Although, connecting with children is generally important,
it becomes crucial when situation becomes tense due to any reason. You can,
undoubtedly, make things right after some time, but letting things go all over
your head should be avoided at first place. At those stressful moments, you may
be thinking about saying something good to contain the situation. Well, this
the testing time for your parenting capabilities. But it doesn’t really mean
that you cannot be good at it when you fail. There is always room for learning
and there is always more than one opportunity, or testing time, when it comes
to parenting.
The fact is that what you say to your kid at stressful
moment is far less important as compared to how you say. If your attitude
towards your kids is filled with compassion, your kids would be absolutely
ready to hear and embrace the bitter things from you.
Having that said, there are some basic principles for the
parents to follow. Some of those principles are mentioned as under.
Connect with your kid
As mentioned above, connecting with your kid is an all-time
important thing. If your kids are not connected well with you, they will not be
ready to listen and respect anything you would say to them. Therefore, when you
see things not going in your favor, the best thing you can do at that time is
to connect with your kid. Drop every other agenda. Hence, making eye contact
with compassion in your behavior, hugging, and gathering your kids around you
to show them some empathy are the best things you can do to start establishing
effective connection with them.
Acknowledge their
feelings
No matter how compassionate you are, children wouldn’t be
ready to cooperate with you unless they would feel understood. It means that
you will need to acknowledge what they feel. They may be angry, upset or
stressed. When you show them respect about their feelings, they are more likely
to gain control over those big feelings because what you are providing is the
very support they need.
This acknowledgement is specifically very important when
your kid demands something which you don’t feel appropriate saying yes to.
Maybe your kid wouldn’t react if you refuse right away. But that refusal will
create a gap between you and your kid. This is something you need to avoid. So,
acknowledging their feelings about what they want is very important.
Find solutions
When your kid fight over something, the worst thing you can
do is blaming. Furthermore, you shouldn’t come up with a solution which you
would end up enforcing. Kids should be included in the solution development
process. They should be asked to provide their opinions.
Remember, parenting is about staying calm in order to the
best of what you should do. So, take a deep breath and focus on the compassionate
side of you.
