Breaking Ingrained Behavior Patterns with Kids

Allow space to develop new behavior patterns with your kids. They are constantly growing and changing, we tend to forget this, and slip into ingrained patterns of communicating with them, especially if they are doing something we perceive as negative; asking us to buy them something new, resisting doing a task, expressing that they don’t like something.

It was a Sunday morning, my son began his campaign to convince me to buy him a digital drawing tablet. With a deep inner sigh, I countered with all the reasons why I was definitely not going to rush out of the house on a Sunday morning to do this, and maybe he should consider doing his chores before he starts asking for things... a familiar interaction. But this time I paused, and listened to what he was actually saying. He was not whining, or throwing a fit, he was calmly stating his reasons, and some possible solutions to the whole, me absolutely-not-wanting-to get-out-of-my-pajamas-and-rush-out-of-the-house-on-a-Sunday-morning complication. I realized in this moment how much he had matured, and grown as a person.

As parents (and teachers) we tend to go into auto pilot when a seemingly familiar scenario appears. He is not the same kid he was a year ago, maybe even a few months ago. We have to allow the opportunity to establish new ways of interacting, new ways of communicating, so that we can grow in this relationship together.

~Tiffany ✨✨