Everything You Need to Know About Parenting You Learned In Kindergarten

Even before kindergarten we all began learning our ABC’s. For a long time one of my favorite authors has bee
Robert Fulgum. He wrote a series of books entitled, Everything I Ever Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. I still recommend it for good, light vacation reading. What we often forget is that way back in pre-kindergarten, or Headstart for me, when we learned the alphabet what we were indeed being taught was the sequencing of linguistics. Before two there is three, before A there is B, and before Want there you I or you. This training eventually helped us to form words, sentences, paragraphs, so on and so forth. But we forgot!

The A-Z Principle contends this: Just as the alphabet follows a sequences, so to does nearly every behavior challenge you are going to face with your child. Furthermore, just as there are twenty-six letters in the alphabet, as a parent you are naturally equipped with a minimum of twenty-six preventative tools for any problem behavior your child struggles with. Now I want to give you a secret component of the inner workings of my own mind madness: Everything I see is sequential. Anything I hear of a behavior problem I always think first in sequences. A question might be: “Bryan, I can’t get my child to go to sleep at night. What do you suggest?” Every questio
I ask from that point forward is implementing data into a sequence which will, I hope, provide my friend a breakthrough to the behavior challenge being experienced. I’ll walk you through it briefly.

How old is your child?
How long has the problem been occurring?
Has there been anything different or out of the ordinary during the past month or two?
What was your child’s birth like?
What is your reaction to your child’s struggle?
How do you sleep?
What do you typically do when your child can’t sleep or wakes up in the middle of the night?

With each answer I am inputting the variables into the equation. The key is that I must listen and then formulate. I can’t be a know it all and just give some pat answer though it may seem that way to some. Rather I am listening intently and formulating my answer. When asked questions such as this, usually at a lecture during break, though I have been speaking non-stop for two hours, I want to give the most accurate answer that I can. So for me when the parent comes up with a question it’s like I’m being asked by the teacher to come to the blackboard and work a problem for the class. I’ve come to love this process because it requires me to work on the fly and many times I’ll tell the parent to wait for the rest of the group so it can be instructional for them as well.

Once I have input all of the variables then I can begin working the A-Z Principle and here’s where you to can become empowered with difficult behaviors.

In our world we are obsessed by outcomes (behaviors) so we tend to focus all of our efforts and energy around XYZ. This is a mistake and one of the reasons I am assured that we have forgotten what we learned in Kindergarten. In reality life just like behaviors is a series of unraveling, sequential experiences leading to an outcome. I call this a process. Just as healing is a process so to are the diminishing of your child’s behaviors. According to the A-Z Principle, in order to get to Z you must first start with A. By doing this you are following a process. Another example,

I recently spent time doing a consult with a family for one of my students. They had two children both in residential care. The parents though divorced were making a diligent effort to co-parent. The son who had been in residential the longest, I quickly assessed for frontal lobe deficiencies and aspergers symptomology. In other words, the main reason he was still in residential, unfortunately, is that he was the by-product of a system that completely misunderstands his core needs and struggles. I gave the parents some insights about the son, did a little emotional process work between he and the dad to help open up the relationship a bit, and then sent him and his mother into the waiting room, thereby leaving just the young 10 year old daughter and the father. From speaking with the mother prior to the session beginning I had already input several key variables into my formula and felt pretty certain I was on the right track towards changing the dynamics of the outcome via shifting the process. The young girl had been in residential treatment for the past 9 months. Now it’s always quite this easy but I asked a simple question, “What happened 9 or 10 months ago?” Her grandmother had died! Her grandmother was someone she loved very much, and being adopted the little girl who already was challenged with abandonment issues was sent spiraling. Not to mention this was tied in with anger towards her father telling her the grandma would be okay, and once grandma had died, for not telling her at the exact moment but waiting until she had finished school for the day. Granted as adults we can understand the actions of dad because after all it was his mother and he had now lost her, but what we tend to do is place that first as a defense to our adult actions. When that occurs we fail to understand the position of the child.

Here’s a key point: When dealing with your child is not your perception that matters but rather theirs and theirs alone. St. Francis said, “Seek first to understand and then to be understood.” This means place what you perceive to be the cause of the issue to the side and explore to its depth what your child perceives to be the issue, and then validate that perception until your child feels calm and understood. Then and only then should you share your perception and oftentimes when you have really only sought to understand, then you no longer need to share your perception because you are no longer needing to defend yourself. I call this honoring your child in the space she is in.

The child was not expressive, did not know how to express and so had bottled all of her big feelings into her little body, but as Stephen Covey says, “Upset feelings never die. They are buried alive and come back as something uglier.” Her grief and anger, and as it turned out the grief of her father also, had went unexpressed and turned to lashing and acting out. Within the span of about fifteen minutes, for the first time in 10 months, the little girl began to express her sadness and anger about the situation. With encouragement and support dad was able to hear her, validate, understand, and accept. Another 10 minutes after this I called mom back into the room and the three of them embraced one another deeply. This entire part of the session lasted about a hour.

The key was in examining the variable, inputting the data, running through the process and then seeing the outcome. You can do it with any behavior. Just look first at the behavior and then go as far back as you can, maybe even to the day before and start making minor adjustments in your relationship to your child. Just minor ones such as in the sleep example, like sitting down together for breakfast, driving your child to school, holding his hand, calling him at school, picking him up, playing games at night before or after dinner, then reading a story, perhaps laying down with him, and then most of all honoring how hard it is for him to sleep at night, and if he wakes up just to let you know. Do this with the confidence that you are now working the A-Z Principle and inputting vital data into a formula that is going to have a major impact on the outcome.

Choose Love.