Parenting: Self-Assessment & Looking for Clues

Paying attention to how we engage with our children and how our children react to us changes the game.  No longer taking offense, we become curious, making change more possible.

Music by Scott Holmes - A Wee Tipple 
Non Copyright Music 

Transcript

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My perception of most households, especially those in religious communities, used to be that their communication was at the very least calm and somewhat respectful. I now no longer believe that. The families I coach come from all walks of life, and essentially, we all struggle with the same things. We just handle it in different ways, some positive and some negative. Our tendency is to minimize our negative interactions, but let's not do that. Let's get really honest because honesty is essential to change and restoring connection between us and our children. As I stated in the previous episode, since we parents are at least 50% of any interaction we engage in, an important first step towards change is looking at our own behaviors when dealing with our children. By the time our children are teenagers, if we have not established an influential relationship and have primarily parented out of control, we will have very little control or influence. And once we reconcile the fact that we have very little control, we have a decision to make. Are we going to go harder and fight for that control? Or are we going to make significant changes and work at building an influential relationship with the little bit of time we have left? And that work on our behaviors begins with self-assessment. How do we show up? What is our own pattern of engagement? What am I like when I am angry or upset, when I feel disrespected? Do I give the silent treatment and turn my back? Or do I yell and participate in name calling? You're so lazy, man. How do you expect to hold down a job when you can't even do your chores? And by the way, I found that if name-calling is part of the way we engage with our kids, we also probably name call our partners. And we justify name-calling because of the other person's negative behaviors. If you don't want me to call you lazy, then stop being lazy. Or if you don't want me to call you an asshole, then stop being an asshole. From my perspective, there is never any good reason for name-calling. It erodes decency and respect, a baseline for any healthy communication, even when I'm angry. Even when I feel disrespected, it is not a healthy response to show disrespect in return. That's just a form of revenge. If I don't have a problem with yelling, then how is my tone? Does it communicate respect or does it communicate derision and ridicule? Do I talk through clenched teeth? Is there a sneer on my face? And how close am I when angry with my kid? Do I get up in his face or stand tall over him? Both are signs of aggression. Do I clench my fists, throw things or slam doors and leave? And if anyone would engage with me in this way, would I ever want to talk to them again? So why do I expect my teenager to respond any differently? Because I'm the parent and he's the child, just doesn't cut it. Being a parent should not justify sloppy or aggressive communication, but should raise our standard of engagement. It should call us to a higher level. We must become what we are looking for from the teenager in front of us. And so, before any work is done with our son or daughter, the work must begin with ourselves. If I can't communicate without aggression in any form, it is better for me to wait to do anything. It is more important for me as a parent to get a handle on my own pattern of behaviors before I try and handle my kid. After all, my pattern of behavior set the groundwork for this relationship that is happening right now. They learned much of it from me. At some point when coaching parents, some of the work I ask parents to do is to identify specific aspects of how they were parented, to put some effort into knowing themselves by looking at the environment they were raised inside of. However, parents are usually resistant to this type of assessment. They feel disloyal and are uncomfortable when asked to name the negatives of their parents' parenting. And because many adults have, on some measure, minimized or pushed aside their own experiences with their parents for years, it is difficult at first to truly recall what it was like to be on the receiving end of their parents' parenting. But I always explain the purpose of this exercise isn't to turn against our parents or make them look bad. It is simply to understand what our parents did and did not do well, to clearly remember. Remembering puts us back in the shoes of what it's like to be a teenager. Remembering helps us make connections between how our parents engaged to how we are now, and reconsider how we engage with our own children. So the work of assessing the environment we grew up in usually includes questions like, what did anger look like in my family? Was it allowed? Was it ice cold and silent? Or was it red hot and loud? Was I allowed to be angry? What happened if I was? Did anyone come close and work to understand? Or was I punished in some way, ignored or ridiculed? What happened when I or a sibling messed up? What did consequences look like? What things was I punished for? How was conflict handled? Did my parents address it, make light of it, or did they just sweep things under the rug? What didn't I like about my parents? I've found these types of questions are extremely difficult for parents to answer honestly. I typically get a rushed, oh, it was fine, my parents were fine, I have nothing to complain about. It wasn't that bad. It's important to note that when raised in a home where patterns of engagement were not so obvious, such as yelling, it is especially difficult to name the negative aspects of how we were parented. For example, some studies show damage done through silence has just as much of a negative impact than outright fighting. Not being able to identify anything specific about what wasn't cool while growing up is not a sign of everything having been fine, but can actually be more of a red flag. Taking some time to reflect on the environment we were raised in and taking notice of how we show up every day, of our responses to our children, and of their reaction to us begins to change our approach almost immediately. We begin to search for clues instead of taking offense. Two quotes speak directly to all of this in their own way. Brene Brown from Daring Greatly says, the real questions for parents should be, are you engaged? Are you paying attention? If so, plan to make lots of mistakes and bad decisions. Imperfect parenting moments turn into gifts as our children watch us try to figure out what went wrong and how we can do better next time. And Greg Mortison said, When you take the time to actually listen with humility to what people have to say, it's amazing what you can learn. Especially if the people who are doing the talking also happen to be children.