Bring It All Down A Notch

Dear Parent,

Flipping your lid regularly over kid behavior is like lobbing a bowling ball at a gnat. Punishment is not necessary for learning.

Level your interventions.  Most issues can be handled with eye contact and a playful request--albeit, over and over in order to create new neuropathways.   

If you are power struggling with a child from difficult beginnings, you are not seeing the need behind the behavior of your child.  Likely your child feels the need for power and self-determination in a world were once there was none or perhaps too much.  

Share power more.  I know that scares you.  I know you fear your child will become even more fixated on power if you give it.  You are the parent.  It is your power to give. Give power often in the form of clear, specific choices, and hold structure in the form of defined boundaries. Sometimes there is no choice in a matter, so the child must learn to accept parental structure.  Not that easy for attachment challenged children.

Parenting an attachment challenged child is a constant teeter-totter balancing act between sharing power and requiring submission to parental direction.  When you fall off, get back on.

Too much structure creates a powerless, power-hungry child.  Too much power creates a tyrant.

Love matters,

Ce

P.S. Check out the Love Matters Parenting Society membership for more support.