Uncategorized

I-Messages—not You-Messages–Communicate Your Feelings and Maintain Respect

Posted on January 22nd, 2010

Using I-Messages is not “all about you,” but it is about how to communicate appropriately and respectfully with others.

I-Messages communicate your feelings and perspectives in a respectful, less challenging way when:

your child’s attitude or behavior is unacceptable to you
you are trying to modify another’s behavior or attitude
you own a problem involving another person

The 6-step formula of an effective I-Message

The most effective I-Message is clear and specific.

State the specific, objective facts…no generalizations or zingers.

Example:

We agreed last week you would feed the dog every night by 5:00. Last night she did not get her dinner until after 8:00.

State your feelings without attacking, judging, criticizing, or ascribing motives.

Example:

I feel disappointed when I discover the dog has not been fed. I feel sad for her.

Describe the actual or potential negative impact.

Example of actual impact:

As a result, I don’t feel like I can trust you to feed her. I don’t like feeling this way about you.

Example of potential impact:

When you tell me you will feed the dog and then don’t do it, it makes it hard for me to trust you the next time you make a promise.

Provide a fair request; describe the behavior that would correct the situation, making sure the request is reasonable for this specific child. Be clear and specific.

Example:

I expect you to feed her by 5:00 every night, and for the next week I would like you to tell me when you have fed her so there is no question in my mind.

Describe a positive impact.

Example:

Once I know you can do this every night on time without a reminder from me, I will be able to trust you more for this and other times you make a promise.

Request feedback; Listen respectfully and appreciate perspectives. Accept explanations, challenge excuses.

Example:

Would you like to tell me how you feel about this?

Example of responding to an explanation:

I hear that the time just got away from you and that you are really sorry that you did not carry out your commitment.

Example of challenging an excuse:

I understand that people sometimes forget to do things they promised to do, however when that happens, they need to correct their mistake and accept responsibility for making it.

I-Messages work better with reasoning of older children

As you can see, an I-Message is used within consideration of the age and stage of development of your child.

So, a toddler who does not yet have the capability to reason would not be the target of an I-Message that expects him to change.

The perfectly normal yet difficult to cope with behaviors such as impulsive and aggressive hitting, biting and throwing of objects may need more limit-setting responses from parents than the use of I-Messages.

Since in an I-Message you state what you are thinking and feeling, a father experiencing frustration over a toddler’s age-appropriate negative behavior can use an I-Message to vent without expecting that the toddler change. “I am so annoyed that I cannot be on the phone for even one minute without you touching things that are dangerous because I can’t finish my phone business.”

You-Messages

Destructive “You” messages are used by the speaker to put-down the child or control him. “You never listen,” or, “You should have set your alarm to remind you,” can diminish self-confidence and the health of the relationship.

These messages do not build your child’s Iceberg.

On the other hand, in your executive role as parent, it is often appropriate to use a take-charge message. Therefore, for reasons of your child’s safety, or when you assume the role of disciplinarian and speak from authority, a “you” message may be appropriate.

“You are going to do this my way now because I am the parent, and this is not open for discussion or negotiation at this moment.” This stance of being in charge is healthy and appropriate when a child needs help through an external control.

At times you may use you-messages with the teaching hat. This kind of message becomes appropriate when you provide information or explain values.

Such interactions are appropriate and valuable for you and your child. It is also both reasonable and necessary for you to convey, in a non-threatening way, the potential consequences of your child’s behavior: “If you pull the kitty’s tail, I will take her out of the room because in our family, we do not hurt our pets.”

PARENTING ACTION STEPS:

Define the problem
Determine who owns the problem
Consider the desired outcome
Communicate your perspective without attacking, blaming, accusing or taking control

Expert information from IPED

This information is brought to you by Lakeside Educational Network’s IPED Program. The Institute for Professional and Educational Development Program informs, equips and inspires educators, counselors, early childhood practitioners and human services professionals dealing with many difficult and complex issues each day.

Our exclusive curriculum, available directly from Lakeside’s IPED, is comprehensive in topics that promote emotional and relational health in children and families. Successful outcomes consistently occur as a result.

With more than 50 years of outstanding service through its many programs, Lakeside is proud to be an international advocate and resource for kids and families.

If you would like to subscribe to our parenting tips, please follow us on Twitter at GerryatLakeside

If you’d like to learn more about our professional development training and CEUs, please complete the form below.

How to Parent Better By Avoiding “RESS-Q” in Times of Trouble

Posted on January 18th, 2010

Parents with good intentions often try to RESS-Q their children at the first sign of a problem.

Awareness is the first step in avoiding inappropriate RESS-Q.

Replace RESS-Q with Active Listening–the powerful tool that grows your child’s emotional health.

“RESS-Qing” the child from disclosing painful feelings, or causing her to express peace and happiness as a result of pain, fear, or struggles because these feelings are too uncomfortable for the parent to hear curtails communication from your child and leaves her with negative feelings and frustration.

It takes practice not to use RESS-Q

First, allow yourself time to increase your Active Listening skills. The more you use Active Listening, the more natural it will become for you to use when needed in everyday situations, and subsequently, the easier it will be to stifle inappropriate RESS-Qing.

When you trust and allow Active Listening as your first response, you will get a “feel” for if and when other forms of communication will be appropriate.

Preventing a RESS-Q response means you do not:

Reassure
Explain
Solve
Share
Question

Why? A potential negative impact exists for each form of RESS-Q. See why…

REASSURE

This form of communication may send the message that the child should be fully capable of handling the situation and suggests it is time to move on.

Examples:

It’s going to be all right; I’m sure.
You can handle this.
Things like this happen. You’ll feel better tomorrow.

EXPLAIN

This form of communication places the focus on the situation and suggests the person consider things at an intellectual level rather than a feeling level. It also tells her she should consider why things are this way in order to encourage her to give up on her feelings about it.

Examples:

The reason this might have happened is…
You must learn to turn the other cheek.
Maybe the other children were having a tough morning.

SOLVE

This form of communication denies the importance of venting feelings. As with explaining, it directs the person to think rather than allowing her to feel. Unsolicited suggestions almost always feel like a criticism. It may tell her she is not capable of handling the situation.

Examples:

A way to handle this is…
Have you thought about trying to…
The first thing you do when a fight is about to start is…

SHARE

This form of communication shifts the attention from the person speaking to the person who was supposedly Listening, changing the focus and the flow of conversation. It can then be difficult for the speaker to shift back to talking about himself, so he may stop authentically sharing and processing.

Examples:

I know just how you feel. That happened to me…
It certainly would make me feel upset. I know I’d want to make sure something was done about it.

QUESTION

This form of communication shifts the control of the conversation from the speaker to the listener. It can interrupt the process in several ways: it makes the speaker accountable to the listener, it can change the direction of the conversation, and it can make the speaker move from a feeling mode to a thinking mode.

Examples:

Why did you do that?
How do you feel about that?
Why didn’t you avoid them in the first place?

Note that each part of RESS-Q is a healthy hat of communication. When something other than Listening is needed, there are appropriate times to Reassure and affirm, Explain or teach, Solve or suggest, Share as a way to connect, and ask Questions to invite someone to explore.

The value of being heard

There are infinite responses to most situations. The Listener’s job is to focus on those responses that will be the most meaningful and helpful to the speaker.

RESS-Qing is much less effective in allowing the speaker to feel heard, understood, accepted and appreciated. So you can see how you benefit from knowing RESS-Q in order to do Active Listening well.

When you send messages of acceptance and availability to your child, your relationship with her has its best opportunity to develop and grow.

PARENTING ACTION STEPS:

First use Observer Role to become aware of your inner pull to solve or quickly cover your child’s pain
Be clear about the five potential RESS-Q responses you need to avoid
Determine which type of Active Listening is needed
Allow the child to own her feelings without having to solve an immediate problem

Expert information from IPED

With more than 50 years of outstanding service through its many programs, Lakeside is proud to be an international advocate and resource for kids and families.

If you would like to subscribe to our parenting tips, please follow us on Twitter at GerryatLakeside

If you’d like to learn more about our professional development training and CEUs, please complete the form below.

How to teach your child to build trust…

Posted on November 20th, 2009

A cornerstone of any relationship is the degree to which there is trust and trustworthiness.

Developing safety and trust with your child is a critical component of the parent-child relationship.

The process of gradually helping your child become trustworthy is essential for the development of your child’s emotional and relational health. A child who trusts feels safe and tends to make better decisions…a characteristic you will appreciate as your child becomes a teenager.

Five principles about trust you need to know:

Trust exists on a continuum: To what degree is each person trusting? To what degree is each person trustworthy?
Trust should not be assumed automatically as existing in a relationship just because a relationship exists.
Trust is not static. It is earned and grown. It needs nurturing to be maintained, and it has the potential to be damaged and rebuilt.
The impact of broken trust is cumulative; that means that each time trust is broken, more time is required to earn back that trust.
Your own history of trust with others—including how your parents handled trust as you grew up—will deeply influence the degree to which you manage trust in fair and healthy ways with your children.

Children tend to break trust, but a parent can be prepared when this happens

As a parent, it can be a challenge to determine how much to trust your child in each situation. However, being prepared for the probability of your child breaking trust with you can feel empowering.

When trust is broken, you will need to help your child find a fair way to make amends and rebuild trust. “I’ll never trust you again!” is not a healthy response. Talking through the facts of what occurred to break trust is healthy and may clarify a way to make amends (See our Iceberg and Relationship Tweets).

When kids ask, “Don’t you trust me?” you may respond by explaining some principles of trust. Help them understand that trust is not an either/or concept and that it will take time to rebuild.

Remember, an essential skill for parents is to help children find acceptable ways to rebuild broken trust.

PARENTING ACTION STEPS:

Step back and observe behavior. (Observer Role)
Accept that you will promote and preserve trust with intentional, in charge decisions and actions.
Consider fair and acceptable ways for your child to make amends.
Discuss how trust may be rebuilt and follow through.

Expert information from IPED

With more than 50 years of outstanding service through its many programs, Lakeside is proud to be an international advocate and resource for kids and families.

If you would like to subscribe to our parenting tips, please follow us on Twitter at GerryatLakeside

If you’d like to learn more about our professional development training and CEUs, please complete the form below.

Use this powerful parenting technique…it costs you absolutely nothing…is simple to use…and can produce positive results almost immediately.

Posted on November 18th, 2009

In any situation, you may play the role of observer, participant—or in some instances—both. In your relationship with your child, intentionally assuming the Observer Role can allow you to step back, become clearer and better able to assess the whole situation before deciding on discipline or becoming involved.

When you use this technique, you can make more informed decisions based on rational thinking…not impulsive reacting. Plus, using the Observer Role is a critical skill for learning to actively listen (a skill you’ll learn about in later Tweets).

There is great power in being able to stand firm in the Observer Role and in refusing to be pushed into a more active role until you are ready.

What is the Observer Role?

Observing means:

taking a detached but mindful perspective in a particular situation
watching, analyzing, categorizing and considering the situation from many perspectives
waiting before deciding to become actively involved.

Choosing the Observer Role offers you control and clarity

You are in the Observer Role when you choose to allow your two children to argue about who first had a toy, though you can hear (and even see) all that is happening.

As long as neither child is in danger, observing allows you to become clearer about the whole situation. If and when you decide to participate, you are better prepared to do so with confidence that you are not over-reacting.

Further, stepping back can also provide children with opportunities to resolve arguments themselves, a learning experience for them. ( See our Relationship Tweet ).

Choosing to participate involves you in what is happening

For example…A parent is in the participating role when he pulls two kids apart and tells them they may either decide how to play without anyone getting hurt or must play in separate rooms.

You make a better participant if you first intentionally assume the Observer Role.

It may take a few tries to learn when and how to be in each role and to avoid premature participation. Then, when you do participate you do so more fairly and effectively.

Using the Observer Role can:

help you more intentionally build your child’s self-esteem
appreciate her needs
communicate appropriately
help you apply the correct technique for each specific situation.

As you intentionally observe, as a parent you can grow in awareness and are more likely to parent in healthy, effective ways.

Keep your role clear

It can be difficult to maintain the Observer Role when others are urging you to participate.

It requires intentionality and self-control to observe. The Observer steps back and intentionally remains separate while still caring.

How the Observer Role helps you become an emotionally healthier parent

As Observer, you are gathering information. The more informed you are, the more likely your decisions will be healthy.

You automatically slow down, take in as much as you can, sort your information, organize it, and integrate it with other things you have observed. As a result, you gain confidence in your decisions because they are based on more information (including your child’s Iceberg.)

You may find you become less critical and less judgmental because you now understand someone or something better. You are more calm and in charge because you are so much clearer.

PARENTING ACTION STEPS:

Step back and observe behavior
Resist participating until you are ready
Watch, analyze and categorize the situation
Decide when you are adequately prepared to make a clearer, healthier decision about your actions

Expert information from IPED

With more than 50 years of outstanding service through its many programs, Lakeside is proud to be an international advocate and resource for kids and families.

If you would like to subscribe to our parenting tips, please follow us on Twitter at GerryatLakeside.

If you’d like to learn more about our professional development training and CEUs, please complete the form below.

Understanding how relationships have an energy all their own can help improve your relationships

Posted on November 16th, 2009

By definition, a relationship exists when two people have an interactive connection with each other. However, realistically, relationships exist to meet the needs of one or both people in the relationship.

So, it follows that each relationship is dynamic. Each is always changing, has many dimensions and multiple levels.

These dynamics give each relationship its own energy—an energy which indicates the emotional health of the relationship.

Your relationship is a dance

A relationship may be considered as two people dancing, and an emotionally healthy relationship looks like a smooth, consistent, flowing dance:

Sometimes the dance is slow and close
Sometimes people step apart and appear more independent
But no matter how the energy of the dance changes, the connection remains

The connection also carries the potential for the relationship to be wounded.

When wounds happen, the dance is interrupted and energy diminishes. What causes wounds to surface? What can we do when they occur?

Wounds often occur from unfair expectations or unclear communication.

If the relationship’s degree of emotional health is strong, the dance will resume, the energy flourishes. In less emotionally healthy relationships, understanding how energy flows within the relationship will help.

Our childhood impacts the energy of our relationships

Each of us carries deep within a collection of the negative and positive experiences of our childhood. . .especially those experiences that occurred in the first several years.

In our early years, we were totally dependent on the people who cared for us to facilitate the healthy nurturing and accomplishment of our developmental and relational tasks; that is, how our parents tended to our physical, emotional, intellectual, moral and social needs and development as we grew.

Some of us had parents who were not well-equipped to facilitate this growth. Perhaps no one guided them in their process of parenting. Or, perhaps they may not have been given what they needed while they were growing up.

Still, these experiences combined and became a “legacy” or history that we transport across generations into our current relationships. Our legacies affect the energy and emotional health of our relational “dances.”

In fact, we may be unaware that the legacy is there and then be confused when we witness its energy-draining impact: repeating a pattern that does not best serve our needs or bring us the successful results we desire–a cycle of less than emotionally healthy relationships.

What about your relationship with your child?

At the core of emotionally healthy parenting is a healthy relationship between parent and child. (See information on the IPED Iceberg.)

The degree of emotional health of your child relates directly to the degree of emotional health of your parent-child relationship. In other words, your legacy affects your relationship with your child and your child’s ability to build healthy relationships.

But no matter what your past, being aware of the legacy you carry forward is a step toward helping restore your relationships. By opening yourself to awareness, you begin understanding the process of helping yourself and your child move toward emotional health.

PARENTING ACTION STEPS:

We all have the potential to be emotionally healthy and to have emotionally healthy relationships.

Appreciate that most significant relationships are complex, dynamic and evolving.
Understand that relational health directly impacts emotional health and vice versa.
Consider the impact that past relationships may have on present ones. (When you are aware of your legacy, you become mindful of how it can impact your relationships.)
Everyone makes mistakes. Make amends when wounds occur. Genuinely saying, “I’m sorry” to your child also teaches a child that he or she has permission to grow and learn. (See information on the IPED Iceberg.)

Expert information from IPED

With more than 50 years of outstanding service through its many programs, Lakeside is proud to be an international advocate and resource for kids and families.

If you would like to subscribe to our parenting tips, please follow us on Twitter at GerryatLakeside

If you’d like to learn more about our professional development training and CEUs, please complete the form below.

Not getting the behavior you want from your child? Here’s why and what you can do…

Posted on November 10th, 2009

As a parent, you may determine how well your child behaves by observing and encouraging outward actions. Think about it…do you concentrate only on behavior results you can see—the tip of the iceberg?

Many parents do. Actually, the behavior you see emerges from what lies below the surface, the part you see.

iceberg

But your child’s behavior goes much deeper.

The two invisible layers of the iceberg—the parts hidden under water—together create the foundation for appropriate behavior, and the foundation is the primary focus.

The first invisible layer: emotional health

See the illustration, and think of the first invisible layer as your child’s degree of emotional health.

Emotional health is more than your child’s feelings. It involves his or her ability to:

build and maintain healthy self-esteem and self-confidence,
develop a core belief system that is nurturing and fair,
grow in self-awareness, compassion and empathy
manage his or her emotions, and
live fully and creatively

The deeper invisible layer: relational health

Notice the bottom portion of the illustration. Your child’s ability to relate to others in a positive and healthy way stems from this deepest layer.

As a result of your child’s growing emotional health—the first hidden layer—he or she will be better able to build and maintain emotionally healthy relationships that involve:

high levels of trust and trustworthiness
a balance of fair giving and receiving, and
the ability to be intimate in ways that are appropriate in the context of each specific relationship

Parents are icebergs, too

Your degree of emotional and relational health emerges from the hidden layers of your iceberg. These layers are the source of your confidence, self-esteem, ability to nurture and be nurtured, and appreciate life more fully.

How do your family relationships impact your—and your child’s—iceberg?

As an infant, your first relationships occur in the context of family where you find a world that proposes:

to nurture and protect
give structure
meet needs, and
help you learn to trust and become trustworthy

The degree to which your family was able to give these key elements of emotional health determines the degree of emotional health you have as an adult, and eventually as a parent. With strong relational and emotional health, it follows that healthy outward behaviors naturally emerge.

As an emotionally healthy individual, you are therefore able to be intentional about emotionally healthy parenting. You are better equipped to nurture and maintain a strong Iceberg for your children and yourself.

How do you fix a parenting mistake?

Since there are no perfect parents or perfect children, Icebergs do get “chipped.” When this happens, it is important to admit the mistake and make amends—apologize.

When you acknowledge a mistake and make amends, it is like pouring warm water over the Iceberg and smoothing the chips and helping to heal the mistake.

The benefit for everyone

As your child experiences emotionally healthy relationships, he or she is positively positioned to grow, nurture and be nurtured, and build others’ emotional health even as his or her own is being built. When your child is emotionally healthy as an individual, you experience and appreciate life more fully and achieve a level of contentment as a family.

When you nurture the relational health of your child, over time, emotional health and appropriate behaviors will naturally grow.

PARENTING ACTION STEPS:

Picture an Iceberg and divide it into three levels: one above the water and two below the water.
Nurture the deeper, invisible layers to gain desired behaviors
When a mistake is made, acknowledge it and make amends. Making amends is like pouring warm water over the “chips” to smooth the Iceberg.

Expert information from IPED

With more than 50 years of outstanding service through its many programs, Lakeside is proud to be an international advocate and resource for kids and families.

If you would like to subscribe to our parenting tips, please follow us on Twitter at GerryatLakeside

If you’d like to learn more about our professional development training and CEUs, please complete the form below.

Lakeside Educational Network

Uncategorized

I-Messages—not You-Messages–Communicate Your Feelings and Maintain Respect

Use this powerful parenting technique…it costs you absolutely nothing…is simple to use…and can produce positive results almost immediately.

Understanding how relationships have an energy all their own can help improve your relationships

Not getting the behavior you want from your child? Here’s why and what you can do…

Expert information from IPED

How to “High Five”

Archives