High Maintenance Mom

Yesterday evening I attended another great seminar at GeoKids on conflict resolution. It's always conforting to hear that others have similar feelings and frustrations. The seminar begin with us listing our feelings about conflicts - anger, frustration, embarrassment, helplessness, challenged to communicate effectively, being judged by others, and a bad sense of deja vu when we watch our kids struggle with it. We then learned the first of the two big ideas I took away from the evening. Conflict resolution is social problem solving and needs to be approached in a similar way to learning how to do other tasks like putting together a jigsaw puzzle...

I came to the seminar knowing that my kids were learning skills they could use for the rest of their lives and that I wanted to be able to help them. But I also came because I knew I would learn something that would apply to my interactions with adults too. Hearing that we would never yell at our kids for not being able to get a puzzle piece into a puzzle, really made me think about how we each have to take the time to learn how to solve our own social problems.

As I write this, B is screaming from his room. "I need to tell you something". He wants to tell us something and we want him to go to bed. Although his screaming has little to do with conflict resolution, it brings up another statement from the meeting that we have to be very firm with the boundaries we set and very flexible with how we approach social problem solving. I find listening to my kids scream for attention at night to be very challenging and I wish there were easier ways to get them to go to sleep. Of course, I also wish I could clean the entire house by wiggling my nose.

So it's incredibly helpful for me to hear ideas about when to be firm and when to be flexible again and again. It gives me the strength to stand back and let the kids try to figure out their complicated social dynamics or to listen to B yell without giving in and going back to his room again (he did finally go to sleep).

The second major clarification in how I was helping my kids with some of their problem solving involved the types of questions we ask. We were told to ask "what" questions - "what can you do to get the truck back" instead of "why" questions. I can't tell you how many times I've asked B why he did something when I knew there was no good reason. Asking why puts the kids in a difficult position because they often don't know why they did something. You're asking them to admit to something they don't want to admit to. So instead of saying, "why did you throw the sand?" we should instead ask "what do you want to tell him/her?". We can also ask questions such as, "who has an idea of how we could solve...?" or "what other way could you do that?".

In addition to the two big ideas I took away from the meeting, we also discussed a social problem solving process.

• Approach and describe the scene (kneel, squat, or sit to be at the child's level and neutralize the object of conflict by holding it yourself)
• Gather information (don't assume you know what happened)
• Define the problem (describe your understanding of the problem and ask for confirmation and clarification)
• Generate possible solutions (let the children figure out a solution)
• Agree on a solution
• Follow through

Adapted in part from: Guiding Young Children in a Diverse Society and I want it my way!: Problem-solving techniques with children two to eight

As always, it was fun to hear what everyone else had to say and I left feeling part of a larger community of parents who were all striving towards the same goals.

Becoming the Parent You Want To Be: A Sourcebook of Strategies for the First Five Years was also mentioned as a resource and I really enjoy my copy.