Reframing How You Think About Your Child
Do you like your child? Do you find yourself thinking or talking negatively about them? If so, it might be time to try a reframe.
9 Minute Read
Sometimes, as parents, we might not like our own kids. I get that this statement might make some peeps uncomfortable. OR it may have provided you a sense of relief - to know that you aren’t the only one who has felt this way from time to time (or feels this way often).
Whether you have been struggling with your parenting methods, or your child has been especially challenging, there are certainly times when many parents have downright not enjoyed or liked their kiddos, whether they’ve been able to admit that openly to themselves or not.
Here’s the thing. There’s no shame or blame here. Whatever feelings are coming up for you as a parent, it’s all AOK. And if dislike is one of them - so be it. But I do want to offer you another perspective and perhaps a way to shift how you feel about your kid. Because how you think and talk about your child might be affecting your ability to connect with them…and your connection (or lack of it) may be contributing to, or even creating, some of your biggest parenting challenges.
Let’s dive a little deeper. Have you ever heard the saying, “Your thoughts affect your feelings and your feelings affect your actions”? If you haven’t, this is the basis for most cognitive therapies - the concept being that what really makes us feel and respond the way that we do is often NOT the words or actions of another person, but instead how WE perceive the situation. In other words, how we THINK about it. And how we think about something often affects our emotions and subsequently our responses or actions.
So, as an example. If your child has been driving you nuts lately and you are constantly thinking, “Why is she always such a brat?” Or, “He’s going to end up a juvenile delinquent,” or “These kids are SO disrespectful. They don’t care about anyone but themselves!”, how do you think this affects your feelings about them?
More than likely, with thoughts like this setting up repeated pop-up shops in your mind, you aren’t going to feel too warm and cuddly toward your child. Thoughts like these will inevitably make you feel frustrated, angry or resentful toward your kid. When flooded with these feelings on a regular basis, there is no room for hope, and therefore no incentive or motivation to work towards changing whatever is going on with your child that is causing you grief.
Let’s look at a fairly mild example of how our negative thinking towards our child can affect how we feel about them and thus how we respond/act toward them - which ends up reinforcing behavior we don’t want to see. Let’s say our six-year-old daughter’s behavior is really bugging us lately. It seems like she is constantly breaking, spilling or losing things. The thoughts repeatedly running through our brain go something like this. Great - here she goes again. She’s broken yet ANOTHER new toy. She has no respect for anything she’s given.
As we stew in these thoughts we get angrier and angrier and the thoughts progressively get worse. We start predicting the future and catastrophizing. Why do I bother buying nice things for her when she repays me with this kind of disrespect? She’s spoiled! Why is she always so careless? She’ll never learn to think before she acts. She doesn’t care about anyone but herself!
And on and on it goes. As you’re thinking these things and picking up the broken pieces of the toy, or wiping up the spilled milk, or hunting for the third lost jacket this year, you find yourself feeling more angry, frustrated and deeply resentful of your supposedly beloved child. While wrapped up in these heated feelings you can’t possibly notice how deeply sorry your girl is, how her eyes are welling with tears and how shamed she feels for disappointing you yet again. Or if you do notice, you aren’t able to summon up any emotional generosity or empathy because you’re caught in the cycle of anger and resentment.
Will her feeling badly about herself help her to be more careful next time? With no other support or problem solving, likely not. And so the cycle repeats and your frustration, anger and resentment only grows. Pretty soon, if she hears it enough, your daughter starts believing she is careless, messy, clumsy, disrespectful. And her self-confidence takes a nose-dive. It all becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Now, let’s try a reframe. Say your daughter spills her milk on the carpet for what seems like the hundredth time. Your usual thoughts about how careless she is start driving along those well-worn grooves in your mind. But this time you catch yourself - you notice yourself thinking them - and you stop. You take a breath (or three, or five). And you try reframing the way you’re thinking about her.
Instead of using or thinking words like “careless” and “clumsy” and “disrespectful,” you look into her beautiful little face, her wild and tangled hair and you tell yourself, This girl is a free-spirit if ever there was one. She absolutely lives in the moment, never thinking or caring about what comes next. She’s not hampered by worries about what others think of her, she’s just rushing off to the next big adventure. What a beautiful way to live life! I hope she never loses this part of herself.
Now, if these thoughts are dancing through your mind, how do you think you’ll be feeling about your little one? Perhaps it will make you softer. Perhaps you’ll be better able to see that she’s not trying to give you a hard time on purpose. That she might just be doing the best she can and the spilling, breaking and losing things isn’t something she can just try harder in order to fix.
By remaining calm and centered and by wilfully changing your thoughts, maybe you’ll find space to realize that because of who she naturally is, she might need some support and scaffolding to not spill, break, lose things so often. You’ll come to the conclusion that maybe your expectations of her weren’t age-appropriate. And you’ll be able to brainstorm ways to help her. Maybe she shouldn’t be drinking milk in the living room where there are carpets. So the household rule either has to change to no food/drink in the living room, or else she needs to have it in a cup with a lid and straw, until she has more ability not to spill.
Creating a reframe about your child and changing your thoughts to change your feelings and actions isn’t always easy but it’s so worth the effort. The first piece is to catch yourself either talking about your kids, or thinking about them, in a negative way. At first you won’t even notice you’re doing it - it might be so engrained and automatic a response, especially if your child has been frustrating you for a long time now. You might only realize you’ve been thinking/speaking this way AFTER the fact. But don’t despair - noticing/awareness is the first step.
After you’ve been doing this awhile you’ll start to notice WHILE you’re in the midst of these thoughts and be able to stop yourself halfway through thinking them and insert your reframe. And soon after that you’ll catch yourself BEFORE you go down that well-trod path of She is the most careless child in the world! And you’ll switch gears into My little free-spirit - living life to the fullest!
As you change the way you think and speak about your child, the way you feel about them will certainly change and you’ll find yourself kinder, gentler, more patient. You’ll have a sense of humour about messy situations instead of catastrophizing them. You’ll be more patient with lagging skills and have more empathy when they are having a hard time. And, most importantly, you’ll be able to help them through it and problem solve solutions so you start seeing some changes in the behaviors that are driving you batty.
How you think about your kiddos directly affects how you feel about them and how you’re going to respond to them. So I would encourage you to give “reframing” a try. If you’re having a rough time with your kid and find yourself thinking or talking negatively about them, write down the words and phrases you find yourself using. Then brainstorm the positive side of these traits. For example - careless becomes free-spirited. Stubborn becomes persistent.
It’s so fascinating that oftentimes the flip side of our “worst” traits are actually our biggest strengths. It all just depends how you look at them, your perspective on them - how you THINK about them.
I can personally attest to how effective these reframes can be. Because the little girl with the wild and tangled hair who was constantly spilling, breaking and losing things was MY little girl. And I worked hard at changing how I was thinking about her - from careless and disrespectful, messy and clumsy to free-spirited, full of life, fearless, independent and fun. I not only like my little gal, I’m constantly in awe of her - she has been my greatest teacher in how to seize the day and live life to the fullest.
Nobody wants to think badly of their children. Nobody wants to dislike these small humans who we are supposed to adore more than anyone in the world. But it’s so easy to slide into a cycle of negative thoughts and negative feelings when we perceive our kids a certain way. So switch things up. Give the reframe a try. See your kiddo with fresh eyes and get to know them all over again, this time through a lens of appreciation and love.