My kid was playing with water while I was washing vessels and I called out multiple times not to waste water, and make sure to not pour on floor or counters. Obviously towards the end, my kid poured a cup of water on counter. (In hindsight, maybe I should not have said it so many times or focused too much about it!!)
I got little mad, took my kid and put kid on a different place (after explaining why) and started cleaning up. Since I was mad, I stopped and took some deep breaths and started cleaning again.
I was still not in the clear, so stopped again and took more deep breaths (always in exaggerated mode so my kid can see what I am doing).
To my surprise, I was no longer mad. This is the first time I tried it and made me wonder why i had not done this before.
Anyway, this helps achieve few goals:
- This method helps handle your big emotions first.
Gentle parenting is hard. While it is possible to suppress your anger and be a calm parent, suppressed anger is going to blow up in other ways. And your poor partner or dear friend or family is going to get targeted soon when it blows up. - You are modeling the positive response to a bad situation:
Most of the discipline books mention about teaching toddlers to take a deep breath to handle big emotions. How else are you going to teach your kid to do that, unless you do it?
And finally the most important part:
- Empathy:
When you try it on yourself, you know how it feels, you know if it works or not. You understand what the reaction is and if the reaction is justified.
This especially will be very helpful to make you understand the impact and response of the discipline strategy, if you are currently using other discipline methods like shouting, yelling or hitting.
For example: I know this sounds silly, but hear me out and try it out:
Shout at yourself before you shout at kid. Maybe record your words and play it to yourself.
What is your reaction now? Are you able to listen to your words? or are the words too loud for you to make sense of it and just making you more upset to listen to it? In fact, do the words even have a meaning or is it just bunch of gibberish loud remarks because you were too angry to provide a sensible feedback?
And no, I am not even going to suggest hitting yourself first. I am going to leave that to your imagination.