You’re in a grocery store and your 5-year-old wants a candy bar at the checkout stand. You calmly but firmly say no. Before you can turn back to the checkout person, your child is on the floor kicking and screaming! What do you do?
Of course, many parents in this situation are mortified, and the child knows it. “If he would just control himself!” you think. But the child has you in the grips of emotional tyranny. He's not at all interested in learning self-control or saving you a possible embarrassment. However, the child does know there’s a chance that his ploy might actually work. Besides, the child’s being out of control may be upsetting you, and if so, the child feels powerful. He definitely has your attention!
Yep, you could give in and buy the candy bar to quiet your child. But if you do, the child learns to “misbehave” in order to get his needs or desires met. This then is the beginning of a possible learned or conditioned behavior.
Of course, you might decide instead to rely on some form of coercion to control your child: “You stop that right now or there will be no TV for a week!" You might try bribes, threats, punishment, humiliation, rewards, guilt… you get the idea. But when we move to control our children and teens (“Do that one more time and you’re grounded!”), they don’t learn to control themselves.
This third option is a lifetime gift to you and your child. Let your child build the muscles of emotional regulation and self-control. It's like giving them super powers that many adults don't even have.
We don’t expect young children to tie their shoes on their own without instruction, but when it comes to self-control, we often expect children to have it without giving them the raw materials to build it.
What few parents realize is that self-control develops over thousands of interactions with parents and caregivers, from infancy through adolescence. It is a skill that comes with experience, practice, and feedback. It is not something that just magically appears one day. In fact, the really tricky part is that emotional control is best nurtured by allowing full expression of emotions in a young, developing child—and this is something parents often find hard to do.
We may be uncomfortable with emotions in general, because of the way our parents responded to our emotions. We may be embarrassed by a child’s public tantrum because of the social expectation that good parents don’t have children who act like that. But in fact, children test limits to feel safe.
To make sure we are on the same page, let me describe how I see self-control (or emotional regulation): Self-control is the ability to choose a productive response to a feeling or feelings from a multitude of possible behaviors.
A child or teen has learned self-control when they can feel any emotion, even a very strong emotion like anger, while taking care of themselves and also respecting others.
Self-control comes from the ability to regulate internal experiences (thoughts, perceptions, feelings, and the meanings that are formed from those experiences) in order to take effective action in varying situations.
Whenever parents are truly present to a child’s emotions and lovingly help them to determine what they need, the child learns to listen to their emotions as a guide to constructive action.
As a child experiences different relationships and circumstances, it is a parent’s job to provide a safe space for the child to explore their experience. On
To help children and teens express emotions appropriately is no small task.
Here are some ways to begin to teach healthy emotional expression while respecting the rights of others, which ultimately builds the foundation for self-control.
Teaching self-control requires tremendous focus, effort, and consistency by parents. However, in the process of teaching self-control to children, we often find that it is we who grow up. To be able to stand calmly and deliberately regardless of what is thrown at us takes incredible strength of character. And when our children have learned self-control, they will enjoy an immoveable inner peace and self-esteem that no one can steal from them.
Root into visionary parenting and stay in touch with your deepest values; keep the long-term goals you have for your children top of mind.