I recently had a chance to interview Hand in Hand Parenting founder Patty Wipfler, who wrote LISTEN: Five Simple Tools to Meet Your Everyday Parenting Challenges (just released in Audio version). Hand in Hand is a Palo Alto based non-profit focused on helping parents connect with their children to build strong lifelong relationships. Review copies of the Audiobook and paperback are available upon request.
As we start the new school year, parents are faced with so many challenges. LISTEN offers parents the know-how and confidence to strengthen their connection with their child while balancing all of the pressures of everyday life. She is a reassuring voice in the middle of the chaos and truly offers parents great reminders of how connecting with their kids is so important -- through all of the computer and iPhone screens.
Why is it so important to set the school year off on the right foot?
When our children's confidence is shaken at school, they don't have their parents to run to. They have to hide their feelings as best they can for hours, until they come home, and by then, it's often hard for them to release those feelings, so they can gather in the reassurance of our love and protection. When they return to school, with feelings still stored up from whatever happened, the sights and sounds of being there trigger those same "I didn't do well" feelings, making it hard for them to enjoy learning, or even think straight sometimes. So connecting with our children as soon as we reunite with them at the end of the day helps them gather the sense that we care. Then, they will find some little imperfection--their brother touched their favorite toy, or they tear their homework paper accidentally--and out come the tears and the fears, and sometimes the anger, from hard moments at school. This is an important time to simply listen. Your caring flows in, while their upset pours out. Never mind that it's about some amazingly small difficulty. What pours out is going to clear your child's mind, and improve his or her confidence tomorrowat school. Listen, offer love, and trust that your child is doing the smartest thing possible at that moment!
What are some tools parents can use to help their kids stay motivated and on top of school tasks?
Special Time is the go-to tool for helping children feel, "I can do it! I want to do it!" about their school assignments and homework. With Special Time, you begin by saying, "I have X minutes for you, and I want to play anything you want to play (and you can add, "but no screens" if you think that's important). Then, you pour your interest and enjoyment into your child, no matter what he or she chooses to do. You put on a timer, and convey your delight in your child. Don't get too involved in the game--play with enthusiasm, but offer eye contact, warm touch, energy, and interest. Let your child show you what they like, and who they are. It breaks the sense that "Adults are always, always telling me what to do!" It is like a vitamin for your child's spirits. Children are often able to go willingly toward their homework after some Special Time. And if not, they break into tears more readily, letting the negative "I can't!" or "I won't!" feelings out, with you offering caring while they do this. Afterward, many things are possible, because you loaded your love on board your child while they were crying or storming.
How can parents help kids manage priorities during the school year?
When it looks like a child is not thriving, it's good to set up a 5-minute time about the topic, at a time of your child's choosing. Name the topic ahead of time: "Can we talk about how you're going to memorize all the state capitals this month?" Then, when the appointed time comes, name the topic, and ASK your child what they think about it. Listen. Listen carefully. If the 5 minutes is up before they finish, set another time the next day, and listen some more. Listening first gets their own mind working on the problem. Your listening offers them safety to feel their fears, if fear is sitting in their way. They'll find a way to have a good cry or start raging about some small thing, and you'll know that the upset is so intense that the tension must be coming from some deeper source. Listen.
Sometimes, you'll need to set limits: "I don't think that screen time after dinner is helping you lately. Let's try two days of parking your screen at 6 pm, and not picking it up until the next day. I'll help you if this is hard." Then, listen! Connection with you is like oil in your child's mental gears. It makes thinking go well. It improves decisions. And it helps tension surface, to be released when you listen. You can set up experiments, and talk about how they went before deciding house rules about homework, bedtime, and such. Be an experimenter, as well as a listener!
Why is listening so important?
Listening fosters a sense of acceptance and connection between parent and child, or in fact, between any two people. The listener keeps an open mind, and adopts a mindset of complete respect. Others can feel the respect and the warmth. It's a powerful agent of change and growth. And when a child is unable to think well, or has gone off track behaviorally, a simple limit, no scolding, no upset, just making sure the nutty thing can't happen by moving in and stopping the action, allows a child to notice the awful feelings they carry, and to begin to offload those feelings. Out comes laughter, a tantrum, tears, or a noisy emotional storm. When you remain confident that there's a good child inside this very emotional being, and that your child is doing something absolutely necessary to shake off his or her emotional burdens, that confidence and caring flows into your raging, highly upset child. You don't see their "tank" of connection filling. They continue to be passionately irrational while you pour in more caring. But in the end, they finish, and they feel entirely different. Their connection to you has been restored. They can be sweetly reasonable again. And they have learned and grown from the experience. Try it sometime. The results are likely to impress you.
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