Great Ways to Communicate With Your Child - Part 6

From Head to Heart
This is the final installment of the series and it sums everything together. It’s about helping our children take the lessons we teach from their heads to their hearts.
While I’m not a fan of rebellion, I understand the spirit behind it – forging an identity separate from that of your parents. Not such a bad thing, if done properly. And if you listen to your child’s heart closely and carefully, you can escape a lot of the drama of teenage rebellion by making allowances for them to shape their own experiences.

1. Start with Regular Daily Communication – asking them tons of questions about their day is fine, but make sure you share about your day. For every question you ask them, be sure to address items from your own day. Talk about highs and lows, successes and failures, excitements and disappointments, about your mistakes and lessons learned and ask them what they might do if they were in your place. This lets them into your experiences and then gives you an in to theirs. Everyone’s defenses are down and dialogue will only grow.
   
2. Add Quality Time – Include quality time that includes interaction and dialogue. Find out what they love doing and do it with them. Also introduce some of your hobbies and let them share in your life. One of my favorite things is doing chores together with my boys. Working together on a common goal is a great bonding experience and you share in the success of the job well done.
   
3. Increase Instruction, Reduce Demands – As our children grow up, we want to move away from the hand-holding and start to provide them choices hat have real options for failure that can allow you to teach. Perhaps you allow them to create their own after-school schedule. This is a good one because it reveals your child’s priorities. Then give it a go and after a few days or a week, sit down and talk about what worked, what didn’t and how to improve upon it and turn them loose again. This makes them feel a bit more in control of their lives and decisions, which is important. If we continue to make every decision, we’ll have 40 year olds at home who expect to be woken up for work, have their clothes washed and their bills paid … by us. Allowing them to experience the natural consequences of success and failure will create more responsible children who can be confident in their decisions because they have learned how to make adjustments when they fail and know how to stick to things that work. Try it with money management, chore schedules, etc. It’s something we do in our family and we’ve seen it really help our kids with other types of decision making as well. I’m not suggesting passive parenting. I’m only suggesting finding teaching opportunities in everything.
   
4. Don’t Hassle them about their Friends – So you don’t like their friends - express it and share why. Then do the opposite of what you would normally do and teach them about character. It’s what we did. Deion had some poorly chosen friends who we thought would be negative influences. We shared our concern. He disagreed and we knew he would. So we then decided to spend time teaching him about how to choose friends based on character. After a couple of months, he changed friends WITHOUT our asking him to. Why? Because choosing good friends based on good character became his conviction, too. He saw the benefit of it. And that killed the possibility of rebellion, as well.
   
5. Let them Struggle with Things – As kids grow up into teens, they become notoriously lazy and inquisitive, and they challenge the rules more. These are all good things for the parent who is ready to teach their children how to survive in the world. My boys ask me how to spell stuff, I direct them to the dictionary. They ask me where the Lysol wipes are, I tell them to look for them where they think they might be. If they really can’t find them, I’ll give a clue, but I’m beyond just telling them to look in the cupboard. If they come to me on Sunday night asking for their gym clothes to be washed, I tell them to figure it out. They know Saturday is wash day and if they didn’t get it down, they’re out of luck. Now I’m not saying that you never throw them a bone and remind them, but do it too often and it never reaches their heart. Nothing like a zero in gym or having to stay after school to make up assignments to help them learn about responsibility. Let them struggle. Let them feel the consequences of failure. Perseverance leads to maturity. I rarely help Deion with homework. I’ll check it, but I make him figure out why I ‘x-ed’ question 16 on his math worksheet. Frederick Douglas said that without struggle there can be no progress. He’s dead on. Let them struggle, but do so with love. Keep the letter of the law without violating the spirit of it.

I’ll conclude with a story related to teaching and struggling. I hope you enjoy it.

A man found a cocoon of a butterfly. One day a small opening appeared. He sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to squeeze its body through the tiny hole. Then it stopped, as if it couldn't go further. So the man decided to help the butterfly. He took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bits of cocoon. The butterfly emerged easily but it had a swollen body and shriveled wings. The man continued to watch it, expecting that any minute the wings would enlarge and expand enough to support the body. Neither happened! In fact the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around. It was never able to fly. What the man in his kindness and haste did not understand: The restricting cocoon and the struggle required by the butterfly to get through the opening was a way of forcing the fluid from the body into the wings so that it would be ready for flight once that was achieved. Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our lives. Going through life with no obstacles would cripple us.We will not be as strong as we could have been and we would never fly. So have a nice day and struggle a little and teach well.

Chris

Great Ways to Communicate With Your Child - Part 5

Communication In Conflict

There are three stages of a relationship: Intimacy, Conflict and Withdrawal. I learned this once in a marriage class, but I think it applies to all relationships, especially parent-child.

When we have intimacy with our children, we’re meeting each other’s needs. We’re spending quality time with our kids, we’re having family time together, we have a good marriage (if we’re married) that our kids see and our children are respectful, responsive, obedient and in an environment that allows them to be open and expressive. Now don’t be fooled, conflict is here. Intimacy allows us to let our guard down. When we are unguarded because we feel close to someone, we tend get easily irritated by one another. That’s a sign of genuine intimacy and caring. We don’t usually associate that with intimacy, but it is intimate. Basically, if we didn’t care about someone or their words, we wouldn’t get irritated. We’d ignore them or they would ignore us.

Conflict happens when we’re not meeting our kid’s needs or they aren’t meeting ours (usually respecting us, obeying us, following instructions, etc). That’s when we go from irritation to taking little swipes at one another. For a parent, it may be issuing uneven consequences like taking away a cell phone for a month because the trash wasn’t taken out or reminding the child without an active father that he’s going to be just like that father when he grows up. That’s actually one I heard growing up quite a bit during my moments of conflict with my guardians. It hurts and they knew it, but that’s the goal in conflict. To make someone hurt worse than you’re hurting. For it to get like that, it takes a buildup of unmet needs. For a child, acting out and behavior issues are the signs that there is conflict in the air. Most kids just want more attention and the conflict will end. Remember the old adage: negative attention is better than no attention. It’s true.

Withdrawal comes when you find it too painful to deal with a person. This is mostly found on the child’s side. They feel like we always come down hard on them, never listen to or value their opinions, are judgmental, sharp tongued and unappreciative of their efforts. That’s when you have the classic teenager locking themselves in the bedroom or bathroom. That’s withdrawal. Some phases are signs of withdrawal, as well. Stay on top of those. Withdrawal is too much hurt, not enough understanding.

So what’s the best way to get out of Conflict and Withdrawal? Be a humble listener and get into their pain or invite them into yours. As parents we hate to find out that we are the source of our kid’s greatest pain, but by listening to them and NOT responding at all, we can hear everything and in turn we can sift it to find out what is truth and what their perception of the situation is. Then we can figure out where we need to change in order to restore lines of communication. Yes, I said we must change. As parents, if we are to expect humility from our kids, we have to take the high road in every conflict. Something we’ve done before is let the boys expressly point out what we need to fix in our parenting and our marriage and we take it on the chin. No rebuttal. No cross-examination. It’s amazing what they see. But what’s more amazing is that it gives them confidence that they can open up to us without fear of rejection or lashing out. It also allows us to offer them constructive criticism and point out things we see in them that need to change and it’s met with welcome hearts. Like I said before, we have to earn the right to be critical.

And so what if their perception is wrong? If we attack that notion, we lose them. If we turn it back on them and attack their failures and mistakes, we lose them. Fight the temptation to lecture back with things like, “I’m like that because you do xyz” or “If you would just do as you’re told I wouldn’t be so mean.” Instead just listen, smile and nod. It’ll hurt you some, maybe even make you cry, but it’ll help them exponentially. The following day, you can sit down with your child and discuss everything they have shared. Share with them why you do what you do. Talk to them about their actions and consequences which led you to whatever decisions you’ve had to make. Help them to understand why you do what you do and how they can help restore intimacy by making certain changes in their lives, too. Let them talk first, and then you respond appropriately. Then you talk and they can respond appropriately. This helps ward off the possibility of a fear dance because everyone gets heard and validated. Then end the conversation with words of affirmation and affection. We always make sure we hug our kids and let them know that we love them so that they never perceive themselves as the problem, but realize it’s things within them that need to change. This approach has really helped our boys grow in their character and it doesn’t compromise their self-esteem. Instead, it allows them to attack the issue and grow, which builds up.

And that will get you back into intimacy and bring you closer together.

Chris

Great Ways to Connect With Your Child - Part 4

My apologies for the long lapse since my last post. I’ve had some challenging circumstances that I’ve had to overcome that have demanded a lot of time and energy.

Please keep my former roommate and dear friend, Monty, in your thoughts and prayers as well as my friend, Russ. Monty had cardiac arrest and is in need of a heart transplant. Russ’s aunt had cardiac arrest and is in critical, but stable condition. Please remember my friend Jeff’s uncle, Joe. He is in ICU with a grim prognosis after wiping out on his boogie board and severely damaging his spine and neck. Thank you.

The ‘Fear Dance’

So what is the ‘Fear Dance?’ The fear dance occurs when change is dependent upon someone else’s actions. Let me illustrate it like this: We all know that children have a way of using “civil disobedience” techniques to get under our skin as much as we have a way of suspending privileges over their heads to get what we want done. That’s classic fear dancing. Since I can’t have what I want, you won’t get what you want. For the child it’s never an outright, “I’m not going to do it, mom!” It’s more of a “Can I eat breakfast first?” or “Can I take a shower first?” or “I was going to walk Scruffy first.” It’s stall techniques to keep from having to do anything that sounds like responsibility.

You have to know your kid here. Sometimes their requests are genuine. Other times, they’re inviting us to the dance floor. They want to do anything to not have to do whatever it is we want them to do when we want it done, and they hope that in our frustration we will change our minds or soften our stance. That’s the 'change dependent on someone else’s actions' part. If you can change, they can win - if you can say, “Fine, you can go out, but when you get home you need to have that room clean!” As parents, we need to see that for what it is -- manipulation. That whole, “Thanks, mom!” and the peck on the cheek is like the kiss of Judas. It’s the “I-knew-you’d-see-it-my-way” kiss. It’s dangerous.

So how do you eliminate the fear dance?

Set the expectations ahead of time. Let them know on Monday that if the room isn’t clean on Saturday morning by 11, that they won’t be going to the movies with their friends. No exceptions. No excuses. You’ve been warned. Make sure they know and understand that there will be consequences if they don’t follow instructions, complete school work and hand it in and obey the first time you speak to them. These pre-emptive strikes protect you from having to dance later because you weren’t clear, or as my teens famously say, “But you NEVER said that!”
Teens are more drainers than givers. They will push more buttons, engage in fewer conversations, debate more critically, demand more time, fill up more schedule and defy more openly than they did when they were younger. It’s a great training ground. If we can use the teen years to teach more and hand-hold less, we’ll raise more responsible citizens. And if we can demonstrate humility with our children by hearing their concerns and thoughts and showing a willingness to discuss their objections and share how we came to our decision, they can understand us and we can understand them and the lines of communication will remain open. When we as parents can get beyond the exasperating, ‘Just do what I say” attitude, we can then tell the DJ to pack up and go home.

Chris