What to do
Understand the importance of your assumptions
The psychologist Albert Ellis, a founder of cognitive therapy, developed the ‘ABC model’ of how people react to negative experiences. A is adversity (a negative event), and C represents the consequences, in terms of your emotions and behaviours. Importantly, Ellis proposed that in between them is B – your beliefs and thoughts about the adversity, which in turn cause C.
I have used Ellis’s model to illustrate what I call ‘the emotional chain reaction’: how the assumptions that you make about yourself and your children provoke your emotions, which subsequently fuel your behavioural reactions. The assumptions, which you make in a split second, are the critical and usually neglected step. They can include ideas, fears, perceptions or judgments. For instance, if your child calls you stupid, and that pushes a button, here’s what happens:
- You hear the words ‘You’re stupid.’
- You have a negative emotional response. You feel put-down, powerless, etc.
- You react with angry threats and punishment.
In between hearing the words and feeling the emotions, however, you make an assumption, such as He’s rude and disrespectful, or I can’t let him talk to me that way, or I’ve raised a thoughtless brat. I failed.
These assumptions are what provoke your emotions and fuel your reactions. You can change your reactions by changing what you think in the first place. If you don’t have a button about being called stupid, you won’t take your child’s words personally. You’ll understand that they are expressions of his frustration. You can respond calmly because you know it’s about your child, not about you.
In Katie’s case, assumptions were made that preceded and provoked her feelings of resentment and being disrespected.
About Liam:
- He’s so rude and nasty.
- He’s going to get in trouble with his boss someday.
- If I don’t control his behaviour now, he’ll never get anything right.
About herself:
- I’m totally ineffective.
- His disrespectful behaviour is my fault.
- I never get anything right.
These negative judgments necessarily provoke negative emotions and reactions. They prevent Katie from connecting with her son and helping him cooperate. She anticipates Liam’s resistance, so is pre-emptively on guard.
Set appropriate expectations about your child’s behaviour
Your assumptions stem from the expectations you hold – spoken or unspoken. They are often ones you were raised by. If your parents expected gratitude and criticised you if they didn’t see it, you might pass on that expectation to your kid. If you have spent an afternoon at the playground with your five-year-old and taken her for ice cream, you will be blindsided that evening if her reaction to being told it’s time for bed is to shout: ‘You’re so mean – you never let me do anything I want!’
Will you yell and punish her, or remain calm? You are more likely to make the automatic assumption that she’s an ungrateful child if you hold the expectation that children should always be appreciative and grateful. Assuming she is ungrateful, you will likely take her words literally and react in anger: ‘How dare you say I never let you do what you want? What did we just do this afternoon? You get to bed, and I don’t want to hear any more about it.’ Such a reaction will provoke feelings of shame in the child.
But if you consider that her young age means she is egocentric and thus focused on getting what she wants, you can interpret her words differently and see that she is expressing anger at not wanting to go to bed – it’s not about the playground and the ice cream. You are likely to be frustrated but can remain calm. ‘It’s a bummer, I know. Sometimes going to bed is hard when you want to keep playing. Let’s decide what books we’ll read when we get upstairs.’ The child is heard and acknowledged, even though she can’t have what she wants. Shame doesn’t come into it.
The question to ask is: are your expectations set for the child you have, or for the child you wish you had? Realistic and appropriate expectations set the bar at a level your child can reach. If your expectations are too far out of reach, your child might come to believe he is never good enough. To hold realistic expectations, it’s important to consider what is age-appropriate and temperament-appropriate. For instance, if your child is still young and egocentric, he will not have the cognitive capacity to fully take someone else’s emotions or point of view into consideration. It is unrealistic to expect that he should understand that his little sister gets upset when he takes something from her, or that his mother has had a hard day and needs some quiet. If your teen is sulky and spending time in her room, it is inappropriate to expect her to share with you everything that is going on when you ask her what’s wrong. If you have an introverted, slow-to-warm-up child, it is unrealistic to expect him to join in on any activity until he has determined his own comfort level.
When your expectations are coloured by what you want, and don’t reflect your child’s needs, you are likely to get pushback as well as send a message of disapproval. These messages can get interpreted by your child as I’m not good enough.
When your button is pushed, take a pause
In the moment when you are triggered, often the most important thing to do is to say nothing. Instead of reacting to that inner voice that tells you to nip this in the bud or teach him a lesson right now, reject that voice. Anything you say will likely be ineffective at best – and could be damaging to your relationship with your child.
When your button has been pushed, something physical often happens in your body. Your stomach clenches, you make fists, your palms sweat, your throat tightens. If you can notice and identify any of these responses, they can be your signal to stop.
Take some deliberate breaths. At least three or four breaths that go down into your abdomen and slowly rise through your nose will help bring your more reasonable mind back online. Stopping that voice in your head can also involve creating a mantra for yourself to say each time you get triggered: ‘Do nothing and breathe.’ ‘She’s having a problem, not being a problem. Or: ‘Detach, detach, detach.’
Check your triggers and reactions
Don’t expect to be always able to stop yourself in the moment of emotional flooding. Much of the work is done afterward, when your ‘thinking brain’ is fully functioning.
Pay attention to what types of behaviours trigger you. Is it when your child ignores you, talks back with rude language, or expresses anger? Make a list of these triggers as they come up. (Eventually, you will be able to name the situation and think: Here’s that trigger. I’m assuming he’s ignoring me. What’s really going on here?)
After an incident caused by one of these triggers, write down how you reacted; for example: ‘I yelled and threatened to take away his phone.’ Ask yourself: If I reacted that way, what must I have been feeling? Write all the feelings you can come up with. Be specific. Instead of just ‘angry’, it might be that you felt ‘put upon’, ‘powerless’, ‘ignored’, ‘guilty’ and ‘resentful’. Then ask: If I felt that way, what must I have been thinking? Write down your assumptions about the situation – as many as you can. ‘He never appreciates anything we do for him.’ ‘He’s so inconsiderate.’ ‘I have failed to teach him gratitude.’ ‘There’s no point in even trying. He’ll never change.’
Also consider this question: Can I connect this to a belief I took in about myself? Perhaps you will conclude something like this: I might think this way because my father once called me an ‘ungrateful bitch’. It has stuck with me forever.
Finally, ask: How can I see the situation differently? For example, here’s a different way of viewing a situation in which a child comes across as ungrateful: ‘He’s focused on what he wants right now. It’s not that he’s ungrateful. Maybe it’s a good thing that we don’t demand his gratitude all the time, because then he’d feel unworthy, like I do.’
Challenge your assumptions by sticking to the facts
Learning to see a situation differently from the way you have come to expect is key to altering your reactions to your child’s behaviour. A mother who resents her daughter’s displays of irritation, for instance, can look at the child’s grumpy face and tell herself: She’s having a problem, rather than She’s being a problem. She feels miserable, instead of She is bad.
The habitual way is to see judgment as truth. You must acknowledge that your assumptions are merely the way you see a situation. What is needed is observation of the facts – and empathy. ‘If there is some truth in your belief, don’t dismiss it,’ writes the psychologist Martin Seligman in his book The Optimistic Child (1995). ‘But it is crucial to separate the kernel of truth from the chaff of catastrophising.’
Watching a child hitting a sibling can quickly lead a parent to think: He’s so mean. That might feel hard to dispute, but dispute it you must. He’s so mean is an assumption, a judgment that provokes fear and anger, which naturally leads to yelling, controlling, threatening and blaming. To alter your reaction, you must first alter your assumption. His sister broke his Lego boat. He was angry and lost control is a more factual assumption that encourages understanding. This doesn’t mean the hitting is fine. It means you will deal with it more effectively.
In Katie’s case, when Liam wouldn’t get off the computer at the designated time, she approached with a reprimand, anticipating his resistance. Liam was playing a game with his friends and said to them: ‘My mom is making me get off. She’s such an asshole.’ Katie lost it.
After working on replacing her initial judgment with a more dispassionate observation of Liam’s behaviour and the circumstances in which it appeared, Katie looked at the situation from a different vantage point. She switched from assuming Liam is attacking me and is frighteningly disrespectful to He is saving face with his friends. He didn’t want to admit that his mother was making him get offline, so he made her the enemy. While his words were unacceptable, she could see that it was not about her as much as it was about his need to protect his status with his friends. She admitted that she had never thought of it this way. She felt more understanding, and came up with the idea of holding up a sign to remind Liam to end. He liked that. After emotions cooled, she was able to tell him calmly how she felt when he called her an ‘asshole’ to his friends. He heard her and apologised.
As Katie began to see Liam’s words and behaviour as a form of self-defence, she felt compassion and so was able to stop defending herself. Compassion has broken their negative feedback loop.
Striving to observe and understand rather than leap to judgment can help you reframe your assumptions. You can see the judgment, and shift to a factual observation. You can replace a thought such as Why can’t he ever listen and do one thing I ask? (notice the emotion implicit in the thought) with He’s involved in what he’s doing, or He doesn’t like what he’s hearing, or He does do what I ask when I give him choices and time. Similarly, you can convert a self-focused assumption such as I’m a lousy parent (which feels hopeless) to I’m exhausted and need help (which encourages self-compassion).
