Parenting Pearls

Proactive vs. Reactive Parenting

By Sara Rayvych, MSEd

This is a topic that has been percolating in my brain for a while but I had been hesitant to take it on. As I don’t drink coffee, I need to percolate something.

I don’t know where I first heard of the concept of proactive parenting so I can’t give credit where credit is due. In my humble opinion, the importance of proactive parenting can’t be overestimated, and I think it would reign as one of my major personal parenting principles.

What is reactive parenting?

Most parenting would probably be classified as reactive. Simply, this means we see our child do something and we react to their behavior, action, or words. Our reaction may or may not match the severity of the situation and may involve yelling, punishing, or saying something hurtful. The subsequent consequence may not provide any educational lessons. We can easily see how ineffective this method is. Worse yet, it could be damaging to the child.

Reactive parenting can easily give parents a feeling that they are losing control of the situation or their feelings. Feeling out of control can be a scary situation, even for an adult, and it puts you in a very vulnerable place. You’re liable to overreact to try to regain stability. I’m sure we’ve all had times we overreacted and then felt guilty afterwards.

Often, our reaction matches the level of our frustration or anger and not the severity of what the child actually did. This can be counterproductive educationally because a lesser behavior may earn a greater reaction than the worse behavior. Our children could get a skewed impression of where our values and priorities truly are.

Another problem with reactive parenting is that we’re basically waiting for a problem to happen before we take any steps. We’re not preventing the issues; we’re simply waiting for them to occur.

What is proactive parenting?

Proactive parenting could be thought of as anticipating the issues in advance and having a solution prepared. It doesn’t involve prophecy, so don’t get that nervous. It does take practice and you can’t have a proactive approach for everything being that we’re only human (but don’t tell that to our kids!). The goal is to slowly become more proactive and less reactive in our response.

We can see there are many advantages to proactive parenting. By having an idea in advance of how you want to parent any given situation, you are more likely to respond in an appropriate manner, without exaggerating your kid’s misbehavior or your response. You’re less likely to scream, yell, or act in a way you’ll regret, and you’ll feel more in control throughout the encounter.

It’s easy to see how being proactive will help you react appropriately but the benefits are even greater than that. When you are proactive, you can often prevent the misbehavior from occurring in the first place. While you can’t anticipate and prevent every situation, you can often recognize the signs of trouble brewing and step in before the full storm hits. With some forethought, you’ll have the opportunity, in advance, to set up an environment for your child to succeed, not fail. As parents, we often underestimate how much we can alter a situation by carefully setting it up and positively manipulating it to meet our child’s needs.

How do you predict the future?

Wouldn’t it be fun if I actually had an answer to this question? The truth, as you know, is that we’re not prophets even if we have other wonderful traits. What you can predict is that certain behaviors will occur again. You know your child’s tendencies and what situations will trigger them. By anticipating those scenarios and preparing for them in advance, you’ll be more able to manage, or prevent, them from happening.

Often, children keep making the same mistakes or repeating the same negative behaviors, and parents keep reacting, often in the same ineffective manner. You want to stop the inevitable cycle of futility and frustration. Even if the behavior isn’t identical, it’s often similar enough. For exam-

ple, the same child may continuously fight with a sibling at the Shabbos table. The sibling with whom they’re fighting may switch and the reason they fight may change but the inherent behavior is similar. Another example is a child who won’t shower during their time slot before Shabbos.

You may find it helpful to find a time or place that gives you some quiet and relaxation so you can properly think through the problem. Don’t be afraid to daven for help since often it feels like we need a real miracle to figure out the solution. Ironically, sometimes the answer comes when you least expect it.

Planning for the inevitable

The next step after recognizing a behavior is trying to figure out the source of their actions. Even little people usually have reasons for why they do things. Those reasons may seem foolish to us but the reason does exist.

It’s important to understand and respect their reason for doing things, even if you don’t agree with their logic. Even if their reason isn’t truly reasonable, it’s still the source for their behavior. An example is a toddler that keeps throwing down his drink cup because he refuses to allow it to remain on his food tray. Especially if you disagree with their reasoning, you still need to respect their feelings and sympathize with their needs. It’s important to acknowledge that kids don’t always have the ability to control themselves and that needs to be taken into account as well. Sometimes, the best or only solution is to physically remove the child from the situation.

Once you know why they’re doing something, you can often prepare a more productive response or even a way to prevent the situation from starting. Some needs may be physical, some emotional, and some developmental. Whatever the cause, you can often find a solution. It can be helpful to ask others for ideas or help. That other person can be another experienced parent, a mentor, or a rav/ rebbetzin, but it can also be a medical or mental health professional.

As an example, you know if your toddler usually has meltdowns in the grocery store. You can safely assume that if you’re going to the grocery store with your toddler, then you can potentially expect a meltdown. There are many reasons a toddler can have a meltdown. A few possibilities are being hungry, tired, overwhelmed or unaware of how to behave in a grocery store. If it’s hunger or exhaustion, then you know to make sure they’re fed or napped first. If it’s due to being overwhelmed, then you can out what will keep them soothed or prevent overstimulation. It’s also possible that the child doesn’t know what behavior you expect from them in the grocery store. If that’s the case, then you can teach them what your expectations are. It’s not uncommon that we wrongly assume a child understands how to behave in different scenarios.

Another potential example: you may know one of your children is having a tough time with a particular pandemic restriction. It’s safe to assume that your child will still be under that stress for the foreseeable future and it’s worth finding a solution. If you can figure out the cause, then you can work on it. Let’s say your child is having issues with the inability to socialize with their peers or grandparents or they are afraid of becoming sick. This may come out as angry outbursts or some other behavior that doesn’t have an obvious connection to the cause. Even if there’s no logical connection in your mind, that doesn’t mean it’s not the source. Sometimes, it can be hard to determine the cause of a particular behavior. It may require more thought and perhaps bouncing ideas off of someone else.

Any time you have a situation that continuously creates friction you want to determine a cause and a solution to stop the inevitable recurrence. This scenario is more straightforward since you can usually see the cause and effect, and you know where to look for the source of their behavior.

If you see a new but more gener-

With some forethought, you’ll have the opportunity, in advance, to set up an environment for your child to succeed.

either not bring them or try to figure

al negative behavior such as anger, hitting or cursing, you want to figure out the source of that, as well. These more general negative behaviors can be harder to get to the bottom of but they have a cause, as hard as it may be to discover. You may have to dig around a lot but it’s worth searching because these behaviors can take over many parts of their day-to-day actions. A child who is continuously angry or acting aggressively may spend a good portion of the day that way. See what’s changed in their lives, what needs are not being met, and don’t be afraid to ask for help.

Often, we feel helpless or wait for the dam to burst before we clean up the mess. As parents, we can understand our children, their needs, and their feelings and be there for them even before they call. This is an opportunity for a bit more peace and calm in our homes. The less time we need to spend cleaning up the emotional mess means we have more time to focus on loving and bonding with our incredible children.

Sara Rayvych, MSEd, has her master’s in general and special education. She has been homeschooling for over 10 years in Far Rockaway. She can be contacted at RayvychHomeschool@gmail.com.