The next area is, is it stress? Is my child not able to meet this demand, whether it be even jumping off the couch, listening to you in a crowded department store. Is it because they're overwhelmed with stress? Now stress can be lots of things. It can be the environment, sensory. You could walk into a shopping mall and a young child or any child that's temperamentally sensitive to this could be overwhelmed by the lights, or the noise, or the sense. And I speak from experience. That's why I say this. For me, somebody like me, it's too much. And as a child, I would become agitated or aggressive, and it was me unable to deal with this state of stress that my body was experiencing. So there's lots of different ways that we can handle things like sensory stress.
Or is it that my child is overwhelmed? They just had a really long day, or they're holding on to some anxiety, maybe worry about a project. I had a client who had...I tell a story where her daughter became immediately upset. She asked if she would go and get her science project and put it in the car so she didn't forget it, and her daughter became immediately aggressive. Well, what we could pinpoint that to was the stress and the worry that her daughter was actually feeling about having to present this project.
So instead of taking that behavior personally and saying, "How dare you talk to me like that?" She recognized, "I think that you're feeling really anxious about your presentation today. Is that true?" And then the young child was able to release it, get that off her chest, and then find a way to adapt her behavior to make it through the struggle. It's not about removing the conflict. It's about helping our kids be resilient.
So skills, stress. Is there extra stress? Sometimes it's temporary stress. "We're moving across the country," or "We're in a divorce situation and kids are feeling the stress of that." We have to recognize how that's going to affect their behavior.
And the third area that you can pinpoint it to is the state of the relationship. Have our interactions broken down the relationship because they've been harsh, critical, judgmental? If you've been really punitive with your child or in a state of using your anger to make them behave, essentially, then you might have some breakdown in the relationship. So if you want to go in to behavior and look at it differently, ask yourself is this a skill challenge, is this a stress challenge, or is this a state of the relationship challenge? Then your mind can go from, "I have to stop you," to, "I want to help you."
Or is it that my child is overwhelmed? They just had a really long day, or they're holding on to some anxiety, maybe worry about a project. I had a client who had...I tell a story where her daughter became immediately upset. She asked if she would go and get her science project and put it in the car so she didn't forget it, and her daughter became immediately aggressive. Well, what we could pinpoint that to was the stress and the worry that her daughter was actually feeling about having to present this project.
So instead of taking that behavior personally and saying, "How dare you talk to me like that?" She recognized, "I think that you're feeling really anxious about your presentation today. Is that true?" And then the young child was able to release it, get that off her chest, and then find a way to adapt her behavior to make it through the struggle. It's not about removing the conflict. It's about helping our kids be resilient.
So skills, stress. Is there extra stress? Sometimes it's temporary stress. "We're moving across the country," or "We're in a divorce situation and kids are feeling the stress of that." We have to recognize how that's going to affect their behavior.
And the third area that you can pinpoint it to is the state of the relationship. Have our interactions broken down the relationship because they've been harsh, critical, judgmental? If you've been really punitive with your child or in a state of using your anger to make them behave, essentially, then you might have some breakdown in the relationship. So if you want to go in to behavior and look at it differently, ask yourself is this a skill challenge, is this a stress challenge, or is this a state of the relationship challenge? Then your mind can go from, "I have to stop you," to, "I want to help you."
