“We’re excited that The ‘Perfect’ Parent is joining this year’s list of award-winning products,” says Julie Kertes, NAPPA General Manager.
The Ultimate Holiday Emotions Tranquilizer
Posted on November 30, 2012
With the holidays around the corner, BUSY ENERGY is on the rise! Busy-ness in malls, parking lots, traffic, demeanor, and facial expressions: they’re all clearly responding to the busy minds with long to-do lists. As we know, hyped emotions and feelings looking for an outlet are also linked to busy-ness. And yikes! The kids are almost out of school! So here’s an emotions tranquilizer from my upcoming book, The Perfect Parent. It guarantees tranquility and harmony for emotional outbursts and uproars. DEALING with the FEELING: 1. SPOT it and SAY it: Spot the feeling that your child is feeling and say it. Put it in words. LIKE THIS: ”I can see you’re angry (or hurt, or sad…) Benefit: this helps your child (and you) identify the emotion and put it in words which will start to turn the volume of the noise down. This is a research-proven tool for minimizing the intensity of emotions. 2. OKAY IT: Offer approval and validation for the feelings. LIKE THIS: ”It’s okay. I can understand why you’re feeling like this,” or ”It’s okay to be angry,” or ”I would be angry, too, if my brother did that to me.” And if you’re a man (or a woman!) of few words and/or if your kids are older, you can ”spot it, say it, and okay it” all in one breath, like this: ”I can see you’re angry and I can understand that. I would be angry, too, if my brother ripped my poster.” Benefit: This validates and acknowledges the child’s feelings and behavior which is another huge step toward promoting noise reduction and tranquility. Dealing with the feeling using “spot it, say it, and okay it” will automatically and naturally open the doors to the next step: conflict resolution. Now that you have dealt with the feelings, you can glide into resolving the issue as your parental instinct guides you! Try it with your kids this week when the opportunity arises. Then, next week, tune in for some trigger words that can help when YOU, the parents, are having trouble dealing with YOUR feelings! In Joy.
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