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 20 - Standards and Beliefs
Contents:
- Purpose
- Discussion of key points
- Questions and answers – Running low. Keep them coming!
- Stories – None this month. We want to hear how you’re doing!
- 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. I answer readers’ questions and give 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 expect 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 that you are able to learn what your buttons are and how to defuse them.
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.
Your questions and stories:
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 – Standards and Beliefs:
I had a question from a reader who is confused about the difference between her "standards" and her "beliefs." She says she feels like an elastic band snapping back and forth between them, not knowing which to put her attention on. She gets focused on her assumptions but knows that her buttons/her frustrations stem from her unconscious.
Uncovering that button is a peeling away process, and the layers to be peeled are not at all obvious for most of us. The place to start is with your assumptions—judgments, perceptions, fears. If you don't like your reaction, then look to your assumptions—the jumping off point. To be aware of them and write them down is a huge step. Putting attention to your assumptions raises a great deal of consciousness about your part of the battle and your responsibility. To know that your thoughts about your child emanate from you, not your child, shifts the focus, allows you to take responsibility and to see the situation more clearly.
Once you have that, then ask yourself, "What was I expecting my child to do or not do that did not happen? Is that realistic for this child at this stage of development and in this situation, considering her agenda?" I think it is easier to look at your expectations rather than get hung up on standards. Standards are basically more general expectations. "I expected her to listen to me and not talk back with that attitude of hers" would translate to a standard as, "Children should do as they are told."
The next helpful question is, "What would have happened to me if I had done what my child just did?" If you draw a blank, make it up! What you make up usually comes from your subconscious and is far more accurate than you might expect. If your answer is that you don't know because you never would have dreamed of talking back or expressing an attitude, then that gives you tons of information. Why wouldn't you? Fear? Of what? If you did not feel free or safe to express whatever you were feeling without fear of criticism, what message did that send to you? This is not to say that you should have copped an attitude with your parents. But if you couldn't, that meant that you had to be somebody they wanted you to be to get approval, i.e. "I'm not good enough" (the belief—your perception of the message they sent—that you bought into). If merely a look from a parent stopped you from arguing your case about something, then you learned that your side of the story was not important. One step further—you were not important.
It's often hard to go there because it feels as if you are betraying your parents and belittling your childhood. it's very important to remember that this is not about parent-bashing—their buttons came from their past and so on—or self-bashing—you were a kid protecting yourself. This is about understanding what perception you had of your parents’ expectations of you that led you to the expectations and standards you now hold. When they attach to the past, they are not appropriate for your child in the present.
So if your opinions didn't matter, if you were treated as an unequal member of the family simply by virtue of your age (an experience most of us had) and had to behave in a proper way to make life easier on your parents (what most of our parents expected), then you took in a belief that you were not as important as others. So when you become a parent and expect your child to treat you with the same obedience/gratitude/respect that you had to give, and she does something that triggers your assumption that she is being rude, bingo, your button goes off. Now you are supposed to be important—you are the parent—but you are still being treated (you assume!) like a second class citizen by your child. How dare she! So your expectation of her behavior—that she should do as you ask without “talking back,” triggers your button, because you still harbor that belief that you are less important, and she has just proved it! Now your button is causing you to react harshly to your child to put her in her place—recreating the same pattern.
3. Questions from readers:
Q. Clean up. My boys, ages 5 and 2, share a room. They love to empty their matchbox cars, hunting guys, and stuffed toys all around the room. All at once! Sometimes they enjoy emptying their clothes drawers. They are not very good at picking any of them up. My husband likes to say, "that's ok, mom and I will pick them up and take them to Goodwill." The toys have never been cleaned up by my husband and taken to Goodwill. First of all, I don't like the threat in general. Second of all, I love toys and don't want them to be given away until the toy is no longer interesting and educational to each boy. I think it is our job to teach them to clean up. I'm just wondering how we do that without a battle. What are logical consequences if they do not clean up? Do they need to clean up on our time schedule and how can we make them independent at cleaning up?
A. Your husband has proved how effective empty threats are! And they are so common. In the heat of the moment we threaten and bribe—neither of which is effective—and then we don't carry through because it's not something we want to do. I think you’re right that's it's our job to teach them to clean up. But to put you in the right frame of mind, first it would be helpful for you to understand that the reason they are not good at cleaning up is because they are kids and don't want to. That is normal. To get them to clean up on your time schedule, since this is your agenda, not theirs, requires a good deal of motivation. You are asking them to do something for you that they don't care about. Having a clean room is your problem, not theirs. They might like the room once it's cleaned up, but they also like having their stuff all over the place. Only organized, meticulous temperaments don't. Step one: Don't expect that they should clean up when they are told. Do expect that the only way they will do it is with your help. If the three of you agree on a time, put on some music, sing and dance while you're picking up, and have something fun planned right after it's done, you will get it done without a battle. Perhaps the 2 year old could pick up everything red and the 5 year old, everything that goes in the second drawer. And realize that at these ages, you need to do the bulk of the job. Getting them to participate is the learning piece. Forcing them to do more than should be expected at that age teaches the opposite lesson. And to be honest, don't expect them ever to keep their rooms clean until they have a house of their own. It will always be your agenda which requires motivation to help you out with what you want. When the family is a community of equally important people of different ages, who do not criticize or coerce each other and who all help out, helping you by picking up their stuff will be less of a problem.
A. It sounds as though your daughter doesn't think she is enough for some reason, and wants to have things that belong to others whom she loves in an attempt to be more like them—more important. If your reaction was at all punitive when she was taking your rings—something very personal, a part of you—if you called it stealing or feared that she was stealing, then she got a message that she was doing something bad—probably not her intention. If you had understood it as a desire to have more of you with her, your button would not have been pushed, and you would have been able to come up with an agreement with her about borrowing your rings; perhaps even giving her one. You certainly can't do that if you think she's stealing (assumption). Stealing must be stopped, not given in to. When you ask her why she took something, the question alone implies that she did something wrong, so she goes on the defensive. "I don't know" is the safest answer. But saying, "You must have really wanted that badly to take it and hide it from me. I wonder if you were afraid that I would be mad," you will get a lot more information from her. But you must not be punitive in any way. She must trust that whatever she says to you will be heard and understood before she will open up. The food seems to fall in line with not being enough. Use the same language and do not criticize her. Your goal is to help her know that she is enough, that you adore her just as she is, not to get her to stop taking things. When she gets the first, the stealing will stop. I am assuming that "consequences" for misbehavior means some form of punishment. Secretive behaviors are usually the consequence of punishment.
A. It's interesting that you say, "...it saddens me" that he is unable to express his sadness. Sometimes when we want to be supportive of our children's feelings, we go overboard in our quest to get them to release. Probably your response to him is different when he expresses anger than when he is covering up sadness. He may sense that sad feelings will cause you to engage emotionally with him, and he may feel uncomfortable with that. As much as we "new age" parents want especially our boys to express their feelings, we can sometimes inadvertently "stop up" our children who tend to be more introverted and process their feelings internally. I am a very expressive person. Everyone knows how I feel! And as you can imagine, it was important to me that my children express theirs. My daughter, however, holds her feelings and works them internally before she talks about them. I had to learn that about her and am still getting lessons in it. Just because your son doesn't express his feelings, doesn't mean that he is not having them or processing them. If he says he hates feelings, that to me is a cue that he hates what happens when he has feelings. He may hate how they make him behave and/or he may hate how they affect you. I would definitely back off and be sure not to give him the message that his unwillingness to share his sadness makes you sad. I'm wondering if sad feelings are some kind of a button for you. Were you able to express sadness? What was the response if you did? If you had difficulty, perhaps you want to compensate with your son by making sure that he can express his sadness. And if he doesn't, do you take that to mean you have failed somehow?
Please let us know if the answers to your questions are helpful. If not, ask again and send me more information. We’d all like to hear how things turn out!
4. Stories
When I started to look at the messages I had been given as a child, the perceptions I had about who I am because of words and actions from my parents especially my father, I was able to come to terms with something pretty important. I did not come from an abusive home. I came from what I consider a very loving family even with all its unusual circumstances. I also remember some very harsh words spoken by my father in anger, words that I still remember to this day that altered the way I thought about myself. Now my father did grow up in an abusive situation but was determined to do things differently than his father. And he did, but when he got his buttons pushed, he said things I know now that he did not mean but were probably said to him by his father and most likely worse. By relating to my dad in this way and understanding him from a new perspective, I am able to look at some of the negative perceptions I had about myself and realize that they are not true. I am able to forgive my father and understand that he said things he didn't mean when his buttons were pushed. Therefore I didn't have to believe them about myself anymore. Now I look at myself in a whole new way and therefore look at my kids in a different way and for that matter the world. It was very healing.
When you can defuse your button, you might see that what you consider rude or disrespectful behavior from your child is actually the opposite. A mother in one of my classes recently talked about her frustration when her fourteen year old keeps using the word "frickin." She said, "I know she's doing that on purpose to drive me up a wall" (her assumption). The rest of the class, having heard the whole story, unanimously agreed that her daughter was probably trying to respect her mother’s dislike of swear words and was controlling herself from using the real word! That twist on it led the mother to see the situation differently and thus respond more effectively instead of react with outrage.
This morning my 6 year old boy was eating cereal at the table. The morning was going great. Until . . . his older brother (age 10) went up close to his face to annoy him. I told the older one that doing that was not very nice, but I also pointed out to the younger one that this is how his brother feels (annoyed) when he does the same thing to him at times. Well after hearing this, the 6 year old forcefully dropped his spoon into his bowl, spilling milk all over his own face. Then that irritated him enough where he just took his arm and swept the entire bowl and contents all over the table and the floor. I was very shocked and mad to see that and wondered what really triggered it. I raised my voice and told him that wasn't acceptable and he had to clean it up (to which he shouted NO!). Well I took his arm and helped him out of his chair and raised my voice to him and then he ended up crying. He did take paper towels and cleaned up the mess, while at the same time yelling to me, I HATE YOU MOMMY!!! to which I said, "Oh yeah? well guess what? I STILL LOVE YOU!!! I told him that I didn't believe he really hated me and I acknowledged that he was mad, but that I still loved him. Once things calmed down a bit several moments later I held him and hugged him and told him some other ideas on how to handle a frustrating situation (such as get up and walk away). Situations like these certainly test patience, but also test whether we're paying attention to what's really being reflected in the "mirrors" presented to us in these situations.
5. News
If anyone is so inclined, I would love more reviews of my book on Amazon or Barnes and Noble.
Click here to Read Previous Newsletters.
Email Bonnie with questions or comments at bh@bonnieharris.com.
^ Top
© 2008 Bonnie Harris, LLC | P : 603.924.6639 | E : bh@bonnieharris.com
