The Forced March 

The forced march is what our son called our family walks.

After a gorgeous weekend and a wonderful relaxed afternoon outside with my teenaged kids and the dogs, I thought back to the battles that so often raged when trying to get everyone out the door for a ‘fun’ family walk. At least I was determined that a walk should be fun and therein lay the problem!

Getting cooperation is one of the toughest challenges parents face and it can be especially hard if, instead of toeing the line, you get intense emotional outbursts.

Faced with a tantruming child, we are flooded with emotion, we can lose perspective, we can’t think rationally and find it hard to overcome the ineffective, knee jerk response. It happens to all of us.

I dealt ineffectively with my young son's emotional (and physical) outbursts and it was only when I realised that I needed to look at my own expectations that things began to change. The family walk was an example as I expected all my children to jump to it, immediately down tools and fall in line, with a smile, on our happy family outing. I learned that gaining cooperation from all my kids started with me – my mind-set, my expectations and my approach.

Turning from our own expectations and agenda to compassion for their feelings, their temperament and their reality is the place to start.  As US parenting expert Bonnie Harris says, if we can think of our uncooperative child as ‘having a problem, rather than being a problem’, we can come alongside them with empathy and compassion rather than down on top of them with control or from behind negotiating or pleading.  Just as my son may have had a problem putting on his socks or remembering to put away his drawing, he was having a problem expressing his big emotions using his words. Helping our children towards cooperation starts with us.

What doesn't work?

Here are just a few of the approaches that are ineffective but may seem familiar (I have tried them all):

Exerting control: “You WILL come for a walk with us”. No one likes to be controlled and this approach results in a power struggle where one ‘wins’ and the other ‘loses’ – hardly a good life lesson.

Bribes don’t result in learning either: “If you come for a walk then you can stay up an extra hour tonight”. Here we end up in a destructive cycle of bribes and extrinsic rewards where kids don’t develop intrinsic motivation.

Demeaning comments dismiss their emotions. “I don’t know why you are the only one who doesn’t want to come. It will be fun. You are overreacting and you will be fine” are counterproductive responses as we are saying that their emotions are not valid and they don’t matter. If we continue, we will lower our children’s self -esteem and they will think of themselves as ‘the one who does not cooperate’ and guess what, they won’t.

What does work?

Five steps to greater cooperation.

1. Put yourself in their shoes. Ask yourself how they might be feeling? Experience their pain and sadness. Perhaps it feels a bit like this:  you're in the middle of an exciting project/film/book and you couldn’t be happier. Just at the good part, your partner comes in and says that it's time to walk the dogs, now, in the rain. You've walked them all week, you are on a roll and are just happy to keep doing what you are doing inside where it’s warm and dry. You can understand where your child is coming from. You go however because you can process immediately that this is important to your partner, you had talked about it this morning and you know that you can finish what you are doing later. You say ‘of course I will come. Give me 5 minutes.’

Part of the empathy step is understanding that one of the differences between you and your young son is that as an adult, you have a fully functioning rational brain (your prefrontal cortex). The hopes and desires of your emotional side (your limbic system) are regulated by your experience and your emotional intelligence. In the nanosecond you weigh it all up, you can make your decision with your fully developed brain. Your young son does not have the benefit of this mature rational thought. With this in mind, we need to come at his problem from his point of view, only then can we help him work through his big emotions. “I really get it that you would much rather be here inside playing with your Lego. You are angry that you need to leave it and put on your wellies and stomp across the fields. That is tough.”

You may get anger that moves on to sadness and tears. This can take time and it means that he is passing through his big emotions and only then will he be able to think again. Our empathy helps him move back to a calm steady state from where problem solving and learning take place.  Done again and again, he will learn that ‘I can manage this. This too will pass. ‘

We are not saying that the behaviour is always acceptable (it is never ok to hit and kick) but the emotions ALWAYS ARE. Seeing things from his point of view and remembering that big emotions are telling you something is always the best place to start.

2. Show respect – Think how it makes your kids feel when you respect their point of view. They feel listened to and understood. I respected my children when I learned to set them up ahead of time for the day’s plans. ‘Shall we chat about the weekend and what we would all like to do? I get that you have lots of playing to do. You are busy all week and you love time with your games. You have so much to build and do and draw.  We also need to fit in some family time with the dogs. Would you like to do that before or after lunch on Sunday? “ Here I am acknowledging their temperament - two of my kids were not great at transitions and I am showing respect by helping them succeed. Listening with respect leads to collaboration and will teach your kids problem solving skills.

3. Don’t take it personally. It is not about you. This was a big one for me. My son was indeed ‘having a problem’ which does not mean that I was a rubbish parent or that he was out to get me but rather that he had not YET learned to manage his big feelings and problem solve. I leaned to take a deep breath (many deep breaths) and put on my collaborative problem solving hat.

4. Stay close – I used to my kids to the naughty step. Why doesn't this work? Because we think sending them away gives them the chance to ‘think about what they have done!!!!” instead they are thinking about all the reasons they resent us and why they are such a bad kids. If we stay close we show that no matter what behaviour they throw at you, we love them unconditionally. ‘I am here. We can get through this. I am just going to stay close. We have this one. We all need a little time to breathe. I will be here. I am not afraid of your big feelings. “

5. Connect before, during and after . Connection is always the key. If we connect deeply with our children and focus on all the things they get right, we will get less undesirable behaviour. Full stop. It is hard to remember at times but children want to please us. They are made to seek our connection – it is part of their survival mechanism and they depend upon us for their security, their safety and their wellbeing. Think about how they search our faces for our responses to things.  Make connection a core part of your family life whether it is reconnecting every day after schoolwork or nursery, spending daily one on one time with each child (even if they are home all day), finding out what music your teen likes, getting on the floor again to play that silly game (in my case this is Monopoly) as connection is the key to cooperation.

A child at any age is more likely to cooperate and be open to our influence when the relationship is deep and strong.