ScreamFree Articles

Which situations tend to push parents to react the way they do? The number one complaint of so many parents is “they just won’t listen to me!” And my response is always the same. Yes, they do. They hear every word you say. It’s not that they aren’t listening; it’s that they aren’t obeying. We simply do not know what to do when our children choose to disobey us, or deliberately ignore us, or make a ridiculous choice that we know will backfire. And it drives us nuts.

How much privacy should a child have a right to? This is a great question, and there is no “right” answer. What is most important is asking the question, because that begins to spur the type of thinking that creates healthy space. Just asking the question begins to stir within us the idea that our child is a different human being, a separate person, with thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that are simply not our own. I talk at length about creating space for our children, space for them to discover themselves and become self-directed. Beginning to create and then respect their privacy is a critical step.

What is the hardest part about extending more and more space to a child? The hardest part about creating space for our child is simple: we don’t know what they’re going to do with it. Are we giving them just enough rope to hang themselves, or are they going to respond by making authentic choices that have positive results? If we respect some of their space to make their own decisions, whether it’s about their feelings or their allowance, then we have to live with those choices. And those choices could lead to a terrible mistake!! (from our perspective). What I’ve come to appreciate, by learning to calm my own anxiety, is the joy of watching them make their own decisions. I get to watch them think through a decision, like whether to continue yelling even though they know timeout is coming, or whether to spend their own money on a whimsical purchase. These are learning experiences that I simply could not teach them through my words or even my example.

Does your style of parenting work best on a six-year-old or a sixteen-year-old? Why? ScreamFree parenting is for parents of all ages with kids of all ages because it is not about kids, it’s about parents. It’s about learning to focus on how I want to respond, regardless of the age of my child. Now, obviously my response is going to change as my children grow up. I say “Let the Consequences Do the Screaming,” which emphasizes granting your child the space to make her own choices and learn from the consequences of those choices. How much space you grant her depends on her age and maturity at the time as well as the specific circumstance. When she’s six, for instance, you are not going to let her learn the consequence of playing in the street by letting her get hit by a car. But when she’s sixteen she’ll be driving in the street, with many lessons to be learned through experience. But there are plenty of opportunities for a six year old to learn through space as well. Regardless of the age of our children, the principles are the same, because it’s about us, not them.

How did your parents raise you? To be honest, my childhood was far from ideal. My parents went through (and took us through) a very messy divorce. There were other traumatic elements in there as well. What I’ve come to believe is that my parents did the best they could with what they had available. This does not excuse them, because, frankly, their best was not nearly good enough. But it does explain them in a way that has helped me come to a place of understanding, forgiveness, and now, mutual respect. I now cherish my relationships with both of my parents. We have talked at length through so many issues, and I have come to a place of humility because I now know how incredibly difficult it is to be married and raise a family. I also find myself imitating them and the good things they did as parents.

How might one’s family change when the parent stops resisting his child and starts going with his momentum? Whenever we resist our child, we anxiously are trying to employ some power method over them. And this naturally encourages their own defensiveness in return. When a parent stops this initial resistance, however, amazing things begin to occur. A child simply doesn’t know what to do when a parent doesn’t immediately react. He says “This is boring!” and his mom responds with empathy, “That stinks. What are you going to do about it?” This puts the ball back in his court; he can’t fault his mom for his boredom. Initially, he may double his efforts to rope mom in. But as she continues to go with the flow, he begins to develop resources that surprise even mom. He entertains himself, or does his own homework, or cleans his own room. In short, he starts to become self-directed.

Why should we avoid attaching labels to our children? Why does becoming a ScreamFree Parent mean taking a very hard look at our own anxiety-driven need to label our child’s tendencies and predict our child’s destiny? Whenever we label our kids (a good girl, a follower, smart, athletic, pretty, sweet, a troublemaker), it is always borne out of our anxious need to predict and categorize. Somehow it helps us feel a little better whenever we can attach some known category. That way we feel as if we “know” our child like no one else.

What we miss is how powerful those labels can be in actually restricting our child’s space to be anything different. A child who’s labeled smart has to always live up to that (and cannot make a mistake). A child labeled a troublemaker continues to behave so because everyone around him begins to expect it.

How do you balance protecting your kids from life’s dangers and yet exposing them to life’s lessons? This is the central question that governs the balance of space and place. It is my responsibility to my kids to grant them both. That means I have to respect the area over their life that is totally theirs. That means I also have to let them know what area of their life is not up to them, where their space ends. This is their place. This means discerning when to let them taste the full brunt of their decisions and when to soften the blow, or when to disallow them the possibility of making certain, more life changing, decisions. This is finding the balance of protection and exposure. The tricky part is that there is no “correct” answer. The key is to continually ask the question with each new situation, with each kid, at every age.

What are some mistakes you would actually like to see your child commit? I believe mistakes are the path to wisdom for those willing to be decisive. Being decisive means taking charge of your own life, and that means making both good and bad decisions. Both are educational and both get your life moving. So, I like for my children to make mistakes that teach them without hurting too much. Like spending too much of their allowance on a frivolous item. Or leaving their belongings out at night, only to find them stolen the next day. Or yelling at me or my wife and discovering that we have feelings that can get hurt. Or learning that correcting their friends in public makes them very unpopular. These are experiences that penetrate their development and indelibly shape their future decisions.

Why is “friendship parenting” not a healthy model? I am not of the belief that we should never be friends with our kids. We love our kids, and love to be around our kids (sometimes). We even begin to learn from our kids. This has all the makings of a good friendship, as long as it is borne of desire, not need. But when our own need for friendship infects our parenting relationship, we begin to erode our own authority. We shoot ourselves in the foot when we need our children to like us, to want to be around us, and to learn from us. At that point we cannot make principled decisions. What our children need most is for us to not need them. That way they are free to explore all the ranges of human emotions without needing to make us feel good. And that frees us to make unpopular, yet principled, decisions.

If you don’t scream or lose control on occasion, how is a child to know his or her limits and understand which issue or behaviors really are taboo? Part of the problem is that once you start down the path of reactivity, you begin to get short term results. The kids eventually comply just to avoid the parent’s wrath. But soon the parent has to escalate their reactivity to get the same compliance. This is not a method for building a lasting relationship of positive influence. When these parents hear of the ScreamFree path, they initially protest: “If I don’t scream, then they won’t ever listen to me!” The business side of parenting calls for us to let our child know his place. This means setting and enforcing limits to their choices. When the child inevitably crosses the line, that’s the time to “Let the Consequences Do the Screaming.” I don’t need to scream when there are logical consequences to do the “limits teaching” job for me.

What do you commonly find your clients are overwhelmed by when it comes to being a parent? The biggest stress about being a parent seems to be the very nature of raising independent creatures, with minds and lives of their own. Despite all of our manipulative control and reactive measures we take, our children still defy us and make decisions we wish they wouldn’t make. And we don’t know what to do about it except try harder to control them. Which, of course, makes things worse. Add to this daily consternation all the stresses of life (especially marriage!), and you’ve got the makings for an overwhelmed parent. What’s amazing about what I do, though, is that I get to see amazing transformations occur throughout the whole family when parents simply choose to focus on themselves and calm down.