More Supportive Parenting Skills

Children have blackboards...

• “It is like they are standing in front of you holding up their personal blackboard saying write on it what you think of me...write on it what you want me to think of myself. This is so powerful. You, as parents, from the minute they are born, begin to write message about them on their personal blackboard. There are intentional and unintentional messages written there.”

Making connections with your children behind walls

• Listening is love
• Love has a tremendous power to pull down invisible walls
• Look over the wall and hear the cry: listen for what they really need, my friend’s problem could be there own
• Find the loose brick: show interest in their interests
• Dismantle the wall: effective communication- love, trust, and respect
• Love: constant, given first, given freely, regardless of their choices
• Trust: have to trust, compliment
• Respect: “The quality of our communication with our children will improve in direct proportion to the amount of respect we show them when we talk together.”

The art of emotion coaching:

• Helping children understand the different emotions they experience, why they occur, and how to handle them
• Comforting them, listening and understanding their thoughts and feelings, and helping them understand themselves
• Help children feel loved, supported, respected and valued

1. Understand how you deal with feelings
• Their child’s feelings are important.
• Their child’s feelings and wishes are okay, even if their actions aren’t.
• Experiencing negative emotions, such as sadness, anger or fear, is important. 
• Negative feelings are a chance for parents and children to grow closer.
• Understanding what causes their child’s feelings is important.
• Negative feelings are an opportunity for problem-solving
2. Believe that your child’s negative emotions are an opportunity for closeness and teaching
• a child’s negative feelings are more likely to go away when children talk about them, label them, and feel understood and feel closer to parents
• once you feel understood, you are more willing to take guidance
3. Listen with empathy and understanding, then validate your child’s feelings
• Share simple observations
• Avoid questions you already know the answer to
• Share examples from your own life
4. Label your child’s emotions
• help your child transform a scary, uncomfortable feeling into something identifiable and normal
• has a soothing effect on the nervous system
5. Set limits while exploring possible solutions to the problem that caused the negative emotion
• Set limits
• Identify goals
• Think of possible solutions
• Evaluate the proposed solutions based on family values
• Help your child choose a solution