manage. What matters, to the outcome of their life, is that they know they can manage. And when they can’t. And that they can come to us for useful help.

I intend to make some suggestions for older children and help with homework next time. If I don’t someone please nudge me in the right direction!

One of the privileges of a holidaying in a small village is that the older and middle-sized children can generally wander as they wish – with a few firm rules in place. One morning, an 11 year-old, a nine year-old and an eight year-old went off biking together. They wandered a bit and then ended up at the top of a steep hill.

On the way down that hill the eight year-old (N)  – her first time on this particular bike – used her front brakes instead of her rear brakes and crashed over the handle-bars onto the tarmac. She was in a great deal of pain and there was a great deal of blood. Without hesitation, the nine year-old (J) raced back to the adults for help and calmly informed us that N needed urgent assistance. The 11 year-old (B) also acted immediately – she hopped off her bike and stayed with N; she used her own sweatshirt to mop-up blood as best she could, all the while reassuring N that help was on the way and that it would all work out OK.

Next and without prompting, J returned to the scene with a bucket of water to wash away the blood from the road and B realised that the deepest wounds were on N’s knees so attended to them the most.

Sure enough N needed to travel by ambulance to the nearest hospital, but luckily had not done as much damage as the ambulance officers originally thought – thanks to her bike helmet. (She’s fully recovered now.)

What struck all the adults present was the maturity of B and J. They were completely calm (yes..that word again); they knew they could not manage themselves – so they sought help; and the things they did do were helpful, not harmful. They were empathic and they were practical. And no-one told them what to do.

All three children have different temperaments, and at first glance seem to come from different styles of parenting – yet on closer investigation we find…

1. All three come from highly demonstrative and affectionate families and have all bed-shared at some stage.

2. All three come from families where outdoor and imaginative play are encouraged.

3. All three come from families where brattish or sassy behaviour isn’t tolerated in any way manner or form; yet they are also listened to when they have real needs or worries.

4. All three come from families where stories are highly valued.

!

Calm is the Soul of Peace

What are the implications then for those children growing up in frantic, noisy homes where flashing electronic lights (tv, dvd etc), stress, and lack of nurturing and wholesome food are the norm?

What are the implications for the society in which we will age?

To change the future, what changes could you make to: where you live; how you live; what happens in your home each day?

Best Wishes for the Holiday Season and a Peaceful New Year everyone.

The difference between the two can be easily explained in an analogy I read this morning – knowledge is being able to label a tomato as a fruit, wisdom is knowing not to put the tomato into a fruit salad.

It is through hundreds if not thousands of experiences with both tomatoes and fruit salads that gives us the wisdom not to mix the two. Most people won’t actually experiment with the combination (but those who do are probably Hares!) – nevertheless it is through repeated similar experiences (or one very intense experience) that we learn wisdom.

One day these darling boys of ours will drive a car. They will be at a party where drugs are available. They may well be in a position where someone is going to commit a crime, and they are in the same vicinity. It is these situations that they will need to make a wise decision. Or suffer the consequences.

Consequences are what make us wise. Children might break an arm or leg. They might get a graze, dislocate their thumbs, cut their fingers, they might get into trouble at school for misbehaving – I would argue that they need to do these things – or at least have the chance to do these things, and face the uncomfortable reality of the consequence.

It is only through getting things wrong that they will have the opportunity to learn wisdom.

By getting things wrong and experiencing the pain or embarrassment of the consequence children also learn they can manage when things don’t go their way.

We allow our children to take physical risks as they are driven to do so. (Yes, I cringe at playgrounds with two year-old Mr Butterfly).

We also are very firm and unmoving if they do something which could be considered to be naughty – rudeness, violence, damage to property etc. It is difficult not to buy into their Power Tantrums at these times – to hear them tell us how upset they are and how sorry they are, to witness their tears and to to hear their pleads. But these are just words and noise. While we might say, “I know you’re sorry” or “I can see you’re sad” – to acknowledge their emotional state, we don’t back down. In the adult world, the consequences for violence, damage to property and even rudeness will happen, and we will not be their to protect them. To be wise, our boys need to know they can made amends and how to make those amends through real actions. They need to know the emotions of sorrow, embarrassment, frustration etc are to be ridden not fought.

School is backward -

real life works with experience coming first

and then knowledge.

Parenting for wisdom and self-assurance is very different to parenting for education and high self-esteem. We need to throw out the idea of moderation in all things and replace it with excess in a few areas – excess affection; excess freedom to explore; excess firmness around a few rules; and excess stories and rituals.

Education is great – I’m all for it – but not at the cost of wisdom and maturity.

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Are you the person who always endeavours to be early – perhaps planning your journey somewhere to the nth degree and arriving well before you need to?

Are you the person who is always late and always apologising for your lateness? Does time disappear for you and you find yourself constantly behind?

Or are you usually pretty much on time…except for things which are important to you or for your health? Late to book your check-up? File your tax-return? Get to bed at night?

The tricky thing for modern mothers is that we are constantly told to take time for ourselves – but babies (biologically) need us to enter their concept of time, to put all our pressures to one side and ‘be’ with them. The cost of not spending quiet calm time on the sofa with our babies in arms – responding as they need us to respond to them, rather than fitting them around with the pressures of our lives is later maturity. How many adults do you know who are still immature or who are overly pedantic about behaving responsibly – chances are they (as babies) were parented according to their parents needs more than their own.

But just as important, and a key indicator in later maturity or lack thereof, is optimal mis-attunement. By mis-attunement I mean those times when we can’t respond immediately, because we’ve other children to attend to, or dinner is boiling over…

The key to this optimal mis-attunement seems to be in… the timing…

Complete attunement in the beginning, but at some time between 18 months to two years of age – the child experiencing that not all their behaviours are desirable or acceptable and that Mum has other things to do, sometimes, which are not centered around them.

In peaceful societies, yes there are still some around, one of the constants is this balance between continuous early attunement and emotional indulgence for that first 18 months to two years and then (quite abruptly in many cases) the loss of complete attunement – in a few cases quite intense discipline and boundary setting, but most often firm but non-emotional boundary setting and equally non-emotional responses to Power Tantrums. (The ones during which they can speak.)

Attunement gives us the sense that our needs are important and can be met. (Amongst other things.) Optimal Mis-attunement gives us the sense we can manage when things don’t go our own way, and that the needs of others are as important as our own. Both help us to leave the (normal) needy-emotional state of childhood and enter competently and empathically into a mature adulthood.

So how DO you manage time? Is the time of others (aside for very small people, which is a temporary state, even if it lasts 10 years) more important than your own? Is your role to support everyone else to the detriment of your own nurturing?

Do you always arrive late – having not moved from the child-like state of being in the moment and oblivious to the needs of others? (Until you abruptly are brought into consciousness and have to deal with another argument or state of embarrassment.)

Are you the person who avoids success? The one who can manage to be responsible and appropriate with time for others, yet aren’t comfortable with feeling good about yourself? The person who for some reason is punishing yourself? The person who forgot to book their check-up, file their tax- return, get to bed on time? Or in my case: finish the ebook, maintain the blog and blogging relationships – just at the point of success?

Oh dear. I’m working on it all – Promise! (I miss you guys. )

Looking forward to comments on this one. ( )

NEW ZEALAND: My do it, MYSELF!.

Our brains are built to make mistakes, have realisations and then change our responses. And the neural pathways and patterns we use most often are the ones we tend to use during stress (getting out the door in the morning),  and times of intense frustration (our child won’t/can’t complete homework, or piano practise,  or chores,  or toilet-training).

We aren’t perfect, which means there are always going to be times when we respond to our children without thinking. There is a parenting style which many consider to be Over-Protective. The people involved think that they are responsible and careful. What is rarely understood as that these people have a heightened sense of empathy. They feel what their child is feeling, but cannot turn off the emotional flooding. Their child has a tantrum – they will try to talk them around or bribe them rather than make a stand and endure the intensity of their child’s  (non-consciously because it makes them uncomfortable and unable to manage their discomfort). They are also often the people who believe the marketers sell ing anti-bacterial soaps and safety nets for trampolines, because they non-consciously imagine all the over-whelming emotions they ‘would’ feel ‘if’…

These parents would never allow their children to use scissors or knives as toddlers. These are the parents who won’t let their children out of their sight. These are the parents who are sadly often faced with teenagers/adults who make out-of-character dangerous or foolish decisions (and they usually end REALLY badly) – because the children have little or no experience at measuring danger or risk. It could be the adult child who leaves a high-paying job on a whim – with a young family to support. Or a teenager who has a one off session of drinking too much booze in order to prove they are ‘cool’ and ends up getting their stomach pumped or worse.

The parents in this group will warn their children constantly of the worst case scenario -

“You’ll cut yourself.”

“You’ll drown/get run over.”

“You’ll get sick.”

“You’ll fall.”

Telling a child that they ‘will hurt themselves’ isn’t helpful. It also implies that being hurt is something they can’t manage. Often it isn’t even true – children can cut accurately without hurting themselves as toddlers; they can climb without falling; they can get a mouthful of wave or pool water and not drown; they can play out of sight and not get kidnapped - but of course sometimes these things do happen, and it is dreadful. They’re called accidents or crimes.

These warnings often don’t mean much to the children anyway. A toddler has no idea what drowning means. And do young children really need to have the concept of being taken from Mum and Dad in their head?

The alternative approach works well - simply use the phrase: “You could get a dreadful fright.” We prime this before hand – at times when they do slip or graze their knees with, “You got a fright.”

Young children can relate to words which name their emotions. They NEED to learn as many names to as many emotions as possible. They are more likely to learn from their ‘frights’ than from abstract possibilities – they learn to manage risk and danger much more efficiently. They become more self-assured, because they know they can manage and they know they can manage when things go wrong or make them feel uncomfortable.

Going into deep water without Dad, could give you a dreadful fright.

If you cut your finger, you could get a fright. (Or…say nothing at all!)

For the serious business of kidnapping we simply make a rule: No sweets from strangers; Don’t go with any adult unless Mum has told you to. (And with older children – you can go with safe adults we have perviously identified.) And…if someone does anything that makes you feel uncomfortable – leave.

This approach allows our children to learn, and us to share our concerns without interfering with their learning.

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One key frustration used to happen when I asked him what he wanted for dinner…in classic Tortoise fashion anything was fine. Really. Truly. He just didn’t care, as long as there was food on the table. Eventually, I got utterly sick of making the decisions about dinner every day so began making menus for the family.

It’s made my mornings easier: I get up get the correct protein organised and don’t even think about the evening meal until it’s time to prepare it at night. There were some great and expected side-affects, the first being that I no longer shop for things we already have in the pantry and freezer. I always have the ingredients I need because I shop to the menu. I save money. ( I never ever just bought what I needed when I did those extra top-up trips to the supermarket.) I now cook more things that I don’t enjoy cooking but the rest of the family love to eat – so there’s probably more variety in our evening meals.

The unexpected positive side-affect has come via our middle son, the one I call Mr Owl. Mr Owl is the fussiest of our children when it comes to foods, particularly new ones. Yet with the menus well in place, now that it’s a year or so down the track, the fussing has mostly stopped. Why? Well for two reasons. Firstly, he knows what the plan is and he can psyche himself up if he’s going to be faced with something he’s not keen on. (Owls are very readily overwhelmed by new or unexpected events/things/people etc) Being prepared is great for all children, but particularly for Owls who need strong routines to their day in order to feel any degree of emotional security. The other advantage is that he is trying more new foods. He knows that we’ll have home-made hamburgers one night a week ( the day we are latest in the door) and that we’ll have snitzel (his other great favourite) one night a week. On the other nights I can pretty well throw anything on the table and he’ll eat it without fuss and bother. He knows that next week or the next day he’ll have something that he likes so, for him, it’s taken a lot of stress out of trying new flavours or textures.

The menus have also made the transition from town-house to country-house easier on all of us: it’s a familiar pattern for the boys and it has meant one less thing for me to worry about with the move.

In these days of recession and horrendous food prices, for those of us who do most of the planning and organising in the house, menus are well worth the effort anyway but, if you have a highly-sensitive Owl child like we do, I think menus are a great way to help Owls feel secure and to be more adventurous with the foods they eat.

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We have dial-up internet: it would be hilarious if it wasn’t so frustrating. Yes, broadband is on the horizon but for now it’s short bursts on the internet and lots of deep breathing!

Now…more grubbing thistles and digging-in compost heaps. The big boys are outside in a tent, finger-knitting, and the little boy is cracking hazelnuts with his little hammer.

Consistency is an ideal and probably not what most parents can realistically manage – we all have bad days, we all have times when we’re not 100% focussed on what the children need us to be focussed on and many modern parents are busy to the point of exhaustion. Parenting experts harrassing us about consistency can make us feel guilty rather than empowered to do things differently.

The Power of Three is another Diane Levy strategy which I have adapted. This is to be used after every (OK, as many as you can manage and the more the better!) sleep or school (or any other ‘separation’) time. Make your first three reasonable requests in a conversational tone and make sure that compliance takes place (all the while ignoring any dramas). If the first three times of reasonable request are complied with after each separation time, you will find that other times of non-compliance lessen and over time will (largely) disappear.

My additive-extra goes like this: for every time we put up with rudeness; every time we given in to a demand to buy something; every time we accept unreasonable non-compliance – we will receive in response from our children at least three times more rudeness/demands/unreasonable non-compliance. (Non-scientific observation from our children and others around and about.)

Reasonable non-compliance might happen when a child is overwhelmed due to: feeling disconnected, sick, tired, hungry, scared or angry. There is little point in trying to achieve anything with a child in these states. What I do then is either deal with the issue (eye-contact and a hug, sleep, food, Boring Cuddle, or wait for the storm to pass) then make the reasonable request again.

Yes, this does mean I have to step over clothes some nights when I’d rather not. Yes, it does mean I don’t get to do things that I want to do from time to time. Yes, it does mean that I have to give the boys plenty of time to comply. Yes, it does mean that I have to be tuned in to their mental and physical state as much as possible. It also means that I can go shopping without resorting to bribery for good behaviour. It also means that they understand that their work doesn’t go away and that I will help (by providing what they really need) but not rescue them (by doing the work for them). It means that our boys understand how to behave when they visiting others or at school.

 Remember the Power of Three – it’s a short-cut to consistency!

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