Help! I Have a Parenting Emergency!
HANDLING A PARENTING CRISIS
The Scenario
Imagine you and your spouse highly value the trait of honesty. You leave the price tags on all your purchases so you can declare everything at the border and pay the appropriate duties and taxes; you always write to the publisher for permission before photocopying a page of a book; you pay full price rather than have anyone make copies of anything for you—and so on.
So imagine your shock, dismay and grief when you get called into the principle’s office regarding your 16 year-old-daughter who has been caught cheating on her math exam. It turns out that this is not the first incident, but the principle had agreed to work things out privately with your daughter on previous occasions. Now, however, the silence had to be broken since it has become obvious that your daughter is not able to help herself on her own.
You listen to the principle as your daughter sits with you, head bowed. You are confused, ashamed, distraught. You nod as the principle speaks but your mind is all over the place. Finally, the principle sends your daughter back to class and you leave the school. What are you feeling as you take the long drive home? What do you experience over the course of the next hours, waiting for your daughter to return from school?
Parental Shock
Situations like this happen to parents like you all the time. The issue could be discovering that a child cheats or it could be any other issue: the child steals or lies or abuses younger children. The child has a “secret life” with friends you don’t know about. The child is taking drugs or abusing alcohol. The child smokes cigarettes. The child is having an inappropriate relationship. Whatever it is that the child is doing, it is not in accordance with the upbringing you have offered. How could this happen? After all that you instilled! Do you not know your own child? How long has this been going on?
Most parents, learning that their child has disregarded their prime values and educational efforts, feel anger, deep disappointment, helplessness and loss of control. . Some parents feel guilt, feeling it is somehow their fault, something that they did or did not do all these years. They feel like dismal failures. Depending on what the child has done and how public the action is, the parents may feel varying degrees of humiliation and shame
Confronting the Issue
Despite the overflow of emotions, parents must be practical in the moment. How should the child be handled once the issue is in the open? In our “cheating scenario” above, the mother waits at home for her daughter to return from school. How should she greet her? With the usual cheery welcome? With cold silence? With a snarled order to meet her in the kitchen for a “talk?” And if the mother is seething with emotion, what sort of “talk” will transpire? Many parents, freshly stunned from learning shocking, unpleasant information about a child, lash into the child at the first opportunity: “What were you thinking? Is there something wrong with you? After all these years do you not understand the importance of what we have taught you? Are you dense? I can’t believe that a daughter of mine would behave in this way. In fact, you are no daughter of mine! You are an embarrassment to this family! Etc., Etc., Etc.”
If parents confront a child while their own emotions are still teaming inside, the results are likely to be disastrous. Harm can be done to the parent-child bond as well as to the child him or herself. The time for confrontation is always a “teaching moment”—a time in which the parents’ emotions are settled and the child is in a calm, receptive state. This might be hours or days after a child returns home from school. The first order of the day is for the parent to tune inside to help herself before attempting to address her child.
Dealing with Feelings
The parent needs to get out of the “shock” stage first. Just grounding oneself in one’s daily routine can be helpful for this: carry on with the tasks of the day, go shopping, make dinner, go back to work, come home. Don’t even try to think about what you just learned. Rather, let the body and mind gently absorb the shock and re-orient toward the present. Soon, you’ll be able to think more clearly. When this happens, tend to the emotions first. Think about the upsetting incident and notice what is happening physically inside your body (lump in throat, pit in stomach and so forth). See if you can name the feelings you are feeling. Write them down, one at a time. Look for 6 to 10 or more feeling words. Just naming feelings helps to contain and soothe them. Talk to others who can support you: a friend, spouse, mental health professional or other compassionate listener. Meanwhile, remember that not everything in parenting is your fault! In fact, the child spends most of his or her day and life away from you, influenced by other people. In addition, the child has his or her own free will, inherited personality traits and other influences. You are certainly part of the picture and you do have some influence and input but you DO NOT have any control. Your child is a separate, free human being on his or her own life journey.
Remind yourself that you will be able to best help your child by talking respectfully and caringly about the issue at hand. You are there as a helpful guide through good times and not so good times. Your job description hasn’t changed: you are still your child’s educator. Your child needs you now.
Dealing with the Child
Once you are calm and settled, you can think about the message you want to convey to your child. What do you want your child to know? In order to deliver the message, first connect to the child with emotional coaching (name what you think are the childs feelings about all this). Only AFTER emotional coaching is it appropriate to give advice, information or other forms of guidance. Discipline, when necessary, would follow these steps.
Parenting can create an emotional crisis at times. That’s just part of the parenting journey. The main thing is to calm the crisis before attempting to help one’s child.
