Nurtured Heart review, part 2 (continued)

Leg One: Avoid Energizing Negativity

Save Toys 'R Us for the right time - those times when your child is demonstrating desirable behavior or qualities. (Please keep in mind that this does not pertain to issues of safety. You must do what is needed to keep your child safe and that may require an immediate and animated response.)

Negative attention is ineffective on so many counts:

~ With traditional parenting, we often give out energy to the rules at the worst possible time. We can easily accidentally reward our child for breaking the rule.

~ Negative attention is also like junk food - it satisfies a craving but has no nutritional value. Instead it reinforces negative attention getting behavior. It also leaves us feeling badly about ourselves.

~ And, although unintentional, it reaffirms a child's belief that they are "bad." As a result, normal attempts to be positive with your child get defended against. Think about your own life. If you have a particularly stressful or conflicted week at work, it is very hard to accept or internalize a compliment.

Try to keep in mind that according to some research it takes 20 compliments to undue the damage caused by one criticism.

Think of a time where your reaction may have unintentionally "sent" a message to your child that they were annoying, a burden, or not to be trusted. If you could rewind that tape, is there something you might have done differently? Share your thoughts with us if you are willing.

As with Toys 'R Us: We get to choose what we radiate and how and we can choose to right this balance.

Remember also the amygdala. While some misbehavior cannot be ignored and may need to be addressed, keep in mind that there is a better and more effective time and place for this. We will touch on this more in a later post.

Nurtured Heart review, part 2

Happy New Year! Hope this finds you refreshed and looking forward to the coming year.

We are now ready to move into a review of the specific Nurtured Heart techniques. It helps to think of the Nutured Heart strategies as a three legged stool.

Leg 1: Refusing to energize or accidentally reward negativity: saving Toys 'R Us for positive behaviors;

Leg 2: Energizing experiences of success: noticing and complimenting;

Leg 3: Providing the right level of limit setting and consequences: setting and enforcing high expectations.

Just as with a stool, all three legs are equally important and need to be even in order for the approach to work well.

In our next post we will begin to talk about leg one.