Who's In Charge, Children Or Parents?

Do you believe that children cause their parents to react with anger and stress? If, for example, children tell their parents a sharp "No!" in response to a direction or request, must their parents become upset, or do parents have better options?
The fact is that you can always improve your reactions to some degree. But as long as you believe that another person or your situation gives you no choice but to react in any particular way, you give up your power to change.
Children do not make parents react. Children are not responsible for their parents' behavior, attitudes and emotional states. Under any circumstances, in any relationship, you can gradually free yourself from stress and strain and employ healthier, happier, and at the same time more effective responses.
In the relationship between children and parents, the parents are responsible for determining if their reactions are really working. Parents don't need their children to behave in any particular way to maintain their peace and poise with their children. Parents can develop their self-control to make it stronger than the child's power to disturb them.
This does not mean that parents must ignore or condone however their children behave. In a state of peace and poise, with your attention focused on what is happening in the present moment, you can perceive more clearly what you and your child need in the now.
Parental self-care is not selfish. Preserving your calm confidence not only feels better than reacting with anxiety and annoyance. It is healthier, and it makes it possible for you to come up with more effective responses that really connect with your child's needs in the present.
Parenting young children is one of life's greatest challenges. It demands your very best to produce calm, content and well-behaved young children. But parents often work so hard at it that they undermine their objectives. Parents influence their children in negative ways when they push themselves with stress and strain to control their children. Parents also negatively impact their children when they regard their children as responsible for how they - the parents - react.
To really be in charge with children, parents need to choose responses that achieve their objectives. In any situation that children make their parents react with anger and stress, those parents need to focus on taking charge of themselves.
Children need their parents to be in charge of themselves. To develop responsible behavior, children need their parents to respond in a very particular way to whatever is happening now. The appropriate response to children's behavior comes from parents reading their children accurately. You need to "read" your child's verbal and non-verbal cues in the present to recognize what your child needs from you.
Nobody in their right mind wants to feel angry and uptight. If you believe children make their parents angry and uptight, you overlook the parents' power and responsibility to improve their reactions.
Parents who blame their children for their own reactions of stress and strain resent their children. These parents then feel and act like victims, causing their children to lose respect their parents and for themselves. Additionally, exasperated, frustrated reactions from parents allow children to begin reading their parents' weak emotional patterns, negatively empowering those children to dominate and manipulate their parents.
Parents of young children in particular need to heed this message because the trends that they establish in the first six years of life form the strongest and longest lasting personality patterns of their children. Parents who feel overwhelmed and out of control of their children's behavior can immediately start improving things by focusing on improving their self-control.