Sarcastic remarks? Talking back? Here's Help!
Do your children ever use sarcasm? Do they roll their eyes when you ask them about their day, tune you out when you ask them to set the table or or say "WhatEVER! ” instead of “Sure Mom! or “Okay Dad!” when you have a request? Congratulations! You have a human child - a precious gift - the baby you dreamed about who, as years go by, learns to put on a tough veneer and surprise you with a verbal wallop that can knock the wind out of you during times of the day when you are busiest or most tired or generally most unsuspecting.
Of course the ten year old tough guy is really a vulnerable child and chances are he is experiencing an emotion which makes him feel scared, uncomfortable or out of control, but how does a parent cope with it? Conventional wisdom and contemporary therapy from your grandmother all the way to Dr. Phil and Nanny 911 may offer you lots of helpful suggestions for setting boundaries and how to modify behaviors, take charge and the like. But what else can we do to nag and fight less and really enjoy our children more? How can we communicate in ways that create lasting changes and greater intimacy?
One way is to teach your kids how to identify their feelings and how to communicate them instead of acting them out. Bad feelings are usually the culprit when undesirable behaviors arise, but most kids don't realize that the reason their tone has an edge or that they are tuning you out is that they are still stuck in a feeling, a feeling that they may not even be able to name, much less express to you. Something may have happened with a friend that day or they felt left out at recess and they didn't get the part in the school play, but they have not really processed the event and so they act out the anger or frustration by picking a fight with a sibling or resisting a simple request from you. There is always a reason and sometimes it may run even deeper than the day's drama. Whatever the source of discontentment, learning the language of emotion is a tool that the whole family can use to begin to explore and share their feelings.
In my “Feelin It !”workshop, kids can learn to identify and explore the wide variety of feelings, particularly the negative ones and begin to see how they work. They will learn about the many ways that feelings can feel in the body. Most importantly, they can learn that having feelings is a normal part of human life and that a bad feeling does not make them bad. It simply gives them a choice. Tools will be offered for working with feelings constructively instead of suppressing them or acting them out.
Getting a handle on feelings can help improve your child's confidence, increase the effectiveness of communication between your child and just about everyone and reduce flare-ups around the house. Not to mention helping Mom and Dad boost their emotional I.Q. as well! In my workshop kids learn that taking a moment to acknowledge a feeling, taking responsibility for the feeling and taking a a positive action if necessary is part of taking care of yourself and can actually be fun.
Comments [0]