Change to Change

Do you want to change your child?
Do you want him or her to change her habits, her attitude, his approach, her
study style, her behaviour with elders, his behaviour with peers, his choice of
vegetables, her choice of clothes, her goals, ambitions, beliefs, dreams?
Do you want to change any of the above?

Most of the time, this change is with all good intentions. After all, as parents,
we know best. But somewhere these "change wishes" turn into issues, arguments,
commands or sheer power struggles. End result: frustration at both ends.

At the first level perhaps we look at everything through our window of correctness.
Is my strategy to compare the rest of the world with myself and find it imperfect?
Or do I compare myself with rest of the world and LEARN from it? If I do not like
the view outside do I want to change the view or the window?

At the second level, am I only wishing a change in others? Somehow we wish
others were like a machine with lots of knobs for me to twist and turn to get the
"perfect result". And what we wish, we seem to get; so we start believing and
behaving as if the wish was true: We start turning knobs of blames, criticisms,
labels, comparisons, commands, manipulations, threats et al. And how does
the machine respond? And how does it leave you?

At the third level, am I ready to change myself, my own beliefs, my own behaviour
and my own responses. Perhaps this is most effective. Simply because since
others are not in our control, it is very difficult to change others. Since we are in
control of ourselves, since we do have access to knobs in our mind, we can
effect this change rapidly, effectively and to other's pleasure.

The best news is that we need to only make very small change. Significantly and
fortunately, this little changes work like 'levers'. Put a small force at your end and
see an amazing change at the other end. The fulcrum being the faith we have in
each other: I am Ok, You are OK.

We present three such small changes:

1 Catch the behaviour, but don't hang the identity
If a child is not doing anything we call him 'lazy', if the child is running all over
we call the child 'naughty', if the child is pulling things down, we call the child
'destructive', if the child is not mingling with others we call the child 'shy'. If the
objective is change the child then the problem with all these labels is that they
attack the identity of the child. They tell the child that there is something wrong
with YOU, instead of saying that there is something wrong with your behaviour.

These labels question "who am I" rather then questioning "what am I doing".
Since the focus is on my identity I either feel bad about myself (and this isn't
going to help me change) or I disregard the acquisition (and that isn't going to
help change either).The moment we shift our focus to the behaviour, changing
the behaviour is where the child's focus goes.

So try, "I see somebody wasting some time"; "The running is causing
problem to others; "Pulling is going to break and spoil things"; "If you interact
with others, you may have a good time" etc.
(For more on this see Issue 6 - 'Lovely Labels, Lousy Labels')

2 Its not about behaviour, Its about Intentions
Once our focus is shifted to the behaviour - how do we respond to that?

The moment we see a child hitting another, we say "Don't ! It is not proper to
hit others." What if we find the intention behind the behaviour by changing our
communication from "why are you hitting" to "You seem to be angry
(about something)". Wouldn't the child stop hitting and start telling you?
Isn't that what we anyway wanted? The child could be hitting because he
wants his toy, feels other might break it, feels other is not friendly, etc.
The intention might be any, but to the child its a valid intention.
And the moment that is acknowledged, the child's basic need is met and this
stops the behaviour. Even when we do not know the child's exactintention, being
aware that there is a positive intention is enough to change our approach.

No child wants to misbehave. Since behind the misbehavior is this positive
intention - the sooner we acknowledge that, we are able to align ourselves with
the child's needs.This results in finding better and more acceptable ways of
getting whatever they want. However, when we only stop unwanted behaviour,
children see themselves as 'bad' or negative. Moment we focus on the child's
intentions and needs, behaviour is seen as inappropriate and alternatives
automatically springout. See how things change if we change:
Instead of "You are lazy", "You seem to need more rest"
Instead of "Stop watching TV and do you homework" "You seem to find
homework burdensome or boring"
For more on this see Issue 29 - 'Acceptance Frames')

3 From Permanent to Temporary
What is common between: "You are so mischievous", You are so irritating"
"You are always teasing your sister", "You are never on time". What's common is
"ARE" and that means all the above statements are permanent. These statements
imply that the behaviour in child is permanent: you are like this, you were always
like this and you will always be like this. Are, always, never, give our statements
a finality to it, a permanence, a this-cannot-be-changed message!

Change to temporary language and the child knows that there is way out, there
is an alternative. So try instead: "Pulling down things is a mischief"; "I feel
irritated when my saree is pulled again and again".

Also using extremities like 'always' and 'never', which are rarely true, gives the
child an implicit message that 'he or she cannot change'. That this is unending
phenomenon. The trick is to avoid these extremities and instead point to the
specific instance(s): "You've been teasing your sister for last ten minutes";
"You were late on Monday, and yesterday and even today.

In conclusion, if we want children to change, let us change, by avoiding the
identity, by acknowledging the intention behind any misbehaviour, by
focussing only at the behaviour and communicating it in temporary language.

By Ratnesh & Aditi Mathur
For www.geniekids.com

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