Think before you respond
“At this age, children start to become a little rebellious. It’s all developmentally normal, but when a child comes at a parent, yelling and saying mean things, the parent might engage in that anger. It’s better to say ‘you seem really angry — if I put myself in your shoes I might be really angry too’.”
Dr Coyne acknowledges that this ‘perspective-taking’ can be difficult. “Yet, when children’s emotion is heard by parents, it can defuse it more effectively than saying ‘you need to stop that now’.”
In an ideal world, parents are at their best when children are at their worst. But parents are human and vulnerable to spur-of-the-moment reactions and strong emotions — anger, embarrassment, fear.
Dr Coyne is an expert in acceptance and commitment therapy, which helps parents accept their own emotion and their child’s emotion so they can do the thing that’s effective and that matters most in the moment.
“Often, parents experience a particularly strong emotion when their child throws a wobbler or they feel very uncomfortable about something a child says in public.
“It can knock them off the rails and make them second guess what to do as a parent. Every parent has these thoughts and feelings. Say you get very angry with your child. Your body tenses. You think ‘I really want to yell at her’, which is followed by the thought ‘that’s a terrible thing to think — I shouldn’t feel so angry’. Your mind runs away.”
An acceptance and commitment therapy approach brings a mindful attitude to the situation where the parent invites in the thought or feeling: ‘I notice I’m having that thought/feeling again’.
“This gives some distance to the thought — you’re having the thought but you’re not so attached to it. And then you say, ‘I’m going to do what matters right now’,” says Dr Coyne.
* More info on acceptance and commitment therapy, and workshops countrywide from www.actnowireland.com .
