Today we’ll take a look at some of the real anxiety producing experiences kids face. Sometimes it’s hard for adults to relate to why these would be scary…like getting a haircut, for example. When anyone faces the unknown, their brain doesn’t like it and will quickly attempt to fill in those blanks from their catalog of experiences.
Sometimes I wish I had an indicator I could see that would give me a warning when I need to pause and recharge. As a parent, caregiver, teacher or whatever your role is with kids it can be easy to get burned out. I’d like to show you a tool I use for myself and the families I work with to help monitor this and to figure out what needs to happen to get back on track and those batteries fully charged again.
Have you ever been called in to your boss’s office? What about the principals office, when you were a kid? Or how about someone you care about saying the dreaded words “we need to talk”?
How does that feel? How much are you able to listen?
This is how your kids feel when you try to parent or discipline using intensity.
In families, we build systems to help us survive. It’s like a kind of shorthand. If I yelled the word “SOCKS!”, everyone in my family knows that means someone left their socks in a place they shouldn’t. What happens next is that the kids prone to “pleasing” will come and find out if it’s their socks and the kids prone to independence will hide in hope that if no one sees them, they don’t exist at that moment. (guess whose socks it usually is!)
