You’re out for a wintry walk (and you’re wearing a wooly hat, heavy coat, snow pants, gloves, and boots), when a tree overhears you grumbling about the cold weather. What does the tree have to say in response?
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Last week on the Brave Writer podcast we discussed how the path to giving our kids the best possible outcomes in life comes down to some counterintuitive advice: You have to think – and care – less about that outcome. Easy, right? Maybe not.
Now that you’ve hopefully bought into the theoretical concept, we’re going to dive into more practical advice about how to apply it. I’m going to offer tips and tricks for caring less and calming down – both for yourself and for your child.
Breathe In, Breathe Out
When faced with an abundance of chaos or overwhelm in the household, we naturally and instinctively draw in air, fill up our bellies, and exhale slowly as a way of calming the nervous system.
But our children may not take requests to “calm down and breathe” very well. They quickly learn to take this as a control mechanism – something you force them to do to make yourself feel more comfortable. They’re already doing what makes them feel better, even if that behavior is disruptive to you.
So how do we combat this? How do we allow our kids to regulate their emotions in ways that aren’t overly destructive or disruptive to our own health and sanity? According to educator, Joshua McNeil, you create hidden “brain breaks.” We want to allow our kids to have the space to make a good decision without losing face or feeling embarrassment and shame over their decision.
Brain Breaks
These come from the book 101 Brain Breaks & Brain Based Educational Activities by Joshua McNeal. Try these techniques to give your kids the break they need without forcing them to do something they don’t want to do or making them feel embarrassed:
Our job is not to talk our kids into better behavior. Our job is to model and provide alternatives. We need to lead wordlessly with our own behavior, and we need to make these de-stressing behaviors pleasurable. Keep these in your back pocket and don’t use them every day, because repetition will cause them to lose their power. Help your kids regulate and renew their energy for the next step in their day.
As parents and caregivers, we all care so much about giving our kids the best possible:
We’ve probably even spent an inordinate amount of time diving into books, podcasts, consulting with others, and other ways of learning what we think we need to know in order to be good parents. But what if all of that ends up backfiring? What if we end up killing our children by caring?
In this Brave Writer podcast episode, I share how caring less might end up being the best thing you can do for your child – and yourself.
As a parent, we hold onto these hopes and dreams for our children – and the child may not have those same dreams. This leads to a power imbalance where parents are trying to force kids to fit into a vision of life that they are resisting.
What’s a parent to do? Stop caring about their child’s future? Well, in a way… yes. My chief advice to parents in this instance is to care less.
Despite how the word makes things look, it isn’t actually careless to care less about what our child does or how they perform. The more you care, the less the kids have to. When a parent is highly invested in their child’s success, the child won’t put in as much energy because they don’t have to! In fact, they quickly learn that they can be resistant and still wind up at the destination the parent has in mind. That child ends up balancing the power dynamic by exerting that power and control with willful resistance.
When our vision for our children is to be world-changers, we will naturally put a lot of pressure on them to care. What if we shift the focus away from what we expect on our kids and instead focus on bringing the wide world to them?
When we focus on bringing the wide world to them we allow them to become who they are meant to be – rather than imposing on them who we want them to be.
We are all growing alongside our children. Don’t overthink things. Just learn, grow, share, and trust.
We are honored to have had top home educators from the Melanated Gold Review Squad try our program and provide helpful reviews to our customers. We hope these reviews help you to see the Brave Writer programs in action and to make good decisions for your family.
Here are their reviews:
Dart: The One and Only Bob by Hi Homeschool
Arrow: Amari and the Night Brothers by Simple Homeschool Lifestyle
Arrow: Amari and the Night Brothers by Little Learner and Mom
Jot It Down! by the Mama Connect
Partnership Writing Review by How We School
Partnership Writing: It’s a Vibe by The Simple Happy Life
If the expression, “being on cloud nine,” means you’re extremely happy then what would you feel on clouds one through eight?
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