Tina and her family were eating dinner at home one night when she and her husband noticed that their six-year-old hadn’t returned from the bathroom for several minutes. They found him playing on Tina’s iPad in the living room. Here’s how Tina tells the story:
At first I was frustrated because my six-year-old had broken several of our rules. He had snuck away from the table, and he had played on the iPad without asking. He had also taken the iPad out of its protective case, which he knew he wasn’t supposed to do. None of the infractions was significant. The problem was that he was disregarding the rules we had all agreed to.
First, I thought about my son, and his temperament and developmental stage. As Dan and I have said several times now, context always has to be taken into consideration when deciding how to discipline. I knew that because my son is a sensitive and conscientious little guy, I probably wouldn’t need to say much to discipline him.
Scott and I sat on the couch next to him, and I simply said, in a curious tone, “What happened here?”
Immediately, my son’s lower lip began to quiver, and tears pooled in his eyes. “I just wanted to try Minecraft!”
The nonverbal communication was a reflection of his inner conscience and his own discomfort, and the words were an admission of guilt. Implicit in his statement was the message, “I know I wasn’t supposed to leave the table and get the iPad, but I just wanted to play so bad! My impulse was too strong.” By this moment, in other words, I already knew that the redirection part of our conversation wasn’t going to be too challenging. At other times it is, but not now, when there was already an awareness on his part.
Before redirecting, though, I wanted to meet him where he was, and to connect with him emotionally. I said, “You really are interested in that game, aren’t you? You’re curious about what the bigger boys are playing?”
Scott followed my lead and said something about how cool it is that the game allows you to create a whole world full of buildings and tunnels and animals.
Our son sheepishly looked up at us, moving his eyes from me to Scott, questioning whether things were really OK among us all. Then he nodded and gave us a soft smile.
With these few sentences and glances, connection had been established. Scott and I could then redirect. And again, knowing our son and recognizing where he was at this moment, the situation didn’t require much from us. Scott simply asked, “But what about our rules?”
Here our son began to cry in earnest. Not much more needed to be said because the lesson had already been internalized.
I put my arm around him to comfort him. I said, “I know your choices tonight didn’t follow our rules. Is there anything you’d do differently next time?”
He nodded as he cried, then promised to ask to be excused before leaving the table next time. We hugged, and then Scott asked him a Minecraft question, which led him to explain to his dad something about a trapdoor and a dungeon. As he became more animated, he moved past his guilt and his tears, and we all rejoined the rest of the family at the table. Connection had led to redirection, meaning not only that teaching could occur, but also that our son felt understood and loved.
In the previous chapter we discussed connection as the first step of the discipline process. Now we’ll focus on what that actually looks like in action, recommending principles and strategies you can rely on when your child is upset or misbehaving. Sometimes connection is fairly simple, as it was here for Tina. Often, it’s much more challenging.
As we discuss recommendations for connection, avoid the temptation to look for the formulaic one-size-fits-all technique that is supposed to apply in every situation. The following principles and strategies are extremely effective most of the time. But you should apply these approaches based on your own parenting style, the situation at hand, and your individual child’s temperament. In other words, maintain response flexibility.
Response flexibility means just what it sounds like—being flexible about our response to a situation. It means pausing to think and to choose the best course of action. It lets us separate stimulus from response, so that our reaction doesn’t immediately (and unintentionally) follow from a child’s behavior or our own internal chaos. So when A happens, we don’t just automatically do B; instead we consider B, C, or even a combo of D and E. Response flexibility creates a space in time and in our minds that enables a wide range of possibilities to be considered. As a result, we can just “be” with an experience, if only for a few seconds, and reflect before engaging the “do” circuitry of action.
Response flexibility helps you choose to be your wisest self possible in a difficult moment with your child, so that connection can occur. It’s pretty much the opposite of autopilot discipline, where you apply a robotic one-size-fits-all approach to every scenario that arises. When we’re flexible in our responses to our children’s state of mind and their misbehavior, we allow ourselves to intentionally respond to a situation in the best way possible and provide our kids with what they need in the moment.
Depending on your child’s infraction, this might require taking a moment to calm down. It’s a good rule of thumb not to respond the nanosecond after you witness a misbehavior. We know you may feel, in the heat of the moment, like laying down the law, yelling that since your daughter pushed her brother into the pool, she’s done swimming for the rest of the summer. (Aren’t we ridiculous sometimes?) But if you can take a few seconds and allow yourself to calm down, rather than making a scene at the public pool and overshooting the discipline mark, you’ll have a better chance at intentionally responding out of a calmer and more thoughtful part of yourself to what your child actually needs right then. (As a bonus, you can avoid being the subject of dinner conversations all around town that begin, “You should’ve seen this crazy lady at the pool today.”)
At other times, response flexibility may lead you to decide to take a firmer stand on an issue than you normally might. If you notice signs that your eleven-year-old is taking less initiative with his responsibilities and his schoolwork, you might decide not to drive him back to school so he can retrieve the book he (again!) “has no idea how” he left in his locker. You would sincerely empathize with him and make sure to connect—“It’s such a bummer that you forgot your book and won’t have your assignment ready tomorrow”—but you’d allow him to experience the natural and logical fallout of his forgetfulness. Or maybe you would take him to get his book, because his personality or the context of the situation leads you to believe that approach would be best. That’s the whole point. Response flexibility means you’re making a point to decide how you want to respond to each situation that arises, rather than simply reacting without thinking about it.
Like so many aspects of parenting, response flexibility is fundamentally about parenting intentionally. We’re talking about remaining mindful of meeting the needs of your child—this particular child—in this particular moment. When that goal is central in your mind, connection will necessarily follow.
Now let’s look at some specific ways you can use response flexibility to connect with your kids when they’re having a hard time handling themselves well or when they’re making unwise decisions. We’ll start by focusing on three No-Drama connection principles that set the stage and allow for connection between parent and child. Then we’ll move to some more immediate in-the-moment connection strategies.
If you’ve heard Dan speak, you may have seen him introduce the concept of shark music. Here’s how he explains the idea:
First, I ask the audience to monitor the response of their bodies and minds as I show them a thirty-second video.* On the screen, the audience sees what appears to be a beautiful forest. From the point of view of the person holding the camera, the audience sees a rustic trail and moves down that path toward a beautiful ocean. All the while, calm, classical-sounding piano music plays, communicating a sense of peace and serenity in an idyllic environment.
I then stop the video and ask the audience to watch it again, explaining that I’m going to show them the exact same video, but this time different music will play in the background. The audience then sees the same images—the forest, the rustic trail, the ocean. But the soundtrack this time is dark and menacing. It’s like the famous theme music from the movie Jaws, and it completely colors the way the scene is perceived. The peaceful scene now looks threatening—who knows what might jump out?—and the path leads somewhere we’re pretty sure we don’t want to go. There’s no telling what we’ll find in the water at the end of the trail; based on the music, it’s likely a shark. But despite our fear, the camera continues to approach the water.
The exact same images, but as the audience discovers, the experience drastically changes with different background music. One soundtrack leads to peace and serenity, the other to fear and dread.
It’s the same when we interact with our children. We have to pay attention to our background music. “Shark music” takes us out of the present moment, causing us to practice fear-based parenting. Our attention is on whatever we are feeling reactive about. We worry about what’s coming in the future, or we respond to something from the past. When we do so, we miss what’s actually happening in the moment—what our children really need, and what they’re actually communicating. As a result, we don’t give them our best. Shark music, in other words, keeps us from parenting this individual child in this individual moment.
For instance, imagine that your fifth grader comes home with her first progress report, which shows that, since she was sick and missed a couple of days of class, her math average is lower than you’d expect. Without shark music playing in the background, you might just chalk this up to the absences, or to the more difficult subject matter in fifth grade. You’d take steps to make sure she understands the material now, and you might or might not decide to visit with her teacher. In other words, you’d approach the situation from a calm and rational perspective.
If, however, your daughter’s older brother is a ninth grader who has shown himself to be less than responsible with his homework, and who is struggling with the basics of algebra, this prior experience might become shark music that plays in your mind as your daughter shows you her progress report. “Here we go again” might be the refrain that takes over your thoughts. So instead of responding to the situation as you normally would, asking your daughter how she feels about it and trying to figure out what’s best for her, you think about your son’s problems with algebra, and you overreact to your daughter’s situation. You begin talking to her about consequences, and cutting back on after-school activities. If the shark music really gets to you, maybe you start lecturing about getting into good colleges, and the chain of events that leads from a couple of bad grades in fifth-grade math to problems in middle school and high school and finally to a slew of rejection letters from universities all across the country. Before you know it, your adorable ten-year-old has become a homeless woman pushing a shopping cart toward the cardboard box she lives in under the bridge down by the river—all because she got mixed up about which way the “greater than” symbol points!
The key to a No-Drama response, as is so often the case, is awareness. Once you recognize that shark music is blaring in your mind, you can shift your state of mind and stop parenting based on fear and on past experiences that don’t apply to the current scenario you face. Instead, you can connect with your child, who might be feeling discouraged. You can give her what she needs in this moment: a parent who is fully present, parenting only her based only on the actual facts of this particular situation—not on past expectations or future fears. See illustrations on next page.
This isn’t to say that we don’t pay attention to patterns of behavior over time. We can also get trapped in states of denial where we overcontextualize behavior or explain away our kids’ repeated struggles with all kinds of excuses that keep us from seeking intervention or from helping our children build the skills they need. You’ve met the parent who has a child who is never at fault and whom the parents never hold accountable. See illustrations on next page.
When the “excuse flavor of the week” becomes a pattern of parental response, then the parents are probably working from a different kind of shark music. It’s similar to the parents whose children were medically vulnerable as babies, whose shark music now leads them to overdo for their kids, treating them as if they are still more fragile than they actually are.
The point is that shark music can prevent us from parenting intentionally and from being who our children need us to be at any given moment. It makes us reactive instead of receptive. Sometimes we’re called to adjust our expectations and realize that our children just need more time for development to unfold; at other times we need to adjust our expectations and realize that our children are capable of more than we’re asking of them, so we can challenge them to take more responsibility for their choices. At still other times we need to pay attention to our own needs, desires, and past experiences, any of which can override our ability to make good moment-by-moment decisions. The problem is that when we are reactive, we can’t receive input from others, or demonstrate any response flexibility to consider the various options in our own mind. (If you’d like to go deeper with this concept, Dan covers it extensively in Parenting from the Inside Out, co-authored with Mary Hartzell.)
Ultimately, our job is to give unconditional love and calm presence to our kids even when they’re at their worst. Especially when they’re at their worst. That’s how we stay receptive instead of going reactive. And the perspective we take on their behavior will necessarily affect how we respond to them. If we recognize them for the still-developing young people they are, with changing, changeable, complex young brains, then when they struggle or do something we don’t like, we’ll be better able to be receptive and hear the calming piano music. We’ll therefore interact with them in a way that’s more likely to lead to peace and serenity.
Shark music, on the other hand, will take us out of the present moment, and out of our right minds, as we become reactive. It will fuel our internal chaos and lead us to make all kinds of assumptions, to worry about all kinds of possibilities that simply shouldn’t be considered in this particular situation. It might even lead us to automatically assume that our kids are “acting out” because they are selfish, lazy, spoiled, or whatever other label we choose. Then we’ll respond not out of love and intentionality, but out of reactivity, anger, anxiety, drama, and fear.
So the next time you need to discipline, pause for just a second and listen for the soundtrack in your head. If you hear calm piano music and feel capable of offering a loving, objective, clearheaded response to the situation, then go ahead and offer just that kind of response. But if you notice the shark music, be very careful about what you do and say. Give yourself a minute—longer, if necessary—before responding. Then, when you feel yourself letting go of the fears, expectations, and bigger-than-necessary reactivity that keep you from looking at the situation for what it really is, you can respond. Simply by paying attention to whatever music is playing in the background of a disciplinary moment, you’ll be much more capable of responding flexibly instead of reacting rigidly or chaotically, and offering your children what they need right then. Responding rather than reacting is the key.
One of the worst by-products of shark music is the parental tendency to make assumptions about what we perceive to be obvious. If a scary or emotionally charged soundtrack is clouding your mind when you interact with your children, you’re not likely to be very objective about the reasons they’re behaving the way they are. Instead, you’re probably going to simply react based on information that might not be accurate at all. You’ll assume there’s a shark swimming in the water or a monster hiding behind the tree, even if there’s not one.
When your kids are playing in the next room and you hear your younger child begin to cry, it may seem perfectly justifiable to march into the room, look at your older child, and demand, “What did you do this time?!” But when your younger child says, “No, Dad, I just fell and hurt my knee,” you realize that what seemed obvious wasn’t accurate at all, and that shark music has (once again) led you astray. Because your older child has played too rough in the past, you assumed that was the case this time.
Few parental actions will hinder connection faster than assuming the worst and reacting accordingly. So instead of making assumptions and operating on information that may be faulty, question what seems obvious. Become a detective. Put on your Sherlock Holmes hat. You know, Sherlock Holmes: the Arthur Conan Doyle character who declared, “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”
When dealing with our children, it’s dangerous to theorize before we have data. Instead, we need to be curious. We need to “chase the why.”
Curiosity is the cornerstone of effective discipline. Before you ever respond to your child’s behavior—especially when you don’t like it—ask yourself a question: “I wonder why my child did that.” Let this lead you to other questions: “What is she wanting here? Is she asking for something? Trying to discover something? What is she communicating?”
When a child acts in a way we don’t like, the temptation will be to ask, “How could she do this?” Instead, chase the why. When you walk into the bathroom and see that your four-year-old has “decorated” the sink and mirror with wet toilet paper and a lipstick she found in a drawer, be curious. It’s fine to be frustrated. But as quickly as possible, chase the why. Let your curiosity replace the frustration you feel. Talk to your daughter, and ask her what happened. Most likely you’ll hear something that’s totally plausible, at least from her perspective, and probably hilarious. The bad news is that you’ll still have to clean up the mess (preferably with the help of your daughter). The good news is that you will have allowed your curiosity to lead you to a much more accurate—and fun, interesting, and honest—answer about your child’s behavior.
The same would apply when your second grader’s teacher calls to discuss certain “impulse control” problems your son is displaying. She tells you he’s not respecting authority because he has begun making noises and inappropriate comments during class reading time. Your first reaction might be to initiate a “That’s not the way we behave, mister” conversation with your son. But if you chase the why and ask him about his motivation, you might discover that “Truman thinks I’m funny when I do that, and now he lets me stand by him in the lunch line.” You’ll still need to do some redirecting, and work with your son on appropriate ways to navigate the difficult world of playground politics, but this way you’ll be able to do so with much more accurate information about your son’s emotional needs and what’s actually driving his actions.
Chasing the why doesn’t mean that we should necessarily ask our children “Why did you do that?” every time a disciplinary situation arises. In fact, that question may imply immediate judgment or disapproval, rather than curiosity. Further, sometimes children, especially young ones, may not know why they are upset or why they did what they did. Their personal insight and awareness of their own goals and motivations may not be very skilled yet. That’s why we’re not advising you to ask the why. We’re recommending that you chase the why. That’s more about asking the why question in your own mind, allowing yourself to be curious, and wondering where your child is coming from in this moment.
Sometimes the behavior we want to address won’t be as benign as lipstick decorations and potty humor. Sometimes our child will make decisions that lead to broken objects, bruised bodies, and damaged relationships. In these cases it’s all the more important that we chase the why. We need to be curious about what drove our child to throw the screwdriver in anger, to strike another child, to spit out venomous words. It’s not enough simply to address the behavior. Human behavior is purpose-driven most of the time. We need to know what’s behind it, what’s causing it. If we focus only on our child’s behavior (her external world) and neglect the reasons behind that behavior (her internal world), then we’ll concentrate only on the symptoms, not the cause that’s producing them. And if we consider only the symptoms, we’ll have to keep treating those symptoms over and over again.
But if we put on our Sherlock Holmes hat and chase the why, curiously looking for the root cause behind the behavior, we can more fully discover what’s really going on with our child. We might find real reasons for concern that need to be addressed. Maybe we’ll learn that our assumptions were false. Or maybe we’ll discover that this “bad behavior” is an adaptive response to something that’s too challenging for the child. Perhaps, for example, your child is faking an illness each day before PE class not because he’s lazy or unmotivated or oppositional, but because that’s his best strategy for dealing with the intense self-consciousness he feels when doing something athletic in front of his peers.
By wondering what our kids are trying to accomplish and by allowing them to explain a situation before we rush to judgment, we’re able to gather actual data from their internal world, as opposed to simply reacting based on assumptions, faulty theories, or shark music. Plus, when we chase the why and connect first, we let our children know that we’re on their side, that we’re interested in their internal experience. We say to them, by the way we respond to each situation, that when we don’t know what actually happened, we’re going to give them the benefit of the doubt. Again, that doesn’t mean turning a blind eye to misbehavior. It just means that we’re looking to connect first, by asking questions and by being curious about what’s behind the external behavior and what’s happening inside our child.
Listening for shark music and chasing the why are both principles that ask us to consider our own and our child’s inner landscapes during a discipline moment. The third connection principle focuses on the way we actually interact with our kids. It challenges us to consider the way we talk to our children when they’re having trouble managing themselves or making good decisions. What we say to our kids is of course important. But you know that just as important, if not more important, is how we say it.
Imagine that your three-year-old isn’t getting into her car seat. Here are a few different hows for saying the exact same what:
• With eyes wide, big gestures, and a loud, angry tone of voice: “Get in your car seat!”
• With clenched teeth, squinted eyes, and a seething tone of voice: “Get in your car seat.”
• With a relaxed face and a warm tone of voice: “Get in your car seat.”
• With a wacky facial expression and a goofy voice: “Get in your car seat.”
You get the idea. The how matters. At bedtime you might use a threat: “Get in bed now or you won’t get any stories.” Or you could say, “If you get in bed now, we’ll have time to read. But if you don’t get in bed right away, we’ll run out of time and have to skip reading.” The message is the same, but how it’s communicated is very different. It has an entirely different feel. Both hows model ways of talking to others. Both set a boundary. Both deliver the same request. But they feel completely different.
It’s the how that determines what our children feel about us and themselves, and what they learn about treating others. Plus, the how goes a long way toward determining their response in the moment, and how successful we’ll be at helping produce an effective outcome that makes everyone happier. Children usually cooperate much more quickly if they feel connected to us, and when we engage them in a pleasant and playful exchange. It’s the how that determines that. We can be much more effective disciplinarians if our how is respectful, playful, and calm.
So those are the three connection principles. By checking for shark music, chasing the why, and thinking about the how, we set the stage for connection. As a result, when our kids behave in ways we don’t like, we have the opportunity to connect first, prioritizing the relationship and improving the odds of a successful disciplinary outcome. Now let’s look at some specific connection strategies.
What does connection actually look like? What can we do to help our kids feel felt and know that we’re with them, right in the middle of whatever they’re going through, as we engage in the discipline process?
As always, the answer will change based on your individual child and your personal parenting style, but most often, connection comes down to a four-part, cyclical process. We call it the No-Drama connection cycle.
It won’t always follow the exact same order, but for the most part, connecting with our children when they’re upset or misbehaving involves these four strategies. The first: communicate comfort.
Remember that sometimes your kids need your help calming down and making good choices. It’s when their emotions get the best of them that we have the most discipline issues. And just as you’d hold and rock or pat a baby to calm her nervous system, you want to help your children calm down when they need it. Words are useful, especially when you’re validating feelings. But most nurturing takes place nonverbally. We can communicate so much without ever talking.
The most powerful nonverbal response of all is one that you probably do automatically: you touch your child. You put your hand on her arm. You pull her close to you. You rub her back. You hold her hand. A loving touch—whether subtle, like the squeeze of a hand, or more demonstrative, like a full, warm embrace—has the power to quickly defuse a heated situation.
The reason is that when we feel someone touch us in a way that’s nurturing and loving, feel-good hormones (like oxytocin) are released into our brain and body, and our levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, decrease. In other words, giving your kids loving physical affection literally and beneficially alters their brain chemistry. When your child (or your partner!) is feeling upset, a loving touch can calm things down and help you two connect, even during moments of high stress.
Touch is only one way we communicate with our children nonverbally. We’re actually sending messages all the time, even when we never utter a word. Think about your typical body posture when you discipline your kids. Do you ever find yourself leaning over your child with an angry look on your face? Maybe you’re saying, in a scary tone of voice, “Knock it off!” or “Stop that this instant!” This approach is essentially the opposite of connection, and it’s not going to be very effective at calming your child. Your escalated response will intensify her emotions even further. Even if your intimidation results in your child appearing calm, she’ll actually be feeling anything other than calm. Her heart will pound in response to the stress because she is afraid enough to shut down her emotions and hide her feelings in an attempt to keep you from becoming more angry.
Would you approach an upset animal in a similar fashion? If you had to interact with an angry-looking dog, would you approach it with an aggressive body posture and demand that the dog “knock it off and calm down”? That wouldn’t be very smart, nor would it be effective. The reason is that it would communicate to the dog that you’re a threat, and the dog would have no other option than to react, either by cowering or by fighting. So instead, we’re taught to approach a dog by putting out the back of our hand, crouching down low, and speaking with a soft, reassuring voice. In doing so, our whole body communicates a message: “I’m not a threat.” In response, the dog can relax, calm down, feel safe, and then approach and engage.
The same process occurs with people. When we feel threatened, our social engagement circuitry can’t turn on. We have trouble engaging our upstairs brain, the part that is thoughtful, makes sound decisions, and has the capacity for empathy and regulating our emotions and body. Instead of calming down and making good decisions, we simply react. This reaction make sense, evolutionarily speaking. When the brain detects threat, the downstairs area immediately goes on alert and becomes highly activated. Functioning in this more primitive mode allows us to keep ourselves safe by being hypervigilant, by acting quickly without thinking, or by going into fight, flight, freeze, or faint mode.
It’s the same with our kids. When emotions escalate and we respond by communicating threat—through the frustrated or angry look on our face, our mad tone of voice, our intimidating posture (hands on hips, finger wagging, leaning forward)—their innate biological response will be to activate their downstairs brain. However, when their caregivers communicate “I’m not a threat,” then the reactive, fighting, act-before-thinking downstairs part of the brain quiets, and they can move into a mode of processing that allows them to handle themselves well.
So, how do we communicate “I’m not a threat” to our kids, even in the midst of escalating emotions? By connecting. One of the most effective and powerful ways to do this is to put your body in a posture that’s the opposite of imposing and threatening. Lots of people talk about getting at a child’s eye level, but one of the quickest ways to communicate safety and the absence of threat is to get below the child’s eye level and put your body into a very relaxed position that communicates calm. You see other mammals doing this to send the message “I am not a threat to you. You don’t need to fight me.”
We recommend that you try this “below eye level” technique the next time your child is upset or out of control emotionally. Put your body in a chair, on a bed, or on the floor so that you are below your child’s eye level. Whether you lean back or cross your legs or open your arms, just make sure that your body communicates comfort and safety. Your words and your body language combine to convey empathy and connection, telling your child, “I’m right here. I’ll comfort you and help you.” You’ll comfort her nervous system and calm her down, just as you did by holding and rocking her when she was a baby and needed you.
We’ve been thrilled by how many of the parents to whom we’ve taught this technique report that this approach is “magic.” They can’t believe how quickly their children calm down. What amazes the parents just as much is that putting their bodies into this relaxed, nonthreatening posture actually calms down the parents themselves as well. They report that this approach works better than anything else they’ve tried to keep themselves calm, and it leads to the best outcomes in how well they handle the high-stress situation. Obviously you can’t get down on the ground if you’re in the car or walking across the street, but you can use your tone of voice and posture, as well as your empathic words, to communicate the absence of threat, so you can connect with your child and produce a calm in both of you.
Nonverbal communication is so powerful. Your child’s whole day can turn on something you’re not even cognizant of, something that’s not even said. Something as simple as your smile can soothe a disappointment and strengthen your bond. You know that moment: when your child does something she’s excited about, like kicking a soccer goal or reciting a line in a play, and she looks for you in the crowd. Your eyes meet and you smile, and she knows that you’re saying, “I saw that and I share your joy.” That’s what your nonverbal connection can do.
Or it can do just the opposite. Look at the pictures below, and notice what message these parents are sending. Without ever opening their mouths, each parent is saying plenty.
The fact is that we send all kinds of messages, whether we intend to or not. And if we’re not careful, our nonverbals can undermine the connection we’re aiming for in a high-emotion disciplinary environment. Crossing the arms, shaking the head, rubbing the temples, rolling the eyes, a sarcastic wink at another adult in the room—even if our words are expressing interest in what our child is saying, there are plenty of ways our nonverbals betray us. And if our verbal and nonverbal messages contradict each other, our child will believe the nonverbal. That’s why it’s so important that we pay attention to what we’re communicating without saying anything at all.
When we do, we’ll be more likely to communicate the messages we want to communicate to our kids.
We’re not saying there won’t be high-emotion disciplinary moments where you get completely exasperated with your kids. Or that they won’t misread something you’re communicating and get upset. Mistakes will be made on both sides of the relationship, of course. Likewise, sometimes you may decide it’s appropriate to use nonverbal communication to help your kids monitor themselves and rein in their impulses when necessary. But the bottom line is that we can be intentional about the verbal and nonverbal messages we’re sending, especially when we’re trying to connect with our children in a difficult moment. Simply nodding, and being physically present, communicates care.
The key to connection when children are reactive or making bad choices is validation. In addition to communicating comfort, we need to let our kids know that we hear them. That we understand. That we get it. Whether or not we like the behavior that results from their feelings, we want them to feel acknowledged and sense that we’re with them in the middle of all those big feelings.
Put differently, we want to attune to our children’s inner subjective experiences, focusing our attention on how they are experiencing things from their point of view. Just as in a duet both instruments need to be tuned to each other to make good music, we need to tune our own emotional response to what’s going on with our kids. We need to see their mind and recognize their internal state, then join with them in what we see and how we respond. In doing so, we join them in their emotional space. We deliver the message, “I get you. I see what you’re feeling, and I acknowledge it. If I were in your shoes, and at your age, I might feel the same way.” When kids receive this type of message from their parents, they “feel felt.” They feel understood. They feel loved. And as a huge bonus, they can then begin to calm down and make better decisions, and hear the lessons you want to teach them.
Practically speaking, validation means resisting the temptation to deny or minimize what our kids are going through. When we validate their feelings we avoid saying things like, “Why are you throwing a fit about not having a playdate? You were at Carrie’s all day yesterday!” We avoid pronouncing, “I know your brother tore your picture, but that’s no reason to hit him! You can just make another one.” We avoid declaring, “Stop worrying about it.”
Think about it: how does it make you feel when you’re upset, and maybe not handling yourself well, and someone tells you that you’re “just tired,” or that whatever’s bothering you “isn’t that big a deal” and you should “just calm down”? When we tell our kids how to feel—and how not to feel—we invalidate their experiences.
Most of us know better than to directly tell our kids they shouldn’t be upset. But when one of your children reacts intensely to something that doesn’t go his way, do you ever immediately shut down that reaction? We don’t mean to, but parents can often send the message that we think the way they feel about and experience a situation is ridiculous or not worthy of our acknowledgment. Or we inadvertently communicate that we don’t want to interact with our kids or be with them when they have negative emotions. It’s like saying, “I will not accept that you feel how you feel. I’m not interested in how you experience the world.” It’s a way of making a child feel invisible, unseen, and disconnected.
Instead, we want to communicate that we’ll always be there for them, even at their absolute worst. We are willing to see them for whoever they are, whatever they may feel. We want to join with them where they are, and acknowledge what they’re going through. To a young child we might say, “You really wanted to go to Mia’s house today, didn’t you? It’s so disappointing that her mom had to cancel.” Especially with older children, we might identify with what they’re going through, letting them know that even though we’re saying no to their behavior, we’re saying yes to their feelings: “That made you so mad that Keith tore your picture, didn’t it? I hate it when my stuff gets messed with, too. I don’t blame you for being furious.” Remember, the first response is to connect. Redirection will come, and you’ll definitely want to address the behavioral response, but first we connect, which communicates comfort and almost always involves validation.
Usually validation is pretty simple. The main thing you need to do is simply identify the feeling at hand: “That really made you sad, didn’t it?” or “I can see you feel left out,” or even a more general “You’re having a hard time.” Identifying the emotion is an extremely powerful response when a child is upset because it offers two huge benefits. First, helping her feel understood calms her autonomic nervous system and helps soothe her big feelings, so she can begin to put the brakes on her desire to react and lash out. Second, it gives the child an emotional vocabulary and emotional intelligence, so she herself can recognize and name what she’s feeling, which helps her understand her emotions and begin to regain control of herself so that redirection can occur. As we put it in the previous chapter, connection—in this case, through validation—helps move a child from reactivity to receptivity.
After acknowledging the feeling, the second part of validation is identifying with that emotion. For a child or an adult, it’s extremely powerful to hear someone say, “I get you. I understand. I see why you feel this way.” This kind of empathy disarms us. It relaxes our rigidity. It soothes our chaos. Even if an emotion seems ridiculous to you, don’t forget that it’s very real to your child, so you don’t want to dismiss something that’s important to her.
Tina recently received an email that reminded her that it’s not only young children who need to be validated when they’re upset. She heard from a mother in Australia who had listened to a radio program where Tina talked about the power of connection. Part of the mother’s email went like this:
Right in the middle of listening I received a call from my nineteen-year-old daughter, who was having a meltdown. She was in pain from a physical therapy session, her bank account was in the negative, she didn’t understand a lot of today’s Business Law lecture, she was stressed about her exam tomorrow, and work wanted her to come in two hours early.
My first reaction was to say, “First-world problems. Suck it up, princess.” But after hearing your interview, I realised that while indeed they were first-world problems, they were her first-world problems. So I said that I was sorry for her bad day, and did she need a mummy hug?
It made so much difference. I could hear her take a breath and relax. I told her I loved her, that her dad and I would fund her textbooks (which was why her bank account was in the negative), and that after her exam tomorrow I’d treat her to her favourite noodle soup at Bamboo Basket.
She was much more relaxed after the call, thanks to how I responded. So often we react harshly without realising the impact it may have. Even when our kids are mostly past the tantrum stage and we have a calm life with them, there’s so many times throughout the day to put these ideas into practice.
Notice this mother’s well-executed validation of her daughter’s experience. She didn’t invalidate her daughter’s feelings by denying them, minimizing them, or blaming her. Instead, she acknowledged the bad day and asked whether she needed a hug. Her daughter’s response was to take a deep breath and relax—not because her parents were going to help her financially, but because her feelings were acknowledged and identified. Because they were validated. Then the actual problems could be addressed.
So when your child is crying, raging, attacking a sibling, throwing a fit because his stuffed dog is too floppy and won’t sit up properly, or demonstrating in any other way that he’s incapable of making good decisions at that moment, validate the emotions behind the actions. Again, it might first be necessary to remove him from the situation. Validation doesn’t mean allowing someone to get hurt or property to be destroyed. You’re not endorsing bad behavior when you identify with your child’s emotions. You’re attuning to him. You’re tuning your instrument to his, so that you two can create something beautiful together. You’re meeting him where he is, looking for the meaning, the emotional undercurrent, behind his actions. You acknowledge and identify what he’s feeling, and in doing so, you validate his experience.
If you’re like most of us, you talk way too much when you discipline. This response is actually funny if you think about it. Our child has gotten upset and made a bad decision, so we think, “I know. I’ll lecture him. He’ll calm down and make a better choice next time if I make him sit still and listen to me drone on and on about what he’s done wrong.” Want to turn your kids off, especially as they get older? Explain something, then keep making the same point over and over.
What’s more, talking and talking to an emotionally activated child is not the least bit effective. When her emotions are exploding all over the place, one of the least effective things we can do is to talk at her, trying to get her to understand the logic of our position. It’s just not helpful to say, “He didn’t mean to hit you when he threw the ball; it was just an accident, so you don’t have to get mad.” It doesn’t do any good to explain, “She can’t invite everyone in your whole school to her party.”
The problem with this logical appeal is that it assumes the child is capable of hearing and responding to reason at this moment. But remember, a child’s brain is changing, developing. When she’s hurt, angry, or disappointed, the logical part of her upstairs brain isn’t fully functioning. That means a linguistic appeal to reason isn’t usually going to be your best bet for helping her gain control over her emotions and calm herself.
In fact, talking often compounds the problem. We know, because we hear it from the kids we see in our offices. Sometimes they want to scream at their parents, “Please stop talking!” Especially when they’re in trouble and already understand what they’ve done wrong. An upset child is already on sensory overload. And what does talking to him do? It further floods his senses, leaving him even more dysregulated, feeling even more overwhelmed, and much less able to learn or even hear you.
So we recommend that parents follow the kids’ advice and stop talking so much. Communicate comfort and validate your child’s feelings—“It really hurt that you didn’t get invited, didn’t it? I’d feel left out, too”—then close your mouth and listen. Really listen to what she’s saying. Don’t interpret what you hear too literally. If she says she’s never going to get invited to another party, this isn’t an invitation for you to disagree, or to challenge this absolute statement. Your job is to hear the feelings within the words. Recognize that she’s saying, “I’ve really been thrown for a loop by this. I didn’t get invited, and now I’m afraid about what this says about my social standing with all of my friends.”
Clue in and chase the why as to what’s really going on inside your child. Focus on her emotions, letting go of the shark music that prevents you from being fully present with her in the moment. No matter how strong your desire, avoid the temptation to argue with your child, lecture her, defend yourself, or tell her to stop feeling that way. Now’s not the time to teach or explain. Now is the time to listen, just sitting with your child and giving her time to express herself.
With the first three strategies of the No-Drama connection cycle, we communicate comfort, we validate feelings, and we listen. The fourth step is to reflect back to our children what they’ve said, letting them know we’ve heard them. Reflecting their feelings returns us to the first strategy, since we’re again communicating comfort, which can lead us through the cycle once more.
Reflecting what we hear is similar to the second step, but it differs from validation in that now we focus specifically on what our children have actually told us. The validation stage is all about recognizing emotions and empathizing with our kids. We say something like, “I can tell how mad you are.” But when we reflect our children’s feelings, we essentially communicate back to them what they have told us. Handled sensitively, this allows a child to feel heard and understood. As we said, it’s extraordinarily calming, even healing, to feel understood. When you let your child know that you really grasp what he’s telling you—by telling her, “I hear what you’re saying; you really hated it when I told you we had to leave the party,” or “No wonder that made you mad; I’d feel angry, too”—you take a huge step toward defusing the high emotions at play.
Be careful, though, with how you reflect feelings. You don’t want to take one of your child’s short-term, temporary emotions and turn it into something bigger and more permanent than it really is. Let’s say, for example, your six-year-old becomes so upset about her big brother’s constant teasing that she begins yelling, over and over again, “You’re so stupid and I hate you!” Right there in your backyard, with the neighbors hearing it all (thank goodness Mr. Patel is mowing his lawn!), she repeats the refrain nonstop, seemingly dozens of times, until she finally falls into your arms, crying uncontrollably.
So you initiate the connection cycle. You communicate comfort, conveying your compassion by getting below her eye level, holding her, rubbing her back, and making empathic facial expressions. You validate her experience: “I know, honey, I know. You’re really upset.” You listen to her feelings, then you reflect back to her what you’re hearing: “You’re just so angry, aren’t you?” Her response might be a return to yelling: “Yes, and I hate Jimmy!” (with her brother’s name drawn out into another scream).
Now comes the tricky part. You want to reflect for her what she’s feeling, but you don’t want to reinforce this narrative in her mind that she actually hates her brother. A situation like this calls for some careful tiptoeing, so that you can be honest with your daughter and help her better understand her feelings but keep her from solidifying her momentary emotions into longer-lasting perceptions. So you might say something like, “I don’t blame you for being so mad. I hate it when people tease me like that, too. I know you love Jimmy, and that you two were having so much fun together just a few minutes ago, when you were playing with the wagon. But you’re pretty mad at him right now, aren’t you?” The goal with this type of reflecting is to make sure your child comprehends that you understand her experience, and in doing so to soothe her big emotions and help calm her inner chaos, so that she can move back into the center of her river of well-being. But you don’t want to allow a feeling that’s simply a momentary state—her anger with her brother—to be perceived in her mind as a permanent trait that’s an inherent part of their relationship. That’s why you give her perspective and remind her of the fun she and her brother were having with the wagon.
One other advantage that comes with reflecting our children’s feelings is that it communicates that they have not only our love, but our attention. Parents sometimes assume that it’s bad when a child seeks our attention. They’ll say, “He’s just trying to get my attention.” The problem with this perspective is that it presumes it’s somehow not okay for a child to want his parents to notice him and pay attention to what he’s doing. In reality, though, attention-seeking behavior is not only completely developmentally appropriate, it’s actually relational. Attention is a need of all children everywhere. In fact, brain imaging studies show that the experience of physical pain and the experience of relational pain, like rejection, look very similar in terms of location of brain activity. So when we give our kids attention and focus on what they’re doing and feeling, we meet an important relational and emotional need, and they deeply feel connected and comforted. Remember, there are plenty of ways to spoil children—by giving them too many things, by rescuing them from every challenge, by never allowing them to deal with defeat and disappointment—but we can never spoil them by giving them too much of our love and attention.
That’s what the connection cycle does: it lets us communicate to our kids that we love them, that we see them, and that we are with them no matter how they behave. When we turn down the shark music, chase the why, and think about the how, we can communicate comfort, validate, listen to and reflect feelings, and support our kids in ways that create the kind of connection that clearly communicates our love and prepares them for redirection.
*This video was originally produced by the Circle of Security Intervention Program. See their great work in the book The Circle of Security Intervention by Bert Powell et al. (New York: Guilford Press, 2013).
