Anger

Good morning moms! Thanks again so much for joining me on Saturday. What a fun time. It is going to be great for all of us to focus together on proactively parenting. One of the suggestions in Love and Logic is if you don't have a good consequence for something your kid does, to tell them you will get back to them later. Then you talk with other people to get some suggestions. We can be those people for each other. You are welcome to comment here, or we all might see if faster if we ask each other on Facebook. I'd be happy to create a Facebook group for us. We could make it a private one since a few of us have kids old enough to have Facebook accounts.

One thing that seemed to be very common for all of us was dealing with anger and when our kids, "push our buttons." Jenne mentioned the Orange Rhino" website. Here is a link to it if you haven't seen it before.

Here is an excerpt from Parenting Teens With Love and Logic. It applies easily to any age of kids:

"The nice thing about teenagers is that if we don't properly apply a Love and Logic principle today, they're certain to give us another opportunity tomorrow. Sometimes it helps to say to yourself over and over just before you fall asleep at night, When I get angry, I'm going to whisper. When I get angry, I'm going to whisper." 

I thought that this went perfectly with the "Orange Rhino" concept. We just have to take charge of our own emotions. We will be much better models for our kids, and their behavior will be better. It is the ultimate win-win.

The Love and Logic teen book lists three principals pertaining to dealing with our anger. They are:

• Principal 1: If it's not an emergency, it doesn't have to be handled right then. So we can say to our teens, "Unlucky for you, I"m angry. Lucky for you, I'm not going to talk to you about it until tomorrow."
• Principal 2: Generally speaking, the angrier you are, the more important it is to lower your voice.
• Principal 3: Talk it over with other people before you decide what to do. The consequence is usually better if it comes after both you and the teen have entered the "thinking state" after leaving the "emotional state."

Although this material comes from the teen book, the principals are the same in the original Parenting with Love and Logic book. I know for me, this applies to my little kids (specifically the 7 year old) far more than my actual teen. It seems as if we all have one that pushes us a little more than the others. 

The next topic we talked about that I will write about is how to help kid's mistakes be their opportunities.