Understanding Is Not The Same As Empathizing

Understanding is an interesting term when it comes to dealing with other people. Most of us totally get that before we can build something we must first understand the parts that are needed and how it goes together before jumping into the task (or at least us women do :) . If we’re asked to be on a committee, most of us will at least try to understand what’s expected of us before agreeing to do the job.

When it comes to people however, this is a whole different ball game. We cannot control how others think, what they believe, how they feel, or how they act. What we are told to do, is to try to put ourselves as completely as we can in the other person’s shoes so we can understand where they are coming from…in other words, we empathize. When we do this, however, other problems arise.

For example, if you come from a secure family where you feel loved, appreciated, respected and understood and you’re trying to empathize with a much younger person growing up in an abusive, broken home, how well do you think you’d be able to relate to life in his shoes? The likelihood that you will sympathize instead of empathizing is much greater and feeling sorry for someone never helps them at all.

This is also a place where values can interfere as you might assume that something like honesty, that is important to you, will be equally important to him. That might suggest to you that he would only steal if he was desperate, when in fact he might have been raised to believe stealing is not a bad thing and desperation has nothing to do with it. In this case, you might put yourself in his shoes, feel the desperation and get a totally different picture from what was actually going on for him.

There will always be information you won’t know about when you are trying to truly understand the actions of others. When you take the time to search for this data and really get a complete picture, you are making the effort to understand. Empathizing is an important first step, but it is not enough.

So what do you do?

In Dr. Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, he suggests you seek first to understand before you are understood. I believe this is a critical part of truly being understanding. This starts with recognizing that “simple understanding” is actually an oxymoron or contradiction – it will never be easy to truly understand where another person is coming from.

Understanding requires research, and that research must be done with an open-mind and heart. In order to get a true picture of what is going on for that person you must have a willingness and desire to gather the missing pieces—and those can only come from the person involved.

Start by empathizing, as previously discussed, then, use positive communication skills…like active or empathic listening, clarifying questions, and open-door techniques… to help understand what he is saying. Put on your inspector’s cap and objectively start searching for more information. A good inspector will keep an open-mind and leave his emotions out of the conversation. Helpful conversation starters might be the following:

· Help me understand what was going on for you when this happened.
· I really want to understand how this happened. Can you help me do that?
· I’m willing to help you deal with this situation, but I’m going to need more information to really understand it first…can you help with that?

The voice you use, your body language and your previous history with the person are all going to factor in to how quickly and easily he feels safe enough to share. Patience and open-mindedness are going to be extremely important during this time.

If you’re feeling emotional before the conversation begins, it’s a good idea to ask for time before talking since it’s quite likely you’ll head in to the talk ready to fight (or defend). This happens because you are taking things personally and while this is a very human thing to do, it will not help the situation.

When you are in the conversation, be as neutral as you can while hearing this person’s story and be sure your body language reflects the same. Try hard not to judge and to really hear what he has to say.

When you feel you understand his side of the story and have reflected that back to him as best you can, it’s time to share your side of the picture. At that point the goal is to work towards solution, and if you have done a good job of understanding this will often be the easy part.
According to The Virtues Project™, “understanding is the power to think and learn and also care”. Coming from a place of compassion without prior judgment, especially when you feel hurt, angry or embarrassed is never easy. It is, however, a building block to strong relationships and that is always worth the effort.

Is it the Dog Whisperer or the Kid Whisperer?

The Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan never fails to remind me of how qualities, skills and behaviours important to being a good dog owner, overlap with those that will help us be effective as parents.

Here are just five of the beautiful parallels I’ve picked up from Cesar’s show:

1) Use calm, assertive energy. People and animals pick up on our energy and react accordingly. If you are pretending to be happy, when inside you are seething or fearful you are not fooling anyone. Calm assertive energy is not weak, nor threatening. It tells the other you mean business and are fully in control of yourself. When our child’s emotions are escalating and we start getting riled up as well, we make the situation much worse than it needs to be.

2) Establish who’s boss. I can feel the hackles going up on some people when they read these words, but hear me out. With dogs this means letting the dog know you are in charge and ultimately they need to live by your rules. You are Alpha and to be in your pack they must accept this. With kids it is only slightly different. When our kids are little they do need to recognize us as boss and when it comes to things like safety, we need them to obey. The difference is with kids we are “grooming” them to eventually take over the boss position in their own lives, which means in many situations it is not imperative that we win. Choose your battles wisely and teach your child to stand up for her own beliefs in an assertive way, while still respecting and understanding authority.

3) Use a clear, consistent message. Figure out your main rules, teach them and enforce them. If the rule is “No going in the pool without permission”, and your water loving dog is jumping in uninvited at any given opportunity, Cesar suggests you teach him he must wait for your permission to enter. Correct him every time he tries to go in on his own so he learns to watch you before going in. With children it is essential we teach them what our rules are and then consistently enforce them. If it’s not important enough to enforce, do NOT have it as a rule. Your young child might not understand why she can’t go in the pool when you’re not around, but she needs to know it is important she not do so.

4) Plan for success. Cesar talks about taking the time to exercise, feed and share affection with your dog – twice daily, but especially – before taking him to something stressful or new. This way you are dealing with a relaxed, content dog instead of one filled with intense energy. Again with kids this is good practice as a child filled with excited energy is going to struggle with sitting still at the doctor’s office, their sibling’s concert, or a restaurant. Just like with our dog, our child’s body language can tell us much about what might be about to come. Preventing our child’s blow-out by having toys, snacks and other attention grabbers available can make the difference between an enjoyable evening and one that ends in tears.

5) Work in the present. This is one of Cesar’s most powerful messages (in my opinion) – a dog does not benefit by people dwelling on the awfulness he might have experienced in his past. We hurt him more by feeling sorry for him, expecting less of him and coddling him because of previous injury or trauma. Focus on the present and believe in the kind of dog he instinctually is. The same is true with people. People do not get stronger when we feel sorry for them and dwell on the things they’ve been through. This doesn’t mean we can’t hug a hurt child, or console a newly broken-up teen, but it does mean if we see her as wounded or to teach her to blame others for her situation we will not help her embrace her inner power and be strengthened. Teach your kids to take only the teachings from the past and then embrace their power in the present.

In closing, there are definitely areas of dog rearing that are going to differ from raising children. We would not, for example, wrestle our kids into the submissive position on the ground, tie a leash around their necks or stick tennis racquets in their mouths to stop biting. But with a little bit of good sense anyone can see there are plenty of positive parallels for us to learn from.

Relationships are built on things like respect, communication, consistency, trust, acceptance, etc., and it appears this is true whether we are dealing with a dog or a child. So if you’re not sure about your ability as a parent, take a look at your dog…perhaps there are some lessons there you can learn from.

Note: This article expresses the understanding of the author and not necessary that of Cesar Millan, The Dog Whisperer.

Debbie Pokornik is the author of Break Free of Parenting Pressures; Embrace Your Natural Guidance and helps people embrace their personal power in all aspects of life. More information can be found at http://www.empoweringnrg.com/ . She is an avid fan of Cesar Millan and puts a lot of positive energy into being the Alpha with her dog and her kids.

Guilty as Charged

If our feelings are signals meant to guide us in life, then guilt is a fantastic guide to tie into. It is one of those feelings that will shoot through us the moment we’ve ‘done something wrong’ and will easily be fed from our resulting thoughts and actions.

In my book Break Free of Parenting Pressures I mention that you can’t send someone on a guilt trip unless their bags are already packed. I hate to say it my bags seem to be packed and ready to go at a moments notice.

A trick I have found over the years to help me stand my ground is to ask myself where my guilt is coming from and then use that information to determine what action could arise as a result. For example, when I feel guilty for snapping at one of my kids, I might ask myself the following: Am I feeling guilty because I spoke harshly and hurt my son’s feelings when he didn’t deserve it? Is it because I said “No” to something that probably could have been a yes? Is it because I just gave a talk on using self-control and I was being a hypocrite by losing mine?

Figuring out what the answer is helps to guide me on where I should go next. If I spoke harshly and hurt feelings, my action might be to apologize to my son and perhaps explain why I behaved the way I did. I don’t do this as an attempt to excuse my behaviour or to change my mind about whatever he was asking for, but more to provide a learning opportunity for both of us. My apology is genuine.

If my guilt came from recognizing that my “No” was premature, I might apologize for snapping and reopen the conversation for discussion. When this happens I love to tell my child he has a second chance to “convince me” rather than just changing my answer to a “Yes”.

On the other hand if these feelings came about because I behaved like a hypocrite I usually need to go inside and look at what I said, how I truly behaved (there is a big difference between snapping at a person and losing self-control) and what this means for the information I’m sharing. Are my expectations unrealistic? Am I being too hard on myself? Is there a teaching point in this I can use in my next talk? Are any apologies necessary (to my son, to myself, to my audience)?

The point from all of this is that rather than feeling the guilt and then beating myself up over how badly I behaved, how I’ve damaged my child for life, or how unworthy I feel of calling myself a Parent Educator, etc, I use this feeling to guide me towards an action that will help me repair damage and grow from the experience. By doing this I feel I am taking this feeling and using it as the signal it was always intended to be rather than heading on the guilt trip my packed bags were ready to take me on.

Building Relationships, 5 Strategies for Building Strong Relationships and Information to Help You Avoid Relationship Pitfalls

Relationships are a key part of the human experience. How we interact with others influences the kind of relationships we build and how capable we feel as a person. Here are 5 strategies to help you focus on building strong relationships that last a life-time:

1. Talk openly about how you feel when the other person says or does something that arouses strong feelings. This applies to both good and bad feelings as relationships flourish when we share the things we like and unhealthy tension can be released when we share the things we don’t like. When done properly, talking openly about feelings helps our relationships to grow and provides us with opportunities to practice positive communication.

I often suggest people think in terms of “I statements” even if they aren’t comfortable actually using them yet. To think in I statements focus on what you are feeling and why.

i.e. “I feel disrespected (or hurt, angry, unimportant…) when I’m interrupted.” or “It hurts my feelings when I’m cut off in mid-sentence.”

Did you know: Starting statements with the pronoun You or demanding an answer with Why, make people more likely to go on the defensive and less likely to care how it made you feel? i.e. “You’re always interrupting me…why can’t you just listen!” or “Why do you always do that? I hate it when you interrupt!” Our goal is to share information, not blame the other or provoke a fight.

2. Look for the positives in the other person and make a point of sharing what you see. This can be easier said then done, as it is often the negative things that jump out at us. With practice, however, it becomes easier and when done on a regular basis helps everyone involved. When you point out the positives in another you strengthen your bond with that person and build a positive outlook for yourself. That makes you feel good and contributes to the self-esteem of the person you are complimenting. This results in more leeway when relationship problem arise, because the relationship is stronger and able to handle the stress.

i.e. “I love your sense of humor…you’re so creative.” or “I feel so relaxed around you – you’re so calm and sure of yourself.”

When a relationship has been going on for a while or when we are parenting/teaching, it becomes very easy to pick out the things that irritate us and point those out instead. If you can make it a habit to point out two positives for every correction, or critical comment you make, your relationship will still move in a positive direction.

Did you know: When we give in to our desire to point out the faults of others, and see changes in their behaviour, it’s usually because we have activated their internal critic? This is that little voice in their head that makes them second guess themselves and feel unworthy or undeserving of whatever good things life throws their way. In many relationships we are feeding the other person’s internal critic as we speak!

3. Accept other people for who they are without trying to mold them into the people you wish they could be. This is a tough one for many of us. It is often easier as an outsider looking in, to see where a person needs to personally develop (at least in our opinion). People will develop where they need to when they are ready…and not a moment sooner. If we can recognize this and allow them to grow at their own pace we are accepting them for who they are at that moment in time.

This is not the same as excusing inappropriate behaviours, or giving up on a person as if he is never going to change. By allowing him to be true to himself you actually help him recognize when changes are required. When the person you are dealing with is your child, be there to guide and set boundaries, but accept her just as she is.

Did you know: In almost every case, a person who is forced to change in order to be liked or accepted by another will change back when stressed? When people stay in a relationship because they are in love with who that person could one day become, they are likely to be very disappointed. People will only truly change when they believe that they need to!

4. Take the time to have fun in all of your relationships. Whether it is a smile shared with a colleague, a laugh with the neighbor, playing with your child or talking with your partner…all of these things build relationship and help us feel stronger. Once again this sounds easy to do, but often it is not. The stress we feel from a health concern, the worry we have about our child’s daycare, the disappointment we experience when we don’t get the job—all drain our energy making it hard for us to create quality moments with the people around us. As the tension mounts the more serious we become and the less effort we put into having fun. Laughter, story telling, and having caring conversation are just a few of the things that help to release that tension and replenishes our energy reserves.

Did you know: Although eating right, getting enough sleep, exercising, etc are important parts of healthy living, sometimes a few hours of fun that keeps you up too late (or dips into your health protocol in other ways), will do more to strengthen you than anything else. Positive human interaction strengthens us in ways little else can.

5. Find the time to focus on your own personal development so that you can be a strong, active member in every relationship that you are involved in. To be effective in any relationship you must first be able to survive on your own. This is a HUGE topic that can’t be covered fully here, but is too important to leave out completely. A relationship is only as strong as the people involved in it. If you are overly dependent on your partner/friend, indulging in hyper-parenting, or unable to detach from your own parent(s) you will struggle in other areas of your life. A strong relationship is built on independence that becomes interdependent (i.e. the people involved are independently working together towards a common goal). Personal development is what life is all about. It does not indicate weakness or incompetence…it indicates that we are alive.

Did you know: The strength of a relationship is not measured by how much you need the other person…but rather by how much you can be yourself with that person and still feel confident he/she will stick around.

These are just some of the things we can do to build healthy, strong relationships with the people in our lives. It isn’t always easy and never really feels finished…but like all important things in life, it is well worth the effort.

Debbie Pokornik is the Chief Empowerment Officer for Empowering NRG and the author of Break Free of Parenting Pressures; Embrace Your Natural Guidance. For more information go to http://www.empoweringnrg.com

Does Parenting Really Have To Be This Hard?

There was a time in my parenting life, when I really wondered if the amount of effort I was putting into raising my kids was worth the effort. I had a lot of great reasons for parenting the way I did, but on the more trying of days I couldn’t help but think I was making it harder than it needed to be.

Looking at it now I realize I found this job so hard for the following reasons:

1. I cared a lot about doing a good job and being a great parent
2. Because I cared about doing a good job, I was putting a lot of energy into being self aware and analyzing why things had gone the way they did
3. Because I was analyzing things so much and really looking for the “reason” behind things, I was taking both my own and my kids mistakes/failures personally
4. Because I was taking things personally I was allowing self-doubt, guilt and uncertainty to weigh me down

I thought this would be an interesting revelation to share with fellow parents. Parenting (in my opinion) is harder when you really care about doing a good job. The other reasons were caused more by my own efforts and less from anything my kids were doing.

If I hadn’t cared so much, I might have just reacted – punished when it suited my purpose and raised kids who listened to me because they felt they had no other choice. I don’t mean to be minimizing the challenges faced by parents who have taken this route or to even suggest it is wrong, but I can tell you this…

Today I have strong, positive relationships with my kids. They truly are wonderful teens – sure my son wears his pants too low, exhausts me with his negotiating and has a real “smart” mouth at times. He’s a “C” average student in high school and I’m sure will make some “interesting” choices as life goes along. Despite this, he is well liked, communicative and respectful most of the time.

My daughter gets involved (sometimes causes) all kinds of friendship drama at school and has a look that can kill from twenty feet away. Her room is messy beyond belief and she avoids chores like the plague. But she is also very caring, determined, self assured and creative. She excels at school and is quick to pick up when people are not respecting her boundaries.

Both of them make me laugh a lot and bring way more joy into my life than they could ever take from it. I have, and will continue, to make numerous parenting errors…but somehow I now know these things only add to the parenting experience.

So, if you are parenting young children, putting in a lot of effort and questioning if it is worth it, I believe it truly is. I think I would have benefited from hearing that back when those feelings were surfacing for me and that is why I share this story.

I would love to hear your thoughts and stories…

Debbie Pokornik is the owner of empowering NRG. She is the author of Break Free of Parenting Pressures and believes all parents can use support at some point in their parenting experience. For other great parenting tips or to book Debbie for keynotes/workshops, go to http://empoweringnrg.com/

Effective Listening; How to Open Your Mind, Your Heart and Your Ears

Empathic Listening is a tool aimed at helping people connect and really hear what another person is telling them. To do it correctly, we must imagine ourselves in the other person’s situation and try to relate to how they are feeling. It is done with open ears, mind, and heart. Our goal is to detach from our own feelings and work on understanding the feelings of the other person. This can be challenging if what we are hearing affects us as well, but it is a key piece to getting the whole story.

The main strategy of Empathic Listening is the following:

• Identify the speaker’s feeling behind the words (anger, disappointment…)
  
• Empathize--try to think how you would feel in that person’s situation and share these thoughts with the speaker (warning: do not say I know how you feel!)
  
• Reflect back what you have heard, clarify if necessary
  
• Assist with problem solving ONLY if requested to do so

Example of Empathic Listening with child’s emotional outburst:

Child: I hate Grandma!

Parent: You sound angry. What’s going on?

Child: Grandma’s mean, she never plays with me

Parent: Hmm, I don’t think I’d like it if my Grandma never played with me, especially if she used to play with me a lot.

Child: Yeah. Now she’s always busy with the baby.

Parent: (nodding) So, do you think the problem is that she’s spending too much time with the baby?

Child: Yeah. Can I have a cookie?

Two important points:

1. Getting past the strong opening statement the child uses can be a hurdle for many parents. Those are BIG words, and if we want to find out where they are coming from we have to ignore our own emotions and listen for our child’s.
   
2. The child ended the conversation without asking the parent to help fix the problem. Parents love to fix problems, even when they are not asked to do so. In this case, and in more cases than you might imagine, the child just needed to be heard. His feelings were making him uncomfortable resulting in his strong opening statement. At some point he might bring it up with his parent again and ask for help with ideas, but if not, it is far more empowering for him if the parent just allows the conversation to end there.

Example of Empathic Listening with a bullying disclosure:

Child: I pretended to be sick because Bart said he was going to bash my head in and teach all the wimps at school a lesson!

Parent: Wow that sounds pretty scary.

Child: I’m not scared, I’m mad!

Parent: Okay, mad makes sense too… if it were me I think I’d be both mad and scared.

Child: Could I stay home tomorrow?

Parent: I wish I could let you. I don’t think I would want to go back either. I think the school might get upset though.

Child: They won’t care. You can just tell them I’m sick.

Parent: You know what Bart is doing is not okay. He has no right to treat you or anybody like that. What he’s doing is bullying. How about we come up with a plan to help you work through this problem?

In this case the parent raises the idea of problem solving together. Bullying is a serious issue that only arises when there is a power imbalance of some sort. Often our kids will need some guidance to work their way through it.

If the child responded by saying, “No. I’ll deal with it myself,” the parent could agree but end with a check back statement. “Okay, how about I check in with you again on the weekend to see how it went?” The result would be a child who feels supported, cared for and empowered by his parent’s belief in his ability.

Sometimes we have trouble identifying the name of the feeling and in fact the speaker himself might not be clear how he feels. Don’t get caught up in identifying the feeling or it could become a circus, (i.e., Are you mad? No. Irritated? No! Frustrated? No! Furious? NO!) The idea is to connect with the person by trying to understand his feeling. Guessing it right is not that important. We will never truly know what’s going on inside another person. If he says he is not angry despite his clenched jaw, red face, and throbbing temple, accept it and move on.

Finally, despite our perfect use of Empathic Listening, sometimes our child will not be receptive. If that’s the case (you can tell because he is escalating instead of calming) ditch this tool and move into self preservation. Calmly say something like “I can see you’re not ready to talk about this now, let me know if you want to talk later.” Then walk away and refuse to engage in further argument.

Exerpted with permission from Break Free of Parenting Pressures; Embrace Your Natural Guidance by Debbie Pokornik.

Raising Leaders - Being a Great Boss, Can Help Us Raise Great Kids

Anyone can boss people around…but not everyone will be a great boss. If we can focus on the qualities that separate an ordinary boss from a really great boss and then apply them to our parenting strategies, we will raise great kids.

Ten qualities that a great boss will possess are:

1. Patient with good self-control. A great boss is predictable in that he stays calm and controlled despite the situation. He does not allow his emotions to determine his reaction, but instead uses them to guide him on a path to discovery. Patience and self-control are two things that can challenge us when dealing with our children. Practicing these skills with our kids is a win-win situation.

2. Clear expectations. Expectations are not a guessing game when you have a great boss. This type of leader will be clear on what she wants from you and when she expects it done by. With our kids this might translate into The table needs to be cleared before you go outside.

3. Acknowledges a job well done. We all like to hear when we’ve done a good job and especially appreciate being told what it was we did well. With our kids we can do this by using effective feedback which tells them what they’ve done well and why we like it. Thanks for setting the table it makes my job easier when you help out.

4. Cares about the individual. For a boss, this means knowing a bit about the employee’s life outside of work – birthdays, weekend plans, sick children, etc. For parents, this involves knowing what their child is dealing with in life at the moment, who his friends are, his IT interests (sites surfing, games playing, shows watching) as well as his current hobbies.

5. Teaches, then trusts. A great boss will show you a new task, allow you to try it, make sure you understand it, and then trust you to do the job. With our children, this training is often severely lacking. To really learn something most of us benefit by having it broken down in steps, by being given an opportunity to try it out (hands-on) and by slight, positive adjustments being made when things go wrong. A great boss wouldn’t assume you know the details just from watching, yet often that is what we expect from our kids.

6. Provides assertive correction. A great boss will calmly, yet clearly tell you when there is a problem with something you’ve done, complete with an explanation of why this behaviour is a problem. This boss will not accept excuses or shirking of responsibility, but is willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. A great boss believes in you and recognizes mistakes are an inevitable part of living. Paying attention to how you are correcting your kids can make the difference between teaching them the lesson, and making them feel “faulty” for making a mistake.

7. Role models desired behaviours. A great boss does not say one thing and do another, unless he’s very clear about his reasons for this discrepancy. It is critical we remember our kids learn far more from what we do than what we say. As much as possible we want our behaviours to match the values we are trying to teach.

8. Promotes independence and interdependence. A great boss allows employees to be individuals within the boundaries of company standards. She doesn’t try to make clones of herself, but recognizes the unique talents each person brings to the table. She also expects people to work together for the good of the company. While our kids might seem to be a lot like us, they are individuals and will benefit most when we recognize and support that. If we allow our child to be her own unique self while working towards a common set of family goals, we will have a much happier team.

9. Avoids micro-managing. A great boss gives us a task, ensures we understand the details and timeline and then allows us to do it. When we want our kids to do things we often ask (or tell) them, wait a moment and then nag at them to do as they were asked. Besides being irritating, this tells our kids they do not need to do what we ask until our level of nagging hits a certain octave!

10. Promotes mutual respect. A great boss promotes a respectful relationship by treating her employees with respect. Orders are given sparingly and without personal attack. Ordering our children might seem more efficient, but in the end it will cause a lot of extra work. Watch the tone of voice you are using with your kids and be aware of how much you are ordering, rather than asking or suggesting.

Our children really are the bosses of the future. If we can keep these qualities in mind and practice them as much as possible in our family environment, we will have future leaders who are ready and able to be great.

Debbie is the owner of Empowering NRG and author of Break Free of Parenting Pressures: Embrace Your Natural Guidance. She believes all parents can use support at some point in their parenting experience and has made it her mission to help with this task. For more info go to http://www.empoweringnrg.com

Understanding Empathy, Seven Tips for Raising Compassionate Children

Empathy is about putting yourself in someone else’s shoes and trying to relate to what they might be feeling. Out of empathy comes caring, consideration, compassion and even remorse (if you are unable to think how your actions might hurt another person, how can you possibly feel bad for what you have done?). Some people purposely turn off their empathy to eliminate getting hurt and others are not stimulated to create the empathy pathways in their brain in the first place.

Seven tips for encouraging empathy:

1. Help kids become aware of their own feelings by pointing out what you see. “I can see you’re disappointed” “I understand your disgust…”
   
2. When your child does something hurtful to another person, ask her to think about how it might feel if the roles were reversed. Try to get her thinking without making her feel bad for making a mistake. “I want you to think about how you would feel if someone took away your favorite toy and wouldn’t let you have it back.”
   
3. Share your own feelings and take full responsibility for them. “I’m furious the dog ate my food while I was on the phone – I was looking forward to eating that sandwich.”
   
4. Model empathy to your child. “I can understand why you might feel that way. I would feel angry if someone did that to me.”
   
5. Use situations around you to discuss how other people might be feeling. Tactfully talk about situations you witness or use the characters in movies and TV shows. “She looked like she felt embarrassed when the store clerk laughed at her – what do you think?”
   
6. When people have to care for something living, they often develop a sense of connection which helps to teach empathy. Teach your kids how to take care of something living – a plant, animal, bird or reptile.
   
7. Have your kids act out a short story (fairy tales work well) and encourage them to really immerse themselves in the roles. To be a great actor you have to think carefully about how your character would be feeling which is what empathy is all about.
   

Developing empathy is important for all of us. Getting along with others, being able to wait your turn, treating people with compassion, feeling bad when you mistreat others are all dependent on our ability to care about how that other person might feel. Tuning into others helps us be caring people.

Parent Power: Using Our Power to Build Strong Relationships with Our Kids

As mentioned in a previous article, Parent Power is the authority given to us to guide our children towards acceptable behaviour. It is a neutral power that is automatically given and, when used effectively, can help us raise resilient kids while building a strong, positive relationship with them.

Gaining our children’s compliance is not always an easy thing to do which is why we need our power to back up our words when they refuse to listen. Our goal with our kids is to teach them how to think for themselves and understand why what we tell them to do is necessary, rather than have them blindly follow our direction.

In the end, we want to have taught our kids our version of right versus wrong, created a strong, loving relationship with them so they want to be part of our lives, and built up mutual respect so they will work with us during those tumultuous teenage years.

Five ideas for using your power wisely:

Provide clear expectations, enforcement and follow-through. Kids crave structure. They like to know what is expected of them and what the potential consequence will be for breaking that rule. Just like us, they feel an injustice has been done when they are not told of expectations and then get in trouble for breaking a rule. Be clear about your rules, enforce them consistently and do your best to follow-through on the planned consequence.

Allow choices. People like to be allowed to make their own decisions – although some will oppose it on occasion. People who resist choices usually have something else going on for them – fear of making a bad decision, challenges with self-regulation, etc. Allowing our kids to make choices and teaching them how to make good ones is an important part of helping them develop.

Guide rather than boss. Notice the kind of language that you use and when possible choose words that suggest an action rather than ordering it. For example, “Pick up your jacket” becomes “Your jacket belongs on a hook.” Depending on your child’s personality this can make the difference between daily fights and voluntary compliance. When we boss people around we are using power. Frivolous use of our power does not build respect. Save the bossing for moments when it feels totally necessary, and practice using positive communication the rest of the time.

Choose your battles carefully. There are a lot of things to correct, advise on, or lecture our kids about and if we do them all we cannot possibly build a positive relationship with them. Remember your kids will do things differently from you and will have their own perspective about what is right or wrong in many situations. Any time you have to fight to get your way, you are not teaching, but forcing compliance.

Be creative. Rather than going on automatic and pulling out habitual parenting tools (spanking, grounding, yelling, time-out…) force yourself to think creatively about the situation. Parenting is not a task to do on auto-pilot and yet so often that is what we do. When our kids are babies most of us experiment to figure out how to stop them fussing. As our kids grow and start pushing our buttons we often stop thinking and start reacting. When we force ourselves to come up with a new idea to try we are developing our own brain pathways along with those of our child.

There are a lot of great ways to gain our child’s compliance and still build a loving, respectful relationship. I encourage you to come up with your own, but to get started you might check out two of my earlier (September 09)articles sharing creative ideas for dealing with name calling (Name Calling: How parents and teachers can use it to their benefit) and rude/whiney behaviour (Would You Like a Do-Over?).

The less you use your power muscle and the more you practice using positive parenting strategies, the more you will benefit when your kids reach that rebellious, teenager stage. We all need to use our power sometimes, we just need to be sure we don’t get lazy and start using it to get our way all of the time.

The choice is ours … we have the power to make a difference!

Debbie Pokornik is a presenter and owner of empowering NRG and is releasing her first book Break Free of Parenting Pressures: Release Your Natural Guidance early 2010.

Parent Power: What is it and why is it important to know about it?

Parent Power is the authority given to us as parents to enforce rules and boundaries with our children in order to teach them right from wrong. It gives us permission to get things done using the power of our position and acts like a bottom line that suggests we can indeed “make our kids” do something.

To some of us this sounds terrible – who are we to force our kids to comply? To others it sounds fantastic – you’re darn rights my kids better listen to me. In reality Parent Power is neither good nor bad. It is there by virtue of our role as parents and how we use it can make all the difference in our growing relationship with our child.

Important things to know about Parent Power:

• Used carefully it can be extremely helpful. It allows us to respectfully guide our kids towards appropriate behaviour and build good, strong relationships with them at the same time.

• It must be used by a calm, controlled parent to be effective. Any time we overreact and “lose it” we diminish our Parent Power

• It relies on our children believing in this power for it to work.

• As our kids grow older our Parent Power naturally decreases. By the time our kids are teenagers we must rely on the mutual respect we have built with them to gain their cooperation.

• Used in a negative way Parent Power can cause our kids to tune us out, call our bluff, comply out of fear, or, in extreme circumstances, be removed from our home. It is very difficult to respect a person who lacks self control and uses their power unfairly.

• Because Parent Power is most often used behind closed doors, there is plenty of opportunity to misuse or overuse it.

Recognizing Parent Power

Some common phrases or actions we might use to flex our Parent Power muscle are:

• Because I said so…
• I am your parent and you’ll do as I say
• I have told you to do something and you need to listen to me
• As long as you are under my roof

• Use a loud or authoritative voice
• Intentionally tower over our little one to give our words more power
• Shoot an “I mean business” look at our child to gain compliance
• Use our strength to force our child to do something we’ve asked him to do (i.e. go to his bedroom)

These are not necessarily bad things for us to do. There are times when we need to gain our kid's compliance and in cases where they have decided not to listen this is how we do it. Those parents with a very full parenting pack of strategies and techniques, might rarely (if ever) get to the above examples, but I guarantee they use this power in some other way.

Where it becomes a problem is when we start using this power just to get our way without doing any of the teaching or mentoring that is required in between. Our goal as parents is to teach our kids how to think so they can make good sound decisions on their own. We cannot do this by regularly using power comments or actions just to get our way.

Using your Parent Power is not a bad thing – it has been given to you as a tool to use. My next article will talk about positive ways to use Parent Power, but for now just becoming aware of how and when you are using it can tune you in to what you are teaching and whether or not you are building the relationship you really would like to have with your child.

So think about your use of Parent Power and by all means leave me comments, questions or stories as you see fit.

Understanding Assertiveness: Standing up for yourself in a way that is both positive and affirming

It’s hard to be assertive if you don’t understand how it is different from aggression, what it does, or why it is important. Being assertive means standing up for yourself and the things you believe in without attacking or putting another person down. It is a skill that requires self control, personal strength and clarity on what you believe. Assertiveness never involves behaviours like shouting, insulting, threatening or swearing at another.

It is important when being assertive to understand this is something you do for yourself to let go of negative emotions. It is not about getting your way or setting the other person straight, as much as it is about saying your piece and feeling good about yourself in the process.

The reason this is important, is if you think being assertive is about changing the behaviour of the other person and that person doesn’t change, you can feel as if assertiveness has failed you. Anytime we try to control other people’s behaviour we set ourselves up for potential failure.

Assertiveness is done to build yourself up and let other people know how you feel. It is a way of venting emotions that would otherwise bottle up inside of you and eventually surface as an emotional explosion or illness. The trick to being successful at it is to stay calm, make your point and then let it go. If you continue to rethink the scene in a negative way, you will not reap the benefits of standing up for yourself.

Although changing other people’s behaviour is not the goal of this act, one of the great things about being assertive is that an ill-meaning offender will be counting on you reacting passively (doing nothing) or aggressively (attacking). When you assertively respond with strength and composure it throws him off balance which can result in a change in his behaviour. Sometimes this will create a reluctant form of respect, causing him to change his behaviour towards you permanently. When this happens consider it a bonus as you reap the rewards of your emotional vent and witness a positive result from your actions at the same time.

If you are already good at being assertive keep up the great work and be sure to model it for others (especially children). If however, like many people, you have gotten assertiveness confused with aggression, or have been playing the victim while others walk all over you, it would be a good idea to start working on developing this skill. Assertiveness grows from confidence and confidence feeds off being assertive. Sounds like a worthwhile investment to me.

Debbie Pokornik is the owner of empowering NRG. She helps people regain or maintain balance in their lives using natural, realistic guidance. To book Debbie for keynotes, workshops or other events, go to http://empoweringnrg.com

The power of communication and the affect it can have on our emotions

Yesterday I had a frustrating and enlightening experience.

My son is starting driver’s ed. at school this week and we have been told to visit one of our driver’s licensing offices (MPI) ahead of time to pick up a customer number. He will require this to write the written test in a few weeks and they highly recommend you pick it up right away.

This process requires very specific identification, but since MPI recognizes this is challenging for most teenagers, they have created a guarantor form to vouch for the child. This form is very similar to the passport verification one and must be signed by a qualified professional who’s known the applicant for at least two years.

Being a keener, I got right on this task and had the guarantor form taken to our Chiropractor in a town about forty minutes away. I carefully read through the MPI brochure my son had brought home and made sure we had everything we’d require. As soon as my son got off the school bus, we grabbed our papers and headed in to our closest MPI office.

Here’s where things got frustrating. I won’t bore you with details except to say that the driver’s ed. people had given out both an old brochure and an old guarantor form. The time I had spent getting things organized was all for naught and we were told we’d have to get a new guarantor form signed and then return to go through the whole thing again.

Here’s the enlightenment piece. Although I’m sure the lady at the MPI office thought she was being very professional with us, she managed to take what was just normal frustration and make me want to explode. She did not care that I had gone to any effort to get the forms signed and appeared to take great pleasure in circling the little numbers that showed the date the form was printed.

“These forms are outdated, they’re no good,” she stated, circling the little 04/07 as if that explained it all. “MPI is very particular – they’ll refuse it so you’ll have to get another one signed. It’s no big deal just get the new one signed by…” she rambled on oblivious to what her tone of voice and problem solving focus was doing to me.

What’s important to note is that by not even trying to put herself in my shoes, she took my frustration at having the wrong form and turned it into anger directly focused at her. I was not ready to problem solve…and it was a big deal! Minimizing the problem did not work in her favour and made me want to snap.

I managed to assertively tell the woman, “I am very frustrated at the moment. I do realize this error is not your fault however that doesn’t change how I’m feeling.” With that I grabbed my forms and walked out of the office, shaking, but with my dignity intact.

My point…this really didn’t need to be a big deal. With just the basic understanding of how to empathize and connect with people I would have been frustrated with the situation but not with that agency or staff person.

These are life skills every person working in customer service need to know. I'm not an easily angered or volatile person…but this situation definitely showed me how things could go in a negative direction. I know I'm responsible for how I feel and behave, but why make it harder on a person?

Those are my thoughts…thanks for listening

Name Calling: How parents and teachers can use it to their benefit

People love to poke fun at one another and will often resort to name calling to express how they are feeling. This activity is not always a bad thing and can actually be quite fun. It is a form of teasing; a give and take process meant to lighten the mood, create a little laugh and strengthen the relationship between participants.

Where name calling becomes a problem is when one person is using these moments to hurt the other. Any laughter is one-sided and typically the jibes only flow in one direction. These kinds of things can be precursors to bullying and are damaging to the relationships involved.

Name calling can also be a problem when the kids involved do not have the skills (or relationship strength) to enjoy the process. The way they deal with this frustration is to strike out at the other person and conflict arises. We can allow this to happen and hope the kids figure out a way to work it out, or we can be proactive and put a process in place first. This process should allow us to teach skills, limit the hurtful comments, and remain calm in the process.

One way to do this is to put a “two nice things” rule into effect. This rule requires that anyone who puts down another (joking or otherwise) will need to say two nice things about that person. Even in a strong relationship teasing can be damaging to self esteem (especially if you hit a sensitive topic), so it becomes the job of the “hurter” to build the other person back up. We call these put-ups and they are teaching the skills of positive thinking and compliments.

Typically, children will question any new rule so it is important to teach it in advance and then enforce it calmly and consistently. Let people know that when they call someone anything other than their name, they will be required to build that person back up by saying two nice things about them. Talk about what put-ups are acceptable and have the kids practice giving out compliments. Discuss if repeats will be allowed for repeat offenses and how these rules will be enforced.

Examples of good put-ups:
You’re fun
You’re a good friend
I like playing with you
You’re fun to hang out with
You’re very creative
You tell great stories
You make great lego machines
You have a beautiful voice
You’re very talented
You’re funny

Let the kids know that if they argue about the put down (i.e. it was just a joke, I didn’t say that, that’s not name calling), they will automatically be required to say four nice things. If they continue to argue the number becomes six and they will be asked to leave the room and return when they are ready to give their compliments.

The idea is to build people up. Although kids are often good at honest compliments when they are young, they often lose this by Grade two and start focusing on what they don’t like about other people. Focusing on positives is a skill that we all benefit by learning. Using a rule such as this allows kids to practice this skill and creates a nicer atmosphere for us all.

One word of warning…It is critical that you, as the enforcer, remain calm and allow this to be a learning experience. If you become judgmental (i.e. that was uncalled for; you are very rude) or allow anger to guide your enforcement, the process will become a form of punishment and, rather than disappearing, the name calling will intensify.


Debbie Pokornik is the owner of empowering NRG. She is the author of Peak at Parenting; Natural, Realistic Guidance for the Busy Parent (releasing late 2009) and believes all parents can use support at some point in their parenting experience. For other great parenting tips or to book Debbie for keynotes/workshops, go to http://empoweringnrg.com/