How I Feel, What They’re Saying

 

Chatting with a friend today, I mentioned some of Don C. Dinkmeyer’s work, from Systematic Training for Effective Parenting, thus:

One of the tools I've found helpful is 'parent reaction'...to discover the probable underlying need expressed through [a child’s] intense behaviour.

When you are irritated or annoyed, it's probably attention the child is seeking... When you're angry or want revenge, it's probably power. When you give up and feel despondent, it's a mirror of the child having given up on ever feeling successful.

Or, as she rephrased it:

when your child does x, and you feel __________, the child needs __________.

I like it when people sort out my thoughts more clearly than I can.

What I like about this tool is that it stops asking the child the horrible question ‘why?’ Kids don’t have a clue what they’re not successfully getting that they need, whether it be attention or power or a feeling of capability.

The other thing I like about this tool is its inherent respect for the sanity and needs of the child. A misbehaving child is not insane, bad or wrong … but struggling to meet needs and attempting creative means to accomplish their valid goals.

It is valid to need attention, power and a sense of being capable. The naturally immature methods use in their bids to get what they sense they need are information and communication –not misbehaviour.

Humiliating Children as a Teaching Tool

 

'Other people are mean, children need to learn to handle it.'

Okay, that might be true –in fact, it probably is. But how is that related to the people closest to them, who are supposed to cherish and nurture them, being mean? Intentionally being mean!

Who are supposed to protect children from unnecessary injury and harm?

It is ironic that today it is just as popular to think kids need to be kept indoors, stopped from sledding or skating on the local pond, and kept rear-facing in car seats until they're 7 or 9 'for safety reasons' as it is for parents to publicly humiliate and shame children.

Why is the only perceived protection or safety children need physical? Do they have no need at all for emotional or psychological safety?

And, seriously people! Is there no way to teach a child how to handle the viciousness of strangers other than through the viciousness of loved ones?

There is a police initiative to combat bullying is called WITS. Walk away, Ignore, Talk it out, Seek help. When the parents are the ones being mean, children are supposed to Walk away? Ignore it? Talk it out (seriously, in conflict with their parents!?) or Seek help? From whom, precisely?

When their protectors and closest family are causing the hurt, who are kids supposed to go to? When it is parents hurting children's feelings, intentionally, how will a child learn to assess 'who to trust' in seeking help?

So much of this comes to the point of 'teaching' through punishment, hurt and humiliation, when one of the basic realities of learning is that in order to develop and thrive, humans must first feel safe and secure, then they can expand and try and risk. When they're hurting, protecting themselves from further harm and pulling away from the world, they are only learning that the people of the world—even the ones who 'love' them-- seek to injure them. The only thing they wonder and want to learn is 'why me?'

Too often, the conclusion kids come to is 'because I'm worthless.'

Please don't teach your children that they are worthless.