Conquering an Emotional Mountain

Because I’m a REAL mom, I sometimes lose my cool. I get frustrated, I yell, I threaten time outs and sometimes I cry.

If you follow me on Facebook, then you know, THAT mom, is not the mom I want to be. I believe in parenting that encourages love and support, where we don’t inflict punitive punishment but rather help and encourage our children to feel their emotions and work through them rather than suppress them. Gordon Neufeld’s book ‘Hold on to Your Kids’ was the first parenting book to truly resonate with me and the way I felt like I should be raising my children.

According to the book, here’s the problem with timeouts:

• Almost all misbehavior stems from feeling disconnected from YOU.
• When you punish your child with a time out, you are physically increasing that disconnect.
• This enforces their disconnect with YOU and introduces a level of separation anxiety.
• Your child becomes stuck in a circular, disconnected, anxious state, which results in more misbehavior.

 The solution therefore to the misbehavior is essentially a time-in, which looks like:

• One on one attention from you.
• Permission to feel their emotions, cry and feel supported.
• Validation that their emotions are normal and ok.
• Love, lots and lots of love.

Which sounds all pretty on paper, but in reality this is tough stuff.

How on earth am I supposed to reward my 5 year old with dedicated one on one attention for getting on top of his three year old brother and pounding him in the back, or kicking him in the face, or pushing him on the ground, or overturning furniture? Particularly if there’s only one parent at home? It’s almost impossible, even when the hubs is home.

But it is possible and sometimes it works.

The more often I step into my boys’ world and try to feel their feelings, the more often time-ins are successful at diffusing the big emotions. Sometimes its simply a matter of perseverance and patience.

The point of all this, is that this week, I had a success and it felt so good. I came home to boys that were borderline raging and within moments the tears, screaming, flailing and hitting were all in full force. After about 30 minutes, I managed to get Bolt up to his room and I quite simply, let him be mad. 

I told him I wouldn’t let him hurt me and physically stopped him from hitting me or breaking his toys, I acknowledged that he was having big feelings and not only was that ok, but I was right here with him if he wanted me. I asked him what was bothering him and over the course of the episode he told me he was mad about his dinner, mad he didn’t have a new Skylander, mad his brother touched him and all sorts of random things that irritated him, but I knew weren’t actually the real issue. Then without warning, in the midst of his screaming, he verbalized what was actually bothering him.

I miss my old house.

I don’t like it here.
I want to go back to my old house.

He opened that door and I jumped in with two feet.

When prompted he told me he missed his old bedroom and he missed the train table in his room, which can easily be remedied, but I suspected that still wasn’t actually the issue. So I told him that what I really missed was our family and our friends, and he readily agreed that he missed them too. 

We talked about how hard it is to be away from the people that we love and that we will go and visit everyone soon. We talked about calling our special people on the phone and talking to them on the computer and I reminded him that soon they would come visit us again at our new house. That turned into a discussion about the spare room we had just painted and how much we thought that our family would like having their own room to sleep in.

Before I knew it, we were talking about the Skylander decals on his wall, laughing and giggling.

And when his brother finally came traipsing in, he said Simba, you can come and play with us, I feel better now.  Me and Mom were making up swap names for the Skylanders and that made me feel happy.

I know it was sharing our feelings that made him feel better, not the Skylanders, but I don’t care.

Bolt and I conquered those emotions together and I’m so proud of us, because now I know we CAN do it.

It’s a long road and we’ve been working on this for over a year and though we have had many small successes (and failures) this is the first time I truly felt like we connected and climbed the mountain together and it gives me SO MUCH HOPE.

If you're looking for resources, in addition to Gordon Neufeld, Aha Parenting has great articles and newsletters that I highly recommend.

Help Your Preschooler Manage His Emotions

Back in September I shared a particularly difficult post about my son's aggressive tendencies but I haven't said much more. I've consciously chosen not to write much about the topic, first and foremost because I have to keep my son safe, but also because its a lot of trial and error and I want to make sure I'm sharing the efforts that have been most successful for us.

I think its essential for parents who are walking a similar path, to know they are not alone and I think its equally, important for other parents to get a glimpse inside the struggles of a family whose child doesn't act quite like everyone else.

The Hubs and I have put considerable effort into finding techniques and resources that help us, help our boy. We have had a doctor identify that what we are seeing is likely tied to ADD and anxiety, both of which are prevalent in our families. We are taking this journey one step at a time and we have seen great strides in Bolt's ability to manage his emotions and frustrations over the past few months.

It's a long road and there is no quick fix but here are two simple changes that are helping us, help Bolt.

Don't Acknowledge Negative Behaviour, Correct It - Instead of simply saying 'Stop Hitting Your Brother' and expecting my preschooler to express his needs in a non-physical way, I am learning to lead him by example and show him how to behave both physically and verbally.

I start with the physical: I take his hand and gently stroke his brothers arm while I state in a calm, even voice, 'THIS is how we touch other people, gentle hands'.

Then I give him the verbal language he needs to communicate his needs and feelings; 'Next time you can just tell Simba, I don't want a hug right now'.

End of lesson, I try and leave the positive behaviour I want him to emulate in the forefront of his mind and I'm always cautious not to overwhelm him.

Find Books that Speak to Your Child's Needs - Bolt has always loved books and they allow us to talk about feelings and behaviours in an indirect way that doesn't offend, aggravate or alarm him.

My absolute favourite, MUST-have book right now is The Way I Feel by Janan Cain. Each two page spread addresses a different feeling with an expressive illustration and a simple, concise poem to describe the emotion. If your child has trouble expressing emotions, this book is amazing.

I'm also a huge fan of The Kissing Hand and A Pocket Full of Kisses by Audrey Penn for separation anxiety and sibling jealousy respectively. These books are about Chester the Raccoon who is even one step further removed from my boy's reality, a fact I think Bolt really loves.

The classic Little Critter books have also really been resonating with our boy as of late; I Was So Mad was one of the very first books we found about anger that Bolt really seemed to relate to. I love that there are so many old and new Little Critter stories, so you can get one relevant to almost any situation.

As Bolt get's comfortable with the books he starts to ask why the characters feel a particular emotion and before I know it we are having brief conversations about feelings, which occasionally lead to more personal, incredibly candid discussions.

These books have worked wonders for us, if they don't fit your families needs, find ones that do. I promise you, its worth the effort.

We have made a number of other changes in order to help our family find its groove and I promise to share more of them later. But for now, I'm curious, how do you help your children manage their emotions?

It's all about the choice baby | Potty Training Month 2

I know I've been talking about potty training a lot lately, but its my reality and its exhausting.  For the first time since he was born, I really felt like I was losing a battle with the boy.  He wanted to wear the big boy undies and refused diapers but he also refused to sit on the potty and essentially peed wherever he felt like it. 

We've tried nearly every suggestion I've read to get him to sit on the potty: special books and toys, treats, bribery, reward charts, bubbles in the potty, sitting backwards on the potty, even watching tv while on the potty.  The only thing that's even been remotely helpful has been singing my 'pee pee in the potty' dance after a success.

Given that I see a lot of my brother in the boy, I decided to experiment with a tactic that worked for him.  Growing up, my little brother had ADD and one of the things that works for him is to always offer choices and allow him the illusion of control.

When the boy started to shriek and protest a trip to the potty, I calmly told him it was his choice; he could go pee pee in the potty or he could go and have a time out in his room.  I want to be clear, I was not trying to threaten or scare the boy into using the potty, I simply needed to provide an undesirable second option to increase the odds that he would choose the option I wanted.  Once he thought it through, he promptly chose to head to the washroom where he sat on the potty and went pee almost immediately.  Honestly, it felt like a miracle.

Since I started giving him a choice, he has not once chosen a time out (or time alone in his room as we usually call it) and we have had very few accidents.  The boy seems to be embracing his new role as the big boy and the big brother and its absolutely amazing.

It's been about a week since I introduced the choice and we've had a number of accident free days and even a two-day streak. but yesterday we had two major successes.  First, the boy peed in a public washroom (and on a full size toilet no less) and second, the boy initiated a successful trip to the potty; success truly does taste sweet.

I no longer need to offer a choice everytime I take the boy to the potty, more and more he is understanding how his body works and acts agreeable when its time to go to the potty.  It's true, potty training is a tough road, but they all get it eventually and when we embrace and celebrate the little steps along the way the road doesn't feel quite so bumpy.