Hi guys, welcome back to another Mindful Motherhood Monday today I want to talk
to you about analyzing the way that we are communicating with our children and
expecting them to understand us and seeing whether or not we are expecting
too much of them too little of them or whether we just need a changing mindset
so I hope you guys find today's video interesting if you do like it don't
forget to share it with your friends and give it a thumbs up so that I know you
guys are enjoying these videos I post mind for motherhood videos every Monday
at 7 p.m. and these videos are all about returning to the present moment and
intentionally thinking about parenting I hope you guys are enjoying this series
if you're new I hope you join me every Monday at 7 p.m. for a new video and now
let's get straight on with the video so a huge part of understanding your child
is understanding yourself first and I don't mean that in a deep existential
way I mean it in the simplest way possible when you become a mum there's a
little bit of an adjustment that needs to be made within yourself so that you
can learn how to live this new way of living how to cope with different
situations because think about it before being parents as young adults we have
been building our portfolio of beliefs of the way that we deal with conflicts
confrontation what we think is acceptable what's not acceptable what's
reasonable what's not reasonable and we have all this belief communication
system within us that's ready to deal with situations that come into our lives
so overnight you become a parent you know you give birth and then you have a
baby and you've got to deal with lots of things that come with a baby in a way
that you've never dealt with before so we use the same standards and the same
definitions to deal with situations when they come as a parent the problem
is that these situations have now completely changed the little people
that we're trying to deal with to reason with are not yet fully capable of
understanding logic emotions reasonableness kindness all these things
that we grow to expect from other people that we interact with in our lives so
going from being an adult who deals with adults and has reasonable ideas
reasonable conversations to then overnight being an adult who deals with
babies and children it's a huge shock because it doesn't come it doesn't
happen as a flip switch so we have all these clever ideas and sophisticated
ways in which we're gonna cope with that situation and how we're gonna deal with
this and how we're gonna tell the child but that's wrong because of this that
and that and it all makes sense in our mind but a lot of the times these
situations can't be dealt with in any case so we are already starting on the
wrong foot for example most of the times you won't be able to avoid your child
spinning a cup of water especially if they are very young what you can do is
either just about capture is the very last minute
or mop it up but the learning process is going to be there they're gonna spill
hundreds of cups of waters of water before they learn not to spill the cup
of water so in my case that's when I feel a bit out of control and a little
bit frustrated is when I know that I'm communicating my thoughts and my ideas
very clearly and logically but the recipient I my children are just not
getting it and that's when you have to adjust your way of speaking and thinking
and remember you're not dealing with fully grown adults who are able to
understand you clearly I realized that I have actually been using quite a lot of
adult logic and speech with them and expecting them to understand that
perhaps that's what's missing in the community
that's what's causing the frustration between us and them and causing that
kind of misunderstanding between parent and child and I don't know about you I
don't know what your background is but my background is not in child care I've
never worked with children before and I am a qualified lawyer so I'm used to
dealing with like clever ideas and complex thoughts and sociology
philosophy and things like that and unintentionally that carries through my
speech with everyone including my children and what I've got to keep
reminding myself is that they are not fully grown adults yet what might seem
logical to me is no more than just words coming out of my mouth to them so be
mindful of that has made me adapt the way that I speak a lot more to my
children and had just things in order to just get that communication flowing for
example if I ask my son when he comes home from school how was school I'll get
good if I'm lucky and then if I start asking things like what did you do it's
really hard to get an answer and I've started to adapt that speech to things
like did you play with animals did you go outside what color pencils did you
use how many horns did that dinosaur have things that they will understand
and that will help me get a better picture when I'm not getting the answer
that I would get if I asked anyone like any adult what did you do today I
probably get a picture quite quickly but with a child you don't you don't get
that full picture so that's how I've been mindful of adapting my speech in
order to match with what my child my children are trying to tell me have four
things that helped me with adapting my speech and the way that I speak to my
children in order to make them understand me a little bit better and
for me to understand them and I'm gonna share those with you so the first thing
that helped me is accepting that I am NOT going to be always in control of a
situation and the way that that's helped me it's just it takes the pressure off
my shoulders so when there's a situation at home like at and
something that's really stressful and something that I feel like I can't
control just accepting that I cannot control two strong-willed toddlers takes
the pressure off me and it makes me feel like I can then talk to them on their
level instead of being up here on the mummy level who is going to tell you off
for having a tantrum I go down to their level and I try and kind of understand
the tantrum it obviously it depends on the situation but if it is something
that I can understand then putting myself in on that level and knowing that
I can't control their strong-willed I can't control that tension at the moment
let me just try and understand it so that's the first thing that's helped me
the second thing that's helped me was to modify my expectations so because
christmas is coming I don't know about you but I'm getting about 10 million
questions per day on whether or not it's Christmas yet even though I say
Christmas is in December and it's November two seconds later I've been
asked is it December yet is it Christmas yet is father Christmas coming tomorrow
and modifying my expectations of what they can actually clearly understand
from me has helped so much to take the pressure off instead of getting annoyed
that I have already answered that question I am now kind of trying to come
up with different ways in which I can say the same thing because say the same
thing over and over again is boring for me so I'm trying to adjust and think how
can I say that differently but say the same thing so that's all about modifying
my expectations of them understanding me third thing that's helped me is the most
important thing is adjusting my language and making it a lot less complex and
making all my words quite simple my thought process is quite easy to
understand so instead of seeing say things like tomorrow you're going to
school I will say when you go to sleep and you wake up you'll go to school
because that seems much more logical to my children and the fourth thing that's
helped me is to put myself in their position would I like being bossed
around all day and being told what to do all the time and being told that
whatever toy I choose is the wrong one and just by doing that I
feel like I tell them off a lot less and I kind of take a step back all the
things that I would normally say no that's not correct that's not right
because my adult brain is telling me that that's not right so now I would
love to hear your opinions and your thoughts on this subject how do you feel
like you communicate with your children do you catch yourself using like adult
language and sophisticated concepts with your children and then find yourself
getting frustrated with them and when they don't understand you properly let
me know in the comments below I hope you guys are having a lovely day and I will
see you all in my next video bye