Decoding Your Child's Behaviour
Do you ever feel so exasperated you hear yourself say, “I don’t know what to do with this child”?
You’ve talked to them. Explained the consequences of their behaviour. Given them empathy and understanding. Given them rules and boundaries. And you still find them repeating the same frustrating (sometimes hurtful to you, their siblings, or others) behaviour.
Rest assured, you’re not doing anything wrong. Nor are you alone in feeling like you don’t know what to do to help your child.
We’ve all heard the phrase, your child doesn’t come with a manual. If only!
But what if your child IS the manual, and your job is to learn how to read it? And in order to do that, you need to adjust your lens prescription to see clearly? Stay with me…
Maisie is a client who has a daughter who is 3 years old. When asked to come take a shower, she refuses to come. Maise has tried to make it fun by singing or playing chase in the bathroom. She’s tried to give her daughter the consequences that she will miss out on storytime. Or there’ll be no TV tomorrow. And every now and then (in Maise’s case, 2 out of 10 times), these strategies work.. but most of the time, Maisie is ripping her hair out and exhausted with each battle and the energy she has to expend to get her child to do one simple thing that is part of a simple daily routine.
Now for Maise and all of us, we are approaching this situation from the way we know how. And this approach is largely unconscious. It is a combination of our natural motivation style, our past experiences, and our own upbringing that creates our biases of how we view the situation. When it’s unconscious, we continue to approach the situation in the same way and hope the outcome will be different. And it’s in learning what our biases are and then learning what our children’s biases are, is where the magic really happens.
When Maise learnt about her own biases and then changed her communication to talk directly to her daughter’s motivations and give her instructions in the way her daughter could hear them, she started to come for her shower 8 out of 10 times - a huge improvement!
This is just the start of the benefits of reading your child….
A child that feels like you ‘get’ them experiences more mental and emotional well-being because they feel understood. They WANT to cooperate because they feel heard and go out of their way to contribute to the family.
My friends often joke about how my son cooks meals for the family more than 3 times a week (he is 14) and how I’m able to rely on him in the evenings to have the meal ready to eat so I can squeeze in dinner with the family when I coach international clients or sing in my glee club (like tonight). Now, before you think this is too much for his age, he CHOOSES to do this (he's not one to be told what to do! :)) I’d like to say I’m lucky. And I am. But it’s learning how to read him and motivate him in a way that he knows I get him is my secret.
In my opinion, it’s one of the greatest gifts we can give to our child. The gift of knowing we “get them”, which leads to them believing that who they are is enough..
It can feel impossible to understand your child without tools that break it down. But with the right tools, it becomes easy. And it starts with understanding your biases.
Much love,
Dina