What is the best course of action to follow when your child loses the plot in the supermarket?
Is there a place for heavy tactics or should we be permissive and let the child fully express?
Not to take this into the smacking debate, but simply to be truthful, if ever a person is going to cross that line, a full blown tantrum is definitely an event with the potential to demolish reasonable resolve.
Generally, like all the gritty moments of parenting, it takes experience and trial and error to achieve a genuinely solid foundation that won’t easily be rocked by heat and fury.
People who practice conscious parenting develop a fairly constant process of personal inquiry and reflection that helps to expose their own irrational triggers, as well as maintaining a careful watch on the deeper currents of developmental stages and an awareness of the weak spots of the individual temperaments involved.
In short, they arm themselves with information that puts the prostrate child into a perspective beyond the judgmental eyes of the trolley-pushing onlookers.
If you know, for example, that strong will is an essential part of a young child’s development you might begin to appreciate why a battle of wills and downright domination as a regular tactic is basically unhealthy. Such things have in fact been connected with learning problems and illnesses that can last into adult life.
Give a child lots of opportunity to freely use that determination in the child’s world – digging holes, building dams, breaking eggs and mixing pancakes – and you will find it easier to establish firm, safe boundaries in the adult world they share.
But don’t expect never to witness a melt-down. After all, dealing with disappointment and frustration, learning balance and self-control is a life-long process.
A willful child can quickly show you where you are at with that.
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