21 Mar 2014

TEN MINUTES AT BEDTIME: REPAIRING CONFLICT AND MISUNDERSTANDING WITH CHILDREN

 The daily lives of children are not all about positive feelings. All children have moments of disappointment, discouragement and self-doubt. In every family, there will be moments of anger and misunderstanding. In healthy development, children recover from these moments. Whether on their own or with our support, most children bounce back. Too often, however, children do not quickly bounce back. Painful feelings linger longer than they should. Vicious cycles are then set in motion, and bad feelings lead to bad attitudes and bad behavior. Criticism and punishment lead to anger and defiance or secretiveness and withdrawal; and then to more criticism; and then to more defiance and more withdrawal.
Our task, as parents and guardians is to recognize these moments and begin a process of repair. Children learn invaluable lessons from moments of repair. They learn that, although it is not always easy, moments of anxiety, sadness and anger are moments and can be repaired. Disappointments are disappointments, not catastrophes, and bad feelings do not last forever.
A Pathway Toward Emotional Maturity
We have now opened a pathway toward emotional maturity. In these moments, children begin to develop a more balanced, less all-or-nothing perspective on the disappointments and frustrations in their lives. As a result, they will be better able to "regulate" their emotions –they will be less urgent in their expressions of distress, less insistent in their demands and able to think more constructively about how to solve emotional problems.
Moments of repair may also lead to a reduction in the level of stress hormones and other stress-related physiological processes that, when prolonged, are damaging to children's physical and emotional health.
Ten Minutes at Bedtime
I therefore recommend that parents and guardians set aside some time, every day (perhaps 10 minutes at bedtime), for kids and parents to have a chance to talk and to use this time to repair moments of conflict and misunderstanding. This may be the most important ten minutes of a child's day.
In these brief daily conversations, we should ask kids if there is something they might want to talk about –perhaps a problem he\she is having at school or with friends, something he\she is angry with us about or what she may be anxious about the following day. 
When there has been conflict in our relationship with our kids, it is especially important for us to take the lead and begin to repair hurtful interactions. We need to make a deliberate effort to set aside criticism and judgment as long as we can and hear her side of the story. Discussion and disagreement, even problem solving, can come later. Don't stay angry.
I also encourage parents and guardians to take responsibility for their own emotional responses, acknowledge their errors and, when appropriate, apologize to their child. (We can say, for example, "I know I was really angry at you earlier. Maybe I got too angry.")
Some parents express concern that, in apologizing to their children, they may implicitly condone their child's disrespectful or defiant behavior and diminish their authority as parents. This fear is understandable, but unfounded. Our apology does not excuse our child's bad behavior. ("You still should not have hit your sister.")
In my opinion, when a parent initiates repair and offers an apology, he has modeled an important lesson in interpersonal relationships and gains authority with his child, because our children's acceptance of adult authority is, ultimately, based on respect.
Of course, children do not always make this easy. And sometimes we may not know what to say. But our willingness to make the effort is important in itself.
Patient listening receives far less attention than it deserves in current parenting debates, in our understandable concern with children's achievement and character development. In my experience, however, there is no more important parenting "skill" than this and nothing we do as parents that is more important for our children's emotional health –and for their success in life.
Original Article: “The Most Important 10 Minutes of a Child's Day”
< K. Barish, Ph.D.