You hear it all the time, kids learn more by what you do than what you say.

Today, my 6 year old offered me a wonderful opportunity to model problem solving, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness with her in 1 interaction.

Let me share:

We get in the car after kindergarten pick-up and she breaks down. She starts crying and telling me how her classmate told her the story of ‘Bloody Mary’.  She was convinced that the ghost of Bloody Mary was following her around waiting for the perfect time to bite her and cut her into pieces.

Tell me moms… how would you be feeling hearing this from your 6 year old?

Let’s just say my thoughts went to judgments on the other child, her parents, and the school for not hearing these conversations.

However, my judgements or comments based on those were not going to be EFFECTIVE to the situation or what I am trying to model for my young daughter.

Lucky for me, I was able to be mindful and not allow my emotions to control my response.

I asked her to describe to me what happened and what was said.  At the end she asked me if it was real.  I told her that it was an urban legend, really hoping the concept of an urban legend may distract her, it didn’t.

Then she wanted to know why her friend would intentionally scare her like that.

She has come home for weeks having issues with this same friend.

So we had the opportunity to problem solve how ‘we’ could handle this situation.

We talked about the relationship with the girl, we talked about her options, and we also talked about where she may need help based on her emotions, the authority at play (friend vs friend, her vs teachers, teachers vs parents etc).

After we decided on a plan: She would tell her friend she did not want to play with her for a while, and I would contact her teacher (to make sure her request was honored) she asked us to role play so she would have a plan on how to talk to her friend.  Yes, SHE asked to role play (I mean she is my daughter lol).

She is very cautious about hurting her friends feelings while at the same time protecting her own.

Doesn’t that sound like so many of us?

I teach a great skill around Objective, Relationship & Self Respect Effectiveness in my 12 week virtual DBT course which covers a lot of what we did in the car (amongst a couple other skills) however, there are some other useful practical tips you can do to set the stage for you and your kids to be able to have these conversations.

Mothering.com has some parenting tips that can help make that happen  and I wanted to share those with you.  Remember, these tips are things YOU can do.  We only have the power over our own behavior and when we do new things, we begin to see new behaviors.

So follow THIS LINK to check out those 5 tips!

No way you want to click and go somewhere else?  I can hear you saying “Just give me the bullet points, that is all I read anyway!”    Okay, here is the short version:

  1. Maintain connection (great suggestion to do that if you follow that link)
  2. Be involved with your child’s friend life (Yep, I knew exactly who this girl was)
  3. Limit Exposure (Which can be difficult their friends are allowed to watch ‘IT’ in the theatre at 6 years old)
  4. Get involved (what do I mean? Ask me or check out the link)
  5. Model (You will here this from me over and over and over and over)

 

 

Hope to see you in my private FACEBOOK GROUP where this week we are talking about the roots of our behaviors!