Positive interactions

I listen to a lot of Wondrium lectures while I clean the barn every morning. Every so often, I hear something that captures my interest. The trouble is that I don't always manage to hear the source that the interesting as something comes from.  This is certainly the case with the bit I'm going to share with you, but I think it is possible for it to stand in its own.

I was listening to a course on managing and resolving conflict, paying marginal attention when I hear the lecturer say that for someone to be able to accept challenging feedback from another person, that 80% of the interactions with that person need to be positive. While this can be important in a work setting (the main audience for these series of lectures), I automatically jumped to how incredibly important this piece of information is in the parenting realm. 

I know in some of our more challenging years of parenting that I did not come even close to 80% positive interactions. The reality was closer to its reciprocal with 20% positive and maybe not even reaching that on our worst days. This was one of the fundamental areas that I needed to change when we began to look at parenting from a different angle.

Before making the change, it was as if I believed (though it was an unexamined belief) that my positive interactions were somehow a reward for good behavior. That if a child was having difficulty following rules or being polite or respectful then I couldn't reward that behavior with pleasantness. If someone had made this connection between a child's behavior and my response, I would have been angry and horrified. It was not the image I held about myself as a mother. But as I've written more times than I can count, parenting can be a very challenging endeavor.

Part of becoming the parent my hurt children needed me to be involved taking a good hard look at how I interacted with them. I had to be honest that I would not find it easy to trust or love me as I had been interacting with some of my children. I was not gentle, loving, or pleasant. When I really started to pay attention I found that I rarely smiled, much less laughed. I was so focused on what they were doing wrong that I very rarely noticed, much less expressed, the ways they got things right. I was so focused on behavior that I completely missed relationship. 

Changing was not easy at first, but it was a change that completely switched around everything. I wholeheartedly concur that the vast majority of interactions need to be positive if one hopes to have any sway in moving more challenging behaviors. Now I can say why. If growth and learning comes from feeling safe and having strong connections, then trusting the adults in your life to see the good in you, to take delight in you, to be on your team is how safety and connection is built. Would you trust a boss who only ever scowled and criticized you? Would you be comfy receiving challenging feedback from them? Why would it be any different between a parent and child with a lot more riding on the relationship?

We can easily get into habits of behavior. Pause and really take a look at them. Is your face open and pleasant or scowling when speaking to your child? Do you laugh together? How often do you offer critical comments? Do you have interactions outside of giving directions or instructions? Would you want to be on the receiving end of these interactions? The answers to these questions may not always be comfortable. The good news is that this is something you have control over and can change if you don't like what you see. And I can tell you that positive interactions are not giving into poor behavior. Instead they are throwing a life line of care and love to a child who is struggling.