Posts Tagged ‘emotions’

Parenting Styles: 3 Types to Avoid

Wednesday, April 7th, 2010

In Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child, Dr. John Gottman cautions against three types of parenting styles:

1) Dismissing parents, who marginalize their children’s emotions

2) Disapproving parents, who are critical of their children’s emotions

3) Laissez-faire parents, who accept whatever emotions their children display but set no limits for those displays

None of these styles positively integrates the natural emotions of children into healthy parenting. If you dismiss your children’s emotional states, you dismiss your children, and your ability to influence them diminishes also. If you constantly express disapproval of your children, you crush their spirit. They will either reject you or rebel against you. If you adopt an “anything goes” attitude toward your children’s emotions, you deny them the opportunity to learn to regulate their emotional states. None of these teaches your child emotional responsibility.

Children need to test out their emotions. They need to experience them, express them, and learn to deal with them. How you react emotionally is being observed and factored into this amazing learning process. I have dealt with innumerable people who were shut down emotionally by their parents as children. These individuals struggle for years and must retrace their childhood steps in order to get back on the right path emotionally. I have also dealt with people who were taught by example to express whatever emotion they felt in whatever way they chose. Their family and friends generally find them to be unsafe and abusive. These individuals also must learn anew how to relate to other people.

Don’t be afraid of your children’s emotions. Be alert to them. Learn from them, and model back to your children healthy emotional responses.

Ask God to help you personally integrate and model emotional responsibility.

SOURCE: Chapter 7, “R is for Responsible for My Emotions,” in Healthy Habits, Healthy Kid: A Practical Plan to Help Your Family by Gregory L. Jantz, PhD., founder of The Center for Counseling and Health Resources Inc.

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R is for Responsible for My Emotions

Wednesday, March 31st, 2010

Just as children come in all body types, they also come in all emotional types. Some children are natural stoics. Some children have a seemingly endless supply of pendular emotions. Other children are one-sided emotionally, reacting to a variety of situations with a specific emotional response, such as anger or disappointment. You may have emotionally different children but one desired outcome — for each child to become responsible for his or her emotional response.

KNOWING YOUR OWN EMOTIONAL STATE

Before we begin to talk about your child, we need to talk about you.

As the adult role model, you need to have your emotional act together. Just as your own poor food choices can make it difficult for your children to eat responsibly, your poor emotional choices can make it difficult for your children to react responsibly. Your emotional stability, or lack thereof, provides an environment for your child’s emerging emotions.

Think for a moment how you usually respond to the following situations with your child — not what you hope you’ll do or what you think you should do but your standard response.

  1. How do you respond when your child whines?
  2. How do you respond when your child is excited?
  3. How do you respond when your child is angry?
  4. How do you respond when your child is happy?
  5. How do you respond when your child is defiant?
  6. How do you respond when your child is hopeful?
  7. How do you respond when your child is sad?
  8. How do you respond when your child is right?
  9. How are your responses to others different from how you respond to y9ur child?

The way you respond to your child, and to others, speaks volumes. As the adult, you set the emotional tone for your child, affecting his or her own emotional response. So now take the time to go through the same nine questions again, this time answering with the healthy responses you would like to emulate in the future.

ASK FOR HELP

Father, thank you for making us as  diverse emotionally as we are physically. Help me to know and understand my child’s emotions. I confess I’ve allowed the sun to go down on my own anger. I accept that my emotional stability is a model for my child. Help me to allow my child to experience and express emotions. Alert me to any difficulty my child has with emotional stability, and help me to subdue my pride in order to get needed help. Amen.

SOURCE: Chapter 7, “R is for Responsible for My Emotions,” in Healthy Habits, Healthy Kid: A Practical Plan to Help Your Family by Gregory L. Jantz, PhD., founder of The Center for Counseling and Health Resources Inc.

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