By-Erik Barker.
Most advice on parenting focuses on how to deal with misbehavior. While helpful, this is also akin to only offering advice on how to survive aftera nuclear holocaust and not talking about how to prevent one. What’s the secret to making sure your living room doesn’t resemble a scene from “Mad Max: Fury Road”?
What usually underlies bad behavior is how the child handles negative emotions. And this is something we rarely teach deliberately and almost never teach well. Showing kids how to recognize and deal with feelings prevents misbehavior — and it’s a skill that will serve them their entire lives. It prevents tantrums at age 4 but it’s also the difference between saving college money and saving bail money later on. Look at it as potty training for feelings.
But how do we do that?
Professor John Gottman is the guy who revolutionized the study of relationships, getting it to the point where he could listen to a couple for just a few minutes and determine with a frightening amount of accuracy whether or not they’d divorce. Well, luckily, Gottman also analyzed parenting. And this wasn’t the latest parenting theory-of-the-week that somebody came up with over lunch — this was a truly epic study of mind-bending proportions.
He took over 100 married couples with kids ages 4 or 5 and gave them questionnaires. Then conducted thousands of hours of interviews. He observed their behavior in his lab. Taped sessions of the kids playing with their best friends. Monitored heart rates, respiration, blood flow and sweating. Took urine samples — yeah, urine samples — from the kids to measure stress-related hormones. And then followed up with the children and families all the way through adolescence, conducting more interviews, evaluating academic performance and…
Okay, enough. You get it. The plans of Hollywood Bond Villains aren’t this thorough. And when it came to dealing with emotions, Gottman realized there are 4 types of parents. And three ain’t so hot:
Dismissing parents: They disregard, ignore, or trivialize negative emotions.
Disapproving parents. They’re critical of negative feelings and punish kids for emotional expression.
Laissez-Faire parents: They accept their children’s emotions and empathize with them, but don’t offer guidance or set limits on behavior.
Children of these parents didn’t do as well over time. They misbehaved more, had trouble making friends or had self-esteem problems. One of them may be breaking into your car right now.
And then there were the Ultra-Parents. These mothers and fathers unknowingly used what Gottman calls “emotion-coaching.” And this produced emotionally intelligent kids. These parents accepted their children’s feelings (but not all of the children’s behavior), guided the kids through emotional moments, and helped them problem-solve their way to a solution that didn’t involve putting the neighbor’s kid in the emergency room. How did these tykes end up?
And it all came down to how the parents handled the child’s negative emotional outbursts. These parents did five things that the other types rarely did.
Alrighty, let’s get to it…
1) Be Aware Of Emotions
Parenting is stressful and can feel non-stop. Often it’s not like running a marathon — it’s like running until you die. So there’s a natural tendency to look around when things are (finally) calm and think, “Nothing is currently on fire. Okay, life is good.”
But this can be like standing in a coal mine ignoring the thousands of dead canaries. Usually emotions precede outbursts. So noticing the child’s emotions early — and not just the resulting bad behavior — is critical.
“Not misbehaving” doesn’t mean “not upset.” When a passive-aggressive spouse crosses their arms, scowls and says, “I’m fine,” at least you know they’re definitely not fine. Kids may not even understand what they’re feeling or how to best express it. So being aware and noticing early can prevent Tonka trucks from taking flight without FAA approval.
But the problem many parents have here is noticing their own emotions. If you’re not aware of your feelings and moods you’ll have trouble noticing and relating to those of others.
Don’t be afraid to show emotions in front of your kids. Gottman found that even anger (as long as it’s expressed respectfully and constructively) has its place. If parents hold back from showing feelings then kids can learn “Mom and dad don’t have these emotions and neither should I.”
Seeing arguments and then seeing them resolved amicably is far better than never seeing them at all. Kids need a role model not just for values, but also for feelings.
Shielding kids from emotional situations and then sending them out into the world is like sending an athlete to the Olympics with no training. Kids need those moments in order to learn how to regulate their feelings.
2) Emotion Is An Opportunity For Intimacy And Teaching
It’s understandable to see a tantrum as an irrational inconvenience that should be eliminated ASAP. But the parents whose children thrived saw outbursts as teaching moments and a time to bond with their kid. Yeah, that doesn’t always feel natural when a child is angrily throwing things.
Does saying anything resembling, “You should not feel this way” ever work with emotional adults? Exactly. Then it sure as hell isn’t going to work with your kid. Saying “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” or “Oh, it’ll be fine” is dismissive. This is how kids learn to doubt their own judgment and lose confidence. The Emotion-Coaching parents realized that a tantrum was the best time to connect with their child and teach them a valuable skill.
Yes, you need to stop misbehavior immediately. But you want to do it in a way specific to the child’s actions and not make it about their identity. So you want to say, “We don’t paint Grandma’s couch purple,” instead of, “Stop being a nightmare!” The children who consistently heard the latter did not fare as well in Gottman’s follow ups.
It takes practice but you want to see kids’ emotional pain like you’d see their physical pain. It’s not their fault. It’s a challenge they’re facing. And one you can help them with.
3) Listen Empathetically And Validate Feelings
Don’t argue the facts. Feelings aren’t logical. You wouldn’t expect the new employee to know how to find the bathroom and you shouldn’t expect a child to know how to handle emotions that, frankly, you still have problems dealing with after decades of experience.
Don’t immediately try to fix things. You need to establish you’re a safe ally before you can solve anything. Understanding must precede advice, and, just as with adults, they decide when you understand.
The critical distinction Gottman realized is that it’s important to accept all feelings — but not all behavior. If you skip immediately to problem-solving, the kid never learns the skill of how to deal with those uncomfortable emotions.
You want to use “empathetic listening.” Get them to talk. Help them clarify. Validate their feelings (but, again, not necessarily their behavior). They need to feel you really understand and are on their side.
Take a deep breath, relax and focus on them. They’ll notice if you’re impatient or frustrated and just going through the motions.
4) Help Them Label Their Emotions
A young child is not going to be able to say, “Dearest mother, I apologize for my unnecessary irritability. My transition to the new kindergarten class has caused me an unexpected amount of stress. My future academic adjustments will be conducted with a level of grace heretofore unseen in our lovely household.”
You’ve got the words; they don’t. Help them get a handle on what’s going on by labeling what they feel.
Don’t gloss over this. Labeling is absurdly powerful. Neuroscience has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to soothe emotions. It’s one of the main techniques hostage negotiators use to keep the most dangerous situations calm.
So when a child is crying because their sister got a better gift than they did, you don’t want to be dismissive and say, “I’m sure you’ll get a better present next time.” You want to validate and label the feeling with something like, “You wish you’d gotten something more fun. I bet that makes you feel kind of jealous.”
Now the kid is thinking, “They understand me.” And they’ve learned something about how to cope by talking it out and labeling the emotions to get a handle on them. And Gottman found this leads to really good things.
5) Set Limits And Help Them Problem-Solve
Again, all feelings are acceptable — but all behavior isn’t. You need to set limits. The parent-child relationship is not a democracy. Once the emotions are dealt with, you can be firm.
After you’ve listened empathetically, labeled feelings, and set limits on any bad behavior, it’s time to fix things. Someone needs to lead the problem solving. And that person is not you.
This is another skill you want to help them develop. You won’t always be there to tell them what to do. So encourage them to come up with ideas, guide them to a solution in line with your values that is effective and takes other people’s feelings into consideration. This is how emotionally intelligent kids become resourceful, responsible children.
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