Now you might think that whispering in a room full of screaming kids wouldn’t have much impact, but I’ve found that screaming is the thing that makes the least impact. The kids just thought I was playing along with their game and continued to scream unless I really lost it, which I later felt bad about.

Instead, I did the opposite and got an almost immediate response. First I thought of a secret to tell. Then I went over to the loudest child and tapped her on the shoulder cupping my hands around my mouth as if I were about to whisper. Then I whispered the secret to her. Usually my secret had something to do with a delicious snack waiting for them in the other room or a really fun game or activity I had planned, but inevitably, the whisper was the thing that made the biggest difference.

My daughter has stopped nursing herself to sleep when she’s going to bed at night and instead prefers to cuddle to sleep. But if she’s really squirming and unsettled I simply begin to whisper a story to her and she’s often asleep within minutes. Sometimes she’ll whisper parts of the story back to me, but she ALWAYS stills her body and listens intently. It really doesn’t matter what the story is about, it can even be gibberish, the important thing is that the message I’m sending with my whispering is that it’s time to relax and rest now. And the message comes across loud and clear…or quiet and clear in this case. ?

I’ve even used whispering to stop a child from screeching wildly when she didn’t get what she wanted. Sure there are times when it’s important to allow a child to fully express her upset, but this particular child was using the screeching as a way to get my attention. So I gave her my attention, but I changed the rules of the game. Whenever she screeched, I would walk up to her, whisper in her ear, and then if the screeching continued, I would walk away. She almost always followed behind me whispering about the topic of choice. Because it wasn’t screaming that she most needed in that moment, it was my full attention.

I know it can be difficult to remember this when you’re in a room full of people who are yelling to be heard, but sometimes going against the grain and doing the opposite of what the crowd is doing is the perfect way to shift the dynamic.

My husband and I even use this technique when we’re dining in a very loud restaurant. If I can’t hear him, I just slide into the booth on his side of the table and we snuggle up and talk quietly to one another. Often, the noise level in the whole restaurant will go down. I’m not really sure why it works, but I’m sure glad it does!

So the next time you’re in a room full of loudness, try whispering and see what happens. I would love to hear how it goes. Please share your story with me in the comment box below.

And have a fantastic week, Shelly

There’s something about our culture, and I’m guessing it has to do with media, that perpetuates the idea that there must be something wrong. But is there really? Maybe the very idea that there’s something wrong is the problem.  What if we could all see ourselves as the wonderful parents we really are – even in the moment when the pediatrician tells us our child is not developing properly, or in the moment when our friends don’t like the way we discipline, or how about when we read a scary article online about the dangers of modern life.

I once heard a description of motherhood that it was like having your heart walking around outside of your body. Now I finally understand what they meant. My own anxiety about being a good mom has surfaced this week through several disturbing dreams. In one, I had to rescue my infant from a hot car where she was locked inside. In another, I realized I had inadvertently let her slip under the water as we were taking a bath. Luckily, when I pulled her out of the water, I realized she had been holding her breath. What these dreams tell me is that even though I usually feel secure and confident about my parenting, a part of me fears that I could create irreparable damage to my child. And although I know this is a common fear that all parents experience, that knowledge doesn’t make it any less terrifying.

The truth is our children will face circumstances that may be difficult or painful and that we actually can’t control. So even in the moments when we’re being the absolutely best parents we can be, our kids can still get hurt or sick. I think that is the most unsettling part of being a parent. And ultimately we have to accept that we live in an imperfect world and we’re all just doing the best we can.

So how can we develop a stronger core belief that we are good parents even in the midst of the uncertainties of life?

Let’s start by acknowledging the moments when we’re at our best. Right now think of three of your favorite moments with your kids in the past week. Maybe there was a sweet snuggle, or a moment when you read that bedtime story for the third time in a row, or a time when you turned a potential power struggle into a fun game. Grab a notebook and write down these important reminders of the moments when you were the parent you wanted to be. And when fears arise, take a deep breath, remember that you and your child are safe, and put your attention on something you enjoy and appreciate about the now.

After all, it’s never really the things we worry about that end up happening anyway. And when all else fails, call your own mom (or a supportive friend) and let her tell you what a great parent you are.

After I had my first baby my neighbor told me that I can no longer call it “going on vacation” if kids are involved, and that she refers to it as traveling or taking a trip.  It took me a couple years and many attempts at vacationing with kids to fully grasp what she meant.

A vacation implies a break, and traveling with young kids, especially more than one, is anything but that.  In fact, in nearly every way it is more difficult, more work, and more exhausting than staying home .  Labeling the trip as a vacation is really just setting yourself up for disappointment as it seems even more painful to be up in the middle of the night with a crying baby or time-zone-wacked toddler when you’re paying $200 a night for the “experience” in lodging alone.

Here are some things that have helped add a little vacation to our trips:

Travel with extended family

Of course, this only works if you have family you like enough to be around AND they are good with your kids.  But if you really think about it, you probably have at least someone who qualifies.  Maybe a niece who likes kids and would love a free place to stay by the beach?

BK (before kids) I never would have considered bringing my mother along for a beach vacation with my husband as it would completely cramp the intimacy and probably drive me crazy, but now she’s the only hope we have of intimacy and I’m making it an annual thing!

If you’re inviting relatives, it’s best to be clear about everyone’s expectations up front (before booking the trip) including the financial side.  If you are want help with the kids you need to make a clear request, such as “My husband and I can really use some alone time to reconnect, would you be willing to you watch the kids for two afternoons and one evening while we go out?”

Other Help

If you really can’t fathom the idea of vacationing with ANYONE you have a blood relationship with, seriously consider forking out the money to take along a babysitter or nanny.  Some people will be happy to come along and provide a certain number of childcare hours as a trade if you are paying for part or all of their trip, especially if they can bring a friend or significant other.  For us, it means we take far less vacations because they are more expensive when we’re paying for additional people, but since it’s so much more of a vacation WITH the help it’s worth it.

The holy grail of help is traveling where there are other kids for your kids to play with, so if there is any way to orchestrate this by traveling with another family (and perhaps bringing and splitting the cost of a nanny) go for it!

Minimize changing locations

Everyone will probably be happier if you stay at one place for 9 days than 3 places for 3 days.   Kids need a couple days to get in a rhythm at a new place and figure out how and what to play, what the sleeping arrangements are, and really feel comfortable.  If you are changing locations every couple days the kids are more likely to act out.

Multiple rooms

You’ll want at least two rooms and at least one of them to get pretty dark so your child doesn’t wake up at the crack of dawn local time just because it’s too bright in the room.  The multiple rooms is worth the extra cash, even if everyone is sharing one bed, because you will need a place to hang out with your mate while the kids are (hopefully) napping or down early.

Kitchen or Kitchenette

You’ll probably more than save the money you pay for this extra in not having to eat out for every meal.  You’ll also have much more relaxed dining experiences and less hunger related meltdowns if you can just eat-on-demand in.

Family Friendly Resorts

I’ve found various resorts that cater to kids & families by offering activities for kids, childcare (either babysitters or daycare “kids clubs”, or both), kids pools with slides, kids food options, and so on.  I haven’t stayed at any of the places I’ve researched because we prefer smaller, B&B type places and our kids generally don’t go for being watched by people they don’t know, but these could be a godsend.

And… possibly most importantly…. Do Less

Getting everyone fed, dressed, and down the to beach or pool expends more than enough effort, why try to pack in that amusement park that they are probably too young  or old for anyway or is much too crowded? (Unless of course Grandma is taking them!)

It can take a day or two for the kids to adjust to having you around so much and so much unstructured time, but they’ll adjust and probably thrive on having endless open afternoons at the same beach, woods, park or just yard day after day.

Please share your wisdom and stories of how you have traveled with kids.

Mindy Ranney
www.ranney.com

I don’t know whether “You’re so mean” rolls off my back because I’ve heard it so many times lately (whenever my son doesn’t get what he wants), and thus am getting used to it but somehow, I’ve been able lately to keep a calm heart in the face of “You’re so mean”,  and offer up empathy guesses into feelings and needs:

“Ah–are you saying you’re angry because you’re not getting what you want?”

“Yeeahhhh.”

Whew. That I can hang with! And it also helps take the edge off his upset. In fact, whenever I can remember to tune in deeply to my son, and help him feel heard and understood, his anger dissipates, and least a bit.

I think if I could remember each and every time I hear something personal, to tune into the feelings and needs underneath, I’d probably be a lot more peaceful.

As it is, what comes up for me sometimes is, well, taking it personally. And then fighting accordingly. This is especially easy to do when I get called a name. For a period of weeks, when my son was unhappy, he’d shout, “Stink!”, which I think was meant to be a noun, as in, You are a “stink,” an unpleasantly-scented thing…like a piece of poop for example.

Often, my feelings get hurt when my son calls me names, especially if it’s a really “mean” tone of voice. When I can be vulnerable and say “Ouch,” I’ve even heard “I don’t care!” sometimes in response. I find that once I start to take something personally, it becomes hard to climb out of that vortex. Similarly, if I can remember to tune into what he’s really feeling and needing, that one step creates a sort of ladder up and out of the taking-it-personally vortex (TIPV).

I think in those moments I am really needing appreciation and support for how hard it is to be a parent, in particular since my divorce, and how vulnerable I can feel, even when things are going well.  I might be smiling, but I’m still am an inch away from the TIPV.

Sometimes, during down times, I have experimented with saying to my son, “It’s hard to do everything myself–I would really like some cooperation.” Even if he chooses not to do what I want during that moment, I feel better about the quality of our connection. I often find that if I wait a few minutes, he jumps up and starts to help of his own accord, rather than if I try to make him do something on my timetable.

The hardest thing for me is when he rejects or gets demanding around food. Maybe it’s being a Jewish mother, but for me, food is love, and when I don’t receive the gratitude I crave, it feels like a sock in the gut, and I’m down in bowels of the vortex.

Hmm.

Maybe next time I’ll go all out and exaggerate that feeling and see what happens, instead of proclaiming loudly, “ALL I want to hear is THANK YOU!” while silently cursing the irony of being a gourmet chef with a son who eats only seven food items, five of them white.

At least if it I still go down the TIPV, I’ll have a nice dinner to nurse while I sulk.

What about you, do you ever have to deal with getting sucked into the TIPV? If so, what are some ways you handle it, or might like to handle it?

Warmly,

Jill

As hard as this may be to remember to do with other adults sometimes, I find it even harder to remember to do with my son.

Recently I got my son and his stepbrother reading and math workbooks based on movie characters. My son got a Cars (as in the Disney movie) workbook for Chanukah, while his stepbrother got a Spiderman workbook. My son wailed and hollered for days…”It’s not fair! It’s not fair! Why did you give him that?”

I explained that I knew Canaan (my son, and that’s his new chosen spelling of his name) liked Cars, so I got him that, and I knew Taebin (his stepbrother) liked Spiderman so I got him that. Completely logical.  Meanwhile I was kicking myself for not remembering to get them identical gifts.

Canaan’s dad explained to him that if he kept reacting like this, people wouldn’t feel like giving him gifts anymore. Turning on my best earth mother tone, I imparted a deeply meaningful spiritual lesson about how gifts are expressions of the heart, and the giver wants joy and gratitude in response, and how the gesture of giving the gift is an act of love, far beyond the gift itself.

We also reminded him to focus on himself, and not pay so much attention to what other kids were getting.

Well, sure.

And…blah, blah, blah.

What does any of this mean to a six-year-old with a bruised heart?

Maybe something sunk in. I hope it did.

But what dawned on me was that I had completely skipped over the step of seeking first to understand him. And in so doing, missed the chance to really connect with him, build trust, and show him I was on his side. And how much more valuable would that be than trying to “convince” him of something when he plainly knows otherwise?

I stopped mid-lecture.

“Are you feeling really sad, because when you saw Taebin’s gift you wanted his more than yours?”

Immediately his energy relaxed.

“Yyyeeeeahhhh….”

Of course it did–I was showing him that I was with him, not against him.

So I continued.

“And you really wish you had that present, so you could feel like things were equal?”

Tiny whimper.

“Uh-huh.”

Oh, my sweet little puffin.

I felt myself soften, too.

I noticed that I can feel afraid, sometimes, when I take this approach, that I’m somehow reinforcing “irrational behavior,” or teaching him that it’s “Ok to be upset about little stuff.”  I’m also just wanting peace, and wanting his tirade to end, which fuels my strategy of explaining why it “should” end.

I need to remind myself that empathizing with him doesn’t mean I’m agreeing with his story–it just means I’m taking a moment to seek first to understand, before trying to get understood. This works pretty well with adults. How much more mileage can we get from this technique with young people, who don’t even have the advanced brain development most adults do? But boy, do they know when someone is genuinely trying to understand them.

Please tell me your experience–what happens when you seek first to understand (and check out with the other person whether you got it right), before seeking to be understood?

Oh, and happy Chanukah!

Last week a good friend of mine back east quit his job. His boss, who rarely had anything but criticism and sarcasm for him said, “I didn’t think you’d have the guts to do what’s best for yourself.” Then the two of them sat down and had a heart-to-heart that lasted over two hours!

This got me thinking–it seemed like the boss, too, was caught in some kind of pattern that was harmful even to herself. She experienced a kind of relief, too, when my friend quit–essentially, did the only thing in his power to demand the behavior stop. She also expressed some sadness and regret that things had gone the way they did. Once my friend unilaterally changed the terms of their relationship by walking out, the boss also got freed up to be more herself–got more access to her full humanity.

Which got me thinking about how sometimes we get stuck in patterns we don’t want, or might not even be aware of.  And how we–or our kids–can feel stuck in a pattern, even as we defend our behavior in that pattern. And how making a unilateral decision–in this case, a demand–can turn things around.

Last night, my son tried repeatedly to hit me. I restrained him and told my son in very clear terms that trying to hurt people isn’t a way we deal with feelings in this family. Once he stopped fighting me, he seemed to feel some relief that he didn’t “have to” resort to this behavior that he didn’t feel entirely good about. There’s no real way to sugar coat this–it was a demand. I insisted that he stop hitting, and I restrained him until he stopped and agreed not to try to hurt me. (I am hoping he grows out of this before he becomes too big to restrain…)

I dislike making demands. I would much rather request what I want. But for myself, when it comes to hitting, I have a bottom line–I do demand that it stop. At the same time, I also wanted to maintain my sense of connection with my son.

So, as I held his swinging arms, I explained some reasons I was preventing him from hitting. I was concerned that no one would want to be his friend if he treated them that way. I also told him that when he got older, if he treated people this way, he could wind up in jail, and I didn’t want that to happen. Both true, both seemed to impact him. So it wasn’t just a battle of wills, it was a boundary with a reason attached.

When I was a kid, my parents set rules but rarely enforced them. This gave me an ungrounded sense, that I could somehow float away and not be noticed. I also lost respect for my parents, and felt more powerful than I was comfortable with. So I guess I’ve gone the other direction and now want to make sure my son knows that I am in charge, he has safe boundaries to thrash around in and that I mean what I say.

I also feel pretty clear that hitting is one of the only areas where I feel myself move into “demand” space. Much of the rest of our day-to-day feels like it has more wiggle room.

But I wanted to raise the issue of making demands because I feel like it’s gotten a bit of a bad rap (and maybe I’ve even contributed to that) and I wanted to look at demands in a different light, as something that can bring relief to all parties concerned.

What do you think? Do you make demands, and if so, when? How do you feel about them? How does that work out?

I’m giving the camera a rest and going back to the old familiar keyboard this week. One of you asked, “My son’s a wiggler. Sometimes I need to use force to put him in diapers, into a car seat, or other places. What do you recommend?”

 Here are some things to keep in mind:

 As the parent, you are in charge. As much as we try to create opportunities for autonomy, ultimately, you need to get the family from Point A to Point B. Your child relies on knowing this, and even if they fight you, they get a sense of comfort from you knowing that you’re in charge—this is probably even part of why it seems they’re testing you—to find out if they’re really in a stable container.

 There are many ways to be in charge.  What happens before, during and after you exert force to make something happen, makes all the difference in how your child experiences it, and how your connection is impacted.

 Before:
If you can think of it and remember to do so, giving your child two or three heads-ups before something happens will help them shift internally to prepare for it, so it’s not as much of a surprise. For example, “In five minutes, we’re going to get in the car to go to Grandpa’s, and I’m going to need to put you in the carseat.”

 If you encounter resistance when it’s time to make the transition, here’s one trick that even works with my especially willful child:

 “Do you want to go now, or in two minutes?”
(They’ll probably answer “in two minutes!”)
“Okay, we agree–yay! I’ll be back in two minutes to collect you”

 This gives them a measure of autonomy. Remember, when they fight you, it’s not you they’re fighting—they’re fighting for their sense of autonomy, and to test the boundaries. It’s through this back-and-forth that they develop a feeling for who they are, and a sense of self-confidence. The more you can weave contained opportunities for autonomy into your everyday activities, the more cooperation you’ll get, because your child will pick up on your respect of him, and respond accordingly.

 Okay, but what about when they’re all out, full-on fighting you? And you need to get out the door? Here are some more ideas:

 During:

Here’s how to make the most of a situation where you need to exercise your will over theirs:

1)      Give the heads-ups, as above.

2)      Say what you need, what exactly what you’re going to do, and offer one last out: “I really need to get out the door because…I’m going to give you until three to come with me, then I’m going to pick you up and take you.

3)      DO IT LOVINGLY!!!  This is the most important. I understand you might feel frustrated and powerless—I often do! And we’ll address expressing your own big feelings to your kids soon. There are times when you might need to sound authoritative to get a response—just try to remember the love if you can.

4)       

As you begin to interact, however, pay attention to your tone. There’s a huge difference between, Get in this car or I’ll haul you away with a crane! And Okay, sweetie, here we go, up, up and away, my little airplane! With the latter, you might even get a giggle.

After

Once you’ve decided on a course of action and enforced it, your child may have a lot of feelings: frustration, fear, anger, relief. If you can at least acknowledge and reflect back those feelings, you’ll add to the trust and connection between you.

Here’s the secret: You can listen to your child’s feelings without giving in. Conversely, you can be in charge and set the limits you feel comfortable setting, and still lovingly allow your child to have their feelings about how things are.

Let us know how it goes!
Warmly,

Jill

But enough about me. Karin, one of our readers, had a question about responding to her child, who gets scared of lots of different things. I loved thinking out loud about this. Here’s my response:

This is just a beginning. You can hear Shelly and I talk at length on a broad range of topics involving feelings, ours and our children’s, in our new audio program, Perspectives on Feelings.

Please let us know what you think!

Warmly,

Jill

I hope you enjoyed my short video about how to give kids even more insight into their own feelings. Please let me know what you think! Oh, and keep an eye out for Jill’s first video next week…

Hey there!  I’m so excited about my very first Awake Parent video blog!  In today’s blog I’m answering a question from my friend Marcella, who’s having some challenges with her stepson.  Sometimes he has a “demanding attitude” and Marcella is ready to transform this irritating behavior.  Oh!  And prepare yourself for our new audio program “Perspectives on Feelings” which will be available in August!  More info coming soon about that. First, a quick video on dealing with a demanding attitude…

I would love to know what you think of my video blog.  Please leave your feedback and comments below so that we can offer you the best, most helpful parenting blog ever.  And, if you’d like to share about your own experiences, we’d love to hear them.  Lastly, if you have a specific question you’d like us to write about or record a video on, please email us!

Love and hugs,
Shelly