Can we take our children's behavior less personally?

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In my last post, I pointed out that many of my clients express a fear that they are the only ones who are having trouble managing their children’s behavior in public and in private. “Everyone else seems to be doing it better!”  In reality, all parents struggle with how to teach their children appropriate behavior, and how to manage it when their children misbehave.

Part of what makes the whole process so hard, is that as parents, we feel so very vulnerable and judged about the way we are parenting.  We are all human, and what could be more sensitive than the way our children are behaving. After all, we gave birth to them, or adopted them, or are fostering them.  Often they look quite a lot like us physically!  We think about what we were like at their age, and how our parents approached our behavior.  And other than our partners, they are the people we love and care about most in the world.  And they know how to push our buttons!

Also, we are not making it up: people are judgmental, a separate but interesting topic in itself!  These children are so precious to us; we can’t help but take heir behavior very personally. We are a part of the same culture as those outside that may judge, as we result, we can end up being the harshest critics and judges of ourselves.

How do we cope with all this: do right by our children, find ways to not take their behavior so personally, and not get overwhelmed by feelings of shame and embarrassment of feeling so exposed?  These are complex dilemmas, and there are no simple strategies to address them.  However, we are ahead of the game just by being aware that all of this is in play in our day to day parenting, and exploring ways to address them.

Start with finding ways not to take our children’s behavior so personally!  When my son was three, my husband and I were out in the front yard of our home, and there was a man across the street mowing his lawn.  My son looked at my husband and said, “I hate you!” My husband and I were both a little shocked, and took a few moments to respond.  In the interim my son quickly recanted, “ I don’t hate you, I hate the man across the street mowing the lawn.”  My husband and I still joke about it to this day.

Toddlers are complicated little beings, and they are exploring who they are, how they are separate from their parents, and how to understand their emotions.  From birth, children are involved in those explorations, differently, in each developmental stage. 

Babies aren’t being manipulative when they are hungry and crying to be fed, or changed, or held.  They have needs, and they are dependent on us to meet those needs.  As they grow, to a year old or so, there is a dance around whether they need to have all their needs met immediately, or whether they can develop an ability to soothe themselves.  As they are more mobile, and more able to communicate verbally, we begin to have to set limits for their safety, and make more demands on them to wait a bit, for what they want.

Suddenly, there is more room for parents to interpret a child’s behavior as manipulative, to fear “spoiling them”, to be frustrated, angry, or disappointed by their behavior. It’s a hard transition: there is a tug around the child being dependent and independent for children and for parents.

An added complication to this dynamic is that the way healthy children learn these developmental tasks by testing out limits.  And we, as parents, are the ones being tested.  Often that feels pretty challenging; it becomes hard not to interpret their behavior as something they are consciously doing to make our lives difficult.  Additionally, all this happens in a very public way, hence the vulnerability and opportunity for parents to feel shame.

I believe that children are not as a rule, manipulative, or trying to give us a hard time.  They are trying to figure out who they are, and how the world works.  We get the daunting task of being their teachers.

A fundamental concept in trying to de-personalize our children’s behavior is the understanding that they are just trying to do their job. If we can manage to reframe their behavior in this context, it can help towards not feeling like they are purposely trying to make our lives miserable!

This blog is an attempt at building a “middle ground” parenting approach. 

One of the first, underlying steps is becoming aware that we need to understand how we are affected by fear of judgments from outsiders, and our own self-judgment.   We can understand the process of child development in the context of a child learning appropriate behavior by testing limits, and by our setting, and consistently enforcing those limits.  

We can’t control how and when are children test us, but with thought, and guidance we can come up with strategies and approaches in which to ease the tension of this natural process for ourselves and hence for them.

And we can be kind and compassionate to our children and equally as importantly: to ourselves. Outsiders can be judgmental, but this understanding of child development can be a part of learning to not judge ourselves harshly, to not blame ourselves for natural child behavior, to know what we can and cannot control.  

The first step in this, as in most things, is to be conscious that taking our children’s behavior personally, interpreting it as intentionally geared to annoy us, stops us from being as effective as we can be in teaching our children appropriate behavior.

Why do other people’s children seem better behaved?

Just this week, in my parent coaching practice, four sets of parents separately said to me, “When I see other families, at the restaurant or at the mall; it looks like they have it under control.  My child/children are screaming, running around, crying, and bouncing off the wall like little monkeys (or some other such mammalian creature).  Other people’s kids are sitting still, eating politely, conversing and behaving perfectly!” 

I am a parent and I know that in the moment, that is how it really feels.  We usually can’t identify what it is we feel, but often, at the root of it is shame.  In those moments we feel like we are bad parents, and that makes us feel like we are bad people.

Shame is a really uncomfortable, painful emotion and it’s natural to try to push it away. So we understandably replace the shame with depression or with anger at our children, for putting us in this situation. As a result, unintentionally, we can lash out at them, cause them to feel shame and that they are bad people, as opposed to people that behaved badly.

In reality, if so many of the people I talk to feel this way then it could not possibly be true that everyone else is “parenting better”.  When our child is screaming in a restaurant, or having a tantrum in a supermarket, we worry we are being judged; we feel embarrassed and alone.  In that moment, it seems like we are the only one who experiences this behavior with our children.  Yet most of us do.

Children are learning how to behave appropriately at home and in public from when they are babies.  One of the prominent ways children do this is by testing.  They will try out behaviors to see how we react and how other people react.  By doing this, and dealing with the repercussions, they learn what they can and can’t do behaviorally.  This testing is their job.  It is our job to set appropriate limits, and use positive discipline, so they will learn those lessons about appropriate behavior.  But it is important for us to do it in a way that is not shaming for them.  And it is important for us not to feel shame because they are testing.  It is not a reflection on our parenting skill or lack thereof, it is not because we are bad, or did something wrong, it is what children do.

So the first step is to try to remind yourself, that you are not alone and that all parents experience this.  If grandparents or parents of older children say their children didn’t do that, it’s just that they’ve forgotten.  They blocked out the embarrassing experiences and remember mostly the positive or funny ones. (That’s a comforting fact as well!)

If there are uncompassionate people, forgetful of their own experience, or haven’t spent much time around children -that give you a look, or a comment, or a judgmental whisper aside to their companions, we have to develop ways to let that go.  They are the ones with the problem.  The way we feel about ourselves and the way we respond to our children is so much more important than the unfair judgments of passers by.

If we become filled with shame, we feel bad about ourselves and internalize it.  Or we get angry and lash out at the children.  It ends up hurting them and us.

We do need to deal with it when children misbehave in private or in public.  If a child is having a tantrum we need to try to pick them up, and without lecturing or long speeches, with as much calmness as we can muster, and get out of the restaurant, mall, birthday party.  If a child is misbehaving in a place of worship or making loud noise in a quiet situation like a wedding, lecture or movie, we didn’t do anything wrong as parents. They were just being children, and we need to remove them from the situation.

Some children are naturally more compliant and need to do less testing, either in private, in public, or both.  This doesn’t mean they are better or that the children who test more are worse.  Everyone is born hardwired with a certain temperament.  We can’t control that.  But we can control how we react, and how we develop strategies to approach effective, non-shaming discipline.  I will go into more depth limit setting and positive discipline techniques in future posts.