Discipline ADVICE&REAL LIFE
It’s a big deal to them
PHOTO:STOCKSY
When your kid is melting down, you go into fix-it mode. In an excerpt from the new book How to Talk When Kids Won’t Listen, authors Joanna Faber and Julie King reveal what actually works. (Spoiler: minimizing their sadness doesn’t.) WHY IS IT THAT WHEN WE TRY TO CALM KIDS DOWN, they sometimes get more worked up? Our intention is to be soothing. To teach them that this tiny bump in the road of life can be driven over without crashing the entire vehicle into a ditch. It will be OK! But the message they hear is a different one: “You can’t have what you want and I don’t care, because your feelings are not important enough to bother about.” Now the distress is doubled—added to the original disappointment over
November+December 2021 todaysparent.com
17
