24/05/2021
Posted • A common trap that parents fall into is to try get their children to comply by telling them how their behaviour is impacting their own emotional state.
This ‘strategy’ is often seen as a way of teaching empathy “kids need to know how their actions and behaviour affect others”
As much as I can agree with how important it is for our kids to know that not all behaviour is acceptable, making our kids responsible for our emotional state is NOT the way to teach those lesson🙏🏻
When we make our kids responsible for managing our emotions it’s codependency that we are teaching - not empathy.
See, WE are the only ones in control of our emotions and how we choose to react to our kids behaviour or other stressors in our environment.
As parents, one of our most important jobs is to take FULL responsibility for regulating our emotions so they don’t spill over on our loved ones🙏🏻
But how to share about our emotions in a healthy way?
Instead of “you’re frustrating me right now and it’s making me angry!”
you can say:
“I’m feeling frustrated/tense, I’m going to take a moment to try and calm down”
Here you are indeed being honest about what you are feeling, but you’re sharing about your emotions from a place of ownership and agency (that this is YOUR feeling to manage) - AND ideally you want to follow that up with also trying to model strategies to self-regulate
“Phew, I need to slow down and take a breath - I can feel stress taking over my body right now and I don’t like that”
“I notice how impatient I’m being with you, I need to take a break - I’ll be right back”
If we can’t do this in the moment and end up losing our temper (which is going to happen sometimes!) this is also how we approach the repair:
“Wow, I had a really hard time just now, I’m sorry I yelled at you. I know it may not feel like that in the moment but me getting angry like that is not your fault. It’s my job to manage my own big feelings and keep calm when I’m having a hard time and I wasn’t able to do that just now.”....
HT Respectful Mom
