Taming The Triggers
A child’s defiance may be triggered by the parent making a demand that the child finds unreasonable.
In Week 3 of SideStepping the Power Struggle course, we understand how our children pick up on our stress level regardless of their age. Do you ever notice that when you’re having a bad day your child seems to act out more? There are two key ingredients to creating anger: Stress and trigger thoughts. Thinking that children are being disrespectful or assuming that they are acting out just to bug you are mistaken ways of thinking.
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Parents must notice their stress levels and deal with them. Frequently stopping to breathe and relax throughout the day can bring down the bodies tendency to hold and accumulate stress. Anger can be like a ball of fire and stress is the tinder and faulty thinking is the spark. Three categories of faulty thinking are: labelling the child, catastrophizing the situation and assuming intent.
Correcting our trigger thoughts needs a level of awareness. Once you notice that you are engaging in faulty thinking, you can find neutral thoughts that are more peaceful. Having studied the last two chapters on stages and temperament should help.
Another important way of changing the antecedents of a child’s misbehavior is to change our own “triggering” behavior. A child’s defiance may be triggered by the parent making a demand that the child finds unreasonable – for example, insisting that the child take out the garbage RIGHT NOW, five minutes before the child’s hour-long television program ends. An older child may pick a fight with a younger child if a parent has picked on him. We tend to be very aware of the effects of children’s behavior on us but, unfortunately, much less aware of the effects of our own behavior on our children. Often, we treat them with much less courtesy than we expect of them. If your child’s negative behavior is occurring regularly in response to a behavior of your own, it makes sense to help him change his behavior by changing your own behavior.
-- Allison Rees