This National SEL Week and International SEL Day, we want to hear your story! Join the “Share Your SEL Story” Contest and tell the world how social and emotional learning (SEL) has impacted you in a written blog, video, or audio story. We are looking for stories from students, parents, teachers, counselors, school and district administrators, community leaders, and employers on the International SEL Day/National SEL Week theme: Today’s Students, Tomorrow’s Leaders.
We’ll publish the top stories on the CASEL blog and social media platforms during National SEL Week, March 4-8, and readers will vote on the most impactful stories. The winner will receive a $100 gift card of your choice, and all finalists will receive a certificate and CASEL swag!
We’ve received some amazing submissions! Thank you if you put thought, energy, time, and passion into writing for our site. Just a reminder that today is the final day for submissions. If you’ve submitted, we’ll get back to you by February 29th.
Here’s more:
We hope you’ll consider writing an article for Confident Parents, Confident Kids! The site enjoys daily visitors from 152 countries around the world and a follow-ship of more than 24,000. Help initiate important dialogue making the connection between parenting at each age and stage and your children’s (and your own!) social and emotional development.
If interested, please email confidentparentsconfidentkids@gmail.com with the subject line: “Article Idea from an SEL Educator!” Please include your idea (parenting opportunity/challenge), how it connects to a social and emotional skill building opportunity (in your child and yourself!), and the ages/stages of children you are writing about. Also, please include a short bio or resume. All authors must have credentials/experience in education with SEL and be actively parenting in your own home. A diverse range of perspectives is encouraged. Articles must align with the research base.
We hope you’ll join our parent-led community of practice by contributing! We are so excited to learn from how you are bringing to life the science of social and emotional learning and development to benefit your children in your own personal parenting!
All the best, Jennifer Miller, Founder and…
Senior Lead Writers: Shannon Wanless, Jason Miller, Jenny Woo, Mike Wilson, Nikkya Hargrove, and Lorea Martinez
Check out the next webinar in this popular webinar series tomorrow, February 14th from 2:00-3:15 p.m. EST hosted by partners National Parent Teacher Association, Institute for Educational Leadership, and the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL). We’ll ask questions like:
How can we become more inclusive in our dialogue among diverse perspectives?
How can we focus on a shared vision and agenda for student learning and thriving?
What do educational buzzwords actually look like in practice when attempting to support and promote student learning?
…Even When We Were Raised Differently and It Doesn’t Come Naturally to Us
By Nikkya Hargrove
Bedtime is always a struggle in my house with 7-year-old twins. As they get older, they’ve learned, rather intelligently, how to squeeze out a little more time before bed with me. There are many stories they have to share, many of them are random and are clouded by their exhaustion like “When you were born in the ’80s, were there bike helmets?” Why they need to know the answer to this question, as I tuck them into bed, I have no idea. It’s taken me a little while to realize the true reason they prolong bedtime. It is because each night, without fail, I give each of them a kiss on the forehead and say “I love you.” Every single night. Because I want them to know they are loved, for who they are just as they are. My words matter to them and to me.
Saying I love you didn’t always come naturally to me.
As a child, I heard the words less frequently than I would have liked from people who didn’t have the gallon-sized love I needed as a child. I promised myself that the very moment I became a mother, I would give my kids the words that comforted me when I heard them. I got into the routine of saying it so much so that now I feel uneasy if I don’t say the words to those I love.
Saying “I love you” to my kids especially, and often multiple times a day, matters to me.
I hope it matters to them too. As parents, we know the power our words have to both build up our kids or break them down and it’s the latter I hope we all can avoid. When we want to teach our kids how powerful words can be, saying “I love you” helps. It teaches them that they are valued. It reassures them that they have a sense of security. It reminds them that they too have love to give and can say those three little words more easily.
Three little words carry so much weight.
They build and nurture relationships. There is a safe space in the room, in the air, when the words linger for just a moment. It also gives us (and our kids) the ability to be vulnerable. To not expect anything in return, except to consider what was said to them, especially when it comes from the heart. It is important for me to role model how to safely and in a purposeful way express love. I create a safe space for them to share their words, their feelings in a meaningful way, and why it matters. I too am learning or rather relearning how powerful these words can be. After I put them to bed, not always, but sometimes, I think about my childhood and my interactions with my caregivers.
In my household as a child, we did not handle words the way that I choose to handle them in my household with my kids or family today. My wife and I show our kids when we are angry or sad or some feeling in between…and if we don’t know what we are feeling we say that to them too. In my household, when an adult had feelings, big feelings about something, the kids didn’t necessarily know why. But when adults were mad, we knew, we heard it, and we felt it. When we heard the words “I love you,” it was something to be held onto in fear of losing it at some point, the feeling, the security of their words. And, that is what I never want my kids to question.
I never want them to wonder if they are loved. I never want them to think that their behavior or a mistake or a trophy or winning a soccer game will in any way change that love. When I tell them every morning before they go to school and every night before they close their eyes that I love them, they know it and can feel it. They can be reminded of my love for them when they open their lunch boxes and find a note from me reminding them of the same. “Remember how beautiful you are and how much you are loved!” I imagine someday in the not-so-distant future, they will want me to stop putting little notes in their lunch boxes. I know they will never tire of hearing me say to them: I love you.
*This beautifully written article seemed perfect in anticipation of Valentine’s Day. May you feel loved and give love to your family each day! Happy Valentine’s Day! Thank you, Nikkya!
Nikkya Hargrove is an alum of Bard College and a 2012 Lambda Literary Fellow. She has written for the The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Taproot Magazine, Elle, and more. Her memoir, Mama: A Black, Queer Woman’s Journey to Motherhood, is forthcoming from Algonquin Books. She lives in Connecticut with her one son and two daughters and is a staff writer for Scary Mommy. Learn more at https://www.nikkyamhargrove.com.
Confident Parents, Confident Kids “merits the attention of anyone working in social, emotional and character development who wants a place to send parents for ideas and advice and dialogue.”
– Maurice Elias, Professor of Psychology; Director, Rutgers Social-Emotional and Character Development Lab; Co-Director, Rutgers Collaborative Center for Community-Based Research and Service
ATTENTION — Writing Opportunity for Educators who are trained in Social and Emotional Learningand are also Parents
Not enough time to contribute to an academic journal but want to write?
Eager to reflect on how what you are learning professionally about advancing children’s social and emotional learning can help your own children?
We hope you’ll consider writing an article for Confident Parents, Confident Kids! The site enjoys daily visitors from 152 countries around the world and a follow-ship of more than 24,000. Help initiate important dialogue making the connection between parenting at each age and stage and your children’s (and your own!) social and emotional development.
If interested, please email confidentparentsconfidentkids@gmail.com with the subject line: “Article Idea from an SEL Educator!” Please include your idea (parenting opportunity/challenge), how it connects to a social and emotional skill building opportunity (in your child and yourself!), and the ages/stages of children you are writing about. Also, please include a short bio or resume. All authors must have credentials/experience in education with SEL and be actively parenting in your own home. A diverse range of perspectives is encouraged. Articles must align with the research base.
We hope you’ll join our parent-led community of practice by contributing! We are so excited to learn from how you are bringing to life the science of social and emotional learning and development to benefit your children in your own personal parenting!
All the best, Jennifer Miller, Founder and…
Senior Lead Writers: Shannon Wanless, Jason Miller, Jenny Woo, Mike Wilson, Nikkya Hargrove, and Lorea Martinez
“I worry about Jake in his room with the door shut. What’s he seeing that he doesn’t want us to see?” posed a friend with a worried brow. She goes on, “When we were teens, parents worried about curfews and what we were doing at other people’s houses but when we were home, they could breathe easy. They knew we were safe. Now, that’s not the case.” It’s true. Once children reach the age of owning their own personal devices — an age which seems to get younger with each passing year — we, as parents, have worries. And those worries are valid. The internet is still the wild, wild unregulated west, offering mostly free reign to publish any content including the very dark stuff.
The tech-in-every-person’s-hand world that we live in has created more isolation. For parents, it may feel like we are skating around the issue frequently but not often or ever able to enter our child’s private digital world. Even if we activate parental controls, there’s still a big world that can be accessed with the touch of a screen. Ownership is a natural human desire and with smartphones in particular, our children can become Gollum-like, “my precious!”, about them. When we try and stir conversation about what’s going in our teen’s social media world, they can become snappish or quiet. First, it’s their own world and that gives them a sense of independence and freedom they don’t enjoy in most of the rest of their lives. And second, how can you describe or even adequately reflect on the rush of images, messages, music, and videos that pass by on screens in nano-seconds? There may be themes but how can a teen call out those themes as they rush past them while scrolling?
Though my own experience of teen parents and parents in general is that we worry about social media, teens’ impressions of their parents (as found in a research study by Pew Trust) is that we don’t.1 Only one in five teens thought their parents’ worried about social media. That same research study showed that nearly half of teen parents regularly worry about social media. So how about you? Do you worry about social media, smartphones, or technology in general? What part of technology do you worry most about?
One concern is that teens do not feel like they are in the driver’s seat when it comes to social media and the information companies collect on them. Both parents’ worry and teens’ feelings of helplessness amount to a lack of agency. But we do not have to passively accept what’s on our screens. It’s worth looking at some small steps we can take to gain more control over our own usage and our teen’s to loosen the grip of worry and take action. When we do, we’ll have more confidence in our ability to meet the challenges we are faced with. So what can we do to cultivate agency in ourselves and in our children and teens related to technology in our lives?
Make the invisible visible to yourself, your teen, and your family. Work with your teen on how to be proactive – and take control – of their content and also who they connect with online. Here are a few ways you can promote their sense of agency — and your own!
Establish a Safe, Regular Digital Dialogue
Ask yourself, are your current interactions around social media psychologically safe from your teen’s perspective? If there’s been any inkling of a “gotcha” or fear in your questions of them, then the answer is likely no. So how can you turn that around and create a safe, ongoing dialogue about social media? Work to establish a new norm or expectation around your digital conversations. Turn that around by cultivating their trust in this area.
Focus on a two-week period and become intentional about your daily interactions – at least one digital and one in person – that are positive like sharing a post you laughed about or a video that you both might enjoy. Check yourself and your own comments after that two-week experiment. Do I have a balanced view – some positive experiences, some negative ones? If not, how am I seeking out more of the positive experiences? How am I sharing in the positive experiences with my teen? How am I creating a safe space to discuss social media so that when there is a problem, my teen will come to me?
2. Build Emotional Awareness.
When you are leaving a social media app, how are you feeling? Model your observations and become aware of yourself and your own reactions. Offer a simple story at your family dinnertime. “It seems like every time I come away from ____(insert social media)__, I end up feeling sad or anxious. I don’t like that.” The simple step of connecting your emotions to your experience of social media will help build that emotional awareness muscle in yourself and model it for family members.
3. Discuss/Educate on the Positive and Negative Effects of Images and Video.
Though research has struggled to pinpoint the extent of the impact of images and video on physical and mental health outcomes, we know that repeated traumatic imagery and video can have a harmful effect.2 What’s most important is that our children and teens understand that and look for ways to protect their own well-being. There are images that you cannot unsee. They stay in your mind. And as we discuss that fact with our son, he understands that if he goes looking for horror, for example, he might discover there are images he won’t want to view. It’s important to discuss that only one search for a curiosity can result in more of the same being sent to you. So go in and block together when undesirable content arises so that you teen knows exactly how to do it themselves and can take control of their viewing to a certain extent.
4. Take Steps to Self Manage and Share.
What steps can you take to self manage your own social media/smartphone intake? For example, leaving phones in a charging station somewhere other than bedrooms is one possible step. Another could be moving app accessibility so that it’s not staring at you when you open your phone. Tuck it away as a reminder that you need to go to that app less. Are there times of the day when leaving the phone behind or shutting it down is important like dinnertime, or supporting homework and study time? Discuss these as the steps you are taking and encourage your family to discuss how they’ll gain time if they come up with their own ideas and strategies for self management.
5. Cultivate Responsible Decision-making Skills.
Before downloading any new app, particularly for children and teens without the independence of their own credit card yet, learn together about it and it’s age-appropriateness before you download. Start this young and early if you can. Once you’ve shown your teen how to look up reviews — check out Common Sense Media! — and learn more about the content, they can take charge of their own vetting before they come and ask you for your money to download it.
Also be sure and discuss what is shareable personal information and what should not be shared. Play out potential consequences to draw connections between sharing their location today on an unsafe app and why that could be a dangerous move that could impact them in a week or two. Our teen’s cannot possibly be aware of all of the pitfalls…just as we aren’t. Discuss what and where information can and should be shared. Be sure and gain consent from your teens if you plan to share their information or photos. If they aren’t comfortable, don’t share their image. The trust has to work both ways!
Proactively talk about cyberbullying and toxic attacks. If you introduce the topic at a time when your teen seems willing to open up (car ride?) surely, they’ll have stories to tell! Share your own stories too and encourage blocking attackers. Teens can feel uncomfortable blocking anyone they know for fear of retribution from their peers. “But they’re not attacking me,” might be a teen’s logic. Yet, if you discuss the fact that consistent attackers require an audience and you are a willing participate if you remain a follower. And we know they will eventually turn on your teen. With that in mind, it might be easier for them to see it’s important to end the conversation.
6. Raise Algorithmic Awareness
Alright, the phrase doesn’t exactly roll easily off the tongue but it’s important for you and your teen to understand how the algorithms determine your social media experience. Though you may feel passive in your viewing habits, all social media is structured for interaction and every interaction — “thumbs up!” — gets coded as data about your viewing habits. Instead of mindless viewing, you can take some control over what you view and help your teen do the same. Take some time to discuss all of the things your teen loves including causes they might be passionate about. Maybe they love sloths or travel or photography or crafting or train modeling or playing drums? Maybe they are concerned about ways we can help the homeless or address the world’s environmental issues? Make a list of all the things they love. Now encourage them to go into their social media proactively and check out sites and profiles in their interest areas. Encourage them to really review the history of posts to ensure it’s a positive addition. Then, they can follow those new feeds and do a deep dive into what they love. If you or they pick well, it will fill their feed with enriching, inspiring content. That’s digital agency!
Navigating technology continues to pose challenges for teens and parents alike. But we can become more conscious of the ways we are taking it in, when we take it, and how we take it in. We can proactively seek out quality content — like you are right here, right now! — and make sure that we load our feeds with inspiration, factual knowledge, and enrichment. How are you adding to the those areas on social media – inspiration, factual knowledge, and enrichment? Technology is simply the tool. It’s humans who create the content. Ultimately, we can have digital agency.
With winter weather advisories becoming a daily event, we are at the apex of the winter season. And though this winter has arrived late for many, it is now giving its full performance…sub-zero wind chills, icy roads, and snow showers. I’m even hearing from my friends and colleagues in Texas and Florida that they are experiencing unprecedented cold temperatures. Yet, we press on with school work and work deadlines. Often, the intensity of school and work feel like a fight in the winter as we have to work against our instinctual tendencies to hibernate or participate in hygge, the cozy conditions we’ve learned are traditional in Denmark and Norway, in order to meet expectations. The physical fight includes the layering of clothing necessary to prepare to go outside for ourselves and of course, the social emotional fight we may have to engage in with our children or teens. “You need the heavy coat. No, that one! You need gloves. You have to wear a hat.” Need I go on? There’s also the physical push through the wind, snow, and ice when outside, the dark beginning and ending of our work days, and the moisture draining heat being pumped into indoor environments all day long. For some reason, each year I seem to need to review why I am feeling so tired. This is why.
Our children and teens are feeling the struggle. And because our children can be naturally more present to the rhythms their bodies feel and require, they can get cranky and upset fast and easily. So in addition to the many other ways we are fighting to keep ourselves in the school/work game, we have to contend with grumpy family members who just aren’t feeling it. All this is a call to find times to renew by embracing the season and feeling the relief of aligning with winter’s rhythms. Yesterday, I texted a friend around 5:00 p.m. when the sun was dipping low and the dark closing in and she said she was cozy in bed after meeting a huge work deadline. My immediate thought was: “she’s got the right idea!”
In our New Year’s Parenting Dialogue on Friday – thank you to many who attended live! – Shannon Wanless talked about being intentional about creating moments of joy… inserting them, taking them, making them whenever she sees a window of opportunity. In the winter season, it seems that looking for ways to lean into our natural inclinations for rest, for care, for gentleness feel like the way to do that. What does this look like? It’s certainly unique to each family but here are a few ideas.
With young children, getting outdoors to play in the snow can be a wonderful way to spend a wintery day. But when temperatures dip into the teens and below, the risk of frostbite is too high so the indoors is our best option. If family members are wanting more quiet amidst wiggly, energetic bodies, getting those wiggles out with a dance party break or a vigorous game of hide and go seek will make a difference. Nothing gets a young child in the flow of play like water play whether in a warm bath or sink. Include plenty of bowls, spoons, and either kitchen tools or bath toys to pretend, funnel, and sift. On dry land, create worlds by building cities, farms, or designing gardens with households objects, toys, books, construction paper, paper towel tubes, and drawings.
With all ages, when you are all ready to slow down, read together. Building a fire or lighting a candle sends a beacon of light in your home to gather around. Discover books together or read separately warmed by the same light.
Care for your backyard animals and mindfully observe them. Lay out birdseed, corn, berries, and fresh water for squirrels and birds and peek out of your windows together to watch the beautiful creatures who come to your feeders. Here are some easy tips from the Humane Society on ways to safely feed birds and squirrels that are most helpful during the winter months.
Do art. Laying out art materials, sketch pads, markers, coloring pencils, paints, and journals for writing can also captivate all ages and get them into the flow of creating. Need inspiration for what to draw or make? Look through the past year’s photos and see if they provide ideas.
Allow for rest. I notice my son falling asleep after a full day of school and play rehearsal. It’s not a matter of avoiding homework. He’s truly exhausted. And most nights, we have to wake him to get his work accomplished. But on occasion – on lighter nights – we leave him alone and let him rest. Where are the small windows that you can allow for rest and rejuvenation amidst the press of the season?
Take care of your own winter heart. As the trees are laid bare, their warmth, light and life is far inside their core — their trunk. So too, we can be laid bare in the wintertime and that can make us feel uncomfortably vulnerable. We may fear the darkness. As adults, we may claim we no longer fear the dark. But when I have honest and vulnerable conversations with family and friends, they admit that winter poses a unique kind of challenge. Many fear that if they fall into the winter rhythms, they may sink into sadness and depression and never emerge. Yet, by the very definition, rhythms change, seasons change. If we spend our time moving quickly to escape the sadness, bareness, or vulnerability we may feel in the cold of winter, we do not feel through to the other side. And that repression can harm ourselves or turn outward and harm others. So how can you take care of your winter heart?
One of my favorite authors – Mark Nepo – offers these questions in the book Seven Thousand Ways to Listen; Staying Close to What Is Sacred (pg. 49-50). I offer them to you to ask of yourself and reflect on to give you a head start in taking care of your own winter heart.
– Are you holding your breath anywhere in your life?
– What will it take for you to breath more deeply again?
– How goes your practice of emptying and opening, your practice of staying a beginner?
– Are you keeping what is true before you?
– How are you listening for the learnings you were born with?
– Is there a change you are resisting or not listening to?
– Are you letting the injury or limitation of one thing limit all things?
– Are you listening to the part of your life that is trying to wake?
– What old definition or plan can you put down that will return you to the freshness of now?
– Can you endure your uncertainty until it shows you another, deeper way?
May you find ways to engage in the rhythms of the winter season to feel the renewal that is possible as it allows us to get quiet, go within, and discover the seeds of hope there.
At the heart of every revolutionary is a person who sees from a different perspective, often a larger perspective. Instead of following rules and other people’s expectations, they actively set out to change the rules and expectations. I’ve written about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the visionary, the peacemaker, and the courageous. This year, I am reflecting on Dr. King, the nonviolent revolutionary and what insights we can learn today from him in our roles as parents, caregivers, and changemakers.
There was much talk of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s nonviolent protests in India and their ability to change the treatment of the poorest citizens named “untouchables” in America’s South in the early to mid 1950s. With many years already spent in laying the seeds of change and small scale efforts, Dr. King’s leadership of the civil rights movement was beginning to take its first large scale steps. And according to Harris Wofford’s “Of Kennedys and Kings: Making Sense of the Sixties,” Dr. King credits a quiet seamstress as the catalyst for the large scale civil disobedience that followed.1 Rosa Parks claims she got on the bus with the same intention she had every other day of her life – to go home from work to be with her family. But that fateful day when she was told to go the back of the bus, a flame grew within her of courage and conviction. “It’s a sudden spark like that that starts great conflagrations — when the tinder is ready,” reflected Dr. King later (p. 114). What followed – led by Dr. King and the Women’s Political Council – was the Montgomery, Alabama Bus Boycott planned originally as a one-day event. This daylong protest expanded into a twelve-month protest involving 50,000 souls.2
Before the bus boycotts began, they agreed to nonviolent principles and also, to three basic demands for change including: 1. courteous treatment by bus operators, 2. seating on a first come, first serve basis, and 3. Black American bus operators were employed for predominantly Black-populated routes.
Dr. King led the civil rights movement in part through his wise, charismatic oration and stirred crowds to visionary, aligned action. Here’s what he told the packed Church the day after Rosa was arrested for her civil disobedience and the evening before the bus boycott began:
…Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, and pray for them that despitefully use you. If we fail to do this our protest will end up as a meaningless drama on the stage of history. If you will protest courageously, and yet with dignity and love, when the history books are written in future generations, the historians will have to pause and say, “There lived a great people — a black people — who injected new meaning and dignity into the veins of civilization (p. 115).“
– Harris Wofford, “Of Kennedys and Kings; Making Sense of the Sixties”
Nonviolent protest was to be the differentiator, the powerful lever of change. And it worked. The Montgomery Bus Boycotts resulted in the Supreme Court ruling that segregation on public buses was unconstitutional. Why did it work? We know their opposition would use violent force. Yet with enough people to unite and show a healthier way society can live, that force overpowers old, outdated beliefs and practices. Evolution continues to advance.
As a changemaker, we can learn, model and teach our children the discipline of nonviolent communication. We can use nonviolent language (non-aggressive, non-blaming yet assertive and responsible) in our adult relationships. These skills can prepare them for uncertainty, injustice, and hardship like no other set of practices. These tools ensure that they can navigate relationships in healthy, generative ways and when they meet destructive forces can, with confidence, move out of harm’s way or refuse to move or participate in a way that changes the dynamic but does not harm individuals.
Can you imagine the resistance to Dr. King’s radical idea? If you followed him, you might be tear-gassed, you may be shot, dragged to prison, beaten in any number of ways. How might you be convinced that the means of nonviolent protests is worth the suffering for the opportunity of a sea change? This applies to family life too – I promise! Let’s look at power versus force from a book by the same name…3
If we analyze the nature of force, it becomes readily apparent why it must always succumb to power; this is in accordance with the basic laws of physics. Because force automatically creates counter-force, its effect limited by definition. Power, on the other hand, is still. It’s like a standing field that doesn’t move…Power gives life and energy — force takes these away. (p. 132).
David Hawkins, MD, PhD, “Power Versus Force; The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior”
Force creates a winner and loser. Power retains agency – your own and others. Perhaps now you see the many implications for your parenting and indeed for any relationship you value in your life. Here are a few reflections Dr. King might whisper for you to consider:
– When do you empower your children or teens to make choices, to learn how to do tasks for themselves, to co-create rules and routines together? When do you teach, model, and practice healthy ways to resolve conflicts building skills?
– When do you use force? Do you punish? Do you act in ways that intend to hurt? How does it make you feel? How does your child feel? Do you experience counter-force? What does your child learn from those interactions? Are there alternative ways of teaching, modeling, practicing and coaching the positive behaviors you want to see you might consider?
–How do you own your role in the creation of hurt or harm even if inadvertant? How do you voice that role with those harmed? And how do you courageously repair harm when needed?
– How do you refuse to participate or go your own pathway when harm can come to you, your children, or others by participating? How do you make moral decisions that fly in the face of social expectations in order to preserve dignity, belonging, and well-being? How do you align with communities who share the values in valuing human dignity?
–How do you, as Dr. King did, share stories with your family of people you admire who were able to speak truth to power or to act in ways that created justice and a better, healthier, more equitable way forward?
These are key models of skills for your children and teens. And they are watching and learning from you!
There’s a reason the book “Nonviolent Communication; A Language of Life” by Marshall B. Rosenberg is in its third edition.4 It lays out in simple terms the ways in which we can communicate assertively, kindly, and firmly to keep our relationships healthy and generative. Often, these ways of communicating are not only not intuitive but they require focused practice and discipline. That’s because we have largely been raised in a “force” paradigm so that aggression – passive or active – is a regular part of the language we are accustomed to. Yet, these changes can make a significant impact in our relationships. Here are a few of the key principles Rosenberg lays out with my own adaptations for parents and caregivers.
Observe instead of evaluate.
It’s been said that observation versus judgement is the highest form of human intelligence. And if you’ve practiced mindfulness in any form, you have practice in non-judgmental observation. Have you ever spied an unsafe or problematic behavior in your child and merely stated that you notice it? If you have, you’ll note that if your child is aware that what they are doing is unsafe or inappropriate, they are likely to turn around the behavior with your simple observation only.
To turnaround behavior:
“I notice it’s dinnertime and you haven’t started on homework.”
“I notice the garbage is full.”
To reinforce behavior:
“I notice you got your homework done before dinner.”
“I notice you made your bed this morning.”
“I notice you were ready and on time!”
This can work with any family member of course, not just in the parent-child role.
Express feelings and needs.
Though both of these may sound easy, they tend to offer the greatest challenge. The reason is that each place the owner of the feelings and needs in a place of vulnerability. Yet that is precisely the stance necessary in order to move a conflict forward in a healthy way. If you are arguing with someone including your child, they can become fearful or suspicious if they feel your anger or anxiousness but do not have the full insight from you to explain and understand your inner state. Here’s how you might express yourself:
“I’m feeling intensely frustrated with… myself, the situation. I feel helpless too.”
“I need to gain more of a sense of control.” Or “I need to pause to calm my insides.”
Take responsibility for our own feelings and role.
This can be the vital distinction between healthy relationships and enmeshed or co-dependent relationships. In taking responsibility, we avoid the pitfall we are susceptible to of projecting our own feelings on another’s heart when we solely own our inner state and role. We offer our loved ones agency when we approach with curiosity but not assumption about their feelings and needs. And we avoid the blame game (which automatically creates a “force” dynamic) when we own our role in a problem and not any other part of the problem. If taking responsibility for our part (and if we are engaged in a conflict, we always play a part. It takes two after all.), then we open the door to the other to take their own responsibility for their feelings and role. Rosenberg writes about emotional slavery versus emotional liberation in the following ways:
Emotional slavery. We feel responsible for other people’s feelings.
Stepping toward liberation – We feel anger to free from being responsible for other’s feelings. If we allow, accept, and honor this feeling, we can achieve…
Emotional liberation – when we take responsibility for only our own intentions and actions.
4. Request honesty and “that which would enrich life.”
Whether in conflict with a child, a partner, a co-worker or a friend, after we’ve owned our feelings and needs, we can ask for honesty from them. How are they feeling? What is their role? What responsibility can they take? Without honesty, it can leave us stuck swirling in the problem without the heart information to move ahead, to mend, to heal. We have a right to ask our intimate others – how can we proceed in a way that enriches our lives collectively?
Sometimes this honesty can only be brought about when we ensure the other that unconditional love is present. Our children must hear: “I love you no matter what.” Isn’t that what Dr. King was insisting of the congregation before they not only inconvenienced their daily lives but literally put themselves and their families in mortal danger?
This is one of the many lessons essential to understanding how to raise confident kids by acting as confident parents that Dr. King and the civil rights movement continue to teach us. Thank you, Dr. King, Rosa Parks, and the many others who courageously demonstrated a better way of living.
Thank you to the many who have already signed up! This is going to be a wonderful chance to reflect on the many challenges we face as parents and how we can meet them with agency and skill — and support one another in doing it!
Last chance for sign ups – Free! Hope to see you there.
This Friday, January 12, 2024 at 1:00 pm EST/12 pm CT/10 am PT
Sign up on the form below free and we’ll send you the Zoom link to join! We’ll be discussing the year’s hottest topics related to parenting children and teens and we’ll take your questions too. Join Jennifer Miller, Jason Miller, Mike Wilson, and Shannon Wanless and gain insights to seed your ideas for the coming year. We’ll be sure at the end to give you time to set your own intentions based on any ideas and inspiration you’ve discovered with us!
One reader and President of a Mom’s Club in Gaithersburg, MD writes, “on first reading...phenomenal! Exactly what I needed right now. I just started checking out books again, feeling like I was doing "something" wrong. I just wasn't feeling great about some of my interactions and felt like I needed a jump start. This blog is putting me back in the right mind frame. It is informative, supportive, yummy! It just makes me feel capable..and like I am talking to my best friend about it!”
Maurice Elias, author of Emotionally Intelligent Parenting and Psychology Professor at Rutgers University writes…
Confident Parents, Confident Kids “merits the attention
of anyone working in social, emotional and character development who wants a place to send parents for ideas and advice and dialogue.”
