Notes and Takeaways from Peaceful Parenting
fs.blog
When I listened to it: February 2021
Why I listened to it: This podcast episode on parenting with Dr. Laura Markham by the Knowledge Project had some great information. Even if you don’t have children, the information about self-regulation and emotion coaching can be useful in most relationships. Here are my notes.
Go to the podcast episode for the recording or scroll down for my notes.
Want to get my future notes when I publish them? Subscribe to my weekly newsletter below.
My notes
About Dr. Laura Markham
Dr. Laura Markham is a best-selling author and the founder of Aha! Parenting, a blog that covers all things parenting, including discipline, effective communication, and fostering self-reliance and confidence in children.
In this conversation with Shane Parrish on The Knowledge Project, Dr. Markham breaks down the three keys to successful parenting:
Regulating your own emotions
Connecting with your kids
Coaching instead of punishing
1. Regulating your own emotions
Regulating emotions = noticing them and feeling them, but not acting on them.
(RKL: Emotions come with an urge to act. The people who are good at self-regulation know how to feel the emotion without acting.)
According to research ⇒ what matters most in how kids turn out is who we are as parents ⇒ we’re the guidance, we’re the role model.
Our children are born with incomplete neural systems ⇒ their limbic system (i.e. emotional part of the brain) is born unfinished and takes shape based on repeated experiences (and interactions with parents are the most common repeated experience).
Kids learn from their interactions with parents ⇒ a parent’s ability to “self-regulate” their emotions might have the most impact on who their child turns out to be.
Our children push our buttons in a way that no one else can ⇒ things they do and say can trigger unconscious memories of our childhood past and how our parents dealt with us.
Hippocampus = the part of the brain that makes and stores memories ⇒ it doesn’t fully develop until the child ages (so early childhood leaves a lot of unsorted/unconscious memories and our young children have a special way of triggering our childhood memories).
Single parenthood is harder because there isn’t another adult to balance things out ⇒ if you’re around a 3-year-old all day, you eventually start to act like a 3-year-old.
An emotion is just a set of sensations ⇒ in intense situations, your emotions often don’t correlate to an actual emergency.
How to learn to regulate your emotions as a parent:
Pay attention to what causes you to repeatedly lose your temper
Then, focus on the fear from the past behind the reaction and confront it.
If it’s not an emergency, take a deep breath and give yourself time to make a conscious choice about how to handle the situation.
Labeling your emotions helps you avoid acting on them ⇒ According to research, when you label your emotions, it gives you more control over them.
Just because you’re feeling angry, doesn’t mean you have to act on it ⇒ There is a big difference between “I’m feeling angry” vs “I’m getting angry” (the latter implies action).
Our thoughts create our feelings ⇒ so, pay attention to your belief system ⇒ if your child violates your belief system (i.e. values), it may cause you to react emotionally ⇒ the trick is to catch yourself in the emotional feeling before you act on it.
2. Connecting with your kids
Parenting is a relationship between you and your child ⇒ and relationships are all about connection.
“Attachment studies” show babies as young as 14 months have formed an opinion about every adult who’s important to them and whether they are trustworthy, including:
Will the adult comfort me when I’m upset?
Will the adult accept my full range of feelings, including anger?
Am I allowed to be who I am and still be loved and get my needs met?
Sometimes parents change a lot and children will change their opinion of the relationship, but that is rare.
It’s good for kids to have more than one parent they interact with and more than one close adult ⇒ this could be a grandparent, a teacher, a nanny, etc.
Children build working models based on every important relationship they have ⇒ this can give them a depth of different ways to act in different situations and different relationships (e.g. they can be angry in one relationship, but not in another).
Many conversations you have with your kids are fundamentally about values, you just don’t realize it ⇒ (e.g. “I don’t want to go to her birthday party even though she came to mine”)
How we relate to our kids and how we make decisions will shape who they are and how they show up in the world based on their values and self-image.
Moms vs Dads
The stereotype is that the mom is often more tender and nurturing and the dad is more playful and exuberant ⇒ Both nurturing and play are important.
Children have a hierarchy of attachment objects of people ⇒ it is natural for a child to have one parent they select as being the one they go to when they’re hurt ⇒ (This can cause the other parent, which is usually the dad, to feel left out, but it’s biological and it will change and become more nuanced as the child gets older.)
Unconditional love
All kids need the same things from their parents: unconditional love.
We want them to do well in school and to be considerate, but our love does not depend on that ⇒ (The paradox is that when we give children unconditional love, they do better.)
Kids need to know that:
They are acceptable as they are (even with their inconvenient feelings).
Their parent(s) will be there to take care of them and to protect them.
They are delighted in (i.e. adored and valued).
Unconditional love does not mean always trying to make your kid happy ⇒ trying to keep your kid happy can sabotage their development because it robs them of learning how to recover from disappointment ⇒ (they don’t learn “grit” or “resilience”, which is a recipe for unhappiness).
Making kids happy is not the point ⇒ you want them to learn that they can handle and recover from disappointment (i.e. resilience).
You also want to teach kids how to choose to give up what they want right now for something they want more in the future (i.e. delayed gratification).
All humans want to contribute and children are no exception ⇒ research shows that kids who contribute to the family do better.
3. Coaching instead of punishing
You want your child to be their best self ⇒ this requires coaching and boundary setting.
You can provide loving guidance to your child while you say no, enforce rules, and set boundaries without attacking them (i.e. without physical spanking or punishment / intentional act of pain to teach them what they’ve done wrong) ⇒ By doing this with them, you’re modeling a healthy interpersonal relationship and how they will get what they need in life without attacking other people.
(You can’t lovingly spank a child ⇒ the child doesn’t perceive it that way.)
When you tell someone how they feel (including a child), it doesn’t feel empathetic to them; it feels judgemental.
Most parents use rewards and punishments (“force”) as opposed to coaching because they aren’t sure what to do.
Coaching includes:
Emotion coaching (i.e. helping the kid learn to self-regulate and have the motivation to do so)
Setting up the environment to allow the kid to explore and learn safely (e.g. for a toddler, move things you don’t want him/her to touch up high so you don’t have to say “no” / use force)
Helping the kid practice (i.e. helping the kid learn to self-discipline and have the motivation to do so)
Emotion coaching
Emotion coaching is about helping kids manage emotions when they get too big for them to handle (rewards and punishments don’t help with this at all).
With coaching, you don’t tell the kid what to do; you help the kid explore what to do ⇒ (E.g. “I wonder what would happen then.”)
John Gottman (Raising an Emotionally Intelligence Child) ⇒ huge finding was that parents tend to react to kids’ emotions in unconstructive ways. For example:
Sometimes shame is used (e.g. “you’re a big boy, and big boys aren’t afraid”).
Sometimes punishment is used (e.g. you raise your voice and punish a kid for getting angry with you)
To react to emotions in constructive ways:
Acknowledge the emotion and label it (e.g. “No wonder you’re angry, that hurt your feelings when she said that.”)
Establish safety and open the conversation to real communication (e.g. “I’m here if you want to talk about it”)
Help the child figure out how to best respond to the emotion by considering different options (e.g. “I wonder what you’ll say when you see her tomorrow.”)
Most humans are scared of emotions, but emotions are useful ⇒ emotions are indicators of:
Something that matters to us
Something that we need to grow
Something that’s not working in our environment
There’s nothing wrong with emotion ⇒ what’s wrong is when we take action on emotions without thinking.
Emotion coaching is hard because most parents haven’t had it modeled by their parents.
Also, parents get anxious when their kids have big emotions ⇒ parents think emotions are dangerous and they get scared ⇒ (One reason we often try to problem solve when people just want us to listen to them is that we get anxious about the other person’s emotions ⇒ rather than problem-solving, let the other person have their feelings)
The rule of thumb when dealing with another person’s emotions is to accept the person’s feelings as they are, to allow them, and to remind yourself that they are temporary.
To be a good emotion coach, the parent needs to be able to self-regulate their own emotions ⇒ this allows the parent to become curious.
Part of how you build a deep relationship with your child so they trust you is accepting all of their feelings.
How relationship problems impact children
Raised voices cause children’s (babies included) blood pressure and adrenaline to shoot up (i.e. when they hear loud voices; they get worried) ⇒ this can cause children to become more anxious (and more difficult as a result).
Role modeling conflict resolution is an opportunity ⇒ When kids see conflict, it’s important that they also see the conflict gets resolved in a healthy way (you want your kids to learn that sometimes people get upset with each other, but they can make up.)
Suppressing conflict does not work; also expressing conflict as an attack on the other person doesn’t work ⇒ what works is to take responsibility for your emotions and having compassion for your partner (this opens the door for your partner to do the same) ⇒ (note: your thoughts create emotion, so take responsibility for your thoughts too.)
When parents don’t model good conflict resolution, it erodes the parent-child relationship because it makes both parents less trustworthy.
Helping kids take responsibility
Helping kids take responsibility is all about helping them develop age-appropriate habits, routines, and systems.
(RKL Note: Knowing what is age-appropriate is key.)
Helping kids develop habits, routines, and systems requires consistent practice ⇒ parents are involved at the beginning, but eventually, they’re not involved at all once the kid has mastered it.
Avoid blaming when things go wrong ⇒ instead focus on solutions: “we’re a family that focuses on solutions, not blame.”
The power of nature
New research suggests that when we are in green spaces (nature), it calms us down and our immune systems work better.
The immune system is about 50% more effective when you spend more than 2 hours in nature ⇒ your T-cells increase for several weeks afterward (RKL: source?)
It helps to see nature (e.g. a picture) even if you can’t be in it, but seeing nature is not the same as being in it.
Build nature into your child’s life.
Morning and evening routines
Morning and evening routines are important because children like to know what to expect ⇒ it builds security and it teaches healthy living habits (e.g. brushing teeth, sleep, etc.)
It helps to build in intentional “connection time” into these routines so that they are a daily habit for the parent.
These routines center around bedtime and include whatever you want (e.g. bath, connection time, a story, brushing teeth, dinner, breakfast, etc.) ⇒ map them out in a document.
How much sleep should kids be getting?
It depends on age ⇒ see charts (RKL: Here’s one from the CDC; also see image below).
The most important indicator is whether they wake up on their own (and the same goes for you as the parent ⇒ if you need an alarm to wake up, you’re probably not getting enough sleep).
If the child is light-sensitive, they need blackout blinds.
If kids are waking up without noise or light happily at 7:00 AM or whenever the target time is, they’re getting enough sleep (most kids don’t).
Source: CDC.gov