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Parenting | Should Children Hit Back?

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bullyMany parents still believe that telling a child to hit back is the right choice on the playground. In an Ireland where we have recently criminalised the hitting of children by adults, do we really want to tell children that hitting each other is the way to deal with playground problems?

Children need to learn to deal with issues in ways that will teach them lifelong skills. Hitting back is not a lifelong skill.

Here are ’10 ways to’ tips to support your child if they are experiencing playground problems:

  1. Support your child to stand up for themselves using words not by hitting back.
  2. Role-play the situation with your child. Help them find the actions and words to deal with the other child.
  3. Allow your child to talk about issues. Ask the child what support they need from you as the parent. Ask them what they think they should do. Explore with them the outcome of those actions. Decide if the outcomes are positive or negative.
  4. Make a plan to deal with the issue but make it their plan. Praise them for thinking this out and coming up with the plan. When their plan succeeds they will grow in confidence much more than if it was yours.
  5. If the plan backfires you can go back to the drawing board with them.
  6. Support and encourage your child to try again. Look at what they did, what went wrong, and ask them again what they think they need to do.
  7. Explore the options with them but do not tell them what to do. Facilitate your child to come up with their own ideas. They are very capable of thinking this through. This is the life skill: problem solving. The first plan is usually not the right plan but most of the time you will get there.
  8. Never allow your child to walk into danger. Alert a teacher to a challenge your child faces, if you need to, but ask them to be vigilant as opposed to jumping in.
  9. All too often we jump in and want to fix things for children. This is where we. In the past parents encouraged children, maybe a little bluntly, to sort it out for themselves. They didn’t have time to get involved. Today parents can be too involved. Do not fight their battles for them.
  10. Remember, the hitter is usually a bully but they may have issues with confidence. They may be bullied in the home or living in a domineering environment. This ’10 Ways to’ article is by One Family’s Director of Children & Parenting Services, Geraldine Kelly, as part of our weekly ’10 Ways to’ series of parenting tips. You can read the full series here.

Find out more about our parenting skills programmes and parent supports. For support and information on these or any related topics, call askonefamily on lo-call 1890 66 22 12 or on 01 662 9212.

Parenting | What to do when your child won’t listen

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listenMany parents say that their child will just not listen to them but the first question to be explored is how well do you listen to your child? As parents we are role models for our children so exploring your style of listening is key to supporting your child going forward.

Here are some tips to support improvement in listening skills in your home and as a result improving behaviour and communication.

  1. Reflect on how you listen to your child. When your child is talking to you do you stop, look them in the eye and listen carefully to what they have to say? Or do you continue with what you are doing?
  2. When you are telling your child something are you inclined to shout in to them from another room or up the stairs? Or do you go to them, stand near them, look them in the eye and talk to them, ensuring they know you are talking to them?
  3. Are you inclined to clarify with your child what they heard you say? For example: Jack, can you tell me what I have asked you to do before dinner? Children often only hear part of what we say.
  4. How do you speak with your child, do you start with threats or with a positive statement? For example: Joe I need you to tidy away some toys before dinner or if you don’t tidy up now you are getting no dinner! Children like positive energy and work more effectively with us if we can keep things fun. Help them achieve rather than focusing on threats and failure.
  5. If you are talking to more than one child at a time be very specific who you are talking with. Stop what you are doing and go and ask that one child to come to you and talk with them. Although it may seem time consuming to stop and talk with them in the long run it will be much faster.
  6. Have a meeting with your children about listening to each other. Play some games with them where you all take turns to listen really nicely to each other and ask questions of each other. Then play a game whereby you don’t listen to each other. Talk about what that feels like for everyone. Children as young as three should be able to participate in this activity. Then as a family talk about some house rules around listening. It is good to instil some good principles in your family that they can bring forward through life.
  7. Reward children and yourself for listening and communicating well with each other. If you have a rule that you have to lift your head and look at a person when they talk with you. That is really respectful. Thank the person for being so nice to you. That is a reward in itself. How often do we thank each other for being nice?
  8. Take time to talk. If your child is over two years old ask them to wait at times to talk with you if you are in the middle of something. Always, always go back to them and ask them to tell you what they had wanted to talk to you about. Never leave it and think they will have forgotten. If children are younger they cannot wait so you have to just stop and listen and make time for this.
  9. Be careful that you model good listening skills to your child if you expect them to listen well to you:
  • Stop and make eye contact.
  • Listen openly to what they are saying.
  • Clarify what you hear them say.
  • Ask open ended questions.
  • Do not jump in with your own story – this is their space to talk and your space to listen.
  • Thank them for telling you.
  • Move on with your activities when they have finished or when you feel it is appropriate.

10. Have a time each day when you turn off phones and televisions and make time to talk and listen. When children feel heard they are more likely to listen to others.

This ’10 Ways to’ article is by One Family’s Director of Children & Parenting Services, Geraldine Kelly, as part of our weekly ’10 Ways to’ series of parenting tips. You can read the full series here.

Find out more about our parenting skills programmes and parent supports. For support and information on these or any related topics, call askonefamily on lo-call 1890 66 22 12 or on 01 662 9212.

Parenting | Ten Ways to Help Your Child Be Active

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child swingResearch suggests that children should have 60 minutes of physical exercise per day. We all know the benefits of exercise for ourselves as adults. We know when we get out walking or doing any form or exercise we always feel better afterwards, and it usually supports a healthier environment all round, combined with diet, attitude and well-being in general.

With rates of child obesity and diabetes rising in Ireland, some small changes can make a big difference. Here are ten ways to support your child in getting 60 minutes of active exercise each day, which respect your budget and which can be incorporated into your regular routine.

  1. Join in with your child. We always talk about quality time with our children. Why not do something you enjoy outdoors with your child?
  2. Walk to school, walk home, or walk part of the way. Plan an activity for each day that fits in with your schedule.
  3. Get an App on your phone and tell the children about it. Record your steps and make it a competition to see how many steps you take each day.
  4. Encourage your child to join a club. A dance club, running club, football, martial arts, swimming, tennis, ballet or gymnastics. While some can be expensive most communities have funded groups for all children to access.
  5. Check out what your school offers. A lot of schools want children to join sports teams. Help your child find what they are good at and enjoy.
  6. If your child is very young take them walking. Walk to the shops, to the library, around the roads, up the hills or visit the animals. There are so many interesting things to do on the way. They don’t have to walk nonstop. You could be easily out for three hours by the time you stop and explore what your community has to offer. Try not to put children in buggies once they pass 2 years old. You come home exhausted and they are full of energy. They can only get good and strong at walking if you allow them to walk.
  7. Climb a hill. Children love to explore and you will too once you get use to getting dirty. Visit a forest. You can walk for hours or find the short path.
  8. Offer to walk the neighbour’s dog or walk your own. Maybe get a dog to make you get out walking all year round.
  9. Children love to use scooters, skate boards or roller blades. Find a local park where they can do this safely.
  10. Use the local football grounds to give young and older children a safe space to run and a space they cannot escape from. For younger children the fear can be letting go of their hand.
  11. In the spring, summer and early autumn children love to just run about the garden if you have one. Stop off at the park on your way home from school or work. 20 minutes of running about could improve the whole evening and give your children what they need around exercise.
  12. Don’t forget to keep exercise top of your list when it is colder outside. Often children who wrap up and get out for a run about are less often sick than those wrapped up indoors all year round. Usually it is adults who hate the winter, children love so much about all the seasons.

Be creative, sit with your children this weekend and plan all the active things you can all do. Make it a game, make it a challenge and you will all feel better. When children feel healthy and fit they will have more confidence and as result have better friendships, do better in school and over all have a better outlook on life at home and in school.

This ’10 Ways to’ article is by One Family’s Director of Children & Parenting Services, Geraldine Kelly, as part of our weekly ’10 Ways to’ series of parenting tips. You can read the full series here.

Find out more about our parenting skills programmes and parent supports. For support and information on these or any related topics, call askonefamily on lo-call 1890 66 22 12 or on 01 662 9212.

Parenting | Communicating with Your Child about Family ‘Secrets’

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secretsThere can be a lot of ‘secrets’ in some families, such as health or relationship issues, that family members simply do not speak about or refer to. At times children don’t know the content of the secret, they just know it is something they don’t talk or ask about.

Do you remember what it was like for you as a child to have a secret? If it was your fun secret to have, that could be great! If, however, it was a secret in your family – something hidden or hushed – it probably often left you feeling very confused and with many questions. Children can carry this as a heavy burden. They may ask people outside of your family to help them understand, or they may never ask yet listen intently to adult conversations for a clue as to what is going on.

This week in our ’10 Ways’ parenting tips series, we explore how the types of secrets that parents tell can cause challenges within their families, and how to communicate openly with children about them.

  1. Many parents, when they separate or leading up to a separation, try to keep it secret for a length of time. Children may find this very challenging. It would be better if children had permission from parents to talk about what is going on at home with close friends and family if they wished to. It can be hard at times like this for children to talk with parents, when they can see how upset parents may be.
  2. Children who don’t know one of their parents can have great curiosity around this. It may be a secret as to who the parent is; maybe the child is told fairy tales to explain where they came from. However, children are clever. They know they have two parents and leaving them without this information can lead to great confusion and identity challenges. Also it can create challenges in the playground as other children may see them as an easy target for bullying. Children usually want to be the same as every other child. They need information to feel confident about their family form.
  3. Children who are adopted often don’t know this to be the case, even though other family members will know. Children always tell other children what they know about them. It doesn’t take much in a small community for children to overhear stories about class mates. Telling children the truth about where they came from and who their family is equips them for a more confident passage through childhood.
  4. When there is abuse of any form in the home, addiction issues, or mental health problems, it can leave children confused and worried. It is really important that one parent can help a child to understand what is going on in their family. Children need permission to talk with trusted adults about things that worry them, be they other family members or child and family support professionals. It is okay for them to ask about why parents fight, to ask why one parent may stay in bed a lot, or what death is.
  5. Try to adopt a policy in your home of talking, voicing concerns and sharing worries with trusted people. Don’t ask children to keep things a secret. Don’t tell them not to talk about certain things. Share with them what is appropriate about their family life.
  6. So many times children have told me that they know the truth about something in their family but that their parent doesn’t know they do, or they don’t want to upset their parent by telling them that they know. Give them support or ask someone in your family or circle of friends to help them to understand.
  7. Children need to be free to grow, to live and to laugh. Holding onto so many secrets can only impede their journey through childhood. Think about what secrets your family holds and what this may be like for your child.
  8. Try to talk with them, be open about the difficult, awkward or sensitive issues that exist. Often once you start talking, these issues are no longer as big as they seemed.
  9. Once children have age appropriate levels of information, they will not be as inclined to worry and they will feel safer. Children are resilient once they are equipped with what they need.
  10. Trust is the foundation of positive relationships. Build your relationship based on trust and you will not go wrong.

Next you might like to read Talking to Your Children about Your Family.

This week’s ‘10 Ways’ parenting tips is written by Geraldine Kelly, One Family’s Director of Children and Parenting Services.

For support and advice on any of these topics, call askonefamily on lo-call 1890 66 22 12 or email support@onefamily.ie. Join our Facebook parenting group.

Parenting | Reading as a tool to manage challenging behaviour

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family readingAs yesterday was World Book Day we thought it would be an ideal time to discuss reading and how reading can be used as a tool to manage challenging behaviours. Reading can create an opportunity for calm, quiet reflection and relaxation. It can also open up an opportunity for discussions between parent and child and can be used as a starting point to discuss any issues going on in the child’s life.

Here are our ’10 ways’ tips on using reading as a tool in your parenting:

  1. Many parents know about time out or they think they know from all the TV shows telling them about it. However many parents get totally confused in how to implement time out and for what reasons. Time out can become a challenging behaviour rather than a tool to resolve it.
  2. Quiet time can be a much more positive tool to try and implement in your home. The whole purpose of time out is to calm down. However the mechanism of implementing time out is very challenging. If you focus on creating quiet time it can make things much easier.
  3. In advance of challenging behaviours taking place, talk with your child about what you can all do when you are feeling angry, overwhelmed or frustrated. Allow your children to talk about what they need at this time. Talk with them about how you feel when they act out these feelings. Talk with them about what currently happens when any member of the family has these feelings.
  4. Talk with them about the idea of creating space and calming down.
  5. Ask them to describe what currently helps them calm down. Tell them things you do to help you to calm down. Bring them back to the idea of a quiet place to sit and calm down. How would this help you restore balance to how you are feeling? How would it support you to talk about how you are feeling so it can be explored?
  6. Ask each person in the family to take part in creating the calm, quiet place. Where it should be, what it should look like, how much space is there for it, should there be activities in this space such as mindfulness tactics. Children and adult colouring books can be really useful. The space must be an area that all family members can use and want to use. Each family member must respect each other when in this place.
  7. There should be some small rules around the space. Such as when someone goes into the space, no one else should talk to them and leave them to calm down. You can sit with them but do not engage with them unless invited to do so. You can stay in there for as long as you need to. Each family can create their own rules and review them every so often to ensure the space is still working for everyone.
  8. A further idea is a feelings tent. You could use a pop up tent which is cheap to purchase and easy to store. It also doesn’t need too much space. It can be a lovely place to sit when you have feelings that need time to resolve, time to sit with, to think about and to understand. Support children to become aware of their feelings and to understand how to name them and why they exist. This is crucial to emotional development and well-being as they grow.
  9. For many parents we have difficulty in identifying our feelings and sitting with them. We can be inclined to make them someone else’s issue and we blame others for them. The feelings tent can be a really good place for you too to further develop your feelings, own them and be kind to yourself in understanding why they exist for you. Role modelling is key to positive parenting.
  10. One Family have compiled a comprehensive book list that is useful for families going through times of change. The book list is divided into the following topics: Separation/Divorce; Family Types; Fostering and Adoption; Death and Bereavement and Stepparents and Stepfamilies. Many of the books should be available in your local library and if not the library will order them in for you.

 

This week’s ‘10 Ways’ parenting tips is written by Geraldine Kelly, One Family’s Director of Children and Parenting Services.

For support and advice on any of these topics, call askonefamily on lo-call 1890 66 22 12 or email support@onefamily.ie