A Brave Writer's Life in Brief

Quality affirmation given in a natural, intentional manner yields great results—trust, openness, self-confidence, and a willingness to take more risks. Affirmation need not only focus on a child’s successes, but also a child’s fierce engagement with struggle.

Here are a few models of friendly feedback you can use to help you enhance that parent-child bond:

• Your voice is loud! I can hear it all the way across a room! That’s fabulous.
• You were careful coming through that door with the folding chair. I noticed! Thank you.
• It’s hard to nap. Thanks for trying to get to sleep on your own for ten minutes before getting up to ask me when the nap would be over. Let’s try ten more, shall we?
• Wow. When you get deeply involved in your game, you can’t even hear me call for lunch. You really know how to focus when you are absorbed.
• I appreciate your offer to help. That’s really nice of you.
• You sure know a lot about __________. Must take real concentration to hold onto all those details.
• That smile of yours? It always makes me a little happier. Thank you.
• I can tell you are hurting. It’s okay to cry. Strong people cry—it’s a way to let go and recover from sadness.

You get to help define how your kids interpret their experiences. You can do that using positive reinforcements of their natural reactions, and also their attempts to be helpful or to be heard or to caretake themselves.

Affirm one of your kids today—look for opportunities to enhance your child’s self-understanding.

And then make sure you follow up and compliment each of the other ones, each of the remaining days this week and into next week if you need it! Put it on the calendar to remind yourself.

Cross-posted on facebook. Image by Steven Depolo (cc)

If you spend 30 minutes with your kids right after breakfast, you will be free for the rest of the morning.

Pick an activity that YOU want to do (painting a bedroom, re-potting your indoor house plants, baking cookies, peeling wallpaper in the ugly bathroom, figuring out how to hook up the new game console, cleaning out one closet, washing the camping equipment, reorganizing the cupboards, weeding the garden, watering the flowers, laundry) and involve your kids right with you.

Give assignments to everyone. Even the smallest child can help by dancing to music to entertain you while you read instructions for the IKEA bookcase you want assembled.

It is a slower process to do the needed activity with your kids. It’s even harder to distract them long enough to get it done without their “interference.”

You can circumvent the whole struggle by including them at the get-go. They love grown up activities, they love to be needed, and they can do more than you think (more slowly, with less proficiency). They will find themselves interested and learning while you get through this important task.

At a certain point, their enthusiasm or energy will fade (they are kids and care less about re-potting houseplants than you do). They will leave you to continue while they do something else.

And even if they don’t–if they need to shift activities and you must come with them, at least you will have invested 30 minutes into that project and you will have moved the chains another ten yards down the field.

If you invest 30 minutes right after breakfast, you prevent a build up of resentment, too. You won’t keep hoping for that “slip of time” when they are happy and you can get to work. Instead, you will set the agenda for the day by including everyone up front. You’ll get some of it done (or a lot).

Most importantly, you eliminate resentment (waiting for them to be happy so you can work; waiting for you to finish so they can have a playmate).

So what’s on the agenda today? What are you working on?

Cross-posted on facebook. Image © Goodluz | Dreamstime.com

We spend a lot of time on the 3 R’s and creating a happy, invested learning life with our kids. We show them household skills like wallpaper stripping and toilet-bowl scrubbing.

The chief skill we need to impart for successful relationships in life is self-awareness. Self-awareness, in this little piece, means “the ability to know your thoughts, feelings, and needs; and then to take care of them yourself.”

Blame is what we do when we don’t have self-awareness. We lash out at the nearest person, expecting the unsuspecting, kind bystander to take care of the agitation suddenly erupting inside. For instance, a hungry child may grab your pant leg and whine, “Mommy, I don’t want to go to the store” when really he means, “Mommy, I need a cup of Cheez-its.”

An older child, humiliated in defeat, just beaten by long distance competitors in World of Warcraft, may suddenly yell at a sibling: “Turn down the television! I hate that show!”

The “thing” that evokes the anger or whining is often a cover for what’s really going on. We don’t want to know ourselves because if we do, we must act for our own good. We wrongly assume that it feels better to get someone else to act for us.

One way to foster self-awareness in family members is to have it yourself. Narrate your own self-inquiry and self-care.

“These shoes littering the hallway are driving me crazy! Wait. I just realized that I’m trying to think of how to coordinate Sarah’s dress rehearsal with Sam’s soccer match and these shoes are distracting me from thinking of a solution. I feel like yelling!”

It isn’t always natural to narrate your inner life, but it is helpful when you do. You can also help your children develop self-awareness:

“I see you don’t want to go to the store. Are you hungry? Can I make you a turkey sandwich, first, and then we’ll see if you want to go?”

“Whoa! That’s a huge reaction to the TV. What happened? Did something ‘not good’ happen in your game?”

Eruptions are usually what happen to us when we aren’t attending to the build-up of stress and anxiety inside. We aren’t honest with ourselves—we’re hungry, tired, worried, fearful, insecure. Instead, we blame the nearest intrusion as the reason for our “un-peace.”

Pause, help your child (and yourself!) take responsibility for the panicky explosion. Learn how to self-soothe, how to provide self-care.

I remember when Jacob was a toddler, he’d get worked up into a near-tantrum state. He’d then leave the room and go cry on his bed. When he was finished, he’d come back into the room cheery and ready to play. Pretty high self-awareness for a 2-3 year old!

Help your kids understand how to take themselves out of the room/activity while they figure out what’s going on inside. There’s nothing wrong with being heart-broken about losing a game or annoyed that trips to the store are preventing lunch. Knowing that’s what’s going on is key to family harmony.