What is the most important piece of advice for a new parent?
I don’t know why this has been on my mind, but for the past few months, I’ve been wondering how I would answer that question if somebody asked me.
(Not that anybody would suddenly ask me. Am I expecting to be suddenly interviewed on the street or something?)
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But I’ve been going back over the last 12 years of my parenting, and have found a few gigantic things that have transformed my parenting life.
This is one of them. This is one of my most important lessons from parenting.
Don’t Worry So Much About Teaching Lessons
Most of us are familiar with old-school parenting. It’s the type of parenting where the goal is to get the child to obey. Feelings are important, but not that important. What matters most is having a compliant child.
This type of parenting is one in which compliance is forced through punishment. If a child doesn’t clean up their room when asked, they lose a privilege. If they talk back, they are sent to their room or even smacked.
This type of parenting is one in which lessons are taught. Lectures are given. Children are made to know exactly what they did wrong.
And you know? For a certain type of child, this works.
I mean, it “works” in that it gets the child to comply.
So this is what I knew. This is what I had seen. This is what I believed.
I planned to have lots of enjoyable times with my children, because I wouldn’t deal with many behavioral issues. Why wouldn’t I deal with behavioral issues? Because I would nip them in the bud with my methods, of course.
The Universe Laughed
If my second child had been my first child, this would have been my start to parenting. She is easily motivated by rewards and consequences. I would have seen her compliance as proof of a solid parenting strategy.
But my second child was not my first child.
My first child was my first child. (Obviously?)
And my first child has ADHD (unknown to me at the time). This means she has issues with impulsivity, distractedness, and heightened emotions.
She often didn’t do what I asked. I now know this is because she was often distracted. But I didn’t know that then. So I punished her.
The punishments didn’t work because she also had those pesky heightened emotions which flooded her brain and wouldn’t allow her to hear what I was saying. She could only hear the punishment, which led to meltdowns of epic proportion.
Which led to more punishment.
It was awful, friends. I was awful.
And because of impulsivity, she couldn’t ever connect the punishment of the past with her decisions in the moment. So she continued to make the same mistakes, and I continued to punish.
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I Removed Myself, and It Made Everything Worse
I remember reading in a book that when your toddler acts out, you should remove yourself. Walk out of sight so they understand you don’t approve of their behavior. Also, put them in their crib when they act out so they understand that bad behavior will separate them from the family.
I tried it, and not only did it NOT work, it made my daughter fearful. She stressed out when I walked away. She didn’t make the connection between her behavior and me leaving. Or if she did, it hurt her.
Pretty soon, I stopped doing these specific practices, but I think I carried that mentality with me. I felt it was my children’s responsibility to be obedient and make our family life happy. I punished, I yelled, I freaked out, I walked away.
It hurt my children, especially the one who kept messing up. I didn’t know her brain was wired differently.
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Connect with Your Child
Eventually, we ended up on the couch of a brilliant, kind, and wise therapist. She watched us interact and pointed out to me that my daughter loved me.
In fact, she adored me.
I had no idea. My shortsighted impression was that our relationship was ruined by that point. I was only in the therapist’s office to “fix” my daughter’s behavior.
But our therapist saw we could make it through — stronger. She then taught me how to connect with my daughter.
Interestingly enough, turning to our relationship and our connection fixed behavior (both my daughter’s AND mine) faster than anything I had ever tried.
We did all the positive connection things, like going to do fun things together, having special time at home, reading, taking walks, and asking each other questions.
And it helped a lot.
But the most interesting thing was that connecting during the hard times was the most significant part of our healing.
I never would have thought to do this.
Connect with Your Child Through the Hard Times
When I talked alone with the therapist, I explained to her how my daughter’s meltdowns lasted forever. And nothing I did would calm her down. It was so hard.
She suggested that I hold her or hug her during the meltdown (if she would let me), and tell her I’m sorry she’s having a hard time. She also suggested I time the meltdowns to see how long they were actually taking.
I decided to give it a try, but I was doubtful.
Nevertheless, as soon as the next meltdown happened, I rushed to my daughter and hugged her. (She let me.) I told her I was sorry she was having a hard time. I resisted correcting her (it was hard!), and just continued repeating I was sorry for how she was feeling.
The meltdown lasted less than two minutes.
Less than two minutes! It was shocking!. Previous meltdowns had lasted for dozens of minutes. Truly.
At two minutes, I could keep doing this.
When the next meltdown happened, I did the same, and it lasted less than a minute.
Soon, it only took a few seconds for my daughter to calm down enough to talk.
If you had seen the epic meltdowns before, you wouldn’t have believed this.
Our therapist was onto something.
I tried other forms of connections during the hard times:
- Holding her
- Putting my hand on her shoulder
- Kneeling next to her
- Holding her hand
- Rubbing her back
- Sitting near her
- Putting our foreheads together
She began to trust me, and I was less frustrated. I wasn’t focused on fixing her behavior. I was focused on making sure she felt loved during her hardest times.
Punishments and lectures had never made a difference. They left us grumpy and disconnected. Leaving my daughter or sending her away never helped us. It was only when I began to join her in her hard times that we improved.
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Rush to Connect with Your Child
I noticed during this time that I was rushing to connect with her, and figured this was probably because I wanted to stop the meltdown before it got out of hand. But I soon began to realize that rushing was another key to our success.
I decided to become a rusher. I would rush to soothe my children. That word would even pop into my mind whenever any of my children began to have a meltdown. This is something that old convention had told me would spoil her; that I would be rewarding her for “bad behavior.”
But it simply didn’t. Showing love to my children in their hard times simply did not, and does not, spoil them. Instead, it makes them feel safe, secure, and connected.
Before, when she freaked out because I asked her to clean her room, I WOULD have screamed at her and sent her to her room for being ungrateful about contributing to the house.
After I learned to connect during the hard times, I instead rushed to her with a hug. I told her I was sorry she was sad and I was here to help her through it.
You can’t believe how fast she calmed down. And most surprisingly to me, she began to do the things I asked her to do, like cleaning her room.
But the most important thing was that we built our relationship together.
I don’t do this perfectly every single time my kids melt down, throw a fit, or complain. I still have old impulses, and I still revert to my old ways when I’m flustered, tired, or off my game.
But even when I impulsively yell or punish, I still have this tool to fall back on.
Even when I make a mistake, I can still rush to my children (once I’ve calmed down, of course) and connect with them through our hard times.
I don’t know what the MOST important piece of advice is for a new parent, but I know this is the most important thing I’ve learned in my 12 years of parenting.
What’s yours?
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