Parenting Matters: Check yourself

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, October 5, 2016

For one day, keep track of your behavior. See how frequently during the day you say something positive and filled with love and how frequently you are angry and say something that has no love or positive message.

You are bound to have some messages that are absent of any obvious loving thoughts. You probably can justify those messages with statements about what you are doing for your child’s best interest or with the fact that you are trying to help him learn. All of us are bound to have some of those messages each day. The question is, do these less positive messages come more frequently than messages of love or those filled with positive feelings?

The balance between the positive and the negative is crucial. Once you figure out how your balance is going by keeping track for a day or two, you then can begin to work on more positive expressions.

You also can just work on trying to say things in a more positive way. For instance, you can remember what a crummy job he did cleaning his room last week and say something like “Timmy, I want you to do a better job than you did last week when you cleaned your room. It was awful and I won’t put up with it again.”

Or you can say something like “Timmy, you usually do such a nice job cleaning your room. I really hope you can do that again this week. I think your room looks just super when you really do a good job. I love it and I love you when you do it like that.”

You can even make a big difference when you say goodnight. You can say “Goodnight, Molly. Turn your lights out right now and get to sleep.” Or you can say “Goodnight, Molly. I love you. I hope you have a great night’s sleep and I will see you in the morning, sweetheart.”

Even when your little one is off to school, you can wish him goodbye positively or somewhat negatively. You can say, “Bye, Mike. Be good today. No more missing assignments or talking back to the teacher. Bring your book home today like your teacher tells you to.”

Or you can hug him goodbye and say, “Bye, Mike. I love you. Hope you have a great day at school. I put a special treat in your lunch to remind you to bring your book home today. Hope that helps.”

These are mild examples of saying things on the negative side. They are the ways parents frequently say things. However, some parents can be far too negative. Instead of sending your little one off to school in the ways above, some really negative people might say something like “Bye, Mike. Don’t be a jerk today like you were yesterday. If you come home with another poorly done paper like the last ones, you better be ready for a tough evening.” Hopefully your negatives don’t go that far.

The hugs and the frequent “I love you’s” really help. Hopefully they are sprinkled through the day. Let him even see the hugs and I love you’s between you and your partner. That kind of demonstration of positive feelings teaches him that it should be a part of his life for the rest of his life.

When he hears positive messages, he feels better about himself. You are helping him learn that he is a good person. Make sure that he overhears you speaking positively about him and about others. You are teaching him to feel that way and to speak that way.

The end result of checking yourself is that hopefully you find the positive messages outnumber the negatives by a significant amount. If not, it means you need to change how you talk with your child to include more of the positives.

We all need to pay attention to things that we can do a bit better.

Cynthia Martin is the founder of the First Teacher program and director of Parenting Matters Foundation.Reach Martin at pmf@olypen.com or at 681-2250.