Family Matters

Posts Tagged ‘communication’

As with most things in parenting, prevention is a better approach than putting out fires. Prevention is done when you are calm, cool and collecting, while putting out fires is always when things are heated and you and your kid are both emotional and confused. Teaching your kids techniques that will help them make good decisions quickly will make them more independent and ensure they will be able to fulfill their own needs. In return, this will reduce your parenting burden and make you more confident they can manage once they leave home.

Here are some more things you can do on a regular basis when you are relaxed that will help you send a message of respect to your kids and strengthen their “choice muscle”.

Some kids are afraid that because they cannot see a way out, they are stuck. We all get stuck when we do see no option that will get us out of a painful situation or get us to a desired situation.

That is OK, because thinking of options is a skill that needs to be taught. Ask your child, “What’s the worst that can happen?” or “What can go wrong?” or “Tell me the craziest solution you can think of”. It is important to think of options and while I suggest coming up with crazy things, I would like to emphasize you should aim for solutions, not problems. If you focus on endless possible problems, you are going to find them. Looking for many problems is a dangerous zone that may create more fear than help.

Many parents understand the importance of helping their kids make good choices, but they are not sure how to go about it. This post is dedicated to those who want to promote their kids’ independence and help them develop an emotional backbone and confidence, but do not know how.

Accept choice as part of life

Be open and share with your kids stories about situations that have made it hard for you to make choices and how you have solved your dilemmas. It is very important for kids to understand that those situations are part of everyday life and our life is full of choices. Kids generally feel small and helpless and when they understand that you, their almighty parent, feel small and helpless sometimes, that you are not always sure what to do, that you are even afraid sometimes, it will help them be more tolerant towards their own difficult choices. If you talk to them about bad choices you have made and how you have grown from them, that will be of great service to your kids, because they will be able to learn from them too.

All men are created … innocent. Women too, of course. Kids start their life trusting their parents completely and following in their footsteps, which is very reassuring, but as soon as they become teenagers, critical thinking kicks in and they start to “see the cracks” and question everything.

Most parents find this annoying and challenging and resent their budding grownups for “bugging” them with their doubts and endless second-guessing. Those same parents typically frowned at them when they were 1 year old and walked around, pointing at things and asking, “What’s this?” When they were 2 years old, their parents became frustrated that they wanted to do everything themselves, and when they were 4, the parents were upset because no matter what happened, they kept asking, “Why?”

But these tender ages, along with the rest of childhood, are a time of discovery, and questions keep our kids’ mind sharp, teaching them about the world at their own pace and according to their own interests. In short, questions are good.

There are several types of questions, each with its own advantages and disadvantages, and all very useful in parenting and generally in life.

I know many grownups that cannot choose. It just so happened they were kids who could not choose and their parents did not help them overcome this. Not being able to choose is being overwhelmed by choices. Sometimes, it is so severe they struggle even when they have only two options to choose from. For some, it is a character trait (those kids seem to be procrastinators), but most have just had no chance to practice choosing and enjoy the ride.

The best way to get over this is to teach kids strategies for making decisions and to give them opportunities to practice. The most wonderful thing is that you need to do it systematically only for three weeks to start noticing change. Many of my clients, even those parenting babies and teenagers, say their kids have fewer “tantrums”, they express themselves better, it is much easier to communicate with them and they are more confident, more decisive and less “hormonal”.

Kids need to learn to make choices and it is our job to give them opportunities to do so in situations that are not so critical to allow them to gain confidence and learn that there are advantages and disadvantages to the options in front of them. You can give your kids opportunities in many areas of life.

In our home, we have been creating systematic ways to give the kids opportunities to make choices regarding food. They can choose what they want for dinner, what to make (if they are making it), what to buy from the market and how much to put on their plate.

When I was a girl, my mom used to serve us food and we had to eat whatever she put on our plate. Sometimes, she would put too much and we were forced to finish it. I never liked it and always thought it did not show respect to us kids and did not help us make our own judgment about how much would make us feel full. Kids can always have “seconds” and no one likes waste. Gal and I decided that in our family, the kids would serve their own food. When they were too young, we put a little bit and asked them, “One more spoon?” or “Would you like some more?” before putting it on their plate. Kids need to learn to say to themselves “That is enough for me” or “That is too much for me”. Let them serve their own food.

Last week, Ronit and I saw a movie that made me think there are some people with no love in their heart. Then, we attended a wedding ceremony that was all about love, and that got me thinking about parents’ role in making the world a more loving place for their children. Since Christmas is coming and we will have a lot more time with our kids, the timing is perfect.

The film we saw was called The Whistleblower. It is a story of an American police officer who works for the United Nations’ peacekeeping forces in Bosnia and uncovers a women trafficking operation. We sat on big, soft cushions on the grass at a park by the Brisbane River, the weather was perfect, the atmosphere was magical, we were happy for the chance to get away for a bit in each other’s company.

Then, the movie started.

The level of brutality shown on the screen by the traffickers towards the women, the complete disregard for the law and the strong violation of every moral system I could think of disturbed me to the core. I had to struggle to keep watching some scenes and felt terrible for poor Ronit who is generally more sensitive than I am.

When we talked about the movie in the car on the way home, we both wondered what would compel anyone to abuse another person in such a way. Our conclusion was that these people had no love in their hearts. Not romantic love. Kindness, compassion, empathy, tenderness, comradery, friendship and understanding towards another human being.

On their second year, kids start their journey towards independence and they need their parents to help them “write their declaration of independence” before they can sign it and go their own way. The longer they work on this, the more opportunities they have to receive guidance, try different things, make mistakes in a safe environment and become skilled at making choices.

Independence is all about making our own choices. The choices children make are small at first, but we all know that one day they will need to make big choices and our job as parents is to help them enjoy the process and trust their own judgment.

How to give your kids choices

1. Start early. When your kids are very young, it is much easier to give them choices, because they are not sophisticated enough to notice that your choices have boundaries around them. For example, if you want them to drink their milk, you can say, “Do you want your milk in the blue cup or the green cup?” It may take more than one time to get them to realize they have a choice, but you get them to drink the milk and give them a choice at the same time.

Our world today is a stressful place, full of pressure from every direction. That much is obvious. In fact, there are many things designed specifically to put pressure on us and keep us feeling stressed, and they are getting stronger and stronger over time.

Being a parent and having to raise kids adds another dimension to the pressure, because we not only have to stay calm ourselves, we also have to help our children relax and teach them how to handle pressure or everyone will go nuts.

I was unlucky in that respect.

My dad was raised by a very strict father, who taught him there was a “right” way to do everything – eat, dress, shave, speak, study, work and behave. Every other way was “wrong”. This was not a matter of personal preference but of “general consensus” and he treated any deviation from propriety with the same high severity.

There were things my dad decided not to do to me, like using physical violence. I was not beaten as a child, although my dad was beaten when he was little. That was a good thing. However, I grew up with strict rules I was expected to follow and not many things were open for discussion.

But I have come a long way since then and you can too.

As hard as it is for parents to imagine, one day, their baby is going to sign their own declaration, leave home and be independent. Kids strive for independence from the age of 1½ to 2 years old, when you try to dress them and they say, “No, no, me”, and keep trying to do things themselves.

Much like many countries around the world, kids can get their independence after war and “bloodshed” or after signing a “peace treaty” with the society around them. And much like the independence of countries is mainly the result of what their leaders do, with kids, it is a mainly the result of what their parents do.

Do you feel it is a heavy responsibility? Well, it is! But if you think deeply about it, you will find that power goes hand in hand with responsibility. Parents have lots of power in leading their kids to design their declaration of independence and sign it.

If you talk to most parents (when they are calm), they will tell you that independence is very important. Yet when I ask them how if they teach independence, they talk about chores. My mom did the same. She said, “If you do the dishes from the age of 10, when you live in your own home, you will be able to do the dishes”. We told her, “No, Mom. If I wash the dishes from the age of 10, by the time I am grown up, I will hate and resent it so much I will avoid washing the dishes”.

Even though my mom did not think that fun and motivation had anything to do with the kind of grownups we would become, she still wanted us to be independent. I think that much like many other parents, she confused doing chores with independence.

I think there is a lot of confusion among parents between happy kids and spoiled kids. Sometimes, out of fear of spoiling our kids, we guarantee they will be miserable.

I heard about the fear of spoiling kids when my first daughter Eden was born. Everyone around me said, “Don’t hold her all day. You’ll spoil her”.

I never liked the word “spoil”. I did not understand how anyone could think of spoiling such a wonderful, perfect, divine creature. I always felt that hugging Eden and holding her was more for me than for her anyway.

As time passed, I realized they were trying to tell me to find the balance, to avoid creating a dependency, to give and get space and to provide and gain freedom. It is sad the only word that can include all those ideas was “spoil”.

I find the idea that showing love to our children is risky very disturbing. I talk to many parents at my parenting workshops and discover that this old fear is still there.

I think people came up with the idea to justify not being able to give their kids what they thought they should. For example, if they feel tired of holding a baby for a long time, they come up with the justification that holding a baby the whole day would spoil the baby. Why can we not just admit that part of what we do for our kids, we actually do for ourselves?

Last Sunday, Ronit ran a parenting workshop and I came in the afternoon to help her pack. When I arrived, she was still talking to the parents about rules and boundaries and mentioned the way she used “family rules” to avoid conflicts with the kids.

That reminded me of the time when I wanted to register for a software engineering course at the local university. The course I wanted was popular and all the places were taken, so I rang during my lunch break to ask to be put on the waiting list.

“I’m sorry, Sir, but you’ll have to come in person and fill out the waiting list form”, the administrator told me.

“Can you please just take my details and put me on the list?”

“I’m sorry, Sir, but it’s university policy”, she said.

Boy, was I pissed off at this. I was spewing for weeks afterwards. It may have even contributed to my later stomach ulcer. Or not.

Over the years that followed, more and more companies structured their operations in such a way that clients could not get their way. Not easily, anyway. When I rang Customer Service, I would bump into First Line staff who were basically trained parrots. The term “company policy” rang in my ears more and more often. It was infuriating.

But at some point, Ronit and I learned how to use the same trick to our advantage as parents. Oh, sweet revenge!