When I went to my first conference on how to manage and run a successful website business I was overwhelmed. I kept on saying, “This is so hard”. The instructor said to me, “Don’t say it is hard. Say it is challenging. It will change your perspective.” He was right, it did. I don’t like to do hard tasks but I do love to tackle a challenge. It always amazes me how just changing your words can have such a huge impact on your psyche.
Now try to give your child the same advice when they are feeling discouraged, “Honey, your math homework isn’t hard, it is challenging. Don’t you feel like working hard now? Isn’t that better way to look at this situation?” Chances are your child will not respond the way I did. At best you will get the proverbial eye roll with a shrug of shoulders that signals irritation. That is because it is tough for kids to accept advice from adults even if the advice is given just to help them cheer up.
Most experts agree that children do not respond well to advice even if it’s given with the best of intentions. This is because it interferes with a child’s need for autonomy. When given advice, children feel as if their parents are talking down to them. Faber and Mazlish in their book, “How To Talk So Kids Will Listen” say, “When you give… advice to children, they either feel stupid (“Why didn’t I think of that myself?”), resentful (“Don’t tell me how to run my life!”), or irritated (“What makes you think I didn’t think of that already?”).
Children also feel annoyed when parents work so hard to make them happy and cheer them up. They feel pressured to stifle their natural feelings. As I said in a previous post, it is frustrating to have to feel good when you are feeling bad, especially with the people whom you want to feel most comfortable.
This is difficult for parents. We have a need to share our values and opinions with our children and we hate to see our children sad, disappointed and frustrated. It is painful to watch our children struggle with the variety of problems they may have: a friend that teases, a tricky homework assignment or an irksome medical condition like food allergies. What better way to cheer them up by giving them some advice? Besides, isn’t it important to give children a new and upbeat way of looking at their problems and help them perceive their problems in a a positive way? Shouldn’t we advise them that challenges are a part of life and we can use them to grow and better ourselves? Isn’t it true that most health professionals feel that children and adults who focus on the negative aspects of their problem will become discouraged, even depressed?
There is an effective technique that therapist use that can help us teach our kids to have a positive outlook of life. It allows us to give advice without interfering with a child’s need for autonomy and denying their negative emotions. That means that kids can actually listen to our advice without feeling bad about themselves and their feelings. It is called Reframing. To reframe effectively we need to first accept our children’s feelings and then gently and tentatively focus them on the positive.
You can use non-confrontational phrases such as:
“Sometimes it helps”, “Even though you know” or “It can be hard to remember”
For example:
“I see you are struggling with your math homework. Sometimes it helps to think of it as a challenge instead of it being something that feels too hard to do.”
“It can hurt so much when a friend teases you about your red hair. Even though you know, in our family we think red hair is beautiful, it can still hurt.”
Don’t Say:
Do Say:
To build a great relationship with our kids we need to choose our words carefully. Reframing is a great tool to use to help us do just that.