One unexciting day, I cleaned up around the house while my daughter played on the floor with her Frozen characters.
Kids are cute like that when they play alone. As I went about Swiffering the floor, I overheard a conversation between Elsa and Sven.
My daughter held the two dolls facing each other. Elsa was scolding Sven and telling him not to touch anything. Elsa continued to angrily tell Sven to go in time out for not listening.
I was a little taken aback. The conversation the two characters were having mirrored the way I spoke to my daughter.
. . .
You can direct without yelling.
The verbal tone my daughter projected through Elsa mimicked the way I speak when I’m short with her. Tired of her dragging her feet, getting side-tracked, or not listening at all, I typically resort to what I — and many others — call the “mom voice”.
A loud, demanding voice expecting obedience.
“Listen to me or lose out on fun things!” is a general sentence I spit out because I’m either too tired to deal or have had it up to here [hand leveled above my head] with her threenager attitude.
I’ve come to learn this is not the way.
My daughter is what some call an empath. She picks up on emotions. I think a lot of toddlers have this quality — unfortunately, some do not. Regardless, she is extremely sensitive, and she is also combative. I’ve found that when I yell, she yells, and when she starts yelling, it’s harder for her to get a hold of her emotions than me.
Before I know it, I have snapped out of mother-knows-best mode, and I’m suddenly trying to reverse the hurricane of intense feelings my daughter is working through.
What I have found works is, in various situations, giving my daughter two choices when she starts to catch feelings regarding a different outcome.
For example, I used to yell at her telling her she cannot have another sugary snack. She has to choose something healthy. She hears the two options: the one she wants and another option she doesn’t want. So she cried about her option.
Instead, I’ve come up with “you can either have crackers with strawberry or nothing at all.” With those options, she usually picks the one where she still gets a snack, even though it isn’t the one she originally wanted.
With this method, I’ve approached situations more calmly and with better outcomes and less resistance.
. . .
You can raise adults by raising adults.
This is a common saying now. We’re not raising children. We’re raising adults.
What does this mean?
This saying is in regards to understanding the intelligence of a child. They understand much more than we’ve been giving them credit for.
A human adult, on average, makes roughly 1 million neural connections in the brain per second. If that sounds like a lot, consider this: “At birth, a baby’s brain contains 100 billion neurons, roughly as many nerve cells as there are stars in the Milky Way, and almost all the neurons the brain will ever have.” (University of Maine)
I’m not the best at explaining science, but these neural connections are basically making sense of things and storing information to simplify it. By the time they’re 8, they’ve pretty much peaked, and the brain begins dumping information that isn’t used.
Making the term “use or lose it” very literal.
If you’ve ever met a child who fixates on one topic and knows everything about that one topic, it’s because of this.
That being said, I’m very mindful of the way I speak, not only to my daughter but the way I act around her and others. She’s watching me and how I interact with other adults, and she follows suit.
She is polite by saying please and thank you. She speaks kindly to others and asks if they’re okay if something has happened to them. She doesn’t litter or say mean things to kids on the playground. I’ve noticed she will remove herself from an unfriendly kid’s company to avoid any negative situations. She’ll usually come up to me, explains to me what happened, and I tell her that it’s okay not to play with them if they’re mean to her.
My daughter holds herself confidently and finds comfort in talking to me. I never deny her conversation because I know that she is learning more and more about the world around her through each conversation. I don’t want her to hide or feel guilty about the way she feels. She’ll stand up for what she thinks is best for her and be mindful of her actions towards others.
. . .
The Golden Rule
I know it’s hard to break cycles and do what you know, as that was how you were raised. But, I also know many of us are looking to find better alternatives and smarter ways to raise our children.
I’m beginning to learn that I must treat my daughter how I would like to be treated. I apologize when I know I’m out of line or when she tells me not to yell at her. I explain why we do things a certain way. I let her know that I am always here for her, and I stand by what I say by never turning her away. I’m present with her, and she knows I’m always there for her.
I do slip up once in a while. I’m not perfect, and she knows this. But I always listen to her.
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This post was previously published on A Parent Is Born.
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