How many times has your child continued to do or say something after you have repeatedly told him not to? Your toddler keeps playing in the fish bowl and your teenager continues to come in past curfew! It could be because they want your attention, or they may think you just don't want them to be happy. Either way, you can redirect their thoughts, feelings, and actions through positive communication.
Positive communication involves giving your child your full attention. It's time consuming but worth every second. A child's mind is often overwhelmed by the fast pace of an adults life. We talk fast, move fast, and live fast. It's true that in the first three years of a humans life the brain grows and develops more than it ever will. So getting down to their level and taking the time to help them organize some confusing thoughts and emotions can drastically affect the way they see and react to the world. For example, you may have or know of a child who people describe as "out of control". He often expresses himself through temper tantrums or screaming out of frustration. People may try to calm him down by saying calmly "It's all right" or "lets just talk about this". More often than not, he is told to "Be quiet!", "Relax!", "Sit down!", "Get ahold of yourself!". Very rarely is the child listened to and spoken to in a manner than helps him sort out his feelings and thoughts. Reason being, adults either don't have the time or simply do not put themselves in the child's shoes and realize that it can be very frustrating for a young mind to keep up with our fast paced society. So how do we speak positively and help a child avoid the negative thoughts and emotions such as frustration, confusion, anger, and stress?
The way we use our words obviously differs with the ages of the listeners. For very young children who understand little of our language, it is extremely frustrating to communicate what they are feeling to us. The "terrible two's" are exactly that! They express their emotions in the only way they know how to. When a toy is taken from a toddler, they may scream, yank it back or hit the person who took it. The first response on our parts as adults is to let the toddler/child know that we are aware of what they are feeling and that it's alright to feel the way they do. Sometimes mimicking their facial expression and giving a hug is all you need to do to communicate this understanding. When you immediately try to distract them and give a big smile in hopes of making them happy again, you have told them that what they felt isn't supposed to be trusted or communicated. Another way is to give their feeling a name. Tell them that they are angry and it's a real feeling. Don't pretend like they didn't or shouldn't feel this, it communicates to the child that what they are feeling is unreliable.
Even in very young babies (9-12 months) it's important to let them express themselves and react in a way that they see and feel you understand what they are trying to tell you. For example, you need to change your babies diaper, and in order to do this you will have to interrupt your babies activity. So, you pick him up and lay him on his back. He starts kicking and crying, and starts to roll over and crawl away. Naturally we try to be happy, smile, sing a song, continue to put him on his back and hope he is distracted by our happiness and will want to be apart of it. Some other reactions are not so kind, such as yelling and holding him down against his will in anger; showing him that anger is responded to with anger. Both of these ways can work, however, neither acknowledge your babies feelings. I have found that talking him through each step calmly and firmly keeping him on his back helps-only if you acknowledge his anger. I do this by making a sad face and saying in a sympathetic tone, "I know you don't like this, you would rather be playing. Don't worry, I am almost done, then you can play again". Even though he may not understand my words, my facial expression and tone communicated to him that I know how he's feeling. This is reassuring to him, and usually half way through the process he is staring at me, at which point I use his attention as an opportunity to make him happy again, usually by tickling or singing. As long as he feels heard, he doesn't feel the need to continue expressing his emotions.
Well, what about when your child does understand your words and still doesn't listen to you? Here's one way you can use words positively to help them listen to you. Let's use a very simple example. When your little one hears you continually reminding him to keep his hands out of the fishbowl, all he's really hearing is "hands in fishbowl". So naturally his hands sink right back into the cool water where he finds the feel of a squirmy fish very funny! Try "Let's go play with puzzles and leave the fish alone". His ears hear "play puzzles and fish alone". What a child's mind concentrates on is what they hear. It's not a distraction necessarily if they still know what they weren't suppose to be playing with is still there. I think it's important that they still know that the things they shouldn't do still exist. The words "no" and "don't" are rarely heard by children. Rather, the topic and tone is what they pick up. I'm in my twenties and I still mostly hear the topic and tone!
For an older child, the problem may be that he's always hungry, never tired, and always hot. Your response may be, "You aren't hungry, you just ate an hour ago!", or "Yes you are tired, you didn't take a nap today", or "You can't be hot, it's freezing in here!". All of these responses are telling the child that what he feels is not to be trusted, it begins to drive him crazy and react in an unhealthy way. Alternatives to the previous responses could be, "You are hungry again? You must be growing! Well, dinner is in one hour, how about you have a small snack now so you will still be hungry for dinner?", or "It's alright if you don't feel tired yet, let's just relax in bed with some books anyways.", or "I feel cold, but if you are hot you can take of your jacket until you feel cold again.". Acknowledging your child's feelings are one of the most effective and positive ways of communicating with your child. Sometimes you don't need to use many words at all. For older children, they often don't want or need you to say anything when they are expressing themselves angrily. Just to have you give them your attention and respond with sounds like "Hmmm, I see", they can simply get their feelings together and work it out themselves just through talking about it and feeling understood as opposed to being blamed, questioned, or lectured.
So why is it that we automatically want to tell our children that what they are feeling isn't true or it's wrong? At what point in our past did we accept the belief that we shouldn't acknowledge our own negative emotions? Well, think about it. When you feel stressed, angry, worried, disappointed, or lonely what do you do? If you are like I was then you try to cover it up with a distraction - television, food, and so on. Then I discovered that in doing this I was only lying to myself and cheating myself out of true feelings of happiness and peace. In addressing my negative and hurtful emotions I was able to set them free, in a sense, as opposed to holding them inside. I do this by first giving my emotion a name. This small act causes me to understand and accept what I'm feeling, in doing so I have released it. It sounds too simple doesn't it? Well, to a child, it is that simple.
Children of all ages are doing, saying, and acting on what they are told not to. Many factors contribute to their decisions and behaviors, but simply rephrasing the conversation and using a tone that makes them feel they can make a better choice has been proven to dramatically change the way they think. I've been using this technique for the past 10 years and it fails me only when I am the only adult in the child's life who speaks to them this way. If we all make the effort to speak to growing minds in a way that causes them to hear and feel the positive, then already we are changing the future of this nation. With a generation of people who believe and trust in themselves, this world will be full of confidence!
To those who would like to learn more about effective ways of communicating with your children, I would suggest Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish's book "How to talk so your kids will listen, and how to listen so your kids will talk". I've learned some great techniques from them and have been using them daily.
