Posts Tagged "wants"
What’s Behind Whining?
What's behind whining? My answer, in a word, is powerlessness. If you think about it, children who are confident they can get what they want, ask; children who think asking won't work, whine. They have to because by nature, children are driven to communicate what they want, whether they can have it or not. This is explained by the first premise of Language of Listening®: Everything children...
Read MoreDrawing Out a Withdrawn Child
When a child has become withdrawn, lost touch with his wishes and is unable to access joy, what do you do? Use Language of Listening coaching skills and watch the magic unfold. In a 4th grade leadership class, the topic was how to make your wishes come true. The children were to list important wishes/unimportant wishes, then list visioning/planning strategies and sub-strategies. Step #1 was...
Read MoreHelping Parents Who Haven’t Asked
"If you want to be part of this family, then you'd better..." Imagine you saw your neighbor using harsh criticism, public scoldings and coercive statements like that with her 9 YO adopted daughter to "make her behave." If you knew a better way to work with children and even had a book that could tell her not only how to create willing cooperation but how to do it in a way that would improve...
Read MoreIf Kids Fighting Makes You Mad
How can you open doors to connection instead of slamming them shut (literally) when kids fighting sets you off? I was invited to answer this question for a reader of Hands Free Mama blog. Our Q&A is reprinted below with permission, edited for brevity and clarity. QUESTION: Do you have any suggestions on how to handle sibling fighting? I am a Type A, list-following,...
Read MoreCreate Shopping Cooperation
What do you do when your child wants everything in the store? Instead of trying to reign in their wants, check your boundaries (physical, social or personal). It's OK to buy only what you can or want to buy, and validate the rest with wishes. An odd thing happens with wishes. When you explore the details of children's wishes—what they love about it, what they might imagine they could...
Read More