The other day I was at church and the lesson was taught by a woman who was a motivational speaker. I learned something very interesting from her that I have been applying to my parenting and it has made a HUGE difference. The Power of a Negative Word.
I have been struggling lately with losing my temper with my kids and every day I would pray that I wouldn't lose my temper again. I put sticky notes up around the house to help myself inforce the rules I was trying to teach my two year old : we don't yell, we don't throw our toys, stop running through the house ect.
what this motivational coach taught us is that our brains automatically ignore all negative words so what our brains actually register is: yell, throw toys, run through the house.
So instead of using any negatives in my language I've really been trying to reword things. So when my son is yelling I will say, "lets use our inside voices".
Or when he takes a toy from his sister instead of saying "don't take that" I say "if you want that toy can you go find a different toy for sister and trade her?"
Of course we still have our terrible-two meltdowns. I constantly feel overwhelmed on a day to day basis that my kid won't be able to read by the time he's three, or do fractions by the first grade, or that he will have serious emotional problems as an adult all because I didn't teach him and do things a better way. I love pinterest but I feel even more inadequate as a parents after reading about all the other things these amazing mothers are doing! but.....
this is one simple change that has brought so much peace in our home and really helps me keep my composure. I may not do everything else right but If I could just make one suggestion to improve your parenting it would be this. Get RID OF THE NEGATIVES! It takes practice and it is hard to break years of habit but I promise the reward is worth it!
