Dr. Jenny Michaelson - How to connect with your child when you're looking for cooperation

1. About Dr. Jenny Michaelson
2. How to connect with your child when you're looking for cooperation
3. How to transition your child from playing to getting ready for dinner
4. Why you only need one minute to connect with your child
5. What to do when your child is really engaged in what they are doing
6. Why the difficult transitions are the best learning experiences
7. 3 more quick tips to make transitions and getting your child to cooperate easier
8. Action steps

My name is Jenny Michaelson. My business is called True North Parent Coaching, and I coach individuals, couples, and I do some group coaching. And my work is about helping parents get in touch with their values as an anchor point for making the best parenting decisions for themselves and their children.

You can book a free 30 minute online consultation with Dr. Jenny Michaelson at her website.

And so, say you're ready to have your child clean up and get ready for dinner. You're in the kitchen cooking and your child's playing and all is right with the world. But then it's time for you to ask your child to stop and clean up, and then get ready for dinner, wash hands, whatever's needed next.

It's simply good practice to connect before you do that. So, if it's possible to leave your dinner preparation, temporarily move into the space that your child is occupying, where they're playing. If they happen to be on the floor, you get down on the floor and actually play with them for a couple of minutes.

You can get curious about what they're doing, ask them what they're building. "What are you drawing?" Whatever it is they happen to be doing and if you can even do that down at their level.

I said, "get down on the floor" because I'm just picturing a smaller child playing on the floor. Or if they're drawing, you can sit at the table with them.

Just moving into their world for a minute gives you that touch point, that connection.

And again, like just either getting curious about what they're doing and asking them really open-ended questions, or just literally jumping in on the play, if they're willing to have you.

And then from there, and even I'm talking about like a minute, I'm not saying take 10 minutes before dinner time, just give a minute. And then you can make eye contact, so that you know that you have the attention of your child, that's the time. That's the moment when you can give them, “Hey, in a minute, we're going to need to start cleaning up."

And then have the directions be really clear and specific, not just clean up, but rather let's go ahead and put our toys away in the toy boxes, or let's put away our colored pencils and put them back where they belong. Giving really specific language for what you want them to do can be really helpful.

That's a lot of tips in one tip. Do the connection. But how to make that connection? Engage in their space. Get into their play. Open with curiosity, and then they get to your level, make eye contact, be clear and specific.

Those can be really helpful.

Sue Meintjes: Why does it work? What is the why behind the methods? Why does it work to connect with a child and join their world?

Jenny Michaelson: It's like akin to, if you're at work and maybe you're writing an email and your boss comes in and says, "Uh, right now I need you to come over because we have this meeting that's going on that just came up" and there's no acknowledgement of what you are doing at that moment, that really allows you to be seen.

So, I think it's really about being seen, and acknowledged and validated for what you're actually doing in the moment. Rather than just feeling like, "Well, I need you to do something right now. So, let's pull you away from what maybe feels really important to you and force you to go off and do something else."

So really, I think it's about acknowledgement and validation and really being seen in that moment and really understanding that whatever is happening is really important to you.

And kids need that same courtesy, just like we would expect if we were in the working world from other adults.

Sue Meintjes: Yeah. It's good to see and respect them.

Jenny Michaelson: Absolutely.

Sue Meintjes: And what about if what they are doing is really fun and they are so engaged and just joining them in their world makes them want to go in their world more deeply. So, what can we do if it's really difficult to drag a child away from something they are in the moment in?

Jenny Michaelson: Yeah. I mean, that happens a lot, right? I mean, that's what you want. You want your kid to really dive into something and be so into it. It's hard to take them away. And there are certainly kids who have a really tough time with those kinds of transitions. So that's the point at which giving a lot of warning about what's coming.

So even if you have this opportunity to connect and within that time being able to say, "You know, we're going to need to transition out of this in five minutes." And so often it just feels better to kids when they know what's coming because they have a sense of control.

That's one thing to do. It doesn't work for every child.

Sometimes it's just going to be hard to pull a kid out of something that they're really into. And at that point, you have to switch hats to being supportive of the fact that this child does not want to stop playing, and that might cause a meltdown, and that's also okay. It's hard to stop doing something you're having a really fun time doing.

We've all been there.

Instead of getting into a fight about it, you have to switch into mode of like, "Okay, now's the time that I'm going to pull out my own coping strategies for staying calm." And if my child is not able to stay calm because they're going to have to do something they don't want to do, then I have the wherewithal to lend them my calm and help them through this tough emotional moment.

And sometimes that's the way we have to shepherd them from one thing to the other, when what they're doing is super fun. So, it's about changing hats and going from, "Okay, this isn't going to be an easy one, I got to put on my sort of coping skills hat, and I'm going to help my child through this tough moment, but we're going to get through it together. And I'm going to stay calm and we're going to get to the other side onto what needs to be done."

Sue Meintjes: It's also a learning experience to practice emotional regulation too?

Jenny Michaelson: Absolutely. I mean, that's a skill, like everything else, right? I mean, our job as parents is to identify what skills our kids need to develop and to help them develop them. So as difficult as it is in the moment to have to deal with, "Okay, I really just wanted to like transition to dinner and eat and move on to bedtime and put these kids to bed."

Every one of those challenging moments is an opportunity for skill building for our kids. If we can think of it in that way, sometimes it can then be a little bit less frustrating.

Sue Meintjes: Yeah. And I think children that find it difficult to transition from one activity to something we want them to do is also, they need to learn the skills.

Jenny Michaelson: Exactly. Exactly.

Sue Meintjes: And we teach them.

Jenny Michaelson: Yeah. We teach them and also, we build their emotional resilience to those moments too. It's okay if they never like transitioning from one thing to the next, but what our job is in those moments is to help them recognize that they can feel frustrated and upset about it, but they can handle those feelings and they can get through to the other side.

That's the learning opportunity there. That's the building of their emotional resilience. We don't expect them to never get upset again. But we hope to help them learn at an early age that, like, "Okay, I can get upset. I have someone I can depend on, someone who's going to help me support me through this. And on the other side, I'm going to recognize that I can have big, uncomfortable feelings and I'm okay. Like I can get through them and then I feel better."

So, sounds simple. And it is, even though it's really not simple in practice, because there's a lot of different factors, but I do think it's fundamentally, it's such a gift if we can truly provide that foundation of emotional resilience for kids, because then they're kind of prepped and ready for anything that comes their way. Because we all know we're handed many transitions in life that we never expected or wanted as adults. And the more we're able to sort of, when they're in our care, teach kids to be able to weather those storms the better off the world will be to be perfectly honest with you.

Sue Meintjes: That all sounds really good. I just want to know, is there anything else you want to add before we move on?

Jenny Michaelson: Sure. You know, another couple of quick tips when you want a kid to transition is to offer some choices. "Hey, do you want to brush your teeth before pajamas or after."

Use positive language, if there's something you, you don't want them to throw balls in the house, instead of saying, "Don't throw balls in the house," you can say, "Let's throw our balls outside." You know, giving them something they can do instead of something they can't do that's a potential alternative.

And really what I'd love is to, when you feel like your child is really cooperating and listening is just to really acknowledge and reflect that with them at different times so that they can understand that cooperation and listening is really valued and appreciated in your home.

And we forget. Often, things go easy, and we just move on because there's lots of things to do. But I think it's important to acknowledge and reflect and to help kids understand that those things are really heavily valued.

And the last one is that they're just our days when I don't want to cooperate either.

So, if your kid has a day where they're just like, it's not happening. Sometimes you have to give yourself and you have to give your child a little grace. And I don't mean to loosen all boundaries, but if they haven't slept or they're not feeling well, we have to release our expectations a little bit and then hold a little bit more space for some nurture until a day when they feel better, and then we can get back to holding them accountable and to the expectations that we have on a daily basis. So that's what I have for you.

Sue Meintjes: That is excellent. Thank you very much for taking the time and giving this great advice.