Phones, facebook and children

When I run my Managing Challenging Behaviour courses I talk about how even as adults we can be driven by desire (a need that can never be satisfied). While we may not tantrum like a two year old if we don’t get it, we can make a decision to go with something that is not essential (ie a new phone) over something more sensible (maybe paying the same amount of money off a debt, or saving it for emergencies)

I’m no different. I’ve got a Samsung Galaxy S2, which I adore and find is pretty much perfect for what I need as a phone, and a business tool. But with the Samsung Galaxy S3 coming out, I’m eying it up. I want it bad (well that OR the Galxy note, which I love too)

Do I physically, rationally need it? NO

Is my brain telling me I do? YES

I mean… it’s beautiful! And it has face recognition. And voice recognition. And, and, and….

If we as adults sometimes stuggle to openly identify from want and need, how much harder can it be for our children?

It is one of the reasons I’m still fairly careful about what level of technology my children personally own. My eleven year old is keen to take over my S2 once I get the S3 (because that IS going to happen ), but I feel it’s too much of a phone for an 11 year old. She doesn’t need a whizzbang phone. The only reason she has a phone at all is because she buses alone, and it’s a safety valve for me- not her.

Apparently four children in her class have iPhone 4s phones and many more have iPhone 4 phones. I find that fairly incredible. I’m unsure why they need those things.

If I give her that level of phone now, won’t I just be capturing her into the same cycle of need that so many adults themselves struggle with?

She, and my other children have open use to a laptop and a tablet, and all own ipods. Is a smart phone a must have for a tween? I think not.

I feel the same about the proposed changes regarding the facebook joining age. I’ve considered giving my children a private family page in the past, so they can communicate with their dad and other relatives with it. But my children are still learning the boundaries of what are good things to share online and what are not. They struggle to make those decisions. And I don’t have the time to micro manage every communication they have on facebook. So for now it’s still email and skype one on one with Dad and relatives.

I personally feel the age is low enough at 13 as it is. My children don’t need more reasons to be online. They need more reasons to connect with people face to face, to develop real life boundaries, to learn how to keep themselves safe offline, so that they can translate that to an online environment.

I’m more concerned with my children being entrusted with learning to walk to the shops by themselves, catch buses independently, arrange their own social lives, than spend more time using screens.

Am I alone in this?

And more importantly… if I’m not going to give the phone to my eleven year old, and it’s a perfectly good phone..

Who should have it?

A drop in the ocean

Running a course on managing adult behaviour is much easier than actually always managing the adult behaviours I see a round me!

I hurt when people do things that cross over my own boundaries

I get angry when I forget to look at the heart of the person and where they are and see only my own reactions and pain

I struggle to slow down, to act in grace and patience

But I apply the same tools I teach in my course to my own life. I test them out and I see them work in increasing measure.

One thing I say (and being headstrong and bossy I fail at sometimes) is that before we take on a challenging conversation we must first come from a place of love and peace.

How do we do that?

At a pinch we use two fast track methods:

1. Find a firm surface and press down hard on it with your palms for ten seconds. This pushes out excess energy produced by adrenalin and helps you come back to calm

2. Take in two long and slow breathes, and focus on the space between the two breathes

If you have more time, then go outside, and take your shoes off and stand on the grass barefoot (or in a sand pit)

or:

1. Go to the beach, collect some stones and through each issue into the water as you throw the stones into the sea. Do it til every last little thing that hurt you is in the ocean

2. Write the issue on a piece of paper, set the timer and vent about the issue either verbally or writing it down for ten minutes, holding back nothing

3. Get a balloon, blow it up, tie it up,write the issue on it… and then pop it.

4. Imagine the person in front of you, and focus on thinking positive thoughts about the person until it is no longer an effort to do so

5. Vent to someone – but not someone who is personally invested and takes the offense on. Find a “rubber wall” person who lets it bounce right off them again.

All of these help. All of these have helped me

Do you have others that work?

*These are all discussed in my course Managing Adults while Supervising children.

If you are a centre owner, manager, supervisor or head teacher of an ECE centre or organisation, contact me to find out how you can attend. Courses are run throughout New Zealand.

 

Fantasies of a mother

I remember a long time ago, when my husband (at the time) asked me what my fantasies consisted of, and I said “The dishes done for me, a shower with no interruptions and a good night’s sleep” and he thought it was the most boring reply ever!

Years have passed, and my girls are grown up and are so able to do so many things alone, but those things are still indulgences I haven’t stopped taking for granted.

I found a blog post on mother’s day, and the picture below resonated with me:

(from www.crappypictures.com)

Learning how important it is to carcve out your own time somehow, to fight for a day, a time, an hour, ten minutes that is just yours helps you fill yourself up with more to give out. If you never let yourself be replenished, everyone else wears that in the end.

As I sometimes say to my girls.. “Mummy is a better mother when she has time away from you” – and now, sometimes, they remind me of this, if I forget to take that time out.

Sometimes it is all about becoming a little bit of a selfish cow… to be the unselfish person our children need us to be.

 

Under the perfect skin

It was rosy, and smooth and red. It felt cold to the touch and I knew it would be crunchy.

So I bit into it.

And the insides were rotten

It’s good to be reminded that appearance only brings so much pleasure.

I replaced this apple with one that was less attractive on the outside. Less glossy. And less polished.

It was perfect right to the core.

More than I ever expected it to be.

I’d rather something flawed but gives me either what it promises or more, than something that promises perfection but falls so very far short of it.

Let them learn to manage their tantrums

Giving children the space and time to confront their fears and frustrations and learn their limits helps our children to develop resilience, learn to help them manage better their “unbearable feelings” and cope with disappointment, change and new boundaries better.

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather my children learnt to manage this early than be an adult throwing a tanty in a boardroom…

(Thanks to Cartoons by Jim who is going to be creating some cartoons on behaviour, education and parenting )

Just who is the boundary for

Watching parents and teachers with children, especially ones who are a little more complex, i often wonder, who are the boundaries set for the child actually for?

Are they there because they are age appropriate, developmentally appropriate boundaries that both keep a child secure, and give them room to learn?

Or are they boundaries that reinforce the child is not trustworthy, and are more about the parent feeling safe about their ability to maintain control?

Sometimes it hard to know…

Benefits of pets for troubled kids

We often decide to get a pet to help children develop repsonsiblity, but there are many more benefits too.

Children can often find it easier to identify with an animal than a human- especially if they’ve experienced trauma. Animals are also more straightforward, so certain behaviours from us, tend to lead to the same behaviours from the animal (for example, if you chase a cat it runs away, if you pull it’s tail, it scratches

There was an article about how the SPCA lends out some of it’s animals to children in a home in Christchurch. This home is for children who have seen and expereinced things no child should, and they often have quite severe behaviour problems as a result. However, they find it easy to find love for an animal, often developing strong bonds with them.

Pets can help our children develop responsiblity

But they can also help teach them:

*How to tell if a behaviour is annoying

*How to build trust in another living creature

*Why it is important to be still and quiet sometimes

*What it feels like to be held or cuddled in a safe way

*Positive touch

*Playfulness

Even in “normal” lives, children can go through challenges where having contact with animals can help

If you don’t want to own a pet, consider finding a dog that can be loaned out for walks, or encourage your child to build a relationship with a neighbouring cat. It’s amazing what the affections of a pet towards your child can do to increase their joy and delight.

Try to not do anything that will get your mummy on the news

As my children grow older, my focus is in entrusting them with more freedoms. They pop down to the service station or dairy for milk and icecreams. They get to go to the movies alone, or catch a bus solo

I talk a great deal to them about what I want them to be able to do without me in six or twelve months time. We do little practice runs of the activities, with me gradually pulling further and further back until they are doing it solo.

Mothers of boys tend to do this more instinctively I think. With three girls, I feel I need to ensure they get those same freedoms.

I was talking to another mum about my philosophy and luckily she agreed. I want my girls to be able to walk the half hour to the beach, buy an icecream, play on the playground, build a sandcastle, then walk home (albeit with a cellphone to tell me they are ok) when summer next arrives. By then they will be 12, almost ten and 7.

For some that seems a huge thing to do- for me it’s teaching them I can trust them while they are still listening to me! – and they’ll find out what happens if they break that trust too! And what is the point of living in New Zealand if we can not allow our children to enjoy the freedoms this country has in abundance?

One saying this other mum gives her kids made me laugh -

“Try not to do anything that will get your mummy on the news”

I think that’s a great guideline to live by!

The chicken and the egg of trust

It is inevitable for most of us that at some point someone is going to act in a way that hurts us. Most of the time it’s not done on purpose, even though it feels like that!

I think for many people, they are often so caught up in trying to just get through their own challenges in life, that they don’t stop or slow down enough to consider how thier solution of removing or resolving pain or confusion can bring someone else immense pain.

Trust broken can be hard to mend. Mainly because we can become hyper sensitive to any hint that the trust is not deserved, wanting to catch the other person out. I see this in parents often, as they place their child in a situation where they will fail, because the expectation is higher than the skill or developmental level, then take it as a personal affront when they do. Both sides siffer.

In any relationship, from a parent and child to one between two lovers, I’ve learned that trust has nothing to do with another person’s actions. It is about our trust in ourselves and our trust in them, regardless of behaviour

First:

If we are distrustful. our gut instincts can be hyper vigilante and wrong. If we’ve been hurt before by others, we can then think we should be hyper vigilante in every relationship. Its like women who become man haters after being hurt by one or two men. Rather than being able to separate the behaviour of a few from the actions of many.

I see this with children who have had trust broken. They test out boundaries with a caregiver or another adult, because they are not used to being in a place where they can trust (and be trusted). Sometimes this means they play up quite a bit!

Adults do exactly the same. In fact, the more I work in the field of behaviour I see mirrors of our childlike methods of resolving issues in our adult relationships.

Trusting ourselves is about getting to a place where our “radar” is healthy and relaxed. Where it doesn’t fully flare up on the little things and knows how to read the big things.

There are people who are more trustworthy than others. I find friendships where people let me speak my mind, and they speak theirs to me are ones where trust is high between us. And if they trust you, you tend to find it easier to trust them back too. There is nothing harder than trying to maintain a friendship where both parties have trust issues!

Second: Trusting the other

I do believe there is a chicken and egg relationship to trust. If we start from a viewpoint that someone has to earn our trust, we will be disappointed with more people at some point. People are flawed, and what we look for, we will fine.

If we start from a place where we trust, rather than a place where we trust with our finger firmly crossed behind our backs, we’ll be more likely to see them act in a trustworthy manner, and be more forgiving for moments they act in a way that isn’t perhaps untrustworthy (or, in fact, we may not even notice it because our eyes are viewing everything from a filter of trust)

When I work with parents who are struggling with huge behaviour issues with thier children, there is often a problem with trust on one or both sides.

A human who can’t trust is unable to learn. We learn best when we are relaxed and feel safe. If we are putting our energies into finding threats, and keeping ourselves safe from those threats, we have no time or energy to enjoy learning new things. A child or an adult that struggles to trust is stuck

I have had issues with trust. Not as a parent. I’ve done that well I think. My kids get a lot of freedoms to learn and experience life because I know I can trust them in a wide range of different situations. But in my personal life and even in my professional life sometimes – yeah, I’ve struggled to trust. And for a long time I thought it was about the other person. Until I looked in the mirror, and discovered..

It was all about me

Trust- I’m glad I found it

Preparing for the first day of school

It’s bad enough having to do this once per child over a period of years, but due to one daughter beginning intermediate this year, and the other two moving schools due to thier mother moving the family (me! ) we have had to once again go through the process of beginning school

It’s a big thing- starting school is worse than us starting a new job- it’s bigger than most businesses, and you don’t get the liberty to sneak into your own office (or a toilet) if you need to take a few breaths and calm down

The girl’s mood is pretty high this morning going into school after quite a long time of expressing anxiety about the change.

These are some of the things we’ve done to help them adjust well

1. We aimed for a start at the beginning of the term.

2. During the holidays they visited the school so the surrounds don’t feel so foreign

3. We brainstormed things they can say to start conversations if they need them

4. They each have a book so if it gets a bit to hard they can escape into make believe for a bit

5. They have been allowed to talk openly about what concerns them, without being shushed up. Their sister talked about how she felt starting intermediate, and told them what worked for her.

6. I gave them both a rose quartz necklace to wear under thier shirt – and told them to give it a bit of a hold if they feel nervous. The six year old commented it made her feel good to have something to hold onto

7. I’m starting as I mean to go on. Which means we found a meeting place and I’ll be meeting them there after school. Then the routine is set from day one

I was nervous this morning too!

But I was amazed at how confident they were – especially the six year old.

Most of fear is about the unknown. When we remove as much of that as we can, everything becomes easier