Have you ever stopped to think if there is a good time to “not parent”? Is there ever a time when we do more harm than good when interacting with our children?
While not common questions, I do ask them quite often in my office when dealing with exasperated parents. If you want to make a significant change in parenting…..or more correctly in disciplining your children when they have displeased you in some way….changing this one key thing can make a significant difference. What I suggest is adopting the guideline that you will not parent above a “5.” But what does this mean exactly?
Imagine a Richter scale in gauging earthquake strength except that this one is for your emotions. It runs from 1-10 with 1 being calm, cool and collected and 10 being a raving maniac of emotional turmoil. A rating of “5” is when you begin to feel it inside, beginning boil to the surface. Your face begins to get a little warm of you get flushed. You notice that your muscles, especially in your upper body are beginning to tense up, you are standing a little taller and your tone has gone to what I call “dictator voice.” Sound familiar?
All of these things, and many more, are our “signals” that we are about to do damage. Oh, our point might be correct but the manner in which we will make it is about to be very unhealthy or unproductive. Our alarms are beginning to go off…..but we typically forge ahead anyway.
The problem is this, whenever our emotions build beyond our intellect (when you pass 5), our brain doesn’t function too well. It is at this point that we lose perspective of what is true, good, healthy, etc. and we are only running on raw emotion. Except in true instances of emergency or imminent danger, this is rarely a good idea. Anytime we parent from raw, unregulated emotion, we do harm. (Remember, our emotions are not necessarily correct indicators of reality and should not drive what we do or how we live.)
At the least we undermine our authority or just fog the message. In other words, when we put so much negative emotion in the mix, this is what our children are the most aware of and they regularly miss our point and just see us as mean or ridiculous.
The vast amount of emotion driven parenting makes it virtually impossible for true learning to happen. At worst we impress emotional injury on our children. Raw emotion does not take into consideration just “how” things come across to our children. How many times have we asked ourselves after an emotion fueled confrontation……”What have I done?” This is parenting above a “5.”
I am often asked however, “Aren’t we supposed to give consequences immediately?” Yes this idea is pitched quite often by my own profession along with many other odd ideas, but the reality is very simple and not always what psychology tells us. Our emotional world is typically the most disordered part of our being. For true discipleship to occur between parent and child we must first recognize this in ourselves and address it. We can’t remove the emotional process nor would we want to, but we need to accept that it does not belong in certain parts of the parenting process.
If we have to disengage from interactions due to getting “above a 5” for weeks, that is just fine. If the behavior that is jacking us up so much is a real problem, it will continue to appear until we are at a better place emotionally to deal with it well.
It is also true that any problematic issue of childhood is not limited to just one behavior or instance….we will have many other opportunities to make our point if the issue is a significant one. The second comfort in this process is that if the behavior in question is really “not” significant, it will go away on its own…..many do just that.
So here is the challenge. Take time and evaluate your emotional temperature when dealing with your children. When it is running to high….disengage. As I told a group of parents recently, unless something is on fire…..walk away. Both you and your child will feel and function better for it.
– Keith McCurdy
