My next topic may seem unrelated but I don’t believe it is. It feels like every day I talk to someone, an adult, who has accepted in a trusting way, and some who have a hard time accepting, their mental illness. You don’t make this specific point, but allude to what happens down the track, and the fear of delinquency. Maybe it is a bold statement, but having been diagnosed as having bipolar… I struggled and reacted very emotionally and defiantly to these negative behaviour concepts soon after highschool, and then eventually knew instinctively pharma drugs would not help… 6 years later I am still haunted by how many of my adult friends have had similar experiences and still suffer. What if? It’s a big what if. BUT. What if their parents… and my parents… had used your non-punitive approach? Would we have seen a generation of happier, more loving, more trusting individuals? It is time that we stop this cycle.

I guess I am fishing for a response. My grandmother helped very much in raising us and looking after us to give my parents time alone together. I want my parents to be involved and able to take care of my children for visits, and my husbands parents as well.
My question is how do I (how would you?) clearly explain my expectations to them in how to interact with my children, when we do have them down the line? I fear not being clear enough verbally and they might resort to what is easy when alone with my children.

There is another group in California too you might be very interested in: HandinHandParenting.org

They have a fantastic model of helping parents focus on emotional connection with children, with a main focus being that children’s behavior gets “offtrack” when they are feeling emotionally disconnected from the parent or when something has restimulated an unfinished emotional project for them. And that when kids’ behavior is “offtrack” it’s because they are caught in their limbic system (non-rational thinking part of mind) and really can’t be expected to think about their behavior or talk about it or learn anything really. What they really need to get back on-track and be able to think clearly and learn is to have an adult offer them warm, supportive listening until the emotions have settled.

The great thing about this parenting model is that it really emphasizes ways that parents can connect with other parents or friends/family through listening partnerships to offload their own emotions about how hard it is to parent when our kids behavior is “offtrack” in some way. This lets parents get a chance to heal their emotions in order to be more clear-thinking when emotions swell up in their kids.

Anyway, I just love their work, and thought you might enjoy checking them out too, lots of great articles and resources on developing non-aggressive, non-harsh responses to our kids behaviors.

I agree

Lots of ‘misbehaving’ is just experimenting and doing things without seeing the consequences of these actions for themselves or other people.

The natural consequence of pouring water out of the bath is that someone else will slip on it or it will damage the floor so you have to get out of the bath to dry it up to stop those things happening.

Ah… water messes in the bath… even my older kids have that problem! Annoying and messy isn’t it? However, I don’t think it has anything to do about willfully misbehaving. I think it is more that they just don’t think of the mess that will happen…

What do we do? We point out to them what is happening… “did you notice that water is going on the floor and making a mess?”

Then provide a solution like… “How about you do that in the corner next to the wall?”

We also either ask them to clean up the water with a towel or just put a towel over the mess ourselves.

If water messes are happening too much then we ask them to stop that game or just say that it is time to get out of the bath…