Responding To Your Child’s Behavior

It's the moment every parent hopes will never happen: that deeply emotional moment when our child screams that they hate us. In this episode, we explore the two ways we can choose to act - REACT or RESPOND - and the possible consequences of each choice. And, importantly, we discuss practical strategies to prepare you to respond to these intense moments with grace and empathy.

What is Living With Joy Renewed with Jeanette Nafziger?

Welcome friend! This is the Living With Joy Renewed podcast, where adoptive families find healing for the present and hope for the future.

I'm Jeanette Nafziger, and I'm here to come alongside you on your parenting journey each week with tips, real-life stories, and encouragement to help your family find renewed joy at home.

Hey everyone. Welcome back to the living with joy renewed podcast, where adoptive families find healing for the present, and hope for the future. Joy renewed is here to support you on your parenting journey each week with tips, real life stories and encouragement to help your family find renewed joy at home.

Talking about our child's behavior, this is a tough one today because there's no one answer for why our children are behaving the way they are. I look back to when my children were little and can remember the times when behaviors happened because they're competing with siblings, you know, a normal rivalry of different people learning to live in the same space. Kind of like a little micro world, where they learn what frustrates them, what angers them, and how to act appropriately when those emotions arise. As parents were the ones who step in, we acknowledge the feelings they're having, we teach them how to manage those feelings in healthy ways for themselves and in socially acceptable ways for the people around them.

This is all normal childhood behaviors, and responses in order to help them learn and grow and mature. But I so often hear from adoptive parents about unusually demonstrative behaviors, sometimes coming out at such young ages. I remember when one of my children screamed, I hate you, at the very young age of six. It was such a profound moment, I can remember where we were, what we were wearing. I mean, it's like it's burned into my memory. I mean, she was homeschooled, we had strict boundaries about what they were allowed to watch on TV, never in daycare, and my husband and I are both fairly even tempered, and we never yell at one another, especially such harsh words. So after I was able to gather my wits about me, my first thought was, where would she have learned to say that, since I couldn't conjure up in my mind how this could be a learned phrase, was suddenly hit with a realization that this is a real emotion for her. And that hit me even harder. I had to work through my own emotions, before I could process how to even begin to help her with these emotions.

In the last podcast, I touched a little on the trauma responses that come from our adopted children, how experiences have told them things about themselves and about the world that may not necessarily be true, but are nonetheless now a filter with which every thought every feeling, every emotion and every experience will flow through. They don't know what to do with these feelings, and a level of frustration will build up if no one around them attempts to understand it either. As adoptive parents, most of us are aware of the trauma of adoption. But do you remember the last podcast where I mentioned that I believe we are called to a different and sometimes higher level of parenting because of that trauma. This is where some of that comes into play. We need to be able to see that the behaviors, reactions, outbursts, manipulations are a cry for help because their brain is on overload. And that they are begging for someone to understand this, and help them to understand this.

So what does this mean in real everyday life? The first thing it means is that we need to find our strength, our value and our identity outside of our role as parents. Let me give you a scenario, you're in your child's bedroom, there's an argument going on, and they begin screaming at you that they hate you that they wish that they had never been a part of this family, where you get tears in your eyes, because there's so many emotions running through your body. It's amazing how fast that gamut of emotions can run their course. And one quick moment, shock, hurt, unbelief, shame, guilt, and immense feeling of failure. As a parent. This was my usual course of emotions, and it was usually in that order. What is your course of action? In that moment, I believe you have two choices, you can react, or you can respond. Some examples of reacting would be screaming back at them, making it known that at that moment, you don't really like them much either. Or maybe you just start to cry because of the wrongness of the hurt you feel. Or maybe because you want them to be very aware of how hurtful these words were to you. Or maybe it's a combination of both of those. Maybe you just turn on your heels and you walk out to either make a statement that you will tolerate that behavior or to truly quietly just process your emotions in another room.

The motives for these reactions aren't necessarily wrong, except I would go back to the you know this screaming back and rebounding hurtful words right back at them. Those motives are not right in that situation. But we do know it's important for our children to learn how to treat people. And that does begin at home with the family. But these are reactions and reactions don't always teach lessons. Well, don't get me wrong, your children will learn something from these reactions, but maybe not what you would ideally want them to have been taught. So if you walk away from your child after an outburst, you may be digging that entrenched belief that they will eventually push everyone away, or that they aren't worth loving. And so their attempts to push someone away, who loves them, has been effective. Their brain will tell them see what's hard enough, they're gonna walk away from you, the world and people are not safe.

Now, this is most likely not at all, what's your thinking, and not at all what your motives are with these reactions, you may truly just need a minute. But there's a very good chance that that belief is being reinforced in your child, if you walk away from them, and attempt to teach them what they did was wrong by making sure that they understand how it affects you, maybe by screaming back at them or bursting into tears. This reaction has the possibility of making you the victim and then a perpetrator. And this could be very dangerous depending on what your child has been through in life, because you may be reinforcing a sense of power through abuse or manipulation. And if there has been some sort of abuse in their past, you may be teaching them that they can use this power to try and overcome the emotions that their victimization has caused in themselves. So like I said before, there's a time and a place for our children to learn how their words and their actions affect others. But first, you need to make sure you understand where their behaviors coming from.

This brings us to the second option, you can choose to respond. I read a quote once from L.R. Knost, that in every day, in 100, small ways our children ask, do you hear me? Do you see me? And do I matter? And this behavior often reflects our response. Our adopted children will especially do this without words, they want to believe that the world is a safe place. They want to believe that you will love them always and unconditionally, and they want to believe they're someone who matters. But in order to find out if these truths can be possible, they're going to test it. And we need to respond in a way that acknowledges the truth of what they are feeling that lets them know you will allow them to feel what they are feeling, and that you won't walk away from them while they are in the midst of those big feelings. This brings us back to where we find our own strength, value and identity.

Self care and mental well being are extremely important here. And no, I'm not talking about the kid who has mental health. Although that is very important. I'm talking about yours as the parent, you need to make sure you're taking the time to be by yourself, so that you can solidify that you know what you believe about yourself, that you understand your own identity. However you want to do this, you can have scheduled quiet moments, meditation, prayer time with friends or peers that encourage you and strengthen you find what works for you. Because here's the thing. In that moment when a child is either specifically lashing out at you, or your child's behavior may be causing a sense of embarrassment or shame for you. You need to be strong enough to attend to the needs that that child is portraying. You cannot be taking that moment to try to process what you believe about yourself. This confidence in yourself will allow you to have the freedom to respond in those moments instead of react. We will continue to touch on this topic in other podcasts because I believe it's the cornerstone of parenting adopted children. If you want to be the most effective healer for your child, and by now you should have caught on that I believe you are equipped to be that person, your mental health, your well being and your belief system about who you are need to be strong. Together we can become who our children need us to be.

I want to leave you with this story I heard once about an African tribe. In this African tribe when someone does something wrong. They take the person to the center of the village where the whole tribe surrounds him. And for two days, they say all the good he has done. The tribe believes that each person is good but sometimes people make mistakes and that these mistakes are really a cry for help. They unite to reconnect him with his good nature. When our children are acting out when our children are lashing out, that's risk spawned in a way that helps them begin to understand why they are begging for someone to help them change their belief systems about themselves and about the world. You can be that someone, but you have to start with yourself.

Thanks so much for joining us on this week's episode of The Living with joy renewed podcast. We hope that this episode resonated with you and provided some hope and inspiration for your own family's journey. If you'd like to join a virtual or in person life group with other adoptive families, visit us at www dot live with joy renewed.com. In the meantime, stay connected with us on Instagram at live with joy renewed. And remember to subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss the next episode. As always, thanks for allowing us to be a part of your family's journey.