Bonnie Harris Connective Parenting : Newsletter

PHILOSOPHY
SERVICES
RESOURCES
Buttons Book
Confident Parents Book
Monthly Column
Newsletter
Compact Discs
Parent Workbooks
EVENTS
MEDIA
CONTACT US
SITE MAP
HOME

When Your Kids Push Your Buttons:
The Newsletter
by Bonnie Harris, M.S.Ed.

Issue 3 — Agendas - and how they effect our parenting.

Welcome! My intention with this newsletter is to spread these ideas so more and more of you can parent with the honesty and integrity you want—rather than from some intellectual idea that gets you stuck again and again. And my intention is to sell more books! What I ask in return is your help in spreading this message. Please forward this to any friends or family you think might benefit, encourage them to subscribe to the newsletter and to buy the book, When Your Kids Push Your Buttons: And What You Can Do About It (Warner Books, 2003).
Thank you.

Contents:

Purpose
Discussion of key points
Questions and answers
Stories
News of upcoming events or announcements

1. Purpose

This newsletter focuses on some of the key points in my book with new thoughts and practical applications as well as answer readers' questions and stories of how these new ideas are effecting their parenting lives. Hopefully it will help the "swimming upstream" struggle we face in changing our parenting from what many of our friends, relatives, teachers and a good deal society expects from us. If you are a subscriber, then I'm assuming that you are working consciously to parent in the most effective way you can. What others expect of us, together with what we learned in our childhoods—about ourselves and our parents is often a sure-fire setup for getting our buttons pushed. My hope is that the book and the newsletter will help you trust both you and your child and learn what your buttons are and how to defuse them.

What I ask in return for this newsletter is your help in spreading this message. Please forward this to any friends or family you think might benefit, encourage them to subscribe to the newsletter and to buy the book, When Your Kids Push Your Buttons: And What You Can Do About It (Warner Books, 2003).
Thank you.

In order for this newsletter to be successful, I need your questions and stories. Your interaction is imperative to making this newsletter interesting and rich. You can ask a question from your daily parenting life or you can ask me to elaborate on certain ideas from the book or any newsletter that may be unclear to you or that you are having a hard time applying. Depending on the number of questions, I may or may not be able to get to all of them in the following newsletter. Your question might be the basis of the discussion of key points or might be in the question and answer section or both.

Keep in mind that most readers think I have more questions than I can answer, so they don't ask. This is not true unless I tell you otherwise. Ask away!

2. ;Discussion of key points

Being a parent means that we have agendas about our children—our hopes, fears, aspirations, demands, expectations, judgments and plans for their future. It is the hardest job of all to nurture our children, give them our love, time and energy and then watch them make mistakes. I often use the analogy of a baby learning to walk. She falls again and again in the learning process, and we accept that. We know that if she falls, she will get back up again. Why is it so hard to know that later on? We get our buttons pushed because we fear for their future relationships, schooling, and success in life.

Unfortunately, soon after walking is accomplished, we start taking control. We tell them when to use the potty, when to go to sleep, when to eat and when not to, what to wear, say and do. We take them where we want them to go, we don't let them go where we don't want, and we tell them what to do and when to do it. At home and at school, all day long, our children are controlled by someone else's agenda. Is it any wonder they resist whenever they get the chance?!

We get so accustomed so quickly to controlling our children's lives, that we lose sight of the fact that they are actually people too, who have their own likes and dislikes, who see the world from their unique perspective and who want what they want when they want it—just like us! Isn't that why we get our buttons pushed—because we're not getting what we want when we want it? Oh, we certainly experience our child's likes and dislikes, but when they interfere with our agendas, we expect them to change. We expect our children to climb on board our agendas and when they don't, we yell at them and criticize them for not doing it our way.

In the last question below, a mother worries about her daughter's education without the tutor that she thinks her daughter needs, even though her daughter hates being tutored. It is clear that this mother thinks the tutor is in her child's best interest—that the tutor will help her daughter succeed. Understandable. However, this is the mother's agenda, not the daughter's. Not to say that we should never ask our children to do what we think they should do. We are the parents after all and do know a bit more than our children. But when our agenda meets with tremendous resistance, we need to listen and acknowledge that our agendas are clashing. It is important to maintain connection by looking for alternative solutions—problem-solving—with our child. When they are screaming at us, either literally or figuratively, and we continue pushing our agenda anyway, we are in for a battle, and we break connection. To what extent, is dependent on how stubborn we are and how resistant our child is. The stakes get higher as our children get older and the more likely it is that we will lose them because they can literally walk away.

;Those of you with young children have the opportunity now to start focusing on your child's agenda, taking it into consideration, and treating your children respectfully. (Chapter Two in the book). Those with older children, who are getting stronger in their resistance, will have a harder time convincing both yourselves and your children that you both want to accept their agendas and will consider them in finding solutions.

With young children, it's easy to say (if you do not have a button about it!), "I understand that you are involved with the computer/video/game and have no desire to leave it for dinner/homework/bed. This is much more fun. I'm sure I'd be right there if I were in your shoes. You can get back to it after dinner/homework/tomorrow. Right now I need you to ...." This certainly does not guarantee cheerful cooperation. But your child does hear that you understand and are taking what he wants into consideration. That WILL pay off, I promise. It's just a matter of extending your awareness to take in his world, his wants, his perceptions. It does not mean you have to let him do it.

Older children and teens require you to be more willing to see their world which is probably a world that scares you. As our children get older and closer to life on their own, we tend to pull the reigns in tighter out of fear and worry. Our children know it and fight it. We have to walk that fine line between staying closely involved in their lives and giving them the privacy they need; between convincing them to do something against their wishes and letting them have some important wins; between shoring them up with our support and help and letting them make their own mistakes in order to learn and take responsibility for themselves. The deciding factor to which side of the line we take seems to me to be the amount of resistance they present.

If your child is screaming at you and her behavior is getting inappropriate over a period of time, then I think it is time to talk about meeting somewhere in the middle. If the resistance is rather in and out with mixed signals, it can be a red flag for help—the cue to stay in there. But in order to effectively know the difference we must have a certain detachment to be able to see where our agenda ends and theirs begins.

3. Questions from readers:

Q. My 2 1/2 year old daughter is recently having problems sleeping through the night. I'm a stay at home mom and we are on a pretty consistent schedule. Until 6 mos. ago, we all co-shared our bed. This past fall she was very excited about transitioning to her own room after we fixed it up. We were amazed at how easily she made the move. But over the past 8 weeks, she wakes either crying or talking about puppies or a toy she wants or pointing to the wall talking jibberish. On several occasions, we have found her between 3:00 and 4:00 a.m. sitting on a stool outside our door looking out the window. She says, "I'm just looking at the moon." She sometimes wakes 6 or more times a night. Sometimes she'll come in our room and ask one of us to go back to her room to sleep with her which we do until she falls asleep. Other nights she'll lay awake until 5:30 or 6:00 and then go back to sleep.

A. I agree that transitioning smoothly to her own room at age 2 is quite amazing. She sounds like quite a mature 2 1/2 yr. old. I think she is going through some very natural regressions. Dr. Brazelton calls these "touchpoints." When children are experiencing cognitive changes, which happen so often in the first several years, regressive behavior usually accompanies them. It's kind of like - I want to grow up but then again maybe I don't. It's very frustrating for all involved but when seen as a progressive move, you may feel better about it. She may definitely be dreaming or having nightmares or seeing a shadow or a make-believe something on the wall when she wakes crying. Sitting outside your room watching the moon, asking you to sleep with her and waking many times are ways to make sure you are still available to her. You can either keep doing what you're doing until she grows out of it, which could be quite awhile or gently encourage her to get herself back to sleep without you. If she is not putting up a major fuss, which you have not mentioned, I would suggest taking her back to her room, rubbing her back for a bit and making sure she has a "lovey" to cuddle or a quiet tape to listen to and leave before she is asleep. It's important that you normalize everything she is experiencing and never give her the impression that there is anything wrong or strange with her behavior. Children need to find their own ways of falling asleep so sleep does not become a big issue later in life.

Q. My 14 yr. old son is being bullied at school. He is short for his age and is really getting picked on. He is begging us to do nothing about it, insisting it will make it worse. I do understand his position but don't know how to proceed.

A. Definitely follow your son's cues about staying out of it. Children often experience a backlash when parents getting too involved. I think it's fine to speak to his teacher and ask her what she is seeing, to watch out for problems in this area, and to let you know of anything. But for now, keep it between just her and you. It's important for kids who are bullied to understand that the bully is usually an insecure child who is being "bullied" him/herself—either at home or by other children— and does the bullying in order to buoy himself up. Just make sure you don't expect your son to "understand" and deny his frustration. Hopefully he will want to work on it, which he is far more likely to do if you stay out of it at school. See if he will do some role playing with you. Keep in mind that for role playing to work, you need to be completely neutral and your button has to be defused! Switch back and forth between you and your son playing the bully and yourselves. Let him scream and yell all he wants "at the bully." Let him get it all out. Then slowly work toward what he can and wants to say to the real bully. If he wants to say something provoking, instead of telling him that's not okay, ask him what he thinks the result would be. Let him think it through and keep working until he has a good comeback that would not provoke you, the bully. The goal is to take the wind out of the bully's sails. You can offer suggestions but make sure he is the one who makes the final decision. He might try something like, "Just call me Frodo" or "How's the weather up there?" The idea is to go with the shortness that he is getting ragged about rather than to act defensively about it. It's hard not to take it personally at that age though. However, working it through with you may be all he needs to change his perception of it. He may be able to just walk away from the bully with a different attitude.

Q. My 4th grader at the Waldorf School was pretty overwhelmed by the homework and behind on everything at the first of the year but turned around after lots of talking and consultations with her teacher. Then my daughter's teacher suggested a private tutor at school twice a week for an hour. She dreads these times but I think she really needs the one-on-one. She sometimes reverts back to crying and refusing to do her homework. She says she sees no difference than before the tutor, "just wants to be like everybody else," and says we are torturing her. My fear if I stop the tutor is that she will fall behind, lose any self-confidence she has and hate school forever! I'm having a hard time explaining to her that she is different and does need the help. Also I never had any trouble in school and I find myself getting annoyed when she doesn't put her energy into the homework, not to mention the extra money going to waste on the tutor. Help!

A. It sounds to me like an understandable, but very strong agenda on your part. Even though you may see the difficulty she faces, your button gets pushed because you had no trouble in school and can't really understand why she can't do it the way you could. (A button would also get pushed in the parent who had a hard time with school and who fears the same will happen for the child). So wanting her to have an easy time like you did, you naturally want the tutor to fix the problem. However, I think your daughter is trying to tell you something. Perhaps she doesn't want the problem fixed. She clearly wants to be accepted the way she is—to be like everybody else. It's excruciating to be singled out at her age. Even though she might do better academically with tutoring, if she is so frustrated with it, it is not going to benefit anyone and the academic advantage will disappear. I would suggest having a heart-to-heart with her and acknowledge that this is your agenda that you are putting on her and why (your fears and concerns). If you say that, she will hear you. Then add that it doesn't seem to be working in a positive direction because she is so angry about it. Go through all the pros and cons to tutoring with her and be willing to look at new options. Is it possible it's this particular tutor she hates? You can explain to her (only if your button is defused) that not everybody learns the same way or has the same brain synapses that process information. There is nothing either right or wrong about that. Explain that one of the problems with any school system is that the teaching doesn't always address different learning styles but that you think Waldorf does a better job than most. Tell her you can understand her desire to just be one of the kids and not singled out, but that your concern is that she won't be able to do her work if she doesn't understand it. If you put her in the driver's seat and let her take ownership of her education, she is much more likely to take it seriously than if she thinks she is doing it for someone else—either you or her teacher. She may have to experience some frustration and even failure, but if you support her and listen to her without trying to fix it, she will either find her own way through it or will come to you with her frustrations, which she won't if it's all about your agenda.

4. Stories:

a. I feel like a new person. I've had a breakthrough! I was really puzzling over the question of �what is my fear' when my two boys get into a frenzy with each other. What I got was that I was reacting as my mother would, but then I had a deeper recognition. When things feel like they are spiraling out of control, I 'become' my child-self and sense that any minute, my mother will be barreling at me with both hands flying. That is a scary feeling, so instead of realizing it won't happen, I reacted as she did. Isn't that interesting? So now when the boys are getting wild, I assure myself that my mother isn't here, and that I am the mother and have the power to respond how I want. Wow! This has been a great week.

b. Becoming a mother had been my dream come true. So when my expectations of what this would be like were not met I became very frustrated and felt that I had failed as a mother and what was I thinking. I felt alone and looked at my children as problems that had to be solved. Mind you I had all good intentions and of course love my kids with all my heart, which is why I knew I had to fix everything and make them into model citizens for their sake, or so I thought. What I learned from Bonnie's book, When Your Kids Push Your Buttons that was life changing for me was that it is not my job to fix everything or to solve everything for my kids. To me this was a revelation. Growing up I lived in a home where my mother was frequently in and out of hospitals, sometimes for extended periods of time, and my only sibling, who was mentally and physically disabled, required a lot of attention. So my "job" was not to make waves and to smooth things over, trying to make everything all better, quite a monumental feat for a young girl. I just knew that my parents had enough to deal with so I better be as good as I can. This fixing and solving things followed me into adult life and into motherhood. So when I learned I didn't need to do that anymore, and that it actually is better not to because they need to work things out to learn, a huge weight was lifted from my shoulders, and I felt freed. My children are very capable of learning through experience how to problem solve for themselves, sometimes with a little guidance from mom. Much easier than constantly trying to make my three children happy all at once and all the time!

5. News

I will be a keynote speaker at the national Parents as Teachers conference in St. Louis on May 7th. And later that night, in Steelville, MO. for an Early Childhood training.

Click here to Read Previous Newsletters.

Email Bonnie with questions or comments at bh@bonnieharris.com.