Unconditional Parenting Chapter 3: Too Much Control - Page 4

[poiyt]

to doubly blessed and mamabear...i think the issue is all the same in all scenarios. And you may disagree with me, and you are totally welcome to, and I get this idea more from CL rather than UP but I find the same philosophies often interact.

Rather than simply redirecting - find the route cause of *why* they are doing something. Are they hurting the dog because it causes you to get angry? Sometimes in an effort to be gentle, and to not manipulate through praise - we can simply exist with our kids. We are happy, we are content, we think life is great! But kids lack the ability to "get" that. They see emotions on the surface. In a lot of the acting out cases, anger is the easiest accessible emotion - they know they can get a reaction out of you, and thus have you show that you are still paying attention, and you do still care on that heightened level. I would suggest getting all into every emotion again. Not in a manipulative way - but like how you would with a baby. Genuine excitement/happiness/pride etc etc etc..then slowly tone it down. I think this is especially true if a new baby has recently joined the family.

The other issue is with redirection itself. Redirection can be manipulation if you arent replacing what they want to do with something similar or something they want to do once the option is presented. If toddler wants to climb on the stove, trying to read books with her isnt going to solve the issue. Why does she want to climb the stove? Watch you cook? To climb something new? Becuase its warm? Find an activity that provides the similar needs that the child is seeking - otherwise you are just trying to manipulate them to do an activity that you wantm, regardless of their feelings.

[dogretro]

Mammabear, I totally agree! The stuff that drives me the most nuts is the stuff you have already told them 349581439 times is a bad idea. And then they laugh at you, or try to get away from you and do it again! Have you read the whole book yet? Kohn gives a lot of different strategies for parenting in the second half of the book.

DB, a book I have not read yet but have heard a lot of good things about is "Siblings Without Rivalry". I plan to read it when I have another child. It probably has some good strategies to deal w/ snatching and snarling I also feel ya on the wanting to be selfish aspects of parenting. I think you had a great idea in splitting up bedtime so that you can be w/ each kid individually. How many parents would say that is it too bad for your dd, she is "old enough" to lay down and go to sleep by herself? So your daughter wants you and it is somewhat inconvenient ~ oh well for YOU, not her, haha! Many times when I am laying w/ dd while she is settling down to sleep, I want her to hurry up so that I can go read, go online, watch a show, clean up, whatever! Anything but being stuck there in bed! Last night, though, I was laying there thinking, "No one ever said that raising a child was going to be about what *I* wanted. It is about what *she* wants." It can be VERY hard (and annoying and infuriating!) to meet kids where they are, but that is our job as parents! We are in the process of moving dd out of our bed, but she still wakes up during the night and wants someone to lay w/ her as she falls back asleep. One day, she wont want/need that anymore, and that will be that. Until then, it really doesnt matter how I feel about it, I just have to be there for her

I finally finished the book last night and I LOVED IT! I am so glad this group was started so that I was reminded about this book! Kohn definitely spends the first half of the book tearing you down and making all punishers and praisers feel like the scum of the earth, but he spends the second half building you back up and empowering you. If you havent read it all yet and are struggling w/ "what do I do intead???", your questions will be answered in the second half. I really feel like this was a well-balanced book full of lots of good ideas. I have been totally energized to make sure that I am speaking and acting in a respectful manner towards my child and to not hit her or send her away from me b/c I am upset. I am definitely going to buy this book so I can keep it for reference. DH already agreed w/ the first half, so I told him he should read the second half to get more ideas and he said he would check it out, so that is great, too! I am still looking forward to discussing the rest of the book, it will keep me motivated, haha. Next up, I am reading "Between Parent and Child", which I started 2 years ago & got about half way thru, but then put aside. It is also an excellent book and REALLY makes you analyze the way you talk to your kids, especially how much you "talk down" to your kids.

[dogretro]

Originally Posted by doublyblessed

also wondering if any of you plan to or are unschooling your kids? any radical unschoolers amongst you? i'm veering towards this...

I have considered unschooling, but dh does not really support it. He is in total support of homeschooling; he does not like the total freedom of choice aspect of US. He says that as a youth, he wouldve spent all of his time playing video games, which is probably true, HAHA. I pointed out that maybe he wouldve gotten a job as a game designer, reviewer, tester, etc, but he blew off that answer If we had a public (or v inexpensive) democratic free school in our area, I would def send my kids there as a first choice. We have no DFS's in our area ~ closest one is three hours away. I change my mind all the time about what I would like to do regarding my children's education, so it is really way too early for me to state anything definitive. Just wanted to reply!

[foodmachine]

Originally Posted by dogretro

Next up, I am reading "Between Parent and Child", which I started 2 years ago & got about half way thru, but then put aside. It is also an excellent book and REALLY makes you analyze the way you talk to your kids, especially how much you "talk down" to your kids.

I have just ordered that book! - the original publication from the 60's. We can "book circle" that next. I've also ordered and heard good things about "Adventures in Gentle Discipline", in regards to toddlers, although I hate the title. I really have a problem with the "D" word.

[doublyblessed]

i am confused. how do i 'nip this in the bud' in regards to my rela w/ my dd...its the both of us...i know that i have mood and personality disorders and i can see my dd developing them too... (more specifically, bipolar II rapid cycling...borderline personality disorder & ADD) she defnitely is the epitomy of ODD: oppositional defiant disorder.

i hate to label either of us...but this is the only way i know how to explain what is going on with the both of us. my dd is so much like i was...and still am. its almost like sometimes i'm a kid trying to raise a kid. i'm struggling here. i want so much to raise my dd and ds in a UP way. a connected, loving, patient, respectful, reverance-full way. i do not want to fall into punitive or rewarding b.s. i don't believe in it. she is not some dog needing to learn to obey their master. i don't want to have to do that to my dd...although i think i need to set some boundaries...i feel like she walks all over me when i actually am loving and calm and kind...maybe i appear permissive to her when i'm not dominating controlling or authoratative...i think she is just really confused and walking on eggshells w/ me...never knowing where on the spectrum we stand in any given moment.

i have been online researching how to get this healed and i came across this...5 warning signs...well this scares me. cuz my dd exhibits all of these at age 6. i know a lot of this is developmental. but almost everyone that knows us can see this in my dd...she is really something. just like her mama... i'm working on me...and i need to work on her or i'm going to lose her to drugs, promiscuity, etc. and i don't want that herstory to repeat itself.

is it possible to heal and reverse this thru UPing? what do you think? how do i set boundaries or do i not need to? i guess i just need to UP myself and my dd.......and we will heal. but i feel like time is going by so fast that i'm losing time to help my dd unravel all the mistakes i've made w/ her...i feel just awful. its like 2 steps forward, 1 stumble back... i want it to end. this all seems so simple, UPing and this beautiful connective parenting...but because of MY personal issues and struggle, its molding and shaping my dd. i'm very worried for her... what do u think......is this just the result of my being inconsistent in how i parent her?????? probably is. in fact i truly believe it is...but i want to know your take on this.....

tell me what you think. i don't want some counselor to tell me to do holding therapy w/ her or TO's or take away 'priveleges' (pfff!) or do a reward board or any of that bunk.

i'm starting a DBT group soon (dialectal behavioral therapy) and i hope it helps me greatly. i need to learn how to respond better when i'm in a distressed emotional state. my mom never taught me well re. that and i want so much to overcome this demon. for myself and my kids... i don't want my dd to be like i was as a teen or young woman. here i am at 38 and just apalled at how reactive i still am and how much rage i still have...its just channeled differently now, but its still there...

here are the 5 warning signs from a local girls boarding school for girls 11-18 w/ mood disorders/personality disorders...

Five Warning Signs You Can't Ignore
Parents often reassure themselves that their pre-adolescent or adolescent is doing fine as long as the child is not involved in dangerous behavior (alcohol use, drug use, sexual acting out) and is making good grades. In fact, the warning signs of impending trouble are actually closer to home than the more extreme behaviors just mentioned.

It is important for parents to focus on the relationship they have with their daughter rather than whether or not she is currently making poor choices. The parent/child relationship is the foundation for being able to navigate through the difficult adolescent years and the challenges they bring. A 12- or 13-year-old who already defies parental authority and treats parents with disrespect is setting the stage for becoming an uncontrollable 15- or 16-year-old and doing whatever she pleases.

It is normal for a pre-adolescent or adolescent child to push away from parents and want to assert her own authority. That is part of establishing her own identity and is developmentally appropriate. But where do parents draw the line between developmentally appropriate behavior and inappropriate acting out?

Here are five warning signs that indicate the need for intervention on the parent/child relationship:

1.Has your daughter become increasingly disrespectful toward you to the point of screaming at you and calling you names?
2.Does your daughter consistently disregard your rules and do as she pleases in the home or outside the home?
3.Does your daughter believe she is the center of your family and demonstrate blatant disregard for the feelings of family members, their time or their possessions?
4.Does your daughter escalate when she does not get her way to the point that you must give in just to be able to manage the situation safely?
5.Do you suspect, after listening to friends and relatives talk about their children, that your daughter's emotional acting out in the home exceeds what other parents experience? Do your daughter's friends or your friends comment to her or you about how poorly she treats you? boy this is BRIGHT!
Hear Melinda talk about making the decision to send her daughter to New Leaf:
If you answered yes to any of these questions, it might be time to talk to a counselor about how to improve the relationship with your daughter. If you answered yes to more than one of these questions, you may need a more intensive intervention than counseling. Your daughter currently may not be making poor choices that are obvious to you, but when she does, you will have difficulty intervening because your authority has already been undermined through her continual disrespect of you and disregard for your rules.

There is nothing more frightening than watching your daughter spin out of control, and feeling hopeless to stop that process.

At _____Academy, our priority is restoring the parent/child relationship into one of mutual respect, yet with clear lines of parental authority. Once she is at New Leaf Academy, your daughter can gain a new perspective on her behavior toward you through the stories of other girls and the expectations of the staff. She will be able to learn how destructive her behavior was, not just in damaging the parent/child relationship but also in pushing herself head-long into choices and decisions she was ill-equipped to make. And she will have a clear understanding of how the adults in her life, including her parents, are there to support her, help her and make decisions for her while she learns and grows.

thanks, mamas........ this is really embarassing to share but i felt this was a good place to do so... esp since most counselors are not pro-UPing... sigh.

[mommabear207]

Originally Posted by poiyt

to doubly blessed and mamabear...i think the issue is all the same in all scenarios. And you may disagree with me, and you are totally welcome to, and I get this idea more from CL rather than UP but I find the same philosophies often interact.

Rather than simply redirecting - find the route cause of *why* they are doing something. Are they hurting the dog because it causes you to get angry? Sometimes in an effort to be gentle, and to not manipulate through praise - we can simply exist with our kids. We are happy, we are content, we think life is great! But kids lack the ability to "get" that. They see emotions on the surface. In a lot of the acting out cases, anger is the easiest accessible emotion - they know they can get a reaction out of you, and thus have you show that you are still paying attention, and you do still care on that heightened level. I would suggest getting all into every emotion again. Not in a manipulative way - but like how you would with a baby. Genuine excitement/happiness/pride etc etc etc..then slowly tone it down. I think this is especially true if a new baby has recently joined the family.

The other issue is with redirection itself. Redirection can be manipulation if you arent replacing what they want to do with something similar or something they want to do once the option is presented. If toddler wants to climb on the stove, trying to read books with her isnt going to solve the issue. Why does she want to climb the stove? Watch you cook? To climb something new? Becuase its warm? Find an activity that provides the similar needs that the child is seeking - otherwise you are just trying to manipulate them to do an activity that you wantm, regardless of their feelings.

I totally agree with you! sometimes i can see that he is just trying to get an reaction- i even tell dh, when ds is hitting his computer, that ds is just trying to get his attention (which is true). its a lot easier to see the bigger picture when i'm not the one having to deal with the frustration.
and like you said about the new baby and emotions. that is what has worked for us but i kinda just fell into it. i can see how maybe my doing other stuff is similar.thanks for pointing this out and pointing out the difficulty with redirection. i do find myself saying lets go read a book just because its easier for me. i'll have to keep in mind "doing like things" sounds so obvious!

doublyblessed-i think there is a difference in a teen acting along the lines of the 5 signs and a 6 yr old (i think thats who old your dd is?) if anything i think that is probably how a 6yr acts a lot of the time. and it sounds a bit like this school is one of those "give a inch they'll take a mile" send them off to get straighten out places.IMO.
i think you can set reasonable boundaries for example we don't let dc play in the road even if they really want to. i think you have to really think about what boundaries you want to set very carefully and on many levels- why, how you and dc will see it, how you will maintain your boundary etc

[doublyblessed]

Originally Posted by mommabear207

I totally agree with you! sometimes i can see that he is just trying to get an reaction- i even tell dh, when ds is hitting his computer, that ds is just trying to get his attention (which is true). its a lot easier to see the bigger picture when i'm not the one having to deal with the frustration.

doublyblessed-i think there is a difference in a teen acting along the lines of the 5 signs and a 6 yr old (i think thats who old your dd is?) if anything i think that is probably how a 6yr acts a lot of the time. and it sounds a bit like this school is one of those "give a inch they'll take a mile" send them off to get straighten out places.IMO.
i think you can set reasonable boundaries for example we don't let dc play in the road even if they really want to. i think you have to really think about what boundaries you want to set very carefully and on many levels- why, how you and dc will see it, how you will maintain your boundary etc

oh isn't it so easy to see how others are not dealing w/ our dc in a non-UP way! i do this w/ my mother all the time and think to myself...what a hipicrite i am!!!

so what do u do if dc is in the road insisting on playing in the road? do u physically bring dc away from the road? what if they are insistent and kicking and screaming and biting and throwing an absolute fit???!!! what then... what if dc refuses to stop whatever behavior you need them to stop??? ie. its bedtime, baby and mama are exhausted and big sis insists on still playing and talking........................ugh.

i think i agree w/ you about the boarding school 'problem child thing... i really feel i've created a monster by being so monstrous... now undoing this is what i need to keep calm while doing so...

[poiyt]

Originally Posted by doublyblessed

so what do u do if dc is in the road insisting on playing in the road? do u physically bring dc away from the road? what if they are insistent and kicking and screaming and biting and throwing an absolute fit???!!! what then... what if dc refuses to stop whatever behavior you need them to stop??? ie. its bedtime, baby and mama are exhausted and big sis insists on still playing and talking........................ugh.

i think i agree w/ you about the boarding school 'problem child thing... i really feel i've created a monster by being so monstrous... now undoing this is what i need to keep calm while doing so...

*note..the thread on consenuality v hierarchy is great, and you should all read it...these very issues are discussed in great length there*

Playing on the road:
Why does he want to play on the road? Is it because he knows he cant? its the forbidden fruit? Is it because he wants to run somewhere different? just wants to run? Want to "be a car"? Find out the issue, redirect to another activity that fills it.

Or..if its a dead road, with no cars, why cant he run on it? Why cant we start setting boundaries so that our rules arent arbitrary, but have an actual reason behind them. "its not safe to run on the 6lane freeway, but we can run on the cul-de-sac one block away". Its another one of those why do you have to use toys the way they were meant to be played with kind of things...why cant they run on a dead road?


Bedtime:
We dont have bedtimes...although everybody has their own body schedule/cycle and it tends to make them tired around the same time every day. Lately, dd and I have been tired at the same time, so we go to bed together, and dh stays up and does his..whatever dh's do when their wives have gone to bed. If when dd is older she wants to stay up past when we go to bed, thats fine too. Why do they have to go to bed before you? If you are tired and they arent - its kind of counter productive to make them go to sleep (thereby insuing argument/frustration/stress/anger) when they arent tired, and all that stress will make sleeping harder for you when you are tired.

Why have the argument in the first place?

[dogretro]

I just returned my overdue copy of the book to the library today, so you all are going to have to forgive me if I cant remember in exactly which chapter certain things are mentioned

Bedtime: While I agree w/ your point, Lindsay, I can see exactly why a mom would not want to go to bed before her 6-yr-old child. It would be different if the child was even 10 or something, but 6 seems awfully young to be staying up by themselves and then putting themselves to bed. However, if you decided to give it a whirl, you could always talk to your 6-yr-old and prepare them for putting themselves to bed. Go thru their bedtime routine so that they know they still have to brush their teeth, etc. And if you find that they are doing inappropriate things while you are asleep, you can sit down and evaluate the situation to see what needs changing. IDK, I just picture the child going outside at midnight and running around, or turning on the stove, or something else horrible/dangerous! It's the same reason that I would really really really not want to take a nap during the day when they are awake. Those are my personal fears, tho. Maybe bedtime independence is something to look into. Maybe the child wont like putting themselves to bed and will start going to bed w/ you. Who knows????

Kohn did have a section in one of the chapters called "When they have to but don't want to". He gave strategies for getting kids to do or stop things whether they wanted to or not. He also said, several times throughout the book, that there will be times when we parents will resort to conventional discipline out of necessity and that there was nothing wrong w/ that. Kohn also talked about how, when you are first starting UP w/ your child, you may need to start w/ a mix of what you have been doing and UP together so that your child doesnt get shell-shocked (esp if you praise a lot and suddenly stop). He advocates explaining what you are changing to and why you are changing.

There was some talk about Super Nanny earlier in our discussions, and it made me think about the switch to UP. Like, if you have a family that is in total chaos like those on Super Nanny, starting w/ her tactics is probably a fabulous thing for your family just to establish normalcy and function. Then, once things are running smoothly, you can take it to the next level by introducing UP tactics. I think that Kohn can make you feel SO BAD at the start of the book that every interaction w/ your child feels like an "all or nothing" situation when that is totally not the case! Being pushed too far and putting your child in time out or yelling harshly at them is not going to turn them into a loveless shell or mean that you are suddenly not practicing UP. Sitting down after the blow-up and apologizing for flipping out, then discussing some things about behaviours and emotions are *still important tenants of unconditional parenting.* We are not perfect. We will still yell, grab, snatch things, sigh, and really really want to smack our kids. Our kids are not perfect, either! They will do and say things that make us yell, grab, snatch things, sigh, and really really want to smack them! Do we need to hold ourselves to higher standards, mama? Yes, we do! Do we need to berate ourselves every time we fall short? NO, we do not! Eating one brownie does not ruin the whole diet! We expect our children to persevere when things get tough, we can do it, too! Two steps forward and one step back is still ONE STEP FORWARD. Do not forget that!

DB, you are dealing w/ a LOT of baggage in your life & you have the will and desire to change things for your kids. Good for you! It seems easy to me b/c I do not have that stuff and my child is still a baby. I can look at your questions from the outside and offer non-emotionally involved advice. And I can look at what you are doing and get inspiration b/c you are doing something that is very difficult. When things get rough w/ my kid, I can look at what you are doing and know that I can do it, too.