I’ll just be a minute… We will do it later… I will buy it the next day

I’ll just be a minute… We will do it later… I will buy it the next day…

I have very strong feelings about making promises to children.   I believe that it is important that we keep our promises.  Perhaps, having a child who has the memory of an elephant and who always reminds me ‘later’ of the casual promises that I made early in the day, I have become very aware and sensitive to casual promises.

I am sure that most parents can picture the scene.  You are in the supermarket and your child wants sweets/chocolate etc., and you say something like “you can have some after dinner”.  You may forget, but will your child?

Equally you are busy and your child asks you if they can paint and you say “we will do it later” but you really mean, I am too busy and I hope that you will get distracted and forget all about this.

Or perhaps in order to get a few minutes peace you promise them a trip to the cinema, or the beach at the weekend if they are quiet for now.

So what is the child actually learning?

They are actually learning that there is no connection between what you say and what you do.

There are learning that the words that you use bear no relation to what they will actually experience later.

Over time this may reduce their trust in you.  As they get older their reliance on language increases, but their association in their head is that your language of promises does not match up with action.

So what can you do –

As the parents we can choose to be more mindful of how we are using language around our children.  When we make a promise of a treat or an activity we can make sure that we keep that promise.

In doing so we are teaching our children a very clear connection between language and action and those association build over time and can equally be translated to the whole are of discipline.

Now you may argue that these are not real promises but rather they are intended as distractions, to deflect the child away one set of actions towards something that fits with our immediate needs.  And yes distraction can be a very useful tool with small children.  However in making promises, no matter how casual we are associating specific elements of our language with  expected outcomes.  the greater the match between these two things the easier it will be to build trust.

However as young children are learning to make the connections between their experience of the world and the words that they hear then those connections are learned more effectively when the words and the experiences match.

Mary Corbett is a founder member of  Parenting Club,  author, life and business coach and mother of 2 busy children aged 12 and 17.

Words can defeat us

According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary a word is a sound or combination of sounds that has a meaning and is spoken or written. According to Wikipedia a word is the smallest element that can be uttered in isolation with semantic or pragmatic content.

So why such a small thing rule our lives?

If you actually think about that we are surrounded by words, sounds, speech.We cannot and what’s more important we do not want to avoid it. When a child is born we can’t wait until she starts speaking properly (using words we can understand) so we (think) can communicate with our child better. However take a look at your newborn, she can perfectly communicate her needs. A 6 month-old infant can communicate with the environment by using combination of sounds and gestures. By looking at our infants we can realise that words are not needed for an effective communication.

As a young parent we all make a promise to ourselves that we will be positive, that we never raise voice on our children, that we never hit them. Most of the time we are able to keep our promise of not hitting children, but the rest of the promise…well that’s a different story. I’m not saying here about raising voice to alert the child in order to protect them (like stopping them running into the busy street, putting their little curious hands into hot oven etc). I’m talking about screaming at them because they disobey us.

Children do test boundaries. I remember my daughter, she was about 1 back then, she was always standing by the fireplace guard (there was no fire), but she wasn’t allow to play with the fireguard. She was constantly going there and was trying to remove it.There were our options:

1. Say firm NO.

2. Remove her from the place and distract her.

3. Say NO and have a stare contest.

We found out that the more we would raise our voice the less of a response we are getting from her. Believe it or not the only thing which worked was the door number 3. Until this day (she is 26 months now) giving her ‘the stare’ works like a charm.

Yes, all children are different and different methods need to be used.

I’ve noticed that not only the tone or loudness of the voice matters. What matters the most is the actually words we are saying. If we say to our child ‘You are stupid’, ‘you are a moron’,’ you are fat’,’ you are useless’, ‘you never be anybody’ this is imprinting into their minds and those words last forever. It takes such a long time and so much effort to get rid of those negative labels adults put on a child. The child will go into the world already defeated and with a low self-esteem.

We can loose our cool and say something hurtful to our children, it does happen. We are tired and we snap. If this is a single occurrence apologize to your child, say you did not mean what you said, because you were tired, you had a bad day and promise it will never repeat. Stick to your promise.

However if you, on regular basis, use words to belittle them (such as moron, stupid, failure etc) you are verbally abusing your child. Nobody wants to hear that as you may think they won’t remember. Children do remember and they do understand what you are saying.

There is an easy solution to use the words wisely and for everyone’s benefit.

Instead of saying ‘You are stupid’ say ‘What you did wasn’t very good’

‘You are a moron’ replace with ‘Explain to me why did you (hit this boy, break that car etc)’

If you are not sure what to say or how to replace what you want to say. Remember the simple rule.

‘Focus on the behaviour, not on the person’

Remember that kids want to please us, and we can a long way with praise.

Frederick Douglass said

‘It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men’.

When we use positive language in our every day life, to our partners, friends, and our children. Our children will grow up believing in themselves, being positive, happy and successful people.

Note: The photo contains phrase: ‘Words have power. Use them wisely’.

Aga Schnier is a founder of ParentingClub2014, Mother and Law of Attraction Master Practitioner which she currently uses to promote positive parenting techniques.