Your Children Are Listening: Nine Messages They Need to Hear from You

impossible to tell which is which!
    Their strategy for tantrums starts with staying calm. If Terry or Jaime get upset, then it can turn into a mixed-martial-arts cage match in which everyone loses. When Terry and Jaime are composed, they avoid “feeding the fire” and their calm may actually rub off on their children. Their reaction involves being both empathic (“I feel your pain.”) and firm (“No, you can’t have that cookie.”). Regardless of the reason for the tantrum, when their kids are really upset, Terry and Jaime want to send messages that respect and acknowledge those intense feelings. At the same time, in the event that their children are trying to “play them,” they convey the message that such attempts at manipulation will not be rewarded.
    Blair has quite a temper. When she gets angry, she has, in the past, just let her emotions explode. Her husband Anthony understands Blair and is able to accept the outbursts. He figures that Blair lets it out, lets it go, and then it’s over. Blair also knows where she got her temper, namely, from her mother who could yell and scream with the best of them, so that Blair and her siblings were often the victims of their mother’s wrath. But Blair didn’t want to teach her two sons, Everett and Jude, that yelling was acceptable, so she was committed to tempering her temper. This was no small task given her history and the fact that it seems as if impatience, frustration, and anger are part and parcel of being a parent. So she is ever vigilantof her emotions when her children are acting up. Her knee-jerk reaction is to respond with anger, so controlling her temper has been perhaps the greatest challenge of her life. But she sees the value of her efforts when her sons are able to get frustrated or angry without blowing up. And she feels better about herself as a mother, wife, and person for her newfound ability to control her anger and express it in healthier ways.
    Randy and Christina found it easy to get frustrated and irritated (and angry!) with their first child’s tantrums and whining. And they didn’t win any Parent of the Year awards with their reactions either. It took Randy and Christina quite a while to figure it out, but they finally realized that when their children are really upset, whatever emotion is most apparent is not usually the real emotion causing the problem. For example, when children have temper tantrums, anger is rarely the underlying emotion. Anger, in reality, is a defensive emotion aimed at protecting children (and adults, for that matter) from more painful emotions such as sadness, hurt, and humiliation. Whininess, in turn, is the outward expression of children feeling frustrated, not getting their needs met, or feeling out of control (all of which, I might add, are normal parts of being a kid). Or children may just be hungry, tired, or too cold or hot, and as a result, more emotionally sensitive. When Randy and Christina take the time to understand the underlying emotion or issue their children are expressing, they find that they are much more empathetic and are in a better position to send their children messages of understanding and support.
    Dede believes in the power of words to shape the way people think and feel. With this in mind, she and her husband, Thad, felt that a great way to help their three children develop good emotional habits was to give them a large vocabulary of words to help them identify and describe the emotions that they feel. Dede and Thad first made a list of all of the emotions that they could think of, but found themselves stuck on the obvious ones such as love, happiness, sadness, anger, excitement, joy, and frustration. So they did asearch online and found a veritable treasure trove of emotions that caused them to think “Of course, why didn’t we think of those before?”: courage, confusion, curiosity, disappointment, embarrassment, jealousy, surprise, contentment, inspiration, relief, loneliness, impatience, silliness, worry, shyness, satisfaction, compassion, empathy, friendliness, boredom, anxiety, and pride. At dinner several times a week, they introduce a different emotion to their children and have a discussion about what the emotion is, how it feels, the facial expressions that it provokes, and how it is expressed.
    The key to emotional maturity for Alma is the ability to express negative emotions in a constructive way. Yet, such constructive expressions don’t seem to come naturally or