Default Parent
Wait before you act
The impulse to act immediately may lead to a crash in your relationship
There is no escaping them. Terribly painful moments when your child or teen does something that makes you want to fix It fast! But the impulse to act immediately to try to end the moment of pain- may lead to a crash in your relationship- rather than effectively helping shape your child or teen’s character in the long run.
Humiliation and the Preschooler
You are at a restaurant and your four-year-old daughter starts playing with her food. You pleasantly remind her that food is for eating not playing. She picks up her plate and flings it at you sending mash potatoes flying into the air. You get covered with potatoes and your glass gets knocked over sending water and ice cubes rushing into your lap and onto the floor. You jump up to avoid some of the water and notice everyone else in the restaurant seems to be staring at you.
Immediate Reactions
As your adrenaline soars through your body- you might feel deep humiliation. You might think, “everyone is judging me as a terrible parent, everyone thinks my daughter is a spoiled brat, we are ruining their relaxing meals, we can never come back here”. Adrenaline fuels an impulse to get out of this restaurant as fast as possible. What happens next?
In the Default Parent the adrenaline surge leads to an immediate action.
Screaming out, “check now”, the parent might roughly grab the child by one arm and pull her out of the chair. With the other arm, the parent might first fumble but then successfully pay the check. Dragging the child out of the restaurant, the parent looks straight ahead to avoid noticing what other adults might be doing. The child is struggling to loosen her parent’s grip on her which tightens painfully in response. The daughter screams out she is hungry, as the parent yells back, “you can just go without lunch today. “
A Different Approach
In the Responsive Parent, the adrenaline surge is a sign that you need to intentionally slow things down, so that you can turn this Pain Point into a learning experience. There is no way around it, having cold water and ice cubes hit your crotch is unpleasant. Seeing others staring at you can make you feel insecure. However, if you allow yourself to take a moment to think, you will remember strategies you have used before to calm down and help your daughter learn something positive from this mistake. Realizing that you don’t have to know instantly what to do, is your first step to being able to be responsive to what your child needs right now. You remember to take a few slow and deep breaths to get your adrenaline under control. Feeling calmer, you consider “why” your child might be acting up.
A common “why” is that your daughter is just overly tired from all the morning activities and needs a nap. Another common “why” is that she just had an impulsive thought and acted on it. Literally, without her thinking about what would happen next, she just had an urge to throw her plate at you for telling her to “stop playing with your food”. Yet another possibility? Your child might be getting an ear infection and the pain in her ear has been building all morning and has come to a head right in this moment making her restless and frustrated. Which ever of these “whys” is most accurate, your child is most likely to respond to the “calm, gentle parent”.
You want your child to behave politely in public. You want to be a model for how to do this. As you mop up the water on the table using napkins the server has brought, you hand your child a napkin and say something specific like, “messes happen, but we are cleaning it up so we can eat lunch.” If your child does anything to help, you can say something like, “time to eat!” If your child doesn’t help, you can pay the check and then walk out holding your daughter’s hand and talking to her about what you might see on the road as you drive home.