The Three P’s of Addressing Your Child’s Weak Spots
One of the keys to good parenting is staying one step ahead of your children and their behaviour. Find out how to do it.
Chances are, your child has times of impatience, just like my Emily. I know it’s frustrating but you can reduce your worry knowing that everybody has weak spots and they’re usually not that hard to fix.
For Emily and most children who show impatience, it’s vital to learn how to manage their feelings more efficiently. To that end, both my husband and I are actively working with our daughter to help her overcome her weak spots.
How?
We use self-control, mindfulness, and gratitude to help her build up her patience. We do everything in our power to fix the weak spot so that it doesn’t prevent our daughter from reaching her goals.
That’s not to mention that we also want to promote her performance, good behaviour and wellbeing.
Whatever you do, don’t expect your children to be able to make a U-turn and instantaneously transform their weak spots, like impatience, into strength.
One way to improve your child’s behaviour is to apply the Three P’s. So let’s get to it.
The Three P’s
#1 - Priming
It bears mentioning that Emily has always shown impatience when she’s in a long car drive. So, what do we do to ease that?
It starts with an explanation that the drive is going to be a long one – like an hour or more. This prepares her for the traffic and the time spent in the car, where there’s nothing she can do about it.
This is called priming.
Furthermore, it’s important for your children to understand that impatience isn’t going to get them to the destination any sooner. Impatience is only going to make them more annoyed, restless, and anxious.
To prevent that, you can help your children to be mindful of the situation as they get into it. Find ways to ease their impatience with the car ride. In our case, we may suggest that Emily bring a book or work on her art. When she was younger we would encourage her to play with her finger puppets.
#2 - Present Moment
This is the stage where you put patience to the test.
Again, we make sure that Emily is mindful of what is going to happen and how she’s going to feel. After that, we ask her to take a few deep breaths and explore how she can respond to impatience differently. We challenge her perspective by asking if her impatience will turbo-charge the car to go any faster.
She’s going to learn that impatience won’t affect speed limits or make other vehicles move out of the way. Through this she will come to terms with her impatience and finds a better way to cope with the long drive.
Now, you can make use of two levels of the present moment.
● Level One - this is basic mindfulness where you point out the situation to the child to help them prepare.
● Level Two - here, you’re working to improve the weak spot in the middle of the distressing situation. The more that a child practises at this level, the less dominant the weakness becomes.
I’d recommend that Level Two be attempted only when you are both well-rested. That’s to prevent anyone from losing their temper.
#3 - Post-Mortem
After the event that triggered a child’s weak spot, you use the post-mortem to pinpoint what happened. This is where you discuss how everything went and if there are things to improve.
More often than not, you’ll find that there’s room for improvement and you can learn how to do better next time.
But rather than right away, you can hold the conversation hours or days after the event. The important thing is for everybody to feel calmer and cooler.
To have a successful post-mortem, you can help the child to be mindful of how things unfolded. You can talk about their feelings, reactions, and what they might want to improve the next time around. Don’t blame them or say they did a bad job, instead flip the situation to focus on what can be better for next time.
Helpful questions include:
● What do you think made you feel that way in this situation?
● How do you want it to be different next time?
● Are there any strengths that can better help you cope the next time?
● Is there anything you’d like to try the next time to make things better?
In our case, we play off Emily’s curiosity to find ideas on how to make the car trip more interesting next time. When she is being curious, she is naturally less impatient. In other words, her strength outshines her weakness.
Weak Spots Be Gone
Some parents may jump to the conclusion that there’s nothing they can do about their children’s weak spots. Worse, they might attempt to force positive behaviour through punishment and aggression.
But now you know better.
The Three P’s are a straightforward exercise for getting your child back on track. You’ll be amazed to see how effective this is as you apply it over time.
A friendly reminder not to expect that weaknesses can be readily turned into strengths but they can be improved.
While we’re at it, I’d like to invite you to take our quiz - How Strength-Based Is Your Parenting. Discover how you score and where improvements lie.