Adopting a Calm, Take-Charge Presence

Sure, most agree that a calm, take-charge kind of presence is ideal, but how do we do that?

1. We own the space in our home.
Our body language says we’re in charge—from the minute anyone enters our castle—and for every moment thereafter. We already know how that feels, and it’s powerful. Think how we’ve wandered into a store or restaurant and just instantly knew who the owner was—without any introduction. That’s the same kind of demeanor and assurance we can adopt in our own home.

2. We believe we need to be in charge.
We understand that if we don’t lead, then someone else will grab that role. Often, that’s a young child who takes over by thwarting everyone else’s sense of calm.

3. We ignore a child’s words and shift our focus to the bigger picture of what he’s needing.
We don’t hear. “I hate you (or whatever other ramped up, angry words are being yelled),” so there’s no temptation to react. Instead, we see an out-of-control child as someone who desperately wants to feel safe—and how can he if he’s learned that creating chaos puts him in charge?

4. We change our mindset so that our body language reflects our thinking.
If we’re feeling helpless (I’ve tried everything—my child just won’t listen), then that’s what our body language says to our child. In contrast, if we believe we’re letting our children down when we don’t take control or that we’re actually hurting them by giving them a false sense of power, our body language automatically shifts to a take-charge demeanor.

5. We use distractions to avoid reverting to prior ways of responding.
If we start to panic (He’s screaming! He’s throwing things! He’s spitting), we don’t go there. Instead, we pick a song to sing to ourselves (or aloud). By the time we’re mooing like cows in Old MacDonald Had a Farm, our body language has already shifted from panic to composed.

6. We acknowledge that we, too, prefer calm, take-charge leaders.
Isn’t that how we want our police officers and fire fighters to respond when called to action? Isn’t that how we want our world leaders to act when making monumental decisions? So why would it be any different for our children?

7. We practice this kind of presence until it feels automatic.
Elizabeth Hasselbeck from “The View” recently shared a story where she put her oldest daughter in charge of the younger siblings while she was in another room. Upon hearing her daughter yelling, she re-entered the room, and asked, “What are you doing? Why are you screaming!?” Her 6-year-old looked up at her and said, “Mommy, that’s what you do when you’re in charge.”

The bottom line: Adopting a calm, take-charge presences makes kids feel secure and protected—and what parents don’t want that for their children?

Are Chinese Mothers Really Superior?

Amy Chua is a professor of law at Yale. Yet, her case that Chinese mothers are superior to Western parents is weak.

In her article, Why Chinese Mothers are Superior, she claims that the solution to substandard performance is “always to excoriate, punish and shame the child. The Chinese parent believes that their child will be strong enough to take the shaming and to improve from it.”

Well, lucky for Ms. Chua that her kids must have developed their lower centers of the brain and inhibited their primitive reflexes.  Otherwise, I think she’d have a very different take on parenting.

That’s because it doesn’t matter how much a parent screams or threatens or takes away belongings (she gives several examples where she is proud to have done this) when such development is incomplete. The truth is, no parent—Chinese or Western— can “will” a brain to do something if it’s not wired to do so.

So I’d like to suggest different criteria for identifying superior parents. I think that title should go to moms and dads who know whether their child has completed their lower brain development—and who then learn how to help their child build those highways, if warranted.

That, Amy Chua, is the best way to guarantee our children become who they are supposed to be.

Is There a Double Standard in Our Home?

Kids have a great radar for fairness, so here are some questions to consider:

• Do we like to unwind when we come home from work, but require our kids to go straight to homework after attending school all day?

• Do we eat unhealthy food, but serve our kids something else?

• Do we react and yell when we’re upset, but expect our kids to approach problems calmly and logically?

• Do we have different levels of tolerance and another set of rules for our sons than our daughters?

• Do we tell our kids about the dangers of alcohol, but allow them to see us as tipsy (or more) at social or family gatherings?

• Do we require our kids to clean their rooms, but our own personal space is often messy?

But most importantly . . .  if we have double standards in our home, how do our kids view those mixed messages? How about initiating a family discussion to find out?

How to Respond if Your Child Messes Up

Suppose you discover your child deliberately kept you in the dark about a bad test grade or a concerning note from the teacher.  Before concluding that your child is untrustworthy, here’s an important question to consider:  How are mistakes handled in your home? In other words, what reaction has your child come to expect if he had shared that grade or note?

For example, did your child anticipate (correctly) that he’d get a speech laced with disappointment, exasperation, and irritation, followed by some kind of punishment? If so, maybe your child’ reaction was more about self-preservation that dishonesty.

Ironically, we may be concerned about our child’s trustworthiness because he no longer trusts us to respond in a way that’s helpful when he’s messed up.  So here’s how we may avoid that from happening.

1. Reassure your child that everyone makes mistakes.

Tell your child that you’re glad he makes mistakes—otherwise, that would mean he’s not human . . . and then that would mean he’s an alien from another planet!

2. Tell your child that you’ll stay calm whenever he approaches you with a problem.

Since that may not have always been the case, establish that if you do not stay composed, your child gets something that he likes.  That helps ensure you don’t revert to old reactions. And if you do, then your child figures at least he’s still going to get something good by coming to you.

3. Ask questions that prompt reflection and positive action for the future.

In lieu of giving a speech, ask questions such as: Why do you think you reacted that way? What other options could you have explored? What will you do differently to avoid this from happening again?

If there was another person involved, you might ask: How would (name of that person) describe what happened? That open-ended question then becomes a non-threatening way to hear a different perspective of what happened without anyone confirming that the other person’s account is correct.

4. Avoid “prosecutor-type” questions.

You’ll get immediate feedback if you start doing this because your child will become defensive, rather than reflective. Note that our tone often dictates whether we’re coming across as a prosecutor drilling a witness or a concerned parent who wants to prompt some insightful thinking.

5. Ask your child how he’ll accept responsibility for whatever happened.

With a generic knee-jerk reaction (“You’re grounded for a week!), there’s little chance that our child reflects and learns from any particular mistake. So it’s important that we also ask our kids what they think might be a good “natural cause and effect” for whatever transpired.  For example, a child may conclude, all on his own, that he’s spending too much time playing video games instead of studying. If so, it’s going to carry a lot more weight if he decides to limit video games to the weekends until his grades improve.

So yes, we all mess up.  That in itself is not newsworthy.  But how we deal with our mistakes may actually define us.

Five Signs a Parent Needs a Break

The airlines get it. For emergency situations, fight attendants always instruct parent passengers to put oxygen masks on themselves before helping their kids. Yet making sure parents are fully functional “on land” is good advice, too.

Here are some tell-tale signs that we have too much going on or that we’re so involved in our kids’ lives, we’ve forgotten we have one of our own.

1) We’re still singing our kids’ CD songs even though he’s not playing them (or even around).

2) We’re waiting to see what grade “we” got on the project “we” worked on.

3) We find ourselves cutting our own meat into tiny pieces.

4) We rushed our child out the door for soccer practice—only to discover that practice was yesterday.

5) We wish we could vote for homecoming king and queen.

If you’re a parent in need of a break, you can easily modify or add to the list above. But the point
is . . .sometimes we think we’re being a good parent by trying to juggle everything or by parenting 24/7. Yet the truth is, we’re better parents when we take some time for ourselves.

So book a massage. Go play tennis. Read that magazine that’s been sitting on the table for three weeks.

Our families will be just fine without us for a few hours.