What if the child does not want to obey? This is one of the most difficult questions facing parents of young children. Two American psychotherapists offer their own method, which, they assure, will resolve parental difficulties and help to negotiate with the child.
Previously, when a child did not obey, parents did not hesitate to resort to punishment, including corporal punishment. The new generation of parents does not accept violence and relies on love. But it turns out that this doesn’t always work. You still need to set boundaries with your children. But how to do that?
American psychotherapists Heather Tergen and Julia Wright in the new book “Now Say This” suggest that frustrated parents use a three-step method called ALP, from the English words attune (tuning), limit set (explaining restrictions or rules) and problem solve (problem solve) .
“Our experience and decades of research confirm that when parents are both empathic and consistent, their children are much more likely to develop and be guided by a natural understanding of what is good and what is bad, rather than behaving well just out of fear or because their he sees,” Tergen and Wright say.
The ALP method helps resolve many of the problems parents face, including nervous breakdowns, outright disobedience, resistance to going to bed, conflicts with siblings, and fights over computer access.
Show your child that you are trying to understand his feelings, even if his behavior seems completely irrational.
How this method is used can be shown with a simple example. You are in the toy section of a children’s store and your child is crying and refusing to leave. Proceed step by step:
1. Adjustment. Squat down so that your faces are at the same level, make eye contact. Gently and kindly explain that you understand what upset him. “Of course, it’s hard to leave such a wonderful place!”
2. Explanation of rules or restrictions. Describe the situation in a calm, neutral tone: “We’re going to have to leave now because we need to pick up your sister from school.” Speak briefly and clearly, a long speech will only divert the attention of the child.
3. Problem solving. Offer some kind of compromise that motivates the child to behave properly: “If you want, take my hand and let’s go, and along the way we will sing our favorite songs. If you want, I will take you in my arms and take you to the car. The ability to make a choice between the proposed options for the child is very important.
Show your child that you are trying to understand his feelings, even if his behavior seems completely irrational. The reasons for his behavior may seem stupid to us, but for the child at this moment they are more important than anything in the world.
The main thing is that parents not only guide the child, but show empathy at the same time, psychotherapists say. This shows that our goal is to help him, and not to condemn or scold him, which can only worsen the situation.
That’s why Tergen and Wright recommend avoiding the typical phrases that parents tend to use in their parenting scripts. For example, from these:
- “Don’t worry, get it out of your head! Are you okay!”
- “How many times have I told you not to do that!”
- “I am tired of you!”
- “Why aren’t you listening?”
- “If you don’t stop behaving like that, you will be left without sweets!”
- “Stop crying, you’re acting like a little kid!”
- “Because I said so!”
All these phrases will only exacerbate the child’s unwanted behavior, they should be avoided at all costs, because they mean that you do not take the child’s distress seriously. And in the future, this can lead to very serious communication problems.
Children need our empathy as much as they need clear rules and well-defined boundaries.
“Communication assumes that we form a secure attachment in a child, learn to recognize each other and communicate,” psychotherapists say. “The long-term goal of parenting is for the child to gradually learn to talk about their feelings and problems in their own words. The more complicated feelings he has, the more important he feels safe telling us about it.”
If parents talk to their child in a serious and thoughtful way when they are young, chances are that when they get older they will have an open and honest dialogue.
“At difficult moments, it is extremely important not to succumb to an involuntary, instinctive impulse and not start scolding the child, talking harshly with him, withdrawing, or otherwise disrupt communication in some way,” emphasize Tergen and Wright.
If you can’t cope with a child, it’s worth reflecting on two questions: what do you yourself expect from the closest person in difficult moments of your life and what do you sometimes get from people you don’t like? The child needs to be shown that he is heard, listened to and understood – this is the central idea of the new methodology. Children need our empathy as much as they need clear rules and well-defined boundaries.
Sources: independent.com, bubble.com