“Teaching Kids Respect – Part 1: Mindfulness”
By Dr. Peter Montminy
mindfulness (n.) the trait of staying aware of, or paying close attention to, your responsibilities; a mental state of calm, enhanced awareness.
respect (v.) to honor or revere; to have a good opinion of someone, and to avoid doing anything they would dislike or regard as wrong.
Many parents and teachers today complain about kids showing so little respect – to adults, to siblings and peers, and even to themselves. Why is this?
As usual, lots of reasons, but let’s look at a few major factors. Kids are exposed to grown up activities, language, and attitudes at younger ages, and feel entitled to “get their due” as mini-adults. There’s been a generation of parenting more concerned with inflating a child’s self-esteem than with instilling self-discipline. And the ever-present electronic media spreads all sorts of toxic messages like wildfire across the social landscape of kids. They are increasingly immersed in a commercial and entertainment driven culture where conflict and crassness sells more than civility and caring.
So, what’s a conscious, caring parent to do?! Two part answer: First, focus on the inside, your own mindset, and cultivate mental habits that will bring forth more respectful and loving parenting practices. Second, focus on the outside, the actual interactions you have with your children. Be conscious of your inner thoughts and your outward actions with your kids, and this will lead you all to a path of more respectful relationships.
Of course, the bottom line is you have to give respect to get respect. So let’s explore some practical ways to do that. I’ve developed the TOP 12 TIPS for TEACHING KIDS RESPECT based on over 20 years of clinical practice with many distressed families. Let’s look at the first 6 tips, focusing on mental mindset, today (and the remaining 6 tips, focusing on conscious actions, next week).
Tip #1: AWARENESS – Be aware of individual differences. Recognize that all kids – and parents! – have unique personality styles, strengths, and needs. Be keenly aware of your child’s temperament (high activity or low, slow or quick to warm up to others, flexible or rigid, intuitive or methodical, impulsive or inhibited, highly sensitive or not, high or low frustration tolerance, auditory or visual learner, etc.) – and yours. Think “How are we the same? How are we different?” and “So what?”
Appreciate diversity, and don’t expect your kids to deal with life the same way you do, or even the same as their brothers or sisters. When you keep this in mind, you can more easily find the energy to adapt your parenting style to meet your child’s needs in the most constructive way. That is, you’ll be better able to get through to your child and help them develop the respectful behaviors you want them to.
Tip #2: ATTRIBUTIONS – Understand what the major factors are that contribute to your child’s functioning. Remember there is rarely a single cause of your child’s behavior. There is no “silver bullet” or “magic solution” that will cure disrespect. But if you’re paying attention to what the major causes are, and how they interact, you can better guide your child’s emotional and moral development.
The major factors to consider include 1) personal characteristics (biological temperament and psychological “thoughts and feelings” filters), 2) interpersonal interactions (the expectations and consequences you apply to your kids, and how you communicate them), and 3) the environmental circumstances (the stressors and supports that surround the family).
When considering why your child is behaving that way, keep in mind these factors, and have them lead you to more practical solutions for improving your child’s behaviors.
Tip #3: ACCEPTANCE – Accept the current reality, and stay focused on what you can control or change. Recognize that in any situation, there are things you can control and things you can’t. Accept your limitations, rather than worrying about those things you can’t really do much about, and this will free up your energy to focus on more constructive solutions.
Remember, what you focus on, grows! Focus your energy, thoughts, conversations, and efforts on what you can control. Think “Here’s something I can do about it now.”
Tip #4: ATTITUDE – Live each day with a positive, loving attitude and lots of positive energy. If you don’t fill up your spiritual, mental, and physical gas tanks, you’re running on empty and unable to give your kids the good, positive parenting that will yield the results you want. Remember, you reap what you sow.
So, commit to at least 30-minutes a day for self-care and rejuvenation. That’s only 3 hours out of 168 hours in a week. The rest of the world will keep functioning, and everyone else’s needs can get met, in the other 165, honest! Make a conscious choice about caring for yourself first, so you can have more of the positive energy you and your kids deserve.
Tip #5: ATTENTION – Pay attention to building your child’s self-discipline and self-respect, not just self-esteem. As Jill Rigby points out in her book “Raising Respectful Children in a Disrespectful World” this is an important distinction. When we worry too much about building up our child’s self-esteem, we often inadvertently give a child a false sense of their own importance and entitlement.
If you focus on developing self-respect instead of self-esteem in your child, you’ll find that you’re dealing with more gratitude than greed, more humility than arrogance, more confidence than insecurity, more perseverance than futility, more contentment than discontentment, more others-centeredness than self-centeredness, and someone who is more well-mannered than ill-mannered
Tip #6: ACCOUNTABILITY – Be empathic to your children’s feelings AND still hold them firmly accountable for their behaviors. I call this the “Goldilocks Parenting Rule.” Not too hot, not too cool – not too hard, not too soft. Always guide your child using a balance of compassionate understanding along with firm and fair expectations and consequences.
Next week, we’ll take a closer look at how to put those firm, fair expectations and consequences into action.
Meanwhile, remember to remember these six mental mindset tips.
Be mindful of your:
– Assumptions – Do I recognize and respect individual differences?
– Attributions – Do I know where my kid is coming from?
– Acceptance – Am I accepting reality and only focusing on what I can do?
– Attitude – Am I staying recharged with positive energy and optimism?
– Attention – Am I more focused on developing self-discipline or self-esteem?
– Accountability – Do I balance loving nurturance with firm limits?
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