Ep. 91 Cultivating Connection With Your Kids with Cami Moss
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Ep. 91 Cultivating Connection With Your Kids
Today we’re chatting all about cultivating connection with our kids with Cami Moss from @realconnectionspodcast.
We talked about:
Simple ways to connect with your kids individually every day
How to create trust with your kids so you can talk to them about the big things
5 ways to teach your kids virtues intentionally
How to avoid accidentally teaching your child that they’re responsible for your emotions (and what to say instead)
What offensive parenting is and how to talk about potential problems before they ever happen
Teaching Your Kids Virtues
Cami describes virtues as the things that really matter in someone’s life--the things that make someone a really good person. For example: honesty, integrity, gratitude, respect, kindness, patience, forgiveness, responsibility, and perseverance.
5 Ways to Teach Your Kids Virtues
1. Be the example every day
When you’re doing something that’s honest, point it out to your kids
Be honest with your kids yourself--tell them the truth!
2. Talk about examples of people you know or in stories who were rewarded for that virtue
Use positive examples rather than fear-based examples
Share stories about yourself
3. Role play
This gives you a chance to practice what to do in a real-life scenario with no stakes
4. Praise in public
Praise them in the moment
And praise them again later in the day by telling your spouse or another family member what they did
Doing this reinforces what’s important to your family
5. Correct in private
When it’s just the two of you, tell them what you saw and give them an opportunity to explain themselves first
Connect the wrong behavior to the virtue that is important to our family
When things settle down after a few days, role play about a similar situation
Offensive Parenting
Being honest, straightforward and clear about the hard stuff is more likely to reduce their fear rather than increase it. Clarity empowers and educates them.
Be able to answer your kids’ questions without awkwardness.
Parenting from a place of calm honesty, not giving the impression that you’re uncomfortable.
Work to establish a relationship of trust so they keep coming back to you for the hard things.
Don’t Connect a Child’s Behavior to Your Emotions & What To Do Instead:
Be careful about connecting YOUR emotions to a child’s behavior. When a parent says something like, “It makes me really sad when you act like that,” it can be manipulative to a child. You’re giving the child responsibility for your own emotions.
Here’s what you can do instead:
If your child can read social cues, ask them how they think their actions affected the other person
If they get it wrong, help them see how the other person is feeling
Teach them that their actions have consequences
Instead of connecting it to your (or another person’s) emotion, point out that the situation itself is sad. The fact that they made that choice is sad.
You can still teach empathy by asking, “How do you think that makes her feel?”
The fact that everyone has responsibility for their own emotions is an advanced concept. Start with a foundation of empathy and build on that later.
Be the kind of parent you want to be. Think of asking yourself in 10 years, “Did I parent the way I wanted to parent?” Not “Did my kids turn out the way I wanted them to?”
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We’re also mailing a physical copy of this beautiful print to any of our new Patreon supporters that sign up for our Patreon Community in the month of November!
Links Mentioned In This Episode
Cami’s amazing podcast called Real Connections Podcast
You can find her on Instagram @realconnectionspodcast
Awesome Instagram account called @10minutestogether all about spending 10 minutes of uninterrupted time together with your kiddos.
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