Secrets To Being A Mother With High Emotional Power
Currently, we have a large amount of information that reinforces the idea of the authorized discipline as the most appropriate. But how do they differ from each other? What can we highlight?
Of course, the best will be what offers us the greatest balance. Let’s look at the characteristics of each discipline:
- Authoritarian Discipline: Strict limits and strict rules are set. It is assumed that children should not express their opinions and that strong control is exercised over them. This makes children unhappy, insecure and with low self-esteem.
- Permissive Discipline : This type of education demonstrates greater acceptance and comfort. However, through this treatment, parents become very passive when it comes to setting limits or responding to disobedience. It will be more difficult for the child to understand his path, as he does not know which direction to go.
- Authorized Discipline : These types of parents often balance clear boundaries with a stimulating home environment. That is, they guide while rejecting the possibility of exercising control. Furthermore, they offer the child explanations in such a way that they involve him in decision-making.
The ideal is to try to value our children’s independence while creating the need for both family and social commitments. We must comfort and praise competence in order to promote self-confidence, their imaginative capacity and their emotional intelligence.
Develop positive attention as a basis for emotional support
All of this looks beautiful on paper. But how do we manage to develop positive, emotional attention in our children? What are the secrets to becoming emotionally capable mothers?
First of all, we must know that caring for children and pampering them are very different things. Offering positive attention to our children means offering comfort and emotional support to the child in a way that he or she will recognize you.
In other words, we must go beyond hugs, compliments and goodnight kisses. We must actively participate in our children’s emotional lives. Let’s see how to do this:
Children under nine years old
Experts suggest defining at least three moments of “ special time ” each week, in which we will participate in games or any kind of playful activity with our children. During this period, we should create a non-judgmental atmosphere in which the child feels full interest and acceptance. For this, we must:
- Praise our children accurately, concretely and sincerely, avoiding excessive adulation. Furthermore, with praise, it is important to celebrate actions, not attributions. In other words, we must say: “ what a big tower you are building! “instead of “ how handsome and smart you are! “. Do not use labels for both good and bad if you want to prevent the child from thinking they are more or less valuable according to their mistakes or gains.
- Show interest in what the child does while playing or in another activity, describing what we see and reflecting the feelings and emotions we perceive. In other words: “It looks like you like the two cars to clash, but you don’t seem nervous, so I think you’re having fun… ”
- Don’t ask questions or give orders, just observe and reflect what you see without controlling or guiding.
Children over nine years old
For children over the age of nine, we should look for opportunities during a similar period, which will allow us to develop activities without judgment and paying full attention to our children.
Secrets of Positive Discipline
It’s impossible to get our children to show good emotional abilities if we don’t raise them with consistency and emotional support. Therefore, it is important to understand and integrate the management of our emotions, principles and values in the same puzzle to implement each point in the corresponding evolutionary stage.
For this, we must:
- Establish clear rules and boundaries. We must focus on them and see to it that they are fulfilled.
- Let the child know when he is starting to misbehave and what is showing us that. Thus, we encourage self-control.
- Define positive behavior and reinforce good behavior with praise and affection. Likewise, we should ignore those behaviors that only seek attention.
- Talk to the child about their emotions and encourage emotional communication. We must know that words only promote 10% of the emotional communication we conduct. It is essential to show the child how their emotions are manifested through the tone of voice, body language, posture and facial expressions.
- Be understanding of your feelings and your emotions. That is, if the child cries, he has to realize that we know he is hurt or that he is distressed by something. Therefore, we should avoid saying “it’s nothing”. Because it is. We must not invalidate their emotions and we need to show the child that we are by their side.
- Spend time explaining to the children why expectations, values and norms are so important.
- Prevent problems before they happen. We have to know how to identify those antecedents that can lead to misconduct.
- Be consistent when you intentionally violate a norm or limit. In these cases, the appropriate punishment must be applied, being consistent with what we said we would do.
- Punish in a manner that is congruent with the misconduct or infraction. So, we should feel comfortable with the punishment we intend to apply and never behave aggressively. The most common are:
1. Reproofs. Rebuking our children in the right way is very important. We must not behave aggressively. We must show ourselves serious and willing to dialogue, but at the same time, determined.
2. Natural consequences. Another option is to let the child experience the consequences of their misconduct. Example: if a child wastes time when his mother rushes him to take the school bus, he can be made to walk to school and have to explain why he is late.
3. The corner. It’s about putting the child in a neutral place where he doesn’t have any bonuses. We should use this for a brief time, one minute for each year of the child’s age from five years old (if the child is younger, the duration should be one minute).
4. Take away a privilege. When children are too old to go to the thinking corner or this has already lost its effect, a privilege can be eliminated, such as watching television, playing with video games or reducing the time of using a cell phone.
In this sense, one should avoid removing privileges that might be important experiences for the child. For example, for a teenager it is better to set an earlier time to get home than to forbid going on a school trip.
5. Overcorrection. This technique is often recommended to achieve rapid change in behavior. Example: if the child arrived home, threw his shirt on the floor and didn’t greet anyone, he can be asked to come back and enter the house 10 times in the correct way.
6. Points system. For chronic problems, a system can be used in which children gain points for positive behavior and lose points for bad behavior. Then, the points obtained can be exchanged for some combined experience and previously scored.
Reference source: Emotional Intelligence – A New Life for Your Child, by Lawrence Shapiro
