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Personal Development

Positive Intent in Parenting

January 30, 2019 by admin Leave a Comment

I love making cross-disciplinary connections and because I’m always reading something in a variety of subjects I end up drawing all sorts of connections to the various subjects I study and love. Today, while wearing my business school professor hat, I read an article on Forbes about “The Hidden Power of Assuming Positive Intent” as it relates to business situations, and I immediately thought of how this would be a valuable exercise as a parent, or as a Montessori teacher.

I believe that humans are always doing their best, in whatever situation they are in. No one aims to do their worst. Even when people (whether they are children or adults) are “behaving badly” there is some aspect of their behavior that makes sense in getting their needs met, no matter how they are going about it. They are trying to survive, feel better, even if the result is seemingly destructive or negative.

For example, imagine the child who throws things in the house when they have been told not to. Your immediate thought might be, “They are ruining that toy and they are probably going to break the TV. What is wrong with them? Don’t they care about their things? Are they ungrateful? I already told them how throwing could break the TV and they are still doing it, they don’t respect me and they don’t care!”

It would be understandable to have thoughts like this. But you can reinterpret the whole thing differently, if you assume positive intent. Become curious about what is GOOD about this situation.

1. Your child feels comfortable disobeying you.

While you may not appreciate this one on its face, there is something about a child whose spirit is strong enough to not listen to instructions. Sure, we want kids to learn the rules of the home and the world, but we also want them to be independent. Think of the far opposite extreme, a child who ONLY does what we say, is afraid to do anything but please others. We would be worried about that child and how they will fare in life.

2. Your child is getting some great gross motor activity in and conducting experiments about their world.

Throwing is a whole body experience. It’s an experiment in cause and effect, not only in the physical world, but in the interpersonal world.

“I want to throw this doll.”
“It’s fun to throw this doll.”
“Look how her dress and hair spins around when I throw her!”
“What happens when I throw the doll underhand vs. overhand?”
“What if I throw it higher/faster?”
“What if I throw it over there?”
“Mom told me not to, I wonder if she’ll notice…I wonder how much throwing is okay, because I sort of half-threw the doll a second ago and she didn’t stop me, but now I’ll throw it even more and see what happens.”

Look at all this amazing stuff going on in your child’s head on a mostly subconscious level and probably in a split-second. When you can put yourself inside their brain, you can see there is no bad intent. You are learning something about them, and then you can even help them get what they need.

For example, if you are not okay with them throwing that particular toy, can they throw a different one? Or if you are not okay with them throwing indoors or in a certain room, can you tell them what they can throw and where they can throw it? Can you ask them what they like, or offer ideas? Be playful. It will help you connect and also not be so frustrated when you realize what is going on in your child’s mind is usually very, very innocent and curious.

3. Sounds implausible. I know my kid is just trying to make me mad.

You might thinking, “Honestly, I know my kid and they love seeing me get angry after they don’t listen to me. It’s like a game.”

To which I say, “BINGO!” You just solved it yourself – think about what is positive about them trying to get your goat. Remember, YOU are your child’s favorite toy. You getting mad and even potentially punishing them IS the game. Again, assume positive intent. Assume the goal isn’t just your misery. What does your misery provide them that is positive in some way?

“Mom is always so busy. I feel sad. I want her attention. She didn’t notice when I was playing quietly which is what she says she wants me to do all the time. So I’ll scream/throw the doll/paint on the wall to see if she notices me.”

In response to their bad behavior, you may stop what you are doing, and spend some time with them which is what they want. You are talking to them, sure you might be angry, but at least it’s something. You are spending time with them, maybe you walk over, point to the toy, and explain rules or more. This is a form of quality time they have just so creatively won from you. Now, you don’t want this kind of quality time, because it’s not yielding much that is positive in and of itself. So shift your focus to giving your child positive attention before it gets to the point they want negative attention.

This all sounds like a lot of work

That’s one way to think of it, but I’d suggest a more positive spin! Sure, it will take practice to remind yourself to use positive intent, but actually seeing a new side of things is not as difficult as you might think. Your brain is happy (and hard-wired) to just do the work for you if you tell it to. It’s called confirmation bias, which can be used for very positive or negative effects in any area of life. See, the brain is very good at taking a task we give it and running with it. If we tell our brain, “This is a bad kid, or this is a kid behaving badly.” The brain will go, “Okay, I will now find all the evidence this is true for you.” And it goes to work. So if you simply tell your brain, “I think there is another, more positive reason this child is acting this way, maybe even opposite of what I originally thought.” Your brain will just go to work on that instead. It’s like magic. So use that magic to your advantage. You’ll be a more creative thinker, better, probably happier and more fulfilled parent if you don’t always think of parenting and the difficult behaviors from kids as all bad.

Filed Under: Parenting, Personal Development

How to Neutralize Negative Parenting Thoughts

May 28, 2018 by admin Leave a Comment

Person holds up stencil of a frustrated expression on a cartoon face.

Photo by Andre Hunter, Unsplash.com

“I’m so tired.”

“I cannot believe they are doing this again.”

“Why can’t they just eat over their plates? I’m so sick of sweeping under the table…”

“Why don’t they understand that they need their bookbag/coat/boots/shoes/homework every morning?”

“What in the world could they [my children] possibly be unhappy about?”

*************************************

Do any of these thoughts sound familiar? If so, you are not alone and you are a normal parent, and you have normal children.

This post is not about solving any of these problems or questions, well at least not directly. This post is about managing the thoughts, and therefore, emotions that arise in the course of parenting, and in doing so, you might just find what you thought was a problem is simply not appearing to you as problematic any longer.

In Montessori training there is the concept of the preparation of the teacher, which is undertaking self-study, self-observation (and really, self control) in all aspects of interacting with the children in the classroom. Dr. Montessori believed this preparation was more important than mastery of the academic subjects the teachers were to pass on to the students. I believe this same kind of self-mastery can be applied to the parent-child relationship and life in the home as well. Not only that, I believe it is crucial for our home and family life to thrive.

In The Discovery of the Child, Dr. Montessori said:

“The teacher must fashion herself, she must learn how to observe, how to be calm, patient, and humble, how to restrain her own impulses, and how to carry out her eminently practical tasks with the required delicacy.”

This is a tall order and a true calling. While almost any Montessori teacher will agree – being a teacher to a child in a classroom and being a parent to a child in the home is a completely different undertaking, I don’t see any reason why these principles cannot be applied by parents.

There is a lot of advice out there that talks about self-care, time management, hiring help – and while those things are great and if you have time and resources to support you in your parenting journey, then by all means, employ them. But not every parent has resources. Some parents have multiple children, or multiple challenges. As a mom of three kids close in age who manages a child with a 24/7 chronic illness, I often feel frustrated with advice that tells me to take a break or hire help if I’m feeling worn down. I really just don’t have that option. But I also don’t have the option to allow my circumstances to make me unhappy and bitter – because I am not and I want to be able to choose how I feel and how I parent.

So how do we parent through difficult situations? How can we ensure we do not let negative thoughts overrun our minds?

The first step is to recognize the thoughts will occur. Just accept that we are going to have negative thinking. This is very human. When we accept our negative thoughts we can more easily move on. When we start to feel guilt or shame about them, we actually run the risk of giving those negative thoughts more weight, and perpetuating more negativity about ourselves, which doesn’t help us or our child, or whatever the situation happens to be that is causing us to have negative thoughts.

The next step is to start observing our thoughts and bringing awareness to them.

Observation is key. If we are not observing ourselves while we parent to see what is successful and what is not, we run the risk of just going on autopilot, taking the path of least resistance, which may lead to what life coach Brooke Castillo has termed indulgent emotions (this particular podcast episode is one I have listened to many times, it is such valuable training to learn and internalize). Indulgent emotions have a sort of roller coaster effect, self-perpetuating because we repeat them so often. We are not even aware we are thinking them. She recommends observing your thoughts for a day, and list your top three emotions you experience during a day. I did this and was surprised to notice I often thought, “I’m so tired.” I’d think this whether I was busy or not, whether I was well-slept or not. It had simply become a habit to say that to myself. I decided that was unhelpful and I wanted to change that.

Once we have a good sense of what exactly we are thinking, we can then employ some kind of tool to evaluate and hopefully change the negative thought. You can do this informally by simply checking with yourself throughout the day, asking yourself quick questions.

For example, “How did our morning go? Could I have done something differently in the moment? Is there a change I could make that would help every morning go more smoothly?”

A question I ask myself a lot is, “Is this reasonable?” This is a great catch-all question for my expectations of my child or of myself. For example, when my 7 year old is supposed to be in bed and sees me pass by their room and calls out for “just one more hug!?” I might ask myself, “Is this reasonable?”

 

My answer might change depending on the day. Maybe yes, she had a hard day and needs those extra hugs. Maybe no, I have had a hard day and I remind her it’s time to be asleep or at least still and quiet in bed.

As you can see, this is not about being scripted and always responding the “right way”, whatever that might be. I believe we have to be flexible in our observations and willing to be patient with our children and with ourselves and creatively discover how to get all our needs met.

Another one of my favorite and quickest tools I have found is to employ neutral thinking. I am a huge fan of neutral thinking where positive thinking is just not realistic. The reason is that it is very difficult to take a negative thought like, “I can’t stand when my child won’t get ready on time. I’m so sick of this.” And turn it into, “I just love how my child takes their time and are their own person. What a lovely experience! I have no problem with this.” Yeah, that’s not happening.

You could, however, turn the thought into, “My child really is acting normally for their age and current situation. I can handle this disruption in our schedule by making some adjustments.” See how the thought is neutralized? You are just acknowledging the situation, you are taking the sting of emotion out of it, and just keeping things on an even keel.

You are moving into a more positive space by saying, “I can handle this.” You don’t have to be puppy dogs and rainbows about everything – that is just putting way too much pressure on yourself. However, you might be surprised how training yourself in neutral thinking makes positive thinking so much easier to access. Since I started my Montessori training and working in a Montessori classroom with master teachers, I have been so inspired by their composure. I have learned little tricks, phrases, and emotion management tools just by observing them. Quite frankly, just seeing that it is possible to stay completely calm no matter what a classroom throws at a teacher, and then seeing the response in the students who also stay calm has been so informative (if not totally miraculous).

Neutral thinking is a crucial step in moving towards positive thinking. When you are doing thought work you have to take small steps toward change, change you can actually believe. You might get to a point where one day you really do embrace every tiny moment along the way, but until then, just work on accepting the moments neutrally.

Another quick tool is an old favorite that everyone knows about, because it really works. Find a mantra, a short phrase you can repeat to yourself that is a catch-all for how you want to be as a parent. For example, “I love my kids.” Or, “I can handle this.” Or, “This too shall pass.” Any short phrase that will trigger a new feeling or a new way of acting positively can really be so helpful.

If you have more time to do some thought work as a parent, you may wish to employ a more thorough method that Brooke Castillo calls “The Model” and has a detailed video about it on her site. She uses an acronym CTFAR to prompt you to walk through the Circumstances, Thoughts, Feelings, Actions, and Results in any situation you want to evaluate, or “model.”

For example, you just start with the facts, then move into the effects of how your thinking causes certain results:

Circumstance: my child is getting ready so slowly we are going to be late for school

Thought: I am so sick of this. I can’t deal with it this morning.

Feeling: frustration, irritation, overwhelm

Action: snapping at my child, dressing my child myself in a hurried way

Result: a child who feels hurried and confused about what they are doing wrong, a parent who is upset and frazzled, starting their day on the wrong foot.

It should be obvious enough that the more we repeat the same thoughts, we will get the same results. And if we keep getting results we don’t like, we need to trace the line back to the thoughts that started the chain of feelings, actions, and results in order to change.

You might be thinking, “No! The child needs to change! The child needs to stop dilly-dallying.”

Well. Maybe. (See how I neutralized that objection? 🙂 ) But if they could, they would have by now. For whatever reason the child is dilly-dallying and while we can find ways to guide the child to be more focused, the only person we have 100% control over is ourselves. This is a really important point I want to explore further another time. But for now just be clear: we do not have control over our children, and the false belief/thought that we do or we should leads to a lot of parenting problems.

So let’s change the thought to something neutral using the same circumstance.

New Thought: This delay is not going to derail the whole day, even if it’s inconvenient. Maybe I can learn something here and adjust our morning routine going forward.

Feeling: in control, optimistic, creative

Action: taking action, teaching my child how to be on task, proactive about how to handle future mornings

Results: even if this morning’s commute is delayed, future mornings will probably run more smoothly

I have been employing these techniques for a while now, and they make such a huge difference in my parenting, relationships, and how I view the problems I encounter as a parent. I hope you find these tips and links to resources as helpful as I have. I would also love to see some more sample models in the comments!

Filed Under: Montessori, Parenting, Personal Development, Thought Work Tagged With: neutral thinking, thought work

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Hi, I’m Milena!

Milena Thomas

Welcome to Noms with Moms where I talk about practical living and all forms of nourishment with kids.

My main inspiration for this blog comes from Montessori, which has inspired me over a lifetime. I was a Montessori child, I became a Montessori mom, and now I am also a Montessori teacher!

My goal as a parent has always been to find child and age-appropriate ways to do just about anything and everything with my kids, and I want to encourage other parents to do the same.

I believe that becoming a parent expands our lives, and we can share our wealth of experiences, interests and passions with our children.

Do you love to travel? Travel with your kids! Our family moved to China for a year.

Do you love to cook? Cook with your kids! My 3 year old loves baking muffins.

You are getting the idea, right?

Parents are a child’s first and best teachers – they provide them with what Dr. Montessori called an “aid to life.” I hope to show you creative ways to live your own best life, with your kids.

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