This is a success story from one of the parents in our live- in person”How To Talk So Kids Will Listen” workshop:
My daughter has a group of friends that live on our block. They are always playing together and they love to play in our basement. My son gets annoyed when they come over to our house and will often go down to the basement and bother them. This frustrates my daughter and her friends and the fighting begins.
After our talk about problem solving, I decided to talk to use the steps outlined to come up with some sort of solution.
This is how the conversation went:
Me: Do you have a minute to talk?
Son: Sure, what about?
Me: I wanted to talk about the problems we have when Sara’s friends come over.
Son: Oh, that I bother them?
Me: Yes, I wanted to know if we can think of some solutions to this problem.
At this point, I took out a pen and paper. I could see that he liked that we were going to write this down. He really felt respected.
Me: We are just going to think of solutions and write everything down. Then we will go over it and see what we like and don’t like. Do you have any ideas?
Son: Move to Main St. where Eli lives.
Me: Ok, I will write that down (even though that is not a possibility, I wrote it down, just like the instructions said), Anything else?
Son: Play with Sammy. (He lives on our block)
Me: Maybe you can play on the computer?
Son: Play with Jonah (He lives on our block)
Me: What about playing with me?
Son: Play with girls without bothering them.
We then went over the list. We crossed out moving to Main St. I told him it wasn’t possible right now, but we can bring it up again later on, if we ever did decide to move. We talked about playing with Sammy and Jonah, which would be good, but he needs to come home before it gets dark. He said that he didn’t want to play with me, because I usually am doing things like cooking. He also liked the idea of playing on the computer. The cutest thing was that he asked to cross out playing with the girls without bothering them. He said, “I don’t think I am ready to do that!”
We didn’t come up with any definite solutions except to play with his friends or with his computer, but he now has ideas of what he can do. I could see that he really enjoyed the process and felt very grown up. He asked if he could keep the paper and show it to his father when he came home. I said, “It is yours and you can keep it. You can decide if you want to show it to Daddy or not, but I think he would really like to see it and know that you came up with these solutions.”
I thought the problem solving technique was great. It helped me treat my child with respect and really look at him like he is a real partner in figuring out solutions to our everyday domestic problems.
For more information on how to problem solve with your kids buy our “Parenting Simply” audios.