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November 18, 2013

Parents Who Are Interested In Quiet – Conflict Resolution

Have you ever felt like a referee when you children are fighting over what seems to be such a silly object?

As a parent most of us has gone to the older child who is the most likely to listen to us, therefore ending the conflict the quickest, and asking them to walk away or to give in to the other child? It is easy to understand that this can contribute to the resentment the older child feels for the younger child. Soon the child will grow tired of being the one responsible for resolving the conflict – with the younger child seeming to “win” all of those battles. As Bill Cosby once said, “Parents are not interested in justice, they’re interested in quiet!”

Families are teams and parents you are the coach. The job of the coach is to set the tone for the family (team) and teach skills that help all the players to get along and for the team to be successful. As Coach we are not allowed to trade our players to another team and we should not pretend that we are doing great when we are not, nor can we hide from the problem at the refreshment stand. As Coach we would like to get the players all on the same page and have good sportsmanship. As the Coach we set the example, teach the skills, and keep some order in the “locker room”. There are times when we need to bench one of the players, but most important is teaching skills to resolve conflict. Check out the Conflict resolution handout.

Virtually all behavior that creates conflict is done so in order to get attention and to fill a need. The four area of needs that we get met when we have conflict and become angry is:

Attention
Power struggle
Revenge
Learned helplessness

We will discuss all of these in other post’s in the weeks to come.

November 15, 2013

5 Emotions That Trigger Most Anger

When I observe anyone who is expressing anger with a behavior that is damaging to themselves or to others I personally feel their pain. There are many causes for the way we feel and express anger but they can be generally summed up with emotions or events:

Embarrassment – not achieving a personal goal
Loss of respect – shown by an invasion of space either verbally or physically
Fear – feeling of inadequacy, not being enough,
Shame – Not being happy with ourselves in a certain way, then projecting that on others.
Sadness – Grieving over a loss and the unfairness of that loss to ourselves.

I am sure that there are other causes but these 5 sum up the majority of causes of anger. The most common one is Fear. That little reptilian part of our brain that causes us to react when we perceive an attack by either Freezing, Fighting or Fleeing causes some people to appear angry when in fact they are very scared underneath.

Learning about ourselves is the first step in managing our anger. Which one of these is creating our reactions? Do we show anger the most when we are embarrassed, disrespected, fearful, shamed, or sad? When we can identify what is happening within ourselves, then we can think about what is happening to others, including our children.

I have seen all of these situations and the causes can go very deep. In my own case it was not until I realized that the death of my father at a very early age was the part of the reason I was so quick to react to situations. Knowing this allowed me to look more deeply at myself and find other triggers. This is the work in anger management that I do now, helping others, including children to learn to recognize and communicate their personal triggers.

November 13, 2013

How Others See You May Trigger Emotional Reactions

The way we see ourselves and the way others perceive us are usually not the same and many times are very far apart. We discussed the 6 different identities that take place in a conversation in our last post. Many times we are unaware of how our behavior appears or is experienced. For instance if we are a much taller or bigger person than those we are interacting with, just because of size we may come off as intimidating.

There may be other reasons others may feel intimidated including our voice, body language or facial expressions. It may be the quickness that we speak or the critical nature of our speech. We may be prone to outbursts or sarcasm that in our mind are acceptable, but to others is seen as abrasive and put-downs. Our words or actions may be triggering in others reactions that may trigger a reaction in ourselves. This spiral of emotional triggers can very easily get out of control.

While we may have many positive character traits, we will never know how others perceive us unless we ask and are open to how others perceive us. This step of becoming aware of our effect on others will help us decide if we need to adjust our reactions and find ways to respond that are not aggressive or intimidating. – need to be aware of the intimidation factor that comes with the position we hold so that our expressions are not seen as intimidating others.

Using empathy we can ask ourselves, “If I was being spoken to at this time in this manner would I feel safe or unsafe.” Answering very honestly will give us feedback in how we would like to proceed.

November 11, 2013

Learning Conflict Resolution Begins With Listening

In conflict resolution the ability to express ourselves without blaming or accusing another person of something is the first part of being able to more quickly come to a resolution. The second part is to be able to listen closely. In any conversation that requires clear communication, being able to express ourselves and listen to the expression of others. This can be difficult because really there are 6 different identities involved.

Person A the real self
Person B the real self
Person A – the way they see themselves
Person B – the way they see themselves
Person A – the way they see Person B
Person B – the way they see Person A

The most important of these 6 selves is how you are seen by the other person. If we are to come to a resolution of any conflict, we must first be able to listen to the other party and understand what they see in us, how they are hearing our messages.In regard to impact the words we say are not as important as other factors. This is how it breaks down:

Only 7-10% of what is heard by the other person is the actual content of what we are saying.
33-40% is the impact of our voice, how fast we are talking, the tone of our voice, the pitch and the inflection of our voice.
50-60 % of what is heard is done with non-verbals, facial expressions, gestures and other body language.

It is easy to see why we may feel that we are not understood. The two most important factors when we are listening or speaking is the way the other person perceives us by our verbal and non verbal impact.

November 8, 2013

Learning About Taking Care of Our Teeth

I was shocked to learn that tooth decay is not as dangerous as the acidic drinks and toothpaste we are using.

On Thursday morning at the South Anne Arundel Rotary Club we had a speaker from Wooddell & Passaro Dental Group. Now normally this would not be something that I would worry too much about, but this presentation opened my eyes to a danger both to adults and to kids that I believe all of us need to be aware of. I learned:

Sports drinks are worse for your teeth even that soft drinks
Acid reflux can increase the amount of enamel decay, cupping and yellowing of teeth
Dry mouth symptoms does not allow the saliva to do its job in protecting the teeth

Unfortunately our children are drinking more sports drinks than ever before and this not only is affecting their teeth but is also associated with poor bone health, diabetes and obesity. It is also easy to misdiagnose what is happening to your teeth and increasing the amount of brushing with highly abrasive tooth paste is contributing to the problem with disintegrating of teeth in children and adults.

What can you do? Get educated on the subject and the products that we use to clean our teeth and the foods that we consume.

Limit the acidic drinks
Use a straw when drinking acidic drinks
Never drink acidic drinks when a dry mouth is present
Drink water to rehydrate
Wait one hour after drinking an acidic drink prior to brushing your teeth.

Would you like to learn more? I learned this information from the Wooddell & Passaro dentist practice in Davidsonville MD. If you would like to hear them speak on this subject, let me know and we will look into doing one of our Parent Workshop’s at Balanced Life Skills on this subject. Both Joe and James were great presenters and I know everyone would benefit from their knowledge.

4C_DrinksDestroyTeeth_2013

November 6, 2013

Should We Keep This Friendship Or Back Away?

Friendship is one of the most precious gifts that we can give or receive from another. But for the friendship to thrive it must be of value to both parties. In fact if the friendship becomes one-sided – if you are the one that is reaching out or being asked to always do for the other – it may be a sign that the friendship does not have an appropriate give and take. This sort of demand of one party over the other may be an indication that there is an imbalance in the relationship.

For adults we may begin to tire of the giving or we may just feel calmer or happier when we are not around the other person who is always taking from us. If we are a child, we may notice that the other person is demanding all of our time and attention. They may want to play their games only or they may not share very well.

When this happens it may be time to broaden our scope of relationships and look to find those that treat us with respect, are honest and are there for us when we need them. This does not mean that we need to have some kind of big talk with the other person, whether we are an adult or a child. It may mean that we just need to back away a little and take a little break.

There may be times though that we will want to have a talk about the relationship. If this is the case, remembering to be honest and assertive with respect, but not critical, is key to having this kind of conversation. In dealing with kid’s relationships we want to remember that just because we enjoy the company of the parents, does not mean that our kids are going to be or have to be friends. Keeping our adult relationships adult and our kids friends their friends is much healthier for our kids than trying to force them to be friends with someone they do not like or have little in common with, except their parents that like each other.