5 minute read
Ask Flora
WRITTEN BY FLORA MCCORMICK
Question 1: “How do you handle lying? We keep having an issue of sneaking into mommy’s makeup and then lying about it even though the evidence is all over her face (makeup everywhere).” - Alison D.
Answer: The first thing to know is that lying is very developmentally common.
“Conventional wisdom long held that young children were not capable of lying. More recent research, however, has found that most children learn to lie effectively between the ages of 2 and 4.” - scholastic.com
Wondering about the motivation behind lying can cause you to feel irritated, defeated or angry. All of those feelings are also completely common. It is best, however, to take a step back and consider the behavior from the child’s point of view.
A young child lying about taking your makeup (when it’s clearly all over her face) is likely lying to protect against an unwanted consequence or to avoid taking responsibility and feeling shameful. Essentially, we can see the lie as the child wishing they didn’t have to take responsibility for what they did. So, here’s what I recommend:
1. Don’t set the child up for lying: If you see the makeup on her face, instead of asking “Did you get into my makeup?” say, “I see you got into my makeup.”
2. Focus on learning, rather than shame: “I have told you my makeup is off-limits. That was a sad choice, that you got into the makeup anyway. I know that I have made sad choices sometimes too, and didn’t do what I knew was the best thing to do. Mistakes are wonderful opportunities to learn.”
3. Involve them in taking responsibility for the error: “What do you think is a reasonable consequence?” or “How can we make this right?”
*Start by asking, instead of telling. If they don’t have any ideas, then you can add what you think is reasonable and related to the behavior. Many parents struggle to find consequences that are effective. Reach out if you’d like help with this.
Question 2: “What are some coping skills we can teach daughters at a young age that will help them with the hormonal emotional roller coaster they will inevitably face when puberty starts creeping in?!” - Erin C.
Answer: Here are three ways to equip young kids with strong social-emotional skills for their future:
1. Establish open communication. Practice listening without fixing/lecturing: When your 6-year-old comes to you upset about a friendship, this is a great time to practice first listening and then problem-solving (without judgment or lectures): “Oh. X happened, and then you felt like Y. That sounds really frustrating.” Then pause and listen.
After the child has been able to vent their thoughts and feelings, use asking instead of telling, to work toward a solution: “I wonder what you want to do about that?” This builds a solid foundation where the child feels supported and safe in bringing upsets to you.
2. Name it to tame it. Every time you name an emotion, that’s a repetition toward the child learning to name that emotion themselves.
When we can identify what we are really feeling, we are able to seek more effective solutions. If we label all feelings as “mad” it’s easy to think it’s everyone else’s fault and others need to keep from making us mad.
When we start naming things as disappointing, frustrating, sad, confused, etc., we learn to understand the complexities of that pounding in our heart and the hotness on our cheeks and chest. And I can promise you, this was covered in counseling 101: When you name a feeling correctly for someone, it helps that feeling’s intensity to decrease. Something in naming it helps to tame it.
3. Help your child build the key emotion-management understanding that feelings rise and fall like waves in the ocean, and it’s best to problem-solve/talk after we first manage the wave.
This is a skill that many parents are still working on mastering, so this may be a great opportunity to work on growing this skill together. The next time you or your child are having big emotions, try these emotionmanagement strategies:
» Notice the feeling without jumping to control or fix that feeling: “You seem (insert feeling word).” Then pause and give seven seconds of silence.
» Model emotion-management by taking one-to-two slow and long breaths. It may feel good to ground yourself physically by sitting down, and then doing some “squeeze breaths:" shrugging your shoulders to your ears during the inhale, and wobbling your shoulders loosely after the exhale.
» Pause, with intention. Detach from the argument or disengage from the power struggle by saying, “We can talk more about solving this when our voices and bodies are calm.” You can return to solve the problem when the emotion wave has eased up.
For more tools to build up your child’s emotion-management skills, check out Chapter 1 of How to Talk So Little Kids Will Listen or reach out to for direct parent coaching support.
To get more sanity-saving strategies for parenting young kids, join Flora’s Free Facebook Group: Sustainable Parenting. Questions for the next issue or wins/questions from this issue can be submitted to contactflora@gmail.com. A special thank you to those who submit monthly questions.
