It’s About Making Babies!

Chrunchy Chicken admits to wanting help dealing with kids acting out, with short school days and enforced confinement at home. She wants to learn “Slow Parenting“.

What about you parents out there? Have you found a happy medium in dealing with the kids? Or do you fantasize about putting them up in a listing on Craigslist?

I did some substitute school teaching a few years back. Classroom discipline is one of the hardest parts of the job. One resource I commend to all parents is “Tools for Teaching” by Fred Jones. A couple of pointers from the classroom:

- The red zone. It turns out that there is a kind of distance-defined zone about a teacher (parent). Within three or four feet, kids tend to behave well, attend to their work or whatever. This is all completely passive. Out to about six to eight feet is a yellow zone, where the mere presence of an adult has less effect. Beyond that is the red zone. In the classroom, the way to get a child into the green zone, from kindergarten through high school in my experience, is to walk through the class. Roam the aisles between seats. You need to “expose” each student every few minutes. Try to sit down – and invite whispering, tossing, playing games and reading comics. Time and experience adds persistence and discipline. With practice you can make do with a pass every ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, but you have to stay on top of it. For parents? keep an eye on things. Wander in and out regularly. If you want them to behave as if you were standing there watching them, let them know you are keeping track, and watching regularly.

- Dealing with your own anger. When you first feel the irritation, take a calming breath. It takes 28 minutes for the adrenaline kicking in to cycle through and be flushed from your system. Be aware that you will be affected by the aggressive tendencies and heightened responses of the adrenaline. The good news is that it takes several minutes to build up full steam. By taking a deep, calming breath, by taking charge of the adrenaline circus, you diminish the full brunt of an encounter. You make better judgments and react more appropriately.

- Calming the yelling. When a child is throwing a tantrum or shouting, that is the last time you want to yell. Keep your voice at a normal or lower pitch and volume, and they have to get quieter to hear you. Yell, and you set them a new objective to overpower.

(I save yelling for imminent danger events and times.)

From my own life:

o – “If you can’t see my lips, I cannot hear you.” My sister and I had a horrible time teaching this to my mother. But it worked. Yelling from the next room, or the smallest room, is an expression of disrespect, and assumes that what is heard is understood – when often it isn’t. Yelling louder isn’t the answer – communicating is.

o – You might try a tactic from military movies. Instead of “stop this” which leaves worlds of opportunities for undesirable things *to* do, how about “Take this old toothbrush and clean the toilet.” and “Go weed the garden, after you clear the snow from the sidewalk.” Or “Vacuum the living room/clean your room/make pizza/make some !?$** chocolate chip cookies! Now!” (I prefer to substitute the word “silly” for “!?$**”, but your mileage may vary.)

And you might try to understand what each wanted from an encounter. A specific toy or object may just be a symbol for wanting to play together, or feeling bad or frustrated about something unrelated. This might be a child version of coming home from work with a bad mood, and letting it affect the family. Learning to deal with such things early can improve self awareness, communication and problem solving skills. When you can catch friction in action before things escalate beyond discipline (the will to complete a task) into a need for disciplinary action, you have opportunities to teach, to share, and to guide. And maybe, those times you get it right, polish up a reputation as someone all-knowing and infallible. “Mom”.

Blessed be.

* While reading “Tools for Teaching” I found the book very easy to read and understand. At the time I was helping my neighbor work with his cattle, and I immediately, as I progressed through the classroom discipline parts of the book, saw things go better in the classroom – and in the neighbor’s pasture. Just changing my perspective and understanding made a noticeable difference.

One last point from the book – weenie parents. If you are going to give in to your child, do it the first time he/she asks. If you ever wear down from constant asking, or allow repeated requests, you teach the child that begging works – and is a viable and useful communication tactic. This *will* cause pain to student and teacher when the teacher has to de-program that habit in the classroom. Smart students learn that whingeing doesn’t work *at school*, mostly, *not* that whingeing doesn’t work at all. All the parent need to do is to hear and consider every request, and only give the “final answer”. Repeated requests are an expression of disrespect for the parent, and should be dealt with.