An Approach to Help Parents Deal with Children who are Discipline Challenges

 

I would like to introduce a guest blogger, Julie Katz. She is a Certified Nurtured Heart Parent Coach/Trainer who lives in Las Vegas and coaches parents and teachers, as well as conducting one-on-one sessions via phone or Skype. Her post offers  my readers useful strategies and resources to help parents manage spirited, intense or undisciplined children.

 

Do you have children in your life who:

·       appear angry or defiant?

·       exhibit temper tantrums?

·       do not respond to traditional discipline techniques?

Do you, as a parent:

·       find yourself yelling all the time?

·       feel like you’re not having any fun with your kids?

·       feel stressed out or anxious?

There is an approach that can help.

 

The Nurtured Heart Approach™ (NHA) created by Howard Glasser, is more than just a behavior management strategy. It’s a method of parenting children with ADHD and others who are highly intense or difficult, by transforming the focus of their intensity and energy from one of ongoing opposition, negativity and failure, into one of success and achievement. It is about recognizing and reflecting successes in every moment with your child.  

 

Traditional parenting methods may work for the average child, but are not designed for the intense child and the harder we try with these conventional methods, the worse it gets.

 

Once we take away the ipad, phone, TV and all other privileges, what are we left with? The truth of the matter is that the child is running the show and he isn’t afraid of us.

 

That’s why I created www.gettingback2greatness.com. I help families with spirited children by having the parents acknowledge and celebrate the child’s positive behaviors and reflect them back to the child, while giving no attention to the negative behaviors.

 

Particularly intense kids who get all of our delicious, luscious attention when they are misbehaving and breaking rules so they rise to that expectation- why would they give that up?

 

 

We as parents, accidentally energize the choices we don’t want our children to make, by giving out $100 bills in the form of our attention, focus, and relationship.

 

Energetically we hand out big bucks all the time. Children can feel relatively invisible when they are not breaking the rules and perceive the juicy connection when they do because the energy we give is often “upside down”.

 

By realizing that we are the gift being sought by our children, we can now decide how to give them our attention, energy, and relationship. We can either focus on the negative behaviors- the whining, name calling, temper tantrums and all of the other undesirable behaviors, or we can flip it right side up and energize the children for all of the non-rule breaking behaviors that they do every day. Once the adult begins to celebrate the child’s positive behaviors, the parent creates a “juicier” time-in.  As the child feels “nourished” by the parent, he will use his intensity in more successful ways.

 

The bottom line of the NHA is that an intense or difficult child is actually an energy-challenged child who is drawn to the strongest possible texture of adult energy- he doesn't care how he gets it- he wants the $1 million check and doesn't see that there's a negative sign in front of it. 

 

Parents and teachers need to make a child feel valued. This is accomplished by recognizing the child’s positive choices and reflecting them back to the child in these moments so they get a first-hand experience of their success. 

 

This technique is a remarkable way of showing your child that you notice and care about many aspects of her life...It is not only a way of feeding her emotional reservoir, but of proving that she is not invisible. Indeed, many children feel they are invisible unless they are either going to the trouble of acting out or doing something exceptionally well.

 

Once you begin to implement this approach and the child feels “seen” - the parent will see the behaviors in their home shift and the child will show up in their greatness.

You can get more information by visiting www.gettingbacktogreatness.com. You can also call 702-461-0749. Email: julie@gettingback2greatness.com