Calming the Selfish-Bitch Voices
Published November 1, 2011Self-care is a tool that fosters awareness, balance, and the ability to be attuned to what we need. For instance, a mom named Paula, who had been working on this for awhile in one of my workshops, came in one day with a bit of a smug look on her face and just had to share her first big victory in practicing a little self-care and over-coming her selfish bitch voices.
She explained that in the past, before going on their family skiing trips she would arrange everything, including healthy snacks for the ride and all the ski equipment. She would even fill the tank with gas. She was always the last person she would think about and so would end up not enjoying herself because of the stress of trying to make it great for everyone else and inevitably loosing her temper in the process. This time she made sure to tell her husband and children ahead of time that she was changing her ways. They would all have to be responsible for their own stuff. She informed them in a kind voice that, if they forgot anything it would be sad, but they probably couldn’t ski. So she got all her stuff packed and was ready, way ahead of time. Instead of being frantic, she had time to sit and have a cup of tea (one of her favorite things in the world to do). While the kids raced around asking where all their stuff was, she calmly and empathetically said, “Gee, I don’t know but I’m sure you can come up with a plan if you don’t find it.” She was cringing inside because her old feelings of guilt and shame were being triggered, but she had done enough self-reflection to know where that habitual reaction came from and also what it lead to.
So she practiced some deep breathing and managed to act very calm while she continued to drink her tea, even with a few derogatory comments coming from the children. (Her husband knew what the plan was so he was on board). To her surprise and relief, everyone got it together. Well, not totally because they forgot the snacks, but they had to stop for gas anyway so the kids picked up some tasty treats, paid for with their own money, and all was well.
We all cheered for Paula because the delight on her face revealed the feeling of empowerment that comes with asking for what she needed and seeing how that helps the whole family learn how to take good care of themselves; not to mention that she had a really good time on her family trip.
Copywrite© 2006 by Leigh Scott. All rights reserved.
A Love and Logic Technique for Teaching Respect
Published October 29, 2011The invaluable added benefit of modeling self-care is what our children will learn from our example. One of my favorite techniques for cultivating self-care for everyone in the household is called the “Energy Drain.” It can be used as a consequence but it is also an excellent way to teach children and adults how to implement respect. When our child has been chronically misbehaving or disrespecting our space, we can immediately start empathizing for the problem they are causing with a calm tone of voice such as, “Oh no……..that nasty word you just used to describe me really drained my energy. How are you going to put that energy back?”
They won’t know what you are talking about at first but after a few times they realize that when they cause a problem for you they will have to do one of your chores for you or come up with some babysitting money so you can have a night off or whatever you come up with that will put that energy back. I love this one because it is so visceral. You can feel the energy drain right out of your body when your child misbehaves and feel it go right back in when you hear a vacuum running from a distance. (meaning your child is doing the vacuuming for you) If they refuse to play this game we move to the next level of consequences, which will be offered in Step Five.
Children from toddlers to teens learn very quickly how to use the Energy Drain technique on us when we are misbehaving so it goes both ways and is a gift for everyone. As a parent, our hearts will sing when we hear our teenagers making appropriate boundaries with friends who are dangerous or a drag to be around, because these skills were modeled in their home. After awhile you realize that there is a different level of respectful behavior in the family as a whole.
Copywrite© 2006 by Leigh Scott. All rights reserved.
Five Minutes’ Peace
Published October 24, 2011A parent who can take just five minutes for themselves will handle a child’s tantrum more constructively than a stressed, tired or hungry parent.
For instance, as you walk in the door after a long day of work, instead of being greeted by your angel children, one of them is screaming about the toy their brother just took from them and they want it back now! A stressed and burnt out parent would have a hard time not either taking this behavior personally, getting a little resentful or at least wanting to stop the screaming at any cost whether by effective parenting or not. This is a trap most of us fall into and is a direct result of having no reserves, especially at the end of the day when everyone is tired. In this situation we might raise our own voice, blurt out a consequence that we can’t enforce or try to solve a problem that isn’t ours to solve. If we are also feeling guilty for not being with our children all day, we might do nothing and just tolerate unacceptable behavior, which confuses a child. This will ensure that whatever the child is doing will be repeated and no one gets any peace or makes progress. In this circumstance your child just wants to connect and they feel the connection when they hear empathy coming from a calm, loving adult. Just allowing ourselves to take five minutes to unwind before or after we walk in the door will up-the-odds that the last half hour before bedtime will be more loving and fun.
What would it look like to practice daily self-care? What if we nurtured the things that bring us joy even if it is just filling basic needs such as enough sleep and food at the right times? Most parents don’t need a whole lot of time away from the devoted job of raising children. We know that there is sacrifice involved and we usually happily embrace getting back to the joy of being parents. A little time to step back and give ourselves a moment for contemplation can go a long way.
My favorite book to read to my children when they were little, and surprisingly also their favorite book was called, Five Minutes’ Peace, about a mama elephant whose three children needed her for something every second. All she wanted was five minutes to drink her tea in peace. Pulling ourselves out of the fray for very short periods of time can help us regulate emotions and be more likely to respond to our children’s problems with empathy.
Copywrite© 2006 by Leigh Scott. All rights reserved.
Happy Parents Happy Kids
Published October 21, 2011Whether we are constantly nagging to get our children to do their chores or arguing with a teenager, applying self-care will improve our ability to be more effective parents and enjoy ourselves at the same time. According to Wendy Mogul, who wrote Blessings of a B Minus, a recent study reported the majority of teenagers saying, “I don’t want to be like my parents because they are always stressed and unhappy.” So, wouldn’t we rather be modeling what it looks like to be a happier and more loving parent?
I can think of only one example of a parent like that. My friend Miriam, who modeled what it looks like to regularly plan ways to fill herself up so she had the reserves it took to raise her three children and have fun doing it. She relentlessly held on to her daily exercise, set up fun activities consistently, and set limits on her time. She was fun to be around because she had energy left for herself and she knew how to engage her children in a joyful
way to get their participation with daily chores.
Love and Logic has some fantastic ideas for making chores part of what a family does to keep a happy household running smoothly, which I teach in my workshops. The most important research about chores is that it builds self-esteem. Children feel useful and proud of being a needed member of the family when they accomplish their daily chores.
Copywrite© 2006 by Leigh Scott. All rights reserved.
Self-Care is Counter Intuitive
Published October 17, 2011Our society doesn’t model what it looks like to take care of ourselves from the inside out, therefore most of us find it hard to even justify applying self-care to our daily lives.
Instead, we are bombarded with messages about how we can improve ourselves physically and materially from the magazine racks at the check-out stands in the market to the ads on billboards and on television. They tell us sixteen different ways we can be more attractive; make more money, be an entrepreneur and loose more weight. I have been teaching the art of self-care for thirty years, and I am amazed at how difficult and foreign a concept it is for most of us to incorporate into our daily lives, especially as parents of small children. Everything and everybody else’s needs seem to take precedence over what we need to sustain ourselves and thrive but the fear of being seen as selfish holds us back from filling our own needs.
It helps to understand that it is counter-intuitive to put the oxygen mask on ourselves first?
Our instinct is to protect our children, even if we die in the process. I had a relative named Helen who actually did die before she got to see her grandchildren because she worked herself to the bone taking care of everyone but herself. This ultimately did not serve her children. She inspired me to find ways to help parents understand that self-care is a gift.
Copywrite© 2006 by Leigh Scott. All rights reserved.
Self-Reflection Makes for Great Parenting
Published October 14, 2011One of the unexpected benefits of my divorce in 1995, was the opportunity it gave me to step outside of the family system I had created with my husband. It allowed me to take responsibility for the effect my own parenting style had on my children. I now realized I had been going about the job of parenting in an automatic and unconscious way, like so many young parents do.
Now that my children were a little older, I could see that whatever my husband and I had gotten away with when they were little was starting to show up in their behavior at 7 and 9 years of age. It really was just their behavior, not their personalities, because they were great kids. Their creative and active imaginations engaged a slew of friends and like a couple of pied pipers they were followed all over the neighborhood. The change in their behavior is what made me think that my parenting style could be responsible.
My daughter was becoming very whiny and needy. Instead of setting limits in a loving way, I would play right into her complaints as if her pain was my problem and I had to fix it. My son had been an easy child from the beginning, but as he felt my weakness as an authority figure he got more anxious. He expressed his anxiety as aggression. I started to look at what I was actually doing and why, which lead me to Step Three.
This step offers ways to not only to step back and observe what you are doing and feeling but also to reflect on your own childhood experiences for clues as to what triggers knee-jerk reactions. How did I become a helicopter parent? I reflected on how I was raised and the messages, fears, and beliefs that my experience left me with. What style did my parents have and how did that shape my experience? I learned from Dan Siegel’s work that when a child witnesses a parent who can model a self-reflective stance, she develops a more integrated sense of herself. I was relieved to know that at least being able to admit when I made a mistake was a good thing for my child.
Copywrite© 2006 by Leigh Scott. All rights reserved.
Nurturing Self is Key
Published October 8, 2011Our society doesn’t model what it looks like to take care of ourselves from the inside out, therefore it is a hard concept to define. Instead, we are bombarded with messages about how we can improve ourselves physically and materially from the magazine racks at the check-out stands in the market to the ads on billboards and on television. They tell us sixteen different ways we can be more attractive; make more money, be an entrepreneur and loose more weight. So when we actually stop and take time to breathe and reflect on our inner world, it is unfamiliar territory and not recognized by society in general, as important. We tend to feel guilty when we are not DOING something productive according to these cultural messages.
I have been teaching the art of self-care for thirty years, and I am amazed at how difficult and foreign a concept it is for most of us to incorporate into our daily lives. Everything and everybody else’s needs seem to take precedence over what we need to sustain ourselves and thrive. Further, we are constantly distracted by outside stimuli– cell phones, the internet, to-do lists, unhappy relationships, etc. Why is it counter- intuitive to put the oxygen mask on ourselves first? It is instinctual to protect our child first, but maybe if we better understood the consequences of running on empty, we would find a way to make self-care our first priority.
Copywrite© 2006 by Leigh Scott. All rights reserved.
Slowing Down Gives You More Time
Published October 4, 2011
Mindfulness begins with slowing down and stepping back to observe what we are actually doing, which wasn’t very easy for me because I was a speed demon, literally and figuratively. I have always had a lead foot, but because I didn’t want my teenagers to have the same lead foot I tried to slow my driving down before they learned from me. One of my first experiences with mindfulness was when I started going the actual speed limit. It felt like I was in the exact right place at the right time and I noticed so much more of my surroundings wherever I went. Unfortunately I hadn’t yet learned the science of how to change habits so I kept slipping back into my speedy ways. I don’t know why I was so shocked when my children automatically drove way over the speed limit.
Now that I teach parenting as a mindful practice I explain to parents that when they slow down they get more time, and worlds open up. Being ‘on the go’ and rushing through our lives is like being in a car with the windows shut and going down the road at sixty miles an hour versus walking down that same road. What we will experience with all of our senses as we walk is what we are missing by moving fast. It’s a bad feeling to look back and realize how much of the precious moments I might have missed with my children because I was too caught up in the activities of my busy mind. Being mindful helped me to understand that my bodily sensations are my barometer for what is happening in my brain and I could use my mind to choose a different response if I paid attention to that barometer. Before we can work toward this goal I think it is helpful to first understand the phenomenal new discoveries in neuroscience that explain what is happening in our brains when we loose our temper.
Copywrite© 2006 by Leigh Scott. All rights reserved.
What is Mindfulness?
Published September 29, 2011Slightly different from meditation, which is staying focused on one particular thing, mindfulness is using our mind to observe the activities of our mind and the physiological sensations in the body that ensue. Meditation fosters a sense of calm, while mindfulness can lead to the nature of the mind itself, giving us more choices in the way we live and interact with ourselves and others. Mindfulness is a non-judgmental observation of the ongoing stream of internal and external stimuli, as they arise.
Neuroscientists, psychologists, philosophers and Buddhist monks, including the Dalai Lama, have been getting together now for over 20 years and pooling their knowledge. Buddhist monks who have spent most of their lives practicing mindfulness have let neuroscientists scan their brains. The scientists saw that the part of the monks’ brains related to higher levels of thinking were much larger than the rest of their brains. What they discovered is that these higher levels, or what scientists call the ‘executive brain,’ can be responsible for an extraordinary potential to transform ourselves. To be mindful is to be right here, right now–capable of being fully present in the moment, receptive to whatever experience happens, yet not caught up in a particular aspect of that experience or judging it.
The goal is not to get rid of the activities of the mind but to learn how to differentiate between them and the present moment. This ability makes it much easier to respond to life’s circumstances with the executive functions we were endowed with rather than automatic habitual reactions. Mindful parenting will help us access our higher mind and heart even in stressful situations when our children push our buttons.
What do you focus your mind on? How do you direct your attention?
Copywrite© 2006 by Leigh Scott. All rights reserved.
Why Learn About the Brain?
Published September 26, 2011Why is learning about the brain and relationships a step in a parenting program? It is not only a step, but it is a central theme in my book because this is the knowledge that enlightened me as a parent when I found the work of a brilliant neuroscientist and psychotherapist, Dan Siegel. It was validating to have new brain scanning technology and cutting-edge neuroscientists confirming what I had intuitively felt and tried to teach for most of my life. There was now evidence that if I focused my attention differently I could change the structure of my brain. We have always been told that we are only using 10 percent of our brains, and with the emergence of what is being called “the neuroplasticity revolution,” we are finally being shown how to access more of the rest of the other 90 percent. Neuroplasticity means that the brain is a living organ that can actually change its own structure and function, even into old age.
This is very hopeful information for a parent. Learning about how the brain works took the shame and blame out of parenting for me because trying to be a good parent didn’t seem so personal. Understanding the science inspired my motivation to change and offered me a clear and hopeful direction to work toward.
Copywrite© 2006 by Leigh Scott. All rights reserved.
