It happens that parents get mad at their kids with flip-flops, necklaces. And every single breakdown is a small disaster in which both the child and the adult need help. Vera Vasilkova, a psychologist, tells us what we need to know to avoid breakdowns and shares exercises that will teach parents to cope with emotions.
Categorically call slaps and necklaces violence and say that it is impossible to say so - means to add even more guilt and pain in a difficult situation. What can we do about it?
You can do it differently!
There is something important behind any parental breakdown. And more often than not, slapping and cursing are the result of powerlessness. It is powerlessness to one's childhood, to the norms and rules learned in the parental family, to live in the totalitarian Soviet system. From their own emotions, fatigue, congestion, unresolved problems at work and with loved ones.
Just forbidding yourself to shout, slap, beat is not enough. The reaction grows from the depths, and there it should be changed. For this purpose, it is important to build a strategy and implement it step by step.
Work with your feeling and attitude
Awareness of the emotions that have led to the breakdown, and learning to live them more environmentally friendly - that's the main task of working on themselves for parents. It is about learning to think about emotions right at the point where they occur.
These questions will help:
- What did you feel at the time of the breakdown? Anger? Rage? Offended? Powerlessness?
- How did these feelings manifest themselves at the bodily level - did you want to stomp, wave your hands, clench your fists, heart rate increased?
- What do these feelings look like? In what other situations, now or in the past, you have faced a similar reaction - in your own or other people's lives.
It is best to have a diary and answer these questions in writing. At first, these will be noted on the traces of the breakdown, but over time you will learn how to "catch" your feelings as they arise. This skill greatly reduces the degree of reaction.
Behind the parental impotence in a breakdown most often stands a combination of fatigue and internal factors (traumatic situations from the past, children's experience, dissatisfaction with life). More rest, taking care of yourself - the most common advice that friends and colleagues give. Yes, it is important, but that's not all.
Exercises will help.
Psychologists commit to personal therapy. It is necessary not to confuse the client's stories with their own, to broaden the view on the problems, to keep the internal balance when meeting with the strong emotions of other people. What should we do?
- Emotionally close unpleasant and traumatic stories from your own life, including childhood. There are different methods to do this, but the result is the same - the memory of a complex event will stop "picking up", causing tears and severe conditions. It is possible to tell a story many times to a loved one who supports a person. Or write down your thoughts and feelings in a diary, draw.
- Learn to look at the situation from the outside. There is a special exercise for this purpose. For example, in a shop where you are usually slightly irritated by a queue or a saleswoman, try to imagine that all this happens on TV. You just watch the news story.
- Be able to withstand the strong feelings of children.
By following these recommendations, you will be able to be more relaxed about moments of disobedience, caprices, hysterics, whining, learn to maintain their inner state, despite the fatigue, and more effectively help the child in solving his needs.
It is quite possible to do something on your own, picking up books and articles. Particularly difficult tasks are better solved together with a family psychologist.
Create a safe contact
Attachment theory proves that a child needs consistent parenting behavior, it forms internal security, and powerlessness in his adult life will be less.
Sanctions for disobedience and a pleasant pastime should be both considered and consistent. For example, parents impose a rule and a sanction: "If you don't clean your room, you don't play the console. And each time you need to monitor compliance with the rule - consistently. When once you haven't cleaned up and there is no sanction, it's not consistent.
Joy in the relationship is also important. Remember what you like to do best with your child? Fool around or hug? Do crafts? Watching educational films together? Read? Do it more often!
For example, taking care of each other is a family value for you. How can you teach your children this care? Of course, your example is taking care of yourself, your partner, your elderly parents, helping charities. And then a family lunch can be not a formal family gathering, but a place where children learn to take care of themselves.
Sometimes it seems that powerlessness is inseparable from parenthood. However, there are situations in which we, the parents, cannot do anything about it. But this does not apply to our breakdowns, such problems are quite solvable.