Children Are from Heaven: Positive Parenting Skills for Raising Cooperative, Confident, and Compassionate Children

WHY CHILDREN RESIST

When children resist a parent, it is often because they are wanting something else and they assume that if you just understood, you would want to support their want, wish, or need. Think about this for a moment. Most of the time as parents you are thinking, “What does my child want, wish, or need?” And then you take action to support your child.

When children feel loved and supported, they will naturally assume you will change your request if you hear what they need, wish, or want. They assume you will adjust your request if you just understand the importance of their immediate wants and needs. Sometimes their resistance is just an attempt to communicate to you that there is something else they would prefer.

The power of understanding your children’s resistance is that it immediately minimizes resistance. When children get the message that you understand what they want and how important it is to them, then their resistance level changes. It is not enough to just understand our children; we need successfully to communicate to them that we do understand.

When children resist, the reason is that they mistakenly believe the parent doesn’t understand what they wish, want, or need.

For example, a five-year-old child wants a cookie, but his mother wants him to wait until after dinner.

BOBBIE: Mommy, I want a cookie.

MOTHER: It’s getting close to dinner time. I want you to wait until after dinner and then you can have one.

BOBBIE: But I want one now . . .

The child bursts into an angry tantrum. The mother first listens to understand Bobbie’s resistance. After pausing to listen, she calmly says, “I know you want a cookie now. You are really angry because you want a cookie, and I won’t give you one.”

At this point, Bobbie relaxes for a moment and lets go of his resistance. This is because he thinks now that Mommy knows what he wants, he will get his cookie. Then the mother says, “You still have to wait until after dinner.”

Sometimes this degree of understanding will be enough, but at other times a child will need more before he or she can cooperate. Most of the time children resist their parents simply because they don’t feel heard or seen.

Let’s explore what happens when Bobbie needs more time and understanding. After letting go of the anger that erupted during his tantrum, he now feels disappointed and sad. Although Bobbie continues to resist his mother, his resistance has a different quality. It has naturally shifted from anger to disappointment or sadness. Bobbie begins to cry saying, “I never get what I want. I don’t want to wait.”

Again, the mother gives understanding and identifies the unmet want, wish, or need. The mother says, “I understand you feel sad. You want a cookie and you don’t want to wait. It’s a long time to wait.”

Clearly, the resistance is being minimized, but more importantly a deeper level of feeling is coming up. After a little crying, the child’s fears will begin to surface. The child resists now by saying, “I’ll never get my cookie. I never get what I want. I only want one. Why can’t I just have a cookie?”

At this step, the mother avoids giving any explanation and continues to understand and identify the feelings and wants. She says, “I know you are afraid that you will never get your cookie. It is a long time to wait. I will make sure you get your cookie. I promise. Come here, sweetie, let me give you a hug. I love you so much.”

At this point, Bobbie melts into his mother’s arms and gets the love, reassurance, and support he really needed in the first place. Usually when children resist cooperating, they are needing something a little deeper. They need to be understood and loved and then they just need a hug.

TAKING TIME TO LISTEN

After reading this example of exploring with children the deeper feelings under their resistance, you may be thinking, “I can’t do this every time my child resists me. You don’t understand my children. They will consume all my time resisting.” This would be true except that this skill really works. It minimizes resistance and creates more cooperation. If you take the time to listen and do it right, your children will resist less the next time and become much more cooperative.

Sometimes it does take an extra five minutes, but this is what your child needs. We spend hours each week driving around, shopping, and doing and getting things for our kids.

While these external things are important, they are not nearly as important as supporting our children from the inside. Taking a few extra minutes to listen and identify our children’s feelings, wants, wishes, and needs will not only give them what they really need, but it will also give parents more time for their own needs.

Although using threats or disapproval may suppress children’s resistance and save precious time, in the long run it creates in a greater resistance to other things. Quite often mothers complain, “But my child picks the worst times to resist. It seems that when I really have no time, then that is when they resist the most.”

When children are not given permission to resist, frustration builds up inside and comes out when the parent is most distressed. This problem can be averted by taking time, when you do have the time, to listen to your children’s resistance. Give them the message again and again that they are seen and heard.

If you never have time to listen, then you are not giving your children what they require. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Don’t wait until children’s resistance builds up and then explodes. Take time to listen to their resistance whenever possible, and then it will not build up and come out when you really need them to cooperate and have no time or opportunity to listen and support them.

Try to remember that it is just an extra five minutes and that it is really worth it. Listening to your children is always more important than getting somewhere on time. When you take the time to listen to your children, they will automatically be more motivated to help you have time for yourself as well. Cooperation means you give and they give. Give the gift of understanding and your children will listen better and cooperate more.

THE TWO CONDITIONS

To communicate that you hear or understand a child’s pressing needs, wishes, and wants, two conditions must be met.

The parent must communicate the validating message, but the child must also be aware of the need to be heard and not just his or her desire for a cookie now. By setting a boundary (that is, “You can’t have cookie now”), children feel their resistance; they are not aware of their underlying need to be heard.

The next step is for the parent to identify their child’s emotion of anger or frustration in a calm and warm way.

When a parent acknowledges this emotion, children become aware of what they feel. Although children may be angry, they are not yet aware that they feel angry.

With an awareness of their feelings, another doorway opens for the child. At this point, children can also identify and feel their need to be heard. When a child feels the need to be understood and that need is fulfilled, then the biggest part of the struggle is over. The child recognizes that he or she is being heard. This feeling of being heard is then confirmed when the parent says what the child is wanting.

All this occurs in a brief moment when the parent says, “I know you want a cookie now. You are really angry because you want a cookie and I won’t give you one.” The child’s response is a complete yes. It is hard to keep resisting when you are feeling yes, and you are being heard and understood.

The cookie example worked because both conditions were met. The parent communicated her understanding and the child felt his need to be understood being met. Though this technique is most effective with sensitive children, it works with all the four temperaments. It may just take a little longer with the sensitive children, because they need the understanding so much.

The more sensitive a child is, the more he or she may need to go deeper into their feelings. A parent can guide the child to deeper levels by simply remembering this easy format of emotions. Under children’s resistance are first anger, then sadness, and then fear. By giving children a chance to go deeper and feel these feelings, a door in their heart opens and they can feel their real and most important needs being met. Unless children go a little deeper, they stay on the surface only resisting and wanting the cookie.

For sensitive children, parents need to focus primarily on drawing out the anger, sadness, and fear, while acknowledging that they clearly understand what their child wants.

For active children, parents need to focus on a few of the primary feelings, but acknowledge what the child is doing or wanting to do. For example, you might say, “I know you have stopped everything to come over here and get a cookie. You are really angry because you want a cookie and I want you to wait until after dinner.” If a child is active, you can succeed in giving better understanding by just elaborating a little on what is physically happening or not happening and by letting the child know directly what you want him to do.

For responsive children who need redirection, you could add a little phrase like this, “I know you want a cookie now. You are really angry because you want a cookie and I won’t give you one. Let’s go over here and wrap up this cookie for you to have after dinner. Tonight we are going to have pink salmon and fluffy white potatoes. Look at these potatoes . . .”

For receptive children who need more rhythm, add the element of time and it will work a little better. Use the phrase, “I know you want a cookie now. You are really angry because you don’t want to wait. Right now it is time to get ready for dinner and after dinner it will be time to eat dessert. First we eat and then we have dessert.” Receptive children need a little rhythm and then they can relax.

Each of these four different approaches works best when applied to the appropriate child, but the original example would also work. Remember that every child has a little bit of each of the temperaments. Any of these approaches will work.

HARD-LOVE PARENTING

When it comes to dealing with our children’s resistance, there are generally two different approaches: soft love and hard love. Hard-love parents mistakenly believe, “If I tolerate my children’s resistance, then I will spoil them. They must always remember who is boss.” Although this limited thinking is now out of date, it is still partially true. To have a healthy sense of security in life, children need to always remember that the parent is the boss.

Although children may love being the boss, it works against their well being. Children need to play in the magical world of childhood without the burden of being responsible.

Too many choices will create an inner insecurity that gives rise to a host of problems. A child will disconnect with his or her natural willingness to cooperate and become demanding, selfish, needy, or just more resistant. An updated adjustment to the old adage, “Spare the rod and spoil the child” is “When a child forgets who’s boss, you spoil the child.” The new message we need to give our children is that it’s okay to resist, but remember mom and dad are the bosses.

The wisdom of the past must always be updated with new adjustments. To create order in society, we no longer need to take adulterers and stone them outside the city walls. In a similar way, we don’t need to spank our children or be intolerant of their resistance. Hard-love approaches must be rethought and adapted to meet the new needs of every generation.

The hard-love approach teaches children who is boss, but does not tolerate children’s natural resistance. While fear- and guilt-based approaches used to work, they now create their own set of problems. As we have already discussed, children do not need to be beaten and punished to create a willingness to cooperate. Children are born already willing to cooperate, but if they are not permitted to resist, they will either be weak and obedient, or they will attempt to find their inner power through rebelling.

Punishment may make them obedient in the short term, but later on they will rebel. Children today are rebelling earlier and earlier. This rebellion not only makes parenting more time consuming, difficult, and painful, but it obstructs a child’s natural development.

Some experts today will say it is good for your child to rebel at puberty, that it is normal for a child in puberty to stop talking to his or her parents or looking to them for love and support. Although things do change at puberty, it doesn’t mean a child has to rebel against the parents or stop going to them for support. The huge disconnection between parents and teenagers is not normal or healthy — it is just common.

Though teenagers naturally feel a greater need for peer support, this does not mean they no longer have a need for their parents’ guidance and love as well. It is not a given that a teenager will defy or rebel against their parents. Yes, it is a time for them to explore their individuality, but this does not mean that they will rebel or disconnect from a healthy willingness to cooperate, please, and follow the direction of their parents.

To live a fulfilled life today, it is not enough to surrender your will to the rules and live obediently under the rule of the boss. It doesn’t help our children to break their will and teach them to follow rules mindlessly and heartlessly. Children today have the potential to create the lives they want.

Our children have the power to make their dreams come true, but this power must be nurtured. It is a creative power.

When there is a problem or obstacle, a creative child or adult does not just accept and give in. Instead, creative people look for another way, a way to get what they want and to serve the needs of others as well. By awakening the spirit of cooperation in our children, this kind of creative intelligence is awakened. By raising our children to simply be obedient, we fail to give them the winning edge they need to compete and succeed in the world today.

Success in life doesn’t come from following rules; it comes from thinking for oneself and following one’s heart and inner will. This natural ability is first nurtured by strengthening the child’s willingness to cooperate. Demanding obedience from your children numbs their inner will. It closes their mind and heart and disconnects them from their potential to create the life they are here to live. When children get the message that it is okay to resist, but remember mom and dad are the bosses, they have the opportunity to keep their mind and heart open and nurture the ability to know their own will and wish in life.

When parents are able to respond to a child’s resistance calmly, without threats of punishment or disapproval, then a child gradually learns how to deal with the resistance she experiences in the world. When confronted with someone who is not willing to cooperate, she knows how to deal with the situation without mindlessly giving in or demanding that the other person give in.

Positive parenting teaches children to navigate through life’s obstacles with understanding and great negotiation skills.

They know with certainty the power of listening to minimize resistance and increase a person’s willingness to cooperate.

What was done to them, they do to others. When parents listen more to their children, their children automatically learn how to listen as well.

SOFT-LOVE PARENTING

Many parents have given up hard parenting. They recognize the importance of listening, but don’t understand the importance of being the boss. They seek to avoid their children’s resistance by listening and then placating the child. They listen, but then cave in to their child’s resistance to make the child happy. They cannot bear to see their children unhappy, and so they make whatever sacrifice they can to please them.

This brand of soft-love parenting does not work and has made many parents suspicious of new nurturing skills of positive parenting. Fortunately, positive-parenting skills work right away. They work in the short run and in the long run.

Soft-love parents sometimes give in to their child’s wants and wishes, because they just don’t know what else to do to stop the tantrum. They refuse to do what was done to them when they were growing up, but they don’t know another way that works. They know that spanking and shaming doesn’t work, but don’t know what does. By indulging their children, they mistakenly give the message that throwing tantrums or being demanding is a good way to get what you want.

Soft-love parenting tries to please and placate the child.

Soft-love parents will do whatever they can to avoid a confrontation with their child. They don’t know what to do when the children resist a request and develop new ways to avoid their children’s resistance and to motivate cooperation. They give the message that it is okay to resist, but they don’t establish that they are the boss.

To avoid a child’s resistance, many parents are even taught by well-meaning experts always to give a child a choice. Giving choices will lessen resistance, but it doesn’t create cooperation. It is another way of giving a child too much power and weakening your power as boss.

Until the age of nine, a child doesn’t need choices. Having too many choices pushes a child to grow up too soon. One of the greatest sources of stress for adults today is too many choices. Directly asking a young child what she wants puts too much pressure on the child. Always asking children what they want or how they feel weakens a parent’s ability to maintain control.

Greater freedom and responsibility creates more anxiety unless we are ready for it. Children younger than nine are not ready for it. They need strong parents who know what is best for them, but who are also open to hearing their resistance and discovering their wants and wishes. After discovering a child’s wishes and wants, parents can then decide to change their direction or hold strong. Either way, the parent is still in charge.

This concept is similar to our court system. Once a case is tried, it cannot be reopened unless there is new evidence.

In a similar way, although a child can resist, and it doesn’t mean the parent will budge from his or her point of view. If the parent gets new insight by listening to the child, it is fine to reconsider what is to be done. Parents may change their mind, not because they are afraid of resistance, but because new information has been considered that has changed their point of view. Like the court system, parents do not change their request unless new information becomes available.

Soft-love parents don’t know that resistance is an important need that children have. Children need to test the limits and make sure what you want them to do is really important. Otherwise, they have things to do that they consider more important. Just as children need permission to resist and test the limits imposed on them, they need a strong parent who will listen and then decide what is best.

Positive parents always decide, because they are the boss.

Without a boss, they begin to self-destruct. Permissive, soft parenting minimizes resistance in the short run, but weakens children’s willingness to cooperate. As a result of hard parenting, girls tend to lack confidence, while boys lack compassion.

As a result of soft parenting, girls tend to have low self-esteem and, later in life, give too much, while boys become hyperactive and lack confidence and discipline.

Children are not ready to be self-employed; they need a boss.

Using positive-parenting skills means hearing your child’s resistance and then deciding what is best. Deciding what is best doesn’t mean that you do not deviate from your original position. As your children develop a greater awareness of what they need and want, often they become great negotiators and are able to persuade you to change your mind.

There is a world of difference between giving in to your child’s feelings or wishes and changing what you think should be done. Parents are the boss, but they must not always rigidly hold on to their request or point of view. To listen to a child’s resistance means to consider what he or she is feeling and wanting and to decide what is best and then to persist.

It is fine to begin asking your nine year old and older children what they feel, want, wish, or need directly. Then around the age of twelve to fourteen, it is time to begin asking teens what they think. The development of abstract thinking at puberty signals children’s ability to start making decisions for themselves. How we communicate with our children always needs to be age appropriate.

At every age, children need a clear message that it is okay to make mistakes. The best way to teach this is by learning from your own mistakes. The truth is parents are not always right, and they don’t always know what is best.

They can know better if they consider and hear their child’s resistance. If parents change their point of view, it should be because they learned something and think a change is best.

They should not change their point of view to minimize a child’s resistance. Placating your children to minimize resistance only paves the way to greater resistance in the future.

LEARNING TO DELAY GRATIFICATION

Whether parents use hard love or soft love, their children do not get an opportunity to experience and cope with their resistance to limits. Expressing resistance not only defines the limits of a child’s space and influence, but also helps the child adjust. Learning to accept the boundaries and limits of time and space is a big lesson in life. Pushing up against life’s limits can teach children to embrace those limits without having to deny themselves. One great benefit of expressing and then letting go of resistance is the ability to delay gratification.

Many studies have shown that children who are able to postpone gratification are more successful in life. This really doesn’t require a study to realize. Look around you and you will see that people who succeed are people who patiently persist in achieving their goals. They do not throw in the towel when they don’t get what they want right away. They don’t lose touch with or deny their wants and wishes just because life doesn’t give them what they want when they want it. They bounce back from life’s setbacks with renewed energy and enthusiasm.

The ability to delay gratification is also the ability to be happy and at peace even though you don’t have everything you want. When children are able to resist their parents and then gradually let go of their resistance, they are learning to accept what has to be. They are accepting limits in a spirit of cooperation and trust that everything is and will be okay.

Ironically, it is the ability to express resistance that allows us to become more fluid in life. A clear acceptance of what has to be allows us to see more clearly what can be changed.

This not only brings greater peace but the motivation to persist in trying to change what can be changed.

Within every person is the natural ability to bounce back from life’s limits and curve balls. When children resist not getting what they want, and parents can identify and understand the feelings underlying the resistance and can communicate that understanding to them, then the children discover their natural ability to be happy and accepting even though they are not getting what they want. By giving children the loving understanding they need, having what they want right away becomes no longer so important.

When children are demanding about their wants, it is usually because they are not getting what they really need.

Likewise, when adults are unhappy because they are not getting what they want, it is because they are really not getting the love and support they need in their lives. The love we need is always available, but we are not seeing it.

Children need boundaries to push up against. When they don’t get them, they are restless and insecure. When they get their way too often, then what they get is never enough. It is only when we are feeling our needs that we can appreciate what we get. Resistance reconnects us to what we need instead of being focused too much on what we want.

When parents listen to children’s resistance and appropriately assist them in being aware of their feelings, wants, wishes, and needs, the children learn to be more aware of what is most important and is not tossed around so much by the ups and downs of life. Most adults today suffer from headaches, heartache, stress, distress, backaches, and other illnesses because they have focused too much on what they want and not enough on what they need.

MEETING YOUR CHILDREN’S NEEDS

You can’t always give your children what they want, but you can give them what they really need. If you don’t focus on providing what they need, then you and your children suffer increasing resistance. Contained within a child’s resistance is the greater need to be seen and heard, cared for and loved.

To know themselves, children are completely dependent on how much their parents see and hear them. When a child resists getting ready for school, refuses to eat vegetables, or simply doesn’t listen to your requests, it is a clear message that the child needs more time, attention, understanding, and direction. Your children need you to know what they need and for you to provide it.

In many cases, just the act of listening to a child’s feelings or resistance will give a child what he or she needs. But if a child needs something more, like more structure, then just listening will work only temporarily. Let’s have a look at an example.

A mother might ask her two sons, ages six and nine, to stop fighting. After hearing their resistance and understanding their frustration, the mother is able to bring the children back to feeling more cooperative. However, if those children don’t have enough structure within five or ten minutes, they will begin fighting again.

In this example, besides feeling heard, the children also need some kind of structured activity with rules, otherwise they will require more supervision. In this example, listening to the child is not enough.

When you just can’t give your children what they need in the moment, there is another way to get the cooperation you want. These new skills to motivate your children work, but they still don’t replace giving your children what they need.

Though they will create cooperation and motivation, they won’t give children what they need to develop. These skills will get your children to do what you want, when you want it, but your children will still have other needs such as understanding, structure, direction, and rhythm. Just as punishment was used as a deterrent in fear-based parenting, rewards are used to motivate in love-based parenting. In the next chapter, we will explore how to motivate your children.