Three steps for dealing with children
The method I use involves considering our own feelings, as parents and the child’s feelings and coming up with something that can attempt to accomplish what both parties want. Generally, parenting advice considers the parents’ feelings only because they are the ones that are seen as “knowing what is best” for the child. The problem is that so much of parents’ feelings get all tangled in with deciding what is “best” for someone else that it is best to take the child’s view into account as well.
I am not advocating letting a child make all his or her own choices about how to behave or what decisions to make. It is not that children are developmentally capable of making many of the decisions necessary in daily life; that is why they have parents. But they are able to convey when a decision or expectation is way above their ability or comfort level. I try to read a child’s behavior to tell me whether I am on the right track. This can be difficult because children’s behavior is not always straightforward in response to what the parent does and how the child feels.
There needs to be a negotiation between what the child needs and what the parent needs. After awhile of doing this, it becomes easier and specific steps are not needed, but in the beginning it helps to learn the process. In addition, I find that I use the steps on by one again when I am particularly frustrated and my emotions are getting the better of me.
The steps are simple. I have labeled them Me, You, and Us. Me is the parent thinking about what they want and what they feel about whatever behavior they are dealing with at that moment. You is the child and the parent thinking about why the child is doing what he or she is doing, what they might be trying to get or avoid or is just feeling. Finally, Us is a procedure worked out either entirely by the parent or by an open negotiation with the child of a solution to the parents issue of wanting a behavior stopped or started.
The general idea and perhaps the easiest way to understand this method is to think about recruiting your charges as junior partners in negotiating a plan or a deal for both parties to get some of what they want. This, of course, is not as easy to do as it is to imagine. Parents needs to take stock of what they want from the child and why and then work to develop their skills of “reading” behavior. In the process, they will also have to develop trust. Children will think that it is a “trick” in the beginning, just a way to get them to do what the adults want. The adult needs to work to build the trust that they will listen to the young person and work with them to create a solution that works for both.
I will explain each in depth in future posts.
