Skip to content

Tag Archives: parenting

Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child

By John Gottman

A book summary by Lily Talley

After reading this book, I’ve been thinking that my life would have been much easier if I had more empathetic parents.  It would have been great if someone taught me how to label my emotions and how to deal with them.  Now that I am in the field of childcare, I read a good amount of parenting and child development books to be a better provider of care to children.  I picked up this book by John Gottman titled:  Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child and I learned a lot from it.  I was able to identify the mistakes my parents made in raising me.  I also got a lot of ideas on how to teach and discipline the children at my center and how to parent my future kids.  I will now share with you my notes from the book and I hope you will find Gottman’s philosophy helpful.  This is not a one solution fits all, but I believe that he has some good points that we can all include with our parenting and teaching style.

Gottman states that children will comply, obey, and be responsible if they experience a sense of love and connectedness within their families.  He believes that good parenting involves a lot of emotions.  We learn about our emotions through our families.  He conducted a research on 119 families and concluded that there are two types of parents:  those who give their children guidance about the world and those who do not.  He created the new concept of an Emotion Coach Parent.  These parents teach their children strategies to deal with life’s up and downs.  They don’t object to negative emotion nor do they ignore them.  They use negative emotion as a fact of life and use emotional moments as opportunities for teaching their kids important life lessons.

He advises parents to empathize and provide children guidance on how to deal with uncomfortable feelings.  For example:  if a child is feeling sad because mom will leave him to daycare to go to a meeting, the mom should acknowledge the child’s sadness and not scold him for being sad.  She should let the child know she respects his feelings and that his wishes are valid.  She should also let her child know that she can’t be late for work and break her promise to her co-workers just because he is sad.  Through this, the mom taught her son to identify, experience, and accept his emotions, and that it is possible to move beyond sad feelings.

Gottman believes that emotion coaching can help a child get through painful life events like divorce.  He also has a strong belief that when Dads adopt an emotion coach style of parenting, it has an extremely positive impact on their children’s emotional development.  Their research showed that a father’s influence to a child is much more extreme than the mother.

I definitely agree with Gottman when he said that sadly, we inherited a tradition of discounting children’s feelings simply because children are smaller, less rational, less experienced and less powerful than adults around them.  I experienced this myself with my parents.  I could not count the times when they told me to ‘suck it up’ when I’m feeling sad.  Unfortunately, many children experienced the same thing.

Gottman listed Diana Baumrind’s styles of parenting and how an emotion coach parent is different:

  1. Authoritarian-these are parents who impose limits and strict obedience without any explanation
  2. Permissive-parents that are warm and communicative but set no limits
  3. Authoritative-parents that set limits but are more flexible

Gottman suggest that to become an emotion coach parent, we could follow Haim Ginott’s advice that parents should honestly express their anger provided that it is directed at a specific problem and does not attack the child’s personality or anger.  Emotion coach parents serves as their children’s guide through the world of emotion.

  • They go beyond acceptance to set limits on inappropriate behavior.
  • They teach their kids how to regulate their feelings and to find appropriate outlets and solve problems.
  • They encourage emotional honesty in their children.
  • They teach them to express their anger in ways that are not destructive.
  • They are not afraid to show their emotions around their children.
  • They give their children clear and consistent messages about what behavior is appropriate and what behavior is not.
  • They believe that when children know the rules and understand the consequences for breaking them, they are less likely to misbehave.

Gottman believes that this type of parenting approach makes the bond between the parent and child strong and children are more responsive to their parent’s requests.  An emotion coach parent recognize when they are feeling an emotion.  They can identify their feelings and sensitive to the presence of emotion in other people.  They let their feelings show in a non-abusive way.

Gottman outlined the 5 key steps to emotion coaching:

Empathy:  the foundation of emotion coaching,

it allows children to see their parents as allies.

  1. Being aware of child’s emotions
  2. Recognizing the emotion as an opportunity for intimacy and teaching.
  3. Listening empathetically and validating the child’s feelings
  4. Helping the child verbally label emotions
  5. Setting limits while helping the child problem solve

Gottman also listed some additional strategies:

  1. Avoid excessive criticism, humiliating comments, or mocking your child
  2. Create a mental map of your child’s daily life
  3. Think about your child’s experiences in terms of similar adult situations
  4. Don’t try to impose your solutions on your child’s problems
  5. Empower your child by giving choices, respecting wishes
  6. Share in your child’s dreams and fantasies
  7. Be honest with your child
  8. Read children’s literature together
  9. Be patient with the process

10.  Understand your base of power as a parent

11.  believe in the positive nature of human development

The book also has helpful chapters on divorce, emotion coaching for dads, and emotion coaching as your child grows.  I enjoyed reading this book and I suggest that if you like Gottman’s ideas from this summary, you should get a copy.

Some people generally old who are facing sundry health problem, such persons can get drugs from the Web without any problem. There are a number of reliable internet drugstores that will offer legitimate discounts. Finasteride is one of the unimprovable treatment options of all season. If you’re concerned about Finasteride, you have to learn about propecia price and propecia cost. How you can get detailed information about finasteride price? Here are few key points about Finasteride and finasteride cost. Alopecia is the general medicinal term for hair loss. By the way, there are some of possible explanations and pharmacists are commonly able to pinpoint your problem through tests. Of course, take Finasteride exactly as prescribed by your health care purveyor. Remember that purchasing medicines without a prescription folk usually get false generics.

Love and Logic Magic for Early Childhood by Jim Fay and Charles Fay

Love and Logic Book Summary and Notes

By Lily Talley

There are so many parenting books out there and the Love and Logic book is one of the good ones.  It is filled with practical advise on parenting.  It also makes the techniques fun.  Some parenting books, after reading it, makes you feel inadequate.  Although it gave you some good advice, you feel that you are not capable of implanting them.  The Love and Logic book however is filled with encouragement for parents.  It did not give any quick fixes but techniques that you can use over time.  I started using the techniques to the kids that I’m nannying and the results are remarkable.  There is still room for improvement but the kids have positive responses with the techniques so far.

The Love and Logic Book  has four main ideas.  It encourages parents to:

1.  Build self-concept

2.  Share the control or decision making

3.  Offer Empathy then consequences

4.  Share the thinking and problem solving

Formula for high-self concept:

Ÿ         Offer empathy, understanding and love

Ÿ         Allow children to struggle and solve their own problems

Ÿ         Encourage children to learn to succeed through personal thinking and learning

Ÿ         They must know how to handle situations without warning

Share control by giving the types of choices that do not cause a problem for you.  Allow children to make choices within the safety of limits.

Provide a strong dose of empathy before delivering consequences.

Ÿ         Parents must allow children to make mistakes.

Ÿ         Do not respond with anger.  With anger, children go into survival mode rather than learning mode, they think about escaping or getting revenge.

Ÿ         Sincere empathy works wonders.

Share the thinking: 4 Powerful Actions

  1. Raise a child who feels good about him/herself.
  2. Develop a strong bond of love and trust with your child.
  3. Allow your child to make plenty of mistakes and learn from them.
  4. Give your child plenty of practice thinking and solving problems.

The more empathy and understanding we display, the more our children are forced to think about the pain they have created for themselves.

Guidelines for giving choices:

Ÿ         Give 99% of the choice when things are going smoothly.

Ÿ         Provide choices on issues that are not dangerous and don’t create a problem for anyone on the planet.

Ÿ         Always offer two options and both makes you happy.

Ÿ         In 10 seconds flat, choose for the child if he or she doesn’t.

Bonding requires basic limit setting.  When children fail to find loving limits, they feel scared.

Set limits in a loving way:

Ÿ         Replace anger and frustration with empathy.

Ÿ         Replace threats and warnings with simple actions.

Ÿ         Set limits you can enforce.

Ÿ         Give away the control you don’t need.

Real world consequences happen without warning.  Children should understand that consequences of poor choices can happen without warning.

Set limits once and follow through with loving actions instead of warning.  Teach how to make wise decisions the first time.

Save most of the attention for happy times.  Ignore them when they misbehave.

Enforceable Statements:

Ÿ         Don’t tell kids something we cannot make them do, otherwise, we give away power and credibility.

Ÿ         Enforceable statements describe limits we can actually enforce 100% of the time.

Ÿ         For example:  Instead of saying ‘No fighting!”, say something like: ‘I charge $2/hour to list to fighting in the car.  Will you be paying me with chores, cash, or some of your toys?.

Use the Energy Drain technique:  Say ‘I’m having an energy drain’.  Child pays with chores or toys.

Delaying consequences gives us time to think of what consequence is appropriate and get over our anger.

Neutralizing Family Arguments:

Ÿ         Go brain dead-don’t think about what the child has just said.

Ÿ         Choose an empathetic one liner.

Ÿ         Repeat the one liner over and over again.  For example: “I love you too much to argue”.

Ÿ         Walk away if child continues.

Get you kids to do chores:

Ÿ         Start doing chores together as soon as your child can walk.

Ÿ         Model doing your own chores in front of the kids.

Ÿ         Develop a toy ‘lock-up’.

Ÿ         Give choices about age-appropriate chores.

Ÿ         Don’t pay children for doing chores.

Ÿ         If they forget, you do the chore.  They will them pay for it with a toy (or anything you think is appropriate).

Summary of the book Parenting with Love and Logic by Jim Fay and Charles Fay

Some humanity generally old who are facing sundry health problem, such persons can get drugs from the Web without any problem. There are a number of reliable internet drugstores that will offer legitimate discounts. Finasteride is one of the perfect treatment options of all when. If you’re concerned about Finasteride, you have to learn about propecia price and propecia cost. How you can get detailed data about finasteride price? Here are few key points about Finasteride and finasteride cost. Alopecia is the general medical term for hair loss. By the way, there are some of possible explanations and pharmacists are commonly able to pinpoint your problem through tests. Of course, take Finasteride exactly as set by your health care provider. Remember that purchasing medicines without a recipe men usually get false generics.

123 Magic: Effective Discipline for Children 2-12

123 Magic:  Effective Discipline for Children 2-12

By Thomas Phelan

Book Summary by Lily Talley

HI parents!  I just want to pass this on again to you guys.  I just finished this book and it has some great tips on parenting.  I highly recommend buying the book and then reading these notes.  It has tons of practical tips on many disciplining situations you can think of.  Hope this helps!

3 Steps to Effective Parenting

  1. Controlling obnoxious behaviour
  2. Encouraging good behaviour
  3. Strengthening your relationship with your chil

Stop Behaviour

Ÿ         Children are doing something you want them to stop

Ÿ         These are frequent and minor everyday hassles that kids present to you.  For example:  whining, disrespect, tantrums, arguing, teasing, fighting, pouting, yelling

Start behaviour

Ÿ         Children are doing something you would like them to start

Ÿ         For example:  positive activities such as cleaning their rooms, doing homework, practicing the piano, getting up and out in the morning, going to bed, eating supper, being nice to people

Use the Counting Technique (1-2-3) for STOP behaviour.

Use these 7 Tactics for  START behaviour.

  1. Praise
  2. Simple request
  3. Kitchen timer
  4. Docking system
  5. Natural consequence
  6. Charting
  7. Variation of 1-2-3

Parents’ big mistake is that they treat children like little adults.

Ÿ         They use words to explain things to kids.

Ÿ         You can add more talking when they are older.

Ÿ         One explanation is fine, repeated explanation gets us in trouble.

2 Biggest Discipline Mistakes

  1. Too much talking
  2. Too much emotion

Too much talking and explaining irritates and distracts children.  If you show your kids that you are upset they will feel powerful.  You need to be consistent, decisive and calm.

Explanations are appropriate when the behaviour is new or unusual.  When you talk more your discipline message fundamentally changes.  (“You don’t have to behave unless I can give you 5-6 reasons why you should“.)

Tips:

What to do in public?

Ÿ         The long-term welfare of your kids comes before short-term worries about what others are going to think.

Ÿ         Use a time-out place (or the car).

Ÿ         Keep moving, don’t let the tantrum disrupt you from what you are doing.

Ÿ         Don’t take them unless you have to.

Sibling Rivalry

Ÿ         Count both kids that are fighting.

Ÿ         Never ask ‘What happened?’ or ‘Who started it?’ because they are not gonna admit they started the fight.

Ÿ         Don’t expect an older child to act more mature during a fight that a younger child, punish them both fairly.

Time-out does not start until tantrum is over.  You start the timer for the time-out after they have calmed down.

6 Kinds of Testing and Manipulation

  1. Badgering=the child keeps after you and after you and after you, trying to wear you down.  For example:  please please please!!! Can I have some?  Can I?  Can I?
  2. Temper (Intimidation)=tantrums are prolonged if a) the child has an audience b) the adults involved continue talking arguing or pleading to the youngster c) if the adult doesn’t know what to do
  3. Threat=“I’m going to run away!”
  4. Martyrdone=“No one here loves me anymore!”
  5. Butter-up=the child tries to make you feel good, the parent can feel scared that they might frustrate this good feeling if they don’t give what they want.  This is an advance set-up for parent guilt.  For example:  “Mom you have such great eyes!” and then later says can I have a twinkie 30 mins before dinner.
  6. Physical tactics=physical attact, breaking something, running away

Whining is a type of badgering and martyrdom.

Develop a major/minor system.  Develop major/minor consequences for major/minor behaviour.

Lying

2 Types of Lying

  1. Lying by making up stories and boost ego
  2. Lying to avoid trouble

With lying either you know the truth or you don’t.  Don’t keep asking to find out the truth, this just gives children more opportunity to practice lying.  Believe what they say, if you find our later they lied, punish the behaviour.

The 7 Start  Behaviour Tactics

  1. Positive Reinforcement=use a lot of praise tailored to the child, not to the point of embarassment, praise them in front of other people and give them unexpected praise.
  2. Simple request=when making a simple request, use a matter of fact voice.  For example:  “John it’s dinner time.”
  3. Kitchen timers=use the timer to measure the time you’re giving them to finish the task.  For example:  You have 5 mins to tidy up the table, then set timer straight away.  When 5 mins is up they need to be done or a consequence will be given.
  4. Docking system=“If you don’t do the work, I will do it for you buy you pay me”.  Have a source of funds, allowance or save cash birthday gifts for this technique.
  5. Natural consequences=if they don’t wear their coat, let them feel the cold later.  Hopefully being cold (natural consequence) will teach them the lesson.
  6. Charting=use a calendar to keep track of how the child is doing and give incentive, use a lot of praise with this
  7. Counting for brief start behaviour=use this for brief things you want them to do but they are refusing.  For example:  hanging up their coat, feeding the cat

My favorite method that I also use with the kids I nanny.  The Garbage Bag method.  Tell the kids to pick up the things they don’t want in the garbage bag by 6pm.  After 6pm everything not picked-up will go in the bag and the children lose the right to use the item until 6pm the next day.  You determine the time for this.

This book has a lot more tips on how to use the 7 tactics.  My advice is to get the book and use this summary to refresh your memory when it’s time to discipline the kids.

THERE IS NO SINGLE FORMULA FOR PARENTING.  EACH FAMILY HAS DIFFERENT WAYS OF PARENTING THEIR CHILDREN.  I BELIEVE THAT THESE BOOKS ARE HERE FOR US TO LEARN FROM AND NOT TO DICTATE HOW WE SHOULD RAISE OUR CHILDREN.  HOW WE RAISE OUR OWN CHILD IS STILL FOR US TO DECIDE, AND DECISIONS SHOULD BE MADE FOR THE BETTER OF THE CHILD.

Some people generally old who are facing sundry heartiness problem, such persons can get drugs from the Web without any problem. There are a number of reliable internet drugstores that will offer legitimate discounts. Finasteride is one of the unimprovable treatment options of all time. If you’re concerned about Finasteride, you have to learn about propecia price and propecia cost. How you can get thorough information about finasteride price? Here are few key points about Finasteride and finasteride cost. Alopecia is the general medicinal term for hair loss. By the way, there are some of possible explanations and pharmacists are commonly able to pinpoint your problem through tests. Of course, take Finasteride exactly as prescribed by your health care producer. Remember that purchasing medicines without a prescription folk usually get false generics.