A message to parents from your child’s teacher
Choose to Act in Alignment with Your Purpose
What is required for effective change is continuity of sincere effort to release and let go of inefficient thought patterns from the past.
-Doc Childre
One of the actions you can choose to ensure more co-operation than conflict in your home is to encourage your kids to make their own choices whenever possible. Their choices and the lessons they learn from them will be the best teachers they have in their lives. Parents overlook needs for choice at great peril-their own and their children’s.
Choice is at the core of human experience at any age. This deep longing to choose our own purpose, beliefs, and actions, no matter what age we are, is fought for and defended in every home, particularly by children whose parents overlook their vital need for autonomy. Opportunities to make choices typically increase with age and experience.
The total dependence of infants gives way, day by day and with increasing momentum, to a desire to make choices for themselves-choices about what and when they want to eat, explore, and express themselves. The maturing process is about growing the ability to make choices for oneself, and it is crucial for their development that kids at early ages have many opportunities to make choices and to learn from them. To appreciate what a child experiences when choices are absent, just notice your own responses when someone says to you, you can’t! You must! You have to! Do it because I said so! Or if you don’t do it, you’ll be sorry! Do you want to co-operate? You can bet that your kids have the same reaction to these messages that you do, and probably twice as strong because they haven’t had dozens of years to get accustomed to them. There are several reasons parents think and do for kids rather than give kids choices about how to think and do for them. One reason is that they want to see things done in certain way-neatly, efficiently, and precisely. Another reason is that it takes more time and patience to let kids do things for themselves.
Rushed and harried the way most parents are these days, they find it easier and quicker to just take responsibility and do whatever needs to be done. All this thinking and doing for kids limits their opportunities to make choices and to get things done using their own brain and muscle power and creates resistance and conflict. Without these opportunities, it is difficult for them to see themselves as capable and competent in their world.
One mother we know remembers sharing opinions with her parents and hearing back, Oh, you don’t believe that! You shouldn’t think that! At an early age she learned to keep her opinions to herself, and even as a grown woman she still doubts that anyone will appreciate them. Such limitations on a child’s way of seeing the world can have severe consequences in adult life.
Help your kids become aware of the range of choices they have and convey your confidence that they can handle more choice about their lives. To further exercise their choice making muscles and to learn what works and what doesn’t, invite them to participate in making rules, agreements, and plans that affect them. Let your kids know that they can rely on you to help them make adjustments when needed and that you are willing to learn along with them as they go.
When you talk with your children about choice, be aware that many young people, especially adolescents, feel confused, irritated, or angry when they hear adults talk about making choices. Most kids know that parents, teachers, and other adults make most of the important decisions for them, and their choices often seem limited to just two-to comply with the decisions that come down or to rebel against them. Most kids’ experience is of living in the midst of a seemingly endless number of rules and expectations that often don’t make sense to them and don’t honor their desire and ability to make choices for them. They might not believe that they have any control over meeting their own needs. They may need a great deal of empathy for the gap between the autonomy they would like to have and the limited number of choices they have been offered by adults in the past.
Summary
Choose to choose. Determining your purpose for parenting is the first step to reduce conflict and create a flow of co-operation at home. From that point on, it is a matter of learning skills and making daily choices about how to think, listen, acts, and talk. We hope this key has expanded your awareness of the areas of your parenting life you have choices about. We also hope that you feel inspired to introduce your kids to an ever-widening range of choices-so that they sense themselves as full participants in their lives, and so they will enter adulthood as competent and confident choice makers.
Daily Practice
Take time daily to reflect on your purpose.
Remember your intention for your interactions with your children.
Notice should and have tos and translate them to things you want and choices you make.
When we understand the needs that motivate our own and others’ behavior, we have no enemies.
-Marshall B. Rosenberg
Key 2 • See the Needs
• All behavior is an attempt to meet a need.
• Children are always doing their best to meet their needs.
• You are responsible for meeting your own needs.
• Feelings are messengers of met and unmet needs.
• Children want to be heard and understood.
Why do we do what we do? Why do our children behave the way they do?
Sometimes, of course, it’s easy to understand why people do certain things: Ask a child why he eats, and he’ll say he’s hungry. Ask why he wants to go out with his friends, he’ll say for fun, to play. And why he asks so many questions? Because he wants to know some things. But ask him why he hit his little sister or why he doesn’t want to go to school today, and he’s not so clear. He’s likely to say, Cuz she’s stupid, I hate her, or School is dumb! Parents often react to statements like these by discounting them: You don’t mean that. That’s ridiculous. That’s not the problem. Or they reprimand their child: You shouldn’t talk like that. What a terrible thing to say. When kids hear this, they will try to defend themselves or they will shut down. And parents will be no closer to understanding what’s really going on. Nor does it help to ask who started this? Or whose fault was it? You’ll just get more accusations and more strife. This confrontational way of determining who is wrong, who’s to blame, and who’s deserving of punishment is upheld in homes, in schools, and throughout our justice system. It persists even though it rarely leads to understanding the deeper motives for actions. Without knowing the deeper motives, you can never really resolve problems or conflicts; you can only put temporary patches on them.
Children, of course, pick up on this approach to conflict and are quick to point the finger of blame: It’s her fault! She started it! She should be punished. They, understandably, do what they can to protect themselves from blame and punishment. One strategy for this is lying. In fact, we have found that the main reason children (and people of any age) lie is that they don’t feel safe telling the truth and they want to protect themselves from being punished. Assigning blame does not solve anything, and when parents assume the roles of judge and jury, determining who is to blame and what’s to be done about it, they perpetuate an ongoing blame game at home, where accusations, fault-finding, and name-calling become the norm.
The real voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
-Marcel Proust
How sad this is, when what every child wants is to be seen for their good intentions and acknowledged for their best efforts. When they are seen with respect, they feel safe. This is especially important when their actions don’t turn out so well. When a child feels discouraged, distressed, sad, fearful, or confused about something, it doesn’t help to give advice, blame, criticize, shame, or punish. These responses only add to the misery and fear; they don’t help kids understand the situation better or learn from their mistakes. When children come to expect these fear-inducing reactions from adults, they decide at some point to find someone else to talk to or they shut down and don’t talk at all.
What kids do want, when things go poorly, is someone who listens, accepts their feelings, and recognizes their good reasons for doing what they did. Listening, accepting, and understanding foster self-reflection and learning. When you fulfill your kids’ needs for being heard, accepted, and understood, and you allow your kids to reflect on their actions, you send a message that they are competent and resourceful and can learn from every situation. When children receive respectful, empathic listening and feel the relief and hope it brings them, they will come back to talk to you next time. Eventually they will be open to hearing your thoughts and seeking your advice.
