Love is the Answer
No matter what the question is, LOVE is the answer. Are you struggling with potty training, picky eaters, talking back, sibling rivalry, bed time drama, anxiety, lying, too much screen time, etc, etc, etc…? No matter what the circumstance, asking yourself “what would love do?” will help you find the answer. Not, “what would (fill in your favorite parenting expert) say to do”, or “what would my mom or mother in law or sister or sister in law or neighbor, or stranger at the grocery store say to do”. But tap into your own motherly instincts to love your child and decide from there how best to handle the situation.
This does not mean you’re a push over. It does not mean that your kid always gets what they want. But when you’re coming from love, not only do you feel better about the way you’re handling things, you also have a bigger chance of even being heard by your child. When we yell at our kids (or even nag etc) their own fight or flight reflexes are triggered and they physiologically cannot even hear us. So when we are acting out in our own high emotion in the heat of the moment, it’s not the right time for teaching cause the child is not in an optimal place for learning.
When your son just bit your daughter (totally hypothetical, not that that happened here the other day… ;) they are already in hightened emotions and they we come charging in with momma bear protective rage: recipe for disaster. But if we can keep ourselves together enough to calm ourselves first, then we can react with love to both of our imperfectly perfect children. We can curiously find out what happened and compassionately find solutions for similar situations in the future. But it all has to be driven by love.
So. In the heat of the moment we have to be able to recognize when we are getting in the “yellow zone” and calm ourselves before we hit red. Our bodies are amazing and trying to protect us and our young but our son is not a tiger 🐯 (even though he did just bite like one… 😬 ) he is just having a hard time. Ideally we can interrupt our kids in their yellow zones also and help them regulate before it escalates that far but if we don’t we need to at least be able to regulate ourselves.
How? But how do we regulate ourselves?! Well, that is the whole premise of my coaching business. I teach moms how to self regulate so that they can drop the war on these power struggles.
But, in short, I’ll share Dr Laura Markham’s (one of my favorite parenting experts) tips. Stop, drop, and breathe. When you’re feeling the heat coming on, stop what your’e doing, drop your agenda, and breathe.
As simple as breathing seems, it is the easiest way to tell our bodies that this is not an emergency. We don’t need that cortisol running through our veins. We are just dealing with a strong willed child, not a rattle snake. Breathing gets us back to calm. Love is one breath away. Try it today and let me know how it goes. Then we can take it deeper from there.
Good luck, Momma! You got this!!
