The importance of fostering connections and coaching children through conflicts with empathy and effective communication.
The importance of fostering connections and coaching children through conflicts with empathy and effective communication.
Project Parenthood is hosted by Chelsea Dorcich. A transcript is available at Simplecast.
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Consciously Parenting Siblings. Ditch the referee role and see how you can shift the balance in your household. Hi, welcome back to Project Parenthood. I am your host, Chelsea Dorcich, Licensed Marriage Family Therapist in California. I am here to join you on your conscious parenting journey, bringing more curiosity, openness, acceptance, kindness, and non judgment along the way.
My goal is for us to accept what is out of our control, commit to improving our parenting life, and discover better outcomes for not only ourselves, but our family. We are continuing to discuss how to consciously parent siblings. Last week, we discussed taking care of yourself so that you can take care of your own children more consciously.
We took a look at self awareness, self regulation, and self compassion. We know that approaching arguing children without regulating and noticing will create more divide between our children. Today, we will focus on connecting and coaching while addressing the situation of our children fighting. First, a reminder that sibling rivalry is typical and natural.
Everyone is born with a need to survive, so it is natural to feel feelings of rivalry with a sibling, but siblings can also have fun. Research shows that it is the amount of fun between siblings that leads to stronger and closer relationships in adulthood, regardless of how much siblings fight. Think about human relationships as a whole.
They will never be without anger, jealousy, hurt feelings, or needing to repair a rupture. Let's discuss how we can support our children to work out their differences and repair their ruptures as opposed to driving them apart. For more on this, you can reference Episode 760 on repairing ruptures. After all, we want to raise children who handle their anger responsibly, not raise children who don't get angry.
Let's talk about connections. Think about your parenting as a relationship as opposed to a set of strategies, as we have no influence as parents unless we actually have a relationship. In order for us as parents to have influence, our children need to feel heard, seen, and validated. For more tips on using effective communication to do so, you can listen to Episode 756 when I talk with Dr. Corr about using the five secrets of effective communication with your children. In order to create and strengthen connections, incorporate playfulness and empathy. Use play to connect with children. Listen with empathy. And set boundaries and limits with empathy. Empathy. Acknowledge your child's feelings while also acknowledging your own mistakes.
This allows your child to feel safe to connect and let you back in after a rupture. Coaching, not controlling. Our goal is to teach our children how to handle it. The argument, the fight, we owe it to our children to coach them so they have an inner compass that they respect and listen to. Teach our children to listen to their own inner compass.
To do that, and we need to let go of our control, our fear, our ego. Remember that adult relationships of our children become closer the more fun they have. So, they can fight non stop so long as they are also having fun together.
What does coaching our children to work out their disagreements instead of driving them apart look like? It looks like parents walking into an argument after taking a breath, regulating and grounding themselves, hanging up your referee whistle. Parents are not the referee or judge. Remind yourself, what you're walking into is not an emergency.
Each sibling deserves to be heard and understood. Especially the one with the bigger emotions. Parents go in and acknowledge that there are loud voices. Parents visibly take a breath. The kids probably will keep yelling. We can keep telling ourselves as parents that this is not an emergency. It's going to be fine in order to keep ourselves grounded and calm.
Acknowledge each sibling and acknowledge their anger and that you are present to hear each side. Encourage your kids to take a breath. They probably will refuse it, but you can just model your own breath again and remind them that you're again, you're here with them to hear them out and have them take turns telling you what happened.
You're not alone. Parents can have a hand on each child looking at the first sibling to speak while glancing to the other sibling, keeping contact with both. Use the five secrets with them. Disarm them. Have empathy with them. And then have them use the five secrets to tell their brother or sister what they don't like.
Empowering them to be someone staying up for themselves and expressing themselves in a safe way. For example, this might look like one of your children saying, Matt, I really get frustrated when you knock over my dolls. And so you might glance to your other child saying, Matt, did you hear Sammy?
You know, she gets really frustrated when you knock over her dolls. Can you tell us what's coming up for you now? And Matt might say, well, Sammy, I get really sad when you don't include me to play. And then maybe that's the basics and you can go on adding more five secrets as you go as your kids get more comfortable with this structure and this structure, you may be doing this for a month, realistically, and it will feel very hands on and really you taking a lot of time to put into this and effort.
However, each time you do that. You will start to notice your children using problem solving skills and better communication and this will allow you to Finish making dinner or finish that chapter in your book If you have one sibling who seems to be the consistent quote unquote aggressor They are actually the one that needs more help not more blame.
So this goes also for a more impulsive child. So the more we acknowledge our children's feelings like anger and simultaneously provide them with communication tools to use, we will see a decrease in physical aggression or impulsivity. Although we may be quick to send children to their room and say, we've had enough.
I know I've been there. There have been moments where it's too much and you just need to separate everyone and space for yourself. It will go a long way for everyone if we can make them feel valued and forgiven. If we can give them an opportunity to repair. When we send them to their rooms or punish them, the first message is that we don't care.
We don't care what's happening to them. What's happening doesn't matter. So we need to increase the empathy. Especially for the siblings, we have inadvertently labeled quote unquote bad. For example, let's say you have your two children and one child hit the other during this argument. You approach them in that way where you're grounded, you're regulated, you've got a hand on each one.
If you look at them and you have the one child who hit another, you send them to go get an ice pack. And then you bring all of your attention to the child who's hurt. This gives the child who hit time to get grounded. They're walking, they're touching their feet on the ground. They're going to touch a cold ice pack.
It allows them that time to decompress. After you've attended to the hurt child, we want to bring attention to the child who hit and really try to bring out the tenderness in them because we know it exists. So we use our five secrets. It's hard when we fight. I imagine you were really angry. Can you tell me more about that anger and what was coming up?
So give them a chance. To repair, give them a chance to connect with their feelings, with their actions. In the end, we are not refereeing, and we are not choosing sides. We are really just working to connect with our children. Working to build a stronger relationship, and really to coach them to repair their ruptures with their siblings.
Remembering that feelings of anger and frustration, they're typical, they're expected. And as long as our children are having fun, they're still going to be close with their siblings in their adulthood. So, hear each sibling, disarm them, and empathize with them. This will take time, and I myself have had waves of needing a refresher and a crash course, but it does stick, and will lead to a more cautious family.
That's it for this week's edition of Project Parenthood. This information was influenced by Dr. Laura Markham and her book, Peaceful Parent, Happy Siblings. Remember to be curious, open, accepting, kind, and non judgmental on your conscious parenting journey. If you have any questions about this episode, about your parenting journey, and or topics you'd like to hear more about, please reach out to parenthood at quickanddirtytips.com or leave a message at 646-926-3243. Project Parenthood is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Thanks to the team at Quick and Dirty Tips, Holly Hutchings, Davina Tomlin, Morgan Christianson, and Brannan Goeschius. May you be happy, safe and protected, healthy and strong, and live with ease.