We all know how hard it is to stay calm when your child is having a tantrum because soccer practice is over (or in the grocery checkout line, or after school...). Especially when that lady watching you leans in and says "You just need to...." She has no idea what you need to do. She probably has no idea what your child needs, or what it feels like to mother your child as they fall apart in a public place. Here's the deal: no matter what you do, it's not going to work unless YOU are calm. The best methods will fail with parental calm. There are many reasons why, but here are a few based on the research in education and co-regulation:Calm decreases the chance that the parent will escalate.  When you are calm, you are able to stay with the plan- sticking with a plan is crucial. This is especially the case when you are changing your parenting methods. Until Positive Parenthood becomes second nature, it's critical you make a plan and commit to following through even when, and if it's awkward. After all, that's how we learn. But to do that, you've got to stay calm. Calm decreases the chance of a deadlock of wills. When you get into a fixed, deadlock position (as in, there is NO WAY you are going to budge) your child often mirrors your state (see our work on co-regulation). If you're deadlocked, and your kid is deadlocked... it's pretty unlikely either of you has the emotional capacity to shift the dynamic and move into a more regulated state that allows you to move forward. Children benefit from seeing and feeling your calm: this is where co-regulation is so critical. When you are calm in the middle of a conflict, children see that it's possible to have conflict without excessive anger or without giving up in dismay. By watching you, they learn to regulate through a range of emotional states with another person. These are lessons that will serve your child for their entire life- all people need to be able to move through frustration and challenge in positive ways. You are the model for your child, so show them with your own behavior how you want them to respond during challenging times. Calm parents are less exhausted, more energized, positive, and inspired. It's just more enjoyable, and more fun to be a calm parent.  The research is clear: we've got to calm down. It's hard in a world with a million things happening at once and other adults commenting on your parenting, but it's imperative. The kind of calm you're shooting for is a calm that is warm and accepting. It is a calm that invites connection. Sometimes, we get calm and flat, detached and uninvolved, and totally shut down when things are challenging with our children. To be clear- this is not what we want when we think about calm. We want a quality of calm that invites the child to connect, not that blankets everyone in silence and pretends whatever is going awry isn't happening at all. Think about the quality of calm that you like most- the one that makes your belly feel warm and your shoulder muscles relax. That presence- open, grounded, inviting- is what you want to offer to your child all the time, but especially during times of extreme challenge.

We are visiting my in-laws in Mexico. There are many different cups for my children to drink juice and water from, but there are two that have built in straws. I have three children, and they all love these straw-cups. We've had a lot of big feelings about the straw-cups, and who gets to use them. This morning, I sat at the breakfast table with one child on either side of me and the third in my lap. They were eating empanadas prepared by their tía and there was a big jug of lemonade on the table. Of course, the one who did not get a straw-cup proceeded to have some big feelings about how no other cup would do. Sisters were not down for sharing, though one offered that after she finished her lemonade, the straw-cup-less sister could have her cup. I had a couple choices: I could respond with dear child, stop crying. It's a cup we're talking about. Either way, you get the lemonade. Calm down, it's not ok to make sure a scene when your auntie just made you a delicious breakfast. That is what was running through my head, spurred by my desire that my children express gratitude for this family member helping us with breakfast. I was feeling embarrassed that my children couldn't just hold it together about a cup, for goodness sake. Do you see how my own feelings were already jumping all over my response to my little girl, tears running down her face about the straw-cup? So I took a deep breath. I held my hand over my heart and sang to myself mama said mama said, there'd be days like this, there'd be days like this my mama said . I opened my eyes, and my child was still very very upset. And I was calm enough to reach for a relationship based parenting tool- The Three Yeses. I asked her three questions to which she could answer yes. In this moment, I asked... So you really love that straw-cup? You're a little mad your sisters are using both straw-cups? The straw cup is your favorite? Yes, yes, and yes. This is my mom's approach- you see, I have the blessing/curse of being the daughter of deeply experience educator and parenting guru Dr. Robin Hauge- and we will be LIVE sharing our approach to managing big feelings on Thursday, January 23 at 6pm PST. Grab your spot now before it fills up! She quieted. My yes-questions did not fix the situation: she still didn't have the cup she wanted. But they did help her feel felt and understood. She sat quietly on my lap. She waited. She was definitely sad, but she wasn't yelling, hitting, or otherwise making a scene. Eventually, sister finished her lemonade and the child on my lap got the straw cup. I want to note a couple of things: one, it took me calming myself down before I could ask three questions to the child from her perspective. Then, the three yeses didn't fix the situation, nor were they supposed to remedy the child's ailment. This tool is about the relationship: its about nourishing the child as a whole, and her feelings so that she may learn and practice navigating a range of emotions. After all, that's what is going to happen to her in life, right? Sometimes she will get the things she wants and sometimes she won't. Something she will work hard for something and it still won't turn out how she wished, and other times there might not be anyone willing to give up their stuff or stake in things to offer it to her. So this window of development- this short time in which I have her under my care- is a chance for me to help her learn to deal with disappointment, frustration, and anger. I talked to the mom of a teenage girl after we finished with the straw-cup fiasco, and she recounted how sullen her fourteen year old had been on a recent family trip to the snow. The trip was sponsored by the grandparents, and much like how I was embarrassed about my child's upset about the straw-cup, through this mom's words I heard an undercurrent of embarrassment, of desire for the girl to thank her grandparents, to participate kindly and sweetly in the family adventure. In this situation too, though, all of our desire that our teen be a certain way tends to fall flat or worse, result in eruption. This young woman sighed a lot of big sighs, threw an awful lot of aggressive looks, refused to give up her phone and didn't smile once when the family went out for dinner. The three yeses is apt here, too. Like the little one, this teenager needs to feel felt and understood. Do you ever remember being in your teens and knowing without a doubt that your parents definitely didn't understand?!?! We're going to bet that's how this young woman felt- like her family was incapable of understanding. Humans need to feel felt and understood in order to grow and learn. Teenagers are in a life stage where they are pulling away from their parents in order to turn towards their friends, and it's painful for all involved. So what might have been The Three Yeses for this young woman? Perhaps you really wish your friends were here? You are counting the days to go home? You think this cabin in the snowy mountains is boring? The Three Yeses don't fix anything: the child didn't get the cup and the teen doesn't get to leave the family vacation. Rather, they foster a felt sense of togetherness. They give us a frame for communicating to our young people... we are here with you, and we love you however you are. What we want to communicate to our children and young people is that no matter what, we love them and that all kinds of feelings are OK. Once that is established, it is then that together the parent and the child or teen can work on dealing with tricky feelings and moving through the towards joy. Join us on Thursday, Jan 23 at 6pm PST over Zoom for conversation about The Three Yeses and how joining your kid's upset supports positive emotional development, relationship building, and the holy grail... cooperation! Sign up by clicking here!

Picture this: Seven year old comes in from school. He’s hot. His baby sister has been crying the whole ride home from school because she hates her car seat. Mama is tired too, and as they stumble in from school Seven Year Old kicks off his shoes in the doorway. He is so happy to be home. He is so happy to take off his sweaty sneakers. He is ready to play leggos. But Mama sighs. She has already asked him about one hundred times to place his shoes in the basket in the entryway. Baby sister trips over the shoes in the doorway and starts to cry, again. Mama asks Seven Year Old to move the shoes. She reminds him again. She warns him he has one minute to put them away. But he is already immersed in his leggos and doesn’t even hear the fourteen requests. Sound familiar? See, the clinical finding is that excessive reminders- be they pleas, instructions, reprimands, updates, warnings, or nagging- make the desired behavior less likely to occur. That’s right- saying something fifty times does not make it fifty times more likely to occur. In fact, it makes it way less likely to occur. Why? When you say it once, and it doesn’t lead to thee desired behavior, then the effectiveness of w2hat you said diminishes. The next time you say it, it’s even less effective, and the chance that your child will do what you ask is further reduced. Typically at this point, the parent starts to get frustrated. Their statements get stronger. Strong statements made with lots of intensity are aversive, like punishment. The child then escapes further- mentally or physically- from the person giving the reminders. In turn, the non-response from the child makes the parent even more frustrated, and the cycle continues… It is guaranteed to fail. Do you see how, in the sketch of Seven Year Old and his Mama, they are in completely different worlds? She is worried about a clean house and a million other things- he is hot and happy to be home and ready to play leggos. His Mama- the adult with the deeper responsibility to effectively co-regulate- needs to come into his world for a moment. What might happen if, while they are on the porch, they take a minute to talk about their days? What is the Mama asks the Seven Year Old what he wants to do this afternoon? What if they decide to take off their shoes together, put them in the basket, have a popsicle, and build a leggo house together, if only for a few minutes? This kind of structure promotes co-regulation: it offers both child and adult a chance to get into each other’s lives and feel each other’s perspectives. It’s not easy, and it takes both practice and planning. It takes pushing aside the other million things tugging on your attention. It takes deciding to immerse yourself in your child’s world for a moment. But it will change your relationship with your child, and with yourself. After all, who enjoys asking their children to follow the directions four thousand times, especially when they never ever follow them?

Praising children frequently can feel awkward, especially if you don’t have experience telling others, very frequently, what they are doing well. Most of us don’t go around telling our colleagues or spouses “Nice handwriting during the meeting!” or “Great work pushing your chair in,” or “You are excellently waiting in line.” It seems mundane, but when we are supporting children to be able to participate in daily life, this kind of praise is exactly what will help them to flourish. So what does healthy praise frequency look like? How much is enough, really? There is never too much praise, and typically each child has at least one hundred praise-worthy moments every day. One hundred! Can you imagine how awesome and motivated you’d be feeling if someone told you how well you were doing one hundred times a day? That inner feeling of awesomeness is exactly what we are trying to cultivate for our children- especially for children who have special needs and may struggle with everyday tasks or understanding language and routines. The question then becomes… what to praise? How to do it? How to maintain your sanity while giving your child one hundred+ moments of praise? The Positive Parenthood approach is to praise any and all fragments of behavior that you’d like to see your child replicate more often. They key word here is fragments: it really does not matter how small of an act it is that is going well, and it doesn’t matter if it only goes well for one second. What matters is that as soon as it happens, you praise. There are fragments of behavior you can praise all the time in your everyday life with your child. For example, you ask your child to wait. You know she has trouble 2waiting. Your child happens to stand quietly for one second. Before she has a chance to fall apart, you bend over and look at your child, your face glistening with pride. You grasp her hands, squeeze them, and say “Wow! (Name) is waiting!” These are the everyday moments worthy of praise; these are the moments that will enhance your relationship with your child. Positive Parenthood is also about catching your child doing something well. Like fragments, this is an everyday, million-times-a-day, occurrence. For example- you announce it is time to get dressed. You start to sing the getting dressed song (whatever that is for your family). Your child independently begins to walk towards the dresser. You notice, and say “(Name) is ready to get dressed! Yay!” You smile broadly and applaud. Are you beginning to get the gist of extremely frequent praise? It needs to be often, all the time. The idea here is that we are finding the golden moments and by emphasizing them, we are going to create more of them. It is important then, that you pay attention. You must be in it with your child, which means you must first take care of yourself. It may sound simple, but it is hard work to be so present with your child that you notice these micro-moments and can praise them effusively, frequently, and with lots of affection.

This afternoon, I watched my five year old niece swing her two braided pigtails behind her and furrow her eyebrows so that they nearly touched, after a child grabbed a block from her stack. And then another kid knocked over a fence she had been building around two plastic cows. And then a cousin playing a poking game with a younger child poked her in the side, and she turned and swung at him, nearly leaving a black eye in her wake. She got in trouble- for she had hit another child. She was yanked from the play-area and made to sit in a white plastic chair, alone, until she could calm down and agree to play nicely. She was angry. But here’s the thing: she really was angry about the block that was grabbed from her (and also frustrated because she wanted to play) and she really was angry about the fence that was knocked (and also, crushed that her cousin didn’t see her magnificent building efforts) and the uncalled for poking (and also, annoyed to be distracted from her play). The adults around her knew none of this, but they were exasperated because they wanted to catch up with each other, not mediate childhood squabbles. And so, they removed her (less she hurt another child) and stuck her in a chair to think (because you can’t hit, and that’s not the way we act in this family, and think about it until you’re ready to come back and be kind). The question emerges, did this little girl learn anything from her time out? What if what she learned was that her anger- and all the feelings underneath- were invisible to the adults who love her the most? What if what she learned, was that it didn’t matter that other children knocked over her creations, and that it was OK for older children to poke her because they were poking other children? Those are not lessons I want my niece or any child I love to learn. And yet- I participated in this- I was one of the adults who wanted to have bread and coffee while the children played over yonder. What if, instead of letting our desire to be with the grown-ups and our short-fuses for kids who hit other kids get the best of us, we connected with our kids? What if instead, we kneeled down, slowed down and tried to understand what was happening for the child who just struck another? What if we approached the situation with empathy, instead of exasperation? Here’s the thing about anger: there is almost always another emotion (or more than one) underneath anger. And when we approach a situation with empathy, what we feel are the feelings underneath the anger. What do I mean? Let me give you some examples: For my niece, under her anger about the knocked over fence was frustration that she couldn’t play as she wished, underneath her anger about being put into time-out was perhaps sadness or a feeling of her experiences being invisible to her caregivers. For you, imagine you didn’t get a promotion you really deserved, and you were angry. But what was underneath that anger? Maybe some embarrassment that you didn’t get the job, maybe some fear that you wouldn’t be able to make it professionally, maybe some disappointment in yourself. For you, maybe you’re a mom. Maybe your child was dawdling in the slowest way only children can dawdle, while you hurried them along because you really wanted to get them to the playdate because you really needed to talk to another grownup about life. And maybe their incredibly slow way of getting their shoes on was making you mad, and maybe you snapped a little. Underneath your mad was a need to be heard, a feeling of losing yourself to dawdles. See how underneath the mad, there’s something really tender? Think back to the last time your were angry: what else was there? If you really looked, what might you find? With that perspective, let’s return to this situation in which my niece has just slugged another child. She did hurt the other child. And yet, she’s only five, and we grown-ups were very engrossed in grown-up things in the time leading up to the slugging. Perhaps this child could have used some help when the other kid grabbed her block, or knocked over her fence. Perhaps she could have used some empathy instead of a scolding. So what would that have looked like? It would have required an adult to sit down in her space, and attend to what was going on for her. We might have asked her “Hey, what are you building? Where do these little animals go? Who is helping? Who is playing something else? How are you feeling? What do you need- do you need helping building the fence again? Do you need more blocks or a little space to work in?” These are all empathic questions- questions that are centered to her experience. They necessarily understand her hitting as an expression of her frustration- and they assume that she was just trying to be a good, playful child. They assume that something went wrong, and that that something caused the behavior. And, they hold open space for the fact that the something that went wrong was, perhaps, that the parents involved were talking to each other instead of attending to their children or being present in their children’s space. And maybe, the something that went wrong was the fact that the parents’ need time for self-care, too, because we live in a world that affords very little of that. And, these questions hold space for this little girls’ experience without pointing fingers at her, her playmates or even her parents. These questions assume that underneath the anger that was expressed through hitting, there is something else happening, and they assume that that something else is actually very important and that, if we can tend to it, maybe next time, we can do something else, instead of hitting. So what if your child looks at you like you have three heads when you ask empathic questions after they express anger (whether they express anger via behavior like hitting or by telling you they’re pissed off)? It’s a good question, and one you might need to deal with if you haven’t approached situations like this in the past. It’s OK to offer yourself some empathy here, and let the kids know you’re trying something new, because the old way (time outs, grounding, whatever it was) seemed like it was hurting more than helping. Because in the end, what we want the children to be able to do is manage their anger in ways that don’t hurt others, and we want them to be able to try new ways when things don’t work out. And if we’re going to ask that of our kids, you know who has to do it first? Yep. You. Model that kind of vulnerability, enact that kind of empathy, and we’ll all be better for it.

Originally published on Popsugar, here. This morning, I try to get my twins to draw their favorite animal, an assignment we were supposed to have done for kindergarten yesterday. One sobs because her deer does not look like a deer. I want to sit with her but I forgot to print the alphabet for today and I can't find the password to GoogleClassroom and I don't know which app is for math. I squeeze my eyes shut and whisper, "I am doing the best I can" - and I almost believe it. I have a PhD in education. I am supposed to be able to figure this out. Professionally, I run parenting groups for families raising spirited kids who want to parent gently and positively. I have written papers on digital literacy, and I regularly consult with school districts on how to support social emotional development during distance learning. And yet, I am failing distance-learning kindergarten. The biggest issue is that in order for my twins to participate, they need an extraordinary amount of support from me that reaches far beyond the darling study area I set up for them over the summer. This is challenging for me as their full-time working mother, but their experience is even more acute: they are stripped of a sense of agency and power. They're small learners whose bodies and hearts are built to do almost none of the digital things we now ask of them on the daily. There is one child in our class who always has his homework done, so I call his mother to ask for advice. She explains, "I have him do what I can and then I just finish it for him to help the teacher check all the boxes." I am struck by the inequity: having a mother with the time to "check all the boxes" results in shining teacherly praise. When I enrolled my children in kindergarten, I imagined budding friendships and new experiences. I did not imagine purchasing iPads. I did not imagine the dissonance in my heart as I beg my children to stay on the Zoom for just 10 more minutes even when I can tell they are not learning. I did not imagine that tears - mine and theirs - would be the defining emotional tenor of our kindergarten experience. My tears are rooted in exhaustion, in a plate so full that it is breaking. Their tears are rooted in a loss of agency, in grief for something they have not even experienced. I have decided, as I work to nourish their little spirits, to let go. I have decided to spend time playing in the creek instead of doing the math app. Just today, I got last-minute word of a 15-minute reading session with the teacher. I decided to let it go - even though I could feel the grip of "you are not doing everything you can to help your children learn" squeeze my heart - because organizing it would have been extremely stressful. What is going to let all of our children move through this challenging time with open hearts is not, in fact, reading with the kindergarten teacher for 15 minutes on Zoom. It is not doing endless math worksheets, and it is not whether I can check all the boxes as well as that other mother. What is going to get us all through is each parent grounding into ourselves, showing up the best way we know how, and letting the rest go. From saying "I am the best mother for this family and it is good to model how to do less." Being able to do this takes some pretty significant emotional resiliency from me as their mother. It is coregulation at its best, and when we slow down and get present with our little ones, it is often healing to our own overtaxed hearts as well. When we make the active decision to let go of that which is too much, we use our own sense of calm to help children thrive. Instead of doing all the apps, I take my kindergarteners outside and teach them about different local birds. A member of our community brings a strawberry basket full of feathers and tells us which ones are turkey feathers, chicken feathers, bluejay feathers, or which ones she doesn't know. The children organize the feathers, feel them, and hunt for more. Their agency is restored in this natural world, their sense of power again at the center of their experience. Tomorrow, we will write thank you letters, and they will deliver them. This, too, is learning. This, too, is kindergarten. Learning happens inside of these relationships with me, with each other, with the community. These moments are fundamentally at odds with the wild frustration sparking inside of me each time we can't log on, forget a password, or miss seven zillion assignments. As I often tell other parents, what matters most is your relationship with your child. It is the sacred ground from which learning, mattering, wondering and hope spring - as I'm often reminding myself. If you, like me, need someone to tell you it is OK to let the rest go, please tell them Dr. Hauge-Zavaleta signed your permission slip.

The email brought me to my knees simply read: I’d like to organize a zoom graduation. My eyes filled. My heart clutched. At first I quieted: containing my grief. After all, it is not high school graduation, or college graduation. It is not a wedding deferred; it’s not the most important adolescent social relationships disrupted; it’s not a job loss or a death or harrowing illness. It’s not anywhere near to the most heartbreaking havoc that COVID-19 has spurred. But it is heart break that my girls won’t get to hug their beloved teachers one last time, that I won’t commiserate over kindergarten placements with the other mothers, that there will not be promises of playdates beyond preschool, when this small group of children- many of them bilingual anomalies growing up in suburbia- break apart from their protective preschool bubble into kindergarten, where so many of them will be the only bilingual and the only biracial child in the classroom. More than anything, it’s the ritual of the graduation for which I am aching: the noticing that time has passed, that things were sweet, that now we will go on new adventures. It is the fear of leaning into the increasingly unknown educational landscape that has be grasping for something mundane like a line of four year olds wearing construction paper hats that fall over their eyes. I wish for their teacher’s shining face, leading them through hand movements. I wish for parents and grandparents sitting in tiny preschool chairs- half of them English speaking, half of them Spanish speaking, all of them with knees reaching up to their chest because the chairs were made for humans much smaller. I miss the everyday celebration of these wonderful children and the community they’ve built together. Grieving the loss of preschool graduation and of this little community doesn’t eclipse the harrowing illness and death, the economic worry, or the social sorrow of the present moment. It is rather to say, this is just one more thing, but this one thing was the drop that overflowed my bucket. My preschoolers did not know they needed this particular rite of passage, and so they are not grieving it. After all, it is I who needed it- me, who needed the other mothers, me who, hoped our family would see their sweet friendships and brilliant water colors. For these little girls, this is what there is, and it is alright. And as their mother, what I want to give them is a way to mark the time, to celebrate and to acknowledge, to remember the sweetness of preschool and shine light on how exciting the next adventure- a kindergarten that none of us can yet imagine- will be. A celebration will suffice, and we will acknowledge all that they’ve learned and all the wish to become. They will probably ask for golden rainbow cakes, and I will probably make golden rainbow cakes, because I do believe that magic and celebration and acknowledgement and saying “you’re ready to learn more things now” is an important marker of time.

Look, parenting is hard. Sometimes we experience a gap between how we want to parent and our actual lived experience of parenting. It happens to me when I get stressed, and my kids are all home with me, and we get stuck inside the house. I start snapping, they get whiney, I get snappier.... and on and on. Aside from leaving the house for an adventure, which always works for me, here are five tips for being the parent you want to be. Three deep breaths. When things are getting a little out of hand, I typically notice my chest starts to tighten and things start to feel impossible and desperate. I remind myself that nothing horrible is going to happen if I just stop, retreat to some un-occupied corner, and take a deep breath. I try to take three. This almost always happens in transitions- when I’m rushing trying to fill sippy cups and find matching shoes and not lose the car keys I just had in my hand. Taking three deep breaths myself allows me to recoup my energy, remember how I want to parent, and respond to my kids in calm, kind ways. Positive-Language Challenge. Sometimes I notice that despite my best efforts, I spend an inordinate amount of time telling my girls what not to do. It’s true that I find myself telling them not to put their fingers in sockets, not to kick each other, not to push, not to climb up the slide…. And it’s exhausting, right? It’s tiresome for me as their mama to always be shouting out what not to do. Plus, it’s confusing for them- now that they know not to put their little fingers in the light sockets, where should they put them? And then I find myself telling them to also not put their fingers in the bag of flour, in the dog’s eyeballs, or in each others’ ears. I challenge myself to stop that cycle right away, and tell them what to do. I tell them to put their fingers in their pockets, I tell them to stomp their feet on the ground and keep their hands on their own bodies. They oblige so much easier and sometimes I even hear them whisper to each other “hands on your own body!” Praise Challenge. A while back I decided to praise the girls-exclusively, no negative comments at all- while they “helped” me mop the floor. They loved it! And I realized how much my praise makes them shine, and how little praise I actually give them on a daily basis. So, heap on the praise. There’s no such thing as too much praise, but there is a way to praise that cultivates effort and resiliency. When we praise what children are doing (as in, working on the math problem, trying to sweep everything up, collaborating with peers on something hard) as opposed to the outcome or value associated with what they’re doing (as in, you’re so smart! You’re so clean!), children learn that their efforts are valued, and they learn that trying and even struggling are necessary in order to grow. Say Yes For A Day. When you’re in a rut with your children, try saying yes for a day. I let mine know I will say yes, and then I follow through. If they suggest we make orange cookies, we figure out a way and go grocery shopping for ingredients. If they suggest we go to the park and have a snack at the top of the slide, I pack some popcorn and get out of the house. Just say yes. Allow the magic to emerge, and follow the silliness of your littles. Start Singing. Yes, sing. I sing to my kids all the time, especially when they need help understanding something, or when I really need them all to cooperate, or when I am starting to lose my patience as I try to pile them into the car. Here’s the deal with singing: it activates calming neurological pathways in your brain and it is bound to calm you down. It’s really hard to be mad when you’re singing. Plus, children are much more able to process information when it’s sung to them, so that makes this tip not only awesome in terms of your becoming the calm, present parent you were meant to be, but also- singing will actually help your child understand whatever information you’ve communicating to them!

I'd barely slept the night before, because the baby was up and down, up and down, up and down. And I had a big work project on the horizon. And so when my toddlers started having an enormous fight over the single red spoon in our home, I started to lose it. Don't ask why I only bought one red spoon (lesson learned), but let me tell you, when I saw one twin grab the other's hair and yank, I really got pissed. Like a lot. I won't go into detail about all the things I imagined doing, but I will say.... I had to yell for my husband to come, stat, and high-tail it out of the kitchen. Even the most equipped parents sometimes get upset with their children. It's impossible not to, and if you've got a child who is genuinely challenging, this feeling may come up more often than you'd like. It's important to think about contingency plans for when you just.... can't. You need to know what to when everything is falling apart- including you. Make a plan for those moments when it feels like your belly is on fire and you are just exhausted and your child is testing every limit you set. So if you are agitated, if you cannot project calm, and if you are starting to make poor moves....here's your plan: stop talking. Yes, you heard us. Stop talking. Slow your physical movements way down. If its possible, remove yourself from the scene. Allow another person to take over- a partner, a grandparent, a teacher- anyone! Parenting is a marathon, not a sprint. Take time for yourself when you need it. Unfortunately, it's not always possible to leave, is it? If there isn't another adult on hand, you've still got to get through the situation, right? If you're stuck in a challenging parenting situation, alone, and you're frustrated.... first stop talking and slow your movements way down. Get through the situation with the absolute minimum amount of interaction with your child. The goal is here to not make things worse. When we are angry, we say things we don't mean. Our faces contort with emotion. We yell. This is why we want to stop talking, and why we must move slow. Move slow? Yes. Move slow. Here's the science behind it: slowing down your body evokes a different set of neurological patterns in your brain, which you interpret as "ahh.... calm..." It's actually quite hard to remain upset if your body is relaxed and moving slowly. So pretend you're moving through sand or water or tar. Do a yoga pose. Force your brain to calm down by controlling your body in ways that... force your brain and nervous system to calm down. After it's over- after you've either left and cooled down, or gotten through with the minimum interaction necessary, THEN connect with someone. Connect with us. We'll help. Review our training, Consider what you can do differently next time. If you're unable to figure out what to do differently, then ask for help- talk to a parent who's been there, review our modules, discuss your challenges with others. Keep talking, until you have a plan for next time.

The "What Meemo Said" series is written by Dr. Chelsey Hauge, about the advice her mother Dr. Robin Hauge and Positive Parenthood's founder gives her. The glass was sweating in the late afternoon sun, a beautiful icey pink with strawberries floating in it. The pizza was hot out of the oven, and the scent of melted cheese and basil filled the air. We sat down to dinner, and Sienna refused to sit in her high chair. She settled on my lap and we blew on her pizza. And then she saw the beautiful pink sangria glinting in the sun, and that is when everything started to get a little nuts.  I mean I can hardly blame her, lusting after the sangria. Except for that she's not quite two, and I just can't justify letting her sip the alcohol even though she was screaming for it, and even though there were big, fat tears rolling down her cheeks. Papa tried to distract her with his bottle of root beer, which she also could not have. She cried harder. I rolled my eyes. Her twin sister started to cry because Sienna was crying. So much for the peaceful summer pizza with a glass of sangria before bath and the rush to bedtime. I was eating ice cream with my mom after the twins were asleep , when I stared into my eight week olds' eyes and proclaimed, "we'll keep you baby, if you promise to never act like your big sissies did tonight at dinner." Here's what Meemo said:  They all act like that. You acted like that. She's gonna act like that. Then she said that it didn't have to be this way. Sienna didn't have to scream for the sangria, ruin dinner, throw her sippy cup across the table, make her twin start crying to, and then cry because she wanted the root beer and the sangria. We could have said, "Sienna, I know you want that sangria. You really want it. You really really really want it. You really want it really bad." We could have empathized. We could have let her upset about it, we could have made sure she understood, and then we could have held the limit, sans offer of a root beer bottle she could also not have. But we're not Meemo, we're adults who want a glass of sangria and so I rolled my eyes, but I sort of listened too. Because obvi I don't want this to be my everyday. Dinner was crazy-town, and I scrambled to eat my last scrap of pizza on the way to the bath, and I wrinkled my forehead because it was stressful and the ice in my sangria melted and it got watery and not as good which didn't even make it worth it that the screaming ended shortly after they got in the bubble bath. Sound familiar? You, like me, might know it doesn't have to be this way, but you, like me, might sometimes just need a glass of sangria on a Sunday night. So, what's important here? What could we have done instead so that I could have had the damn sangria before all the ice (and the child in my lap) melted down? Here's how we could have turned that sh*t around: CONNECT, EMPATHIZE, HOLD THE LIMIT. Sienna needed connection. She needed to be recognized, validated, and heard. Sienna needed empathy. God knows she wanted that sangria just as much as I did- I could have empathized. And finally, Sienna needed the limit to be held, not the root beer to be offered. I mean I wasn't gonna give her the sangria, but Sam could have also not offered her the root beer. Getting anything right takes a whole lot of getting it wrong first. Besides, as one of the children upon whom Meemo herself practiced, I promise you, she didn't always get it right either.

You know song by The Shirelles that kicks off with "mama said, mama said"? I've finally found my Buddha phrase. Two years into taking the signature, 12-week Positive Parenthood course for the first time, I finally found my Cool & Calm phrase. I've made them up when pressed- I've tried "this too shall pass" and also "don't worry, be happy."  None of them really fit, though.... The Cool & Calm phrase is a short thing you decide to say to yourself in moments of distress, in order to stay calm yourself so that you don't resort to saying things like "BECAUSE MAMA SAID SO" or "if you don't share that plastic dinosaur with your sister RIGHT NOW you are never going to play with plastic dinosaurs ever again." So, it's a pretty little phrase with a pretty big role, because it is actually going to help you stay calm when parenting is rocky, and most parents know.... that things can get real rocky, real quick, real often when their are parents and children and responsibilities involved. So, "this too shall pass" has never really worked for me because I would never say that. "Don't worry be happy" didn't fit because it felt like something I'd say when I was on a carefree beach with someone worried about getting sand in blown into the fruit salad, which is a much smaller aggravation than my everyday experience of not feeling calm when my children start fighting over plastic dinosaurs, baby dolls that talk, or that specific blue cup (and not the exact same blue cup which we own six of- only that one). So I've been searching for a Cool & Calm phrase that would really work. A phrase that I could really ground to, one that would actually help me regulate myself when my children are doing all the things that really push my buttons. And tonight this song popped into my head: Mama said there'll be days like this There'll be days like this, mama said Mama said there'll be days like this There'll be days like this, my mama said Our Cool & Calm phrases have to work for each and every one of us, personally. There's a dad we work with who's Cool & Calm phrase is "teflon." It helps him remember that he can let the hard moments slide off him, that he's got a no-stick finish for all those times when things are legit challenging. You know, saying "teflon" to myself would never work- I'd be like I'm not some kind of weird metal and isn't there a health concern with teflon? But that's the beauty here: it works for him. He found it. That's all that matters. And I think I've found mine. It's singing to myself "mama said, mama said... there'll be days like this, my mama said." See, I pulled the mother-as-a-parent-educator lucky card, and not only do I get to work on Positive Parenthood professionally, but I also have the good fortune of being Robin's daughter. While her calm nature isn't genetic it is the case the recalling her lessons and acknowledgement of the sweet madness (is that an oxymoron? I don't think so!) that is parenting is in itself, very calming for me. And that is exactly what this little chorus does for me. It reminds me, that even Robin herself- our parenting guru and my mama- knows that sometimes, there's going to be hard days. And that, no matter how hard the day, she always always holds the belief that the Positive Parenthood tools can help you through anything. Literally, anything. And it is that steadfast belief, backed up by decades of knowledge, dozens of tools, and the fact that she raised me that calms me down enough to know that... it's going to be OK, and I can be OK even if my children are really struggling, and that truly, the most important thing is.... me being OK when my children are having a really, really hard time. So, here's what works for me: Mama said there'll be days like this There'll be days like this, mama said Mama said there'll be days like this There'll be days like this, my mama said What works for you? Do you just replace "mama" with "Robin" or do you have a saying like "teflon" or "this too shall pass" or, as Robin herself shares is her Cool & Calm phrase, "hmmmmm...." What works for you?

Offering positive touch- in a way that works for your individual child- is an important part of giving praise. Consider times when you've done exceptionally well at work or in your family- do you love to give high-fives, do you throw your fist in the air, or do you like a big hug? All of us have different orientations to how we like to experience praise, but for many of us using our bodies to celebrate is a key element- and it's the same for your child! What kind of positive touch do you offer when you tell your little one they are doing something well? Because many children with special needs have sensory issues, touch can be an important piece of communicating, relationship building, and teaching. Learning how to give your child the touch that is right for her or him can deeply enhance your parent-child relationship. Many children, especially when they are over-aroused, love deep pressure. Some of the gestures they might enjoy including having their hands, shoulders, upper or lower arms squeezed. At times, squeezing the torso by having the child face away from you and firmly wrapping your arms around their torso to squeeze is a welcome gesture! Other children like the "chest press and shake."  Place one hand on the chest, the other on the back, and squeeze together briefly with a little shake. If a child is working on a task, sometimes a side-by-side buddy hug is best, as it allows the child to stay focused and oriented to the task they are completing. Other children are prone to under-arousal, and for these children light, quick moving touches are best. For example, you can grasp a child's hand a shake, or place a hand on their belly and jiggle lightly. If your child ever flinches or recoils when you are offering touch for praise, it may indicate that your touch has triggered sensory defensiveness. If this happens, try another kind of touch on the list. You can also consult an occupational therapist who can help you to identify what kind of touch works best for your child.