Calm: The Gentle Giant

 

 

My recent self-examination of my own child rearing style has opened me up to so many possibilities as a parent. I had to change my thinking. In all my self-assessing, and reading, and researching I found one consistent theme, calmness. Any act of discipline or correction or simple communication requires calmness. It seems like such a simple idea, which it is. It's executing this constant calm that becomes complicated. There is always some situation that comes up that causes me to almost lose it. One child hits another, someone shoves paperclips in a USB port, someone puts their hands in their diaper and uses whatever is in there as finger paint (all real incidents by the way), and sometimes in rapid succession. But my belief is, if I am going to handle this effectively, I must be calm. Definitely easier said than done.
 

 

Recently I came across this blog post from another mom who wrote "Calm equals power". Wow! That was so profound to me. You see, for me, yelling is a reactionary response and completely ineffective. But to address negative behaviors with calm, reason, thoughtfulness, and intention requires a lot more from me. But I find that when I handle any given situation with calm and reason, the outcome is much better. My position as the authority is secured when I am calm (not passive, calm). If I jump up and down and scream like they do, we all look like children. But as far as I know, I am the adult and you should be able to tell the difference between the two.  As much as I would like to end on that note, I had another "Aha" moment. Being calm works with unreasonable adults as well! I recently found myself in a situation with an unreasonable vendor who not only provided an inconsistent product but had an attitude about me challenging it. Well everything in me wanted to curse her out! But I didn't because I knew that wouldn't be right and wouldn't fix my problem either. So I prayed. What I ultimately ended up doing was CALMLY stating my problem, suggesting what I thought was a fair reasonable solution, and CALMLY expressing my displeasure of the way it was handled. And you know what? After all was said and done, we reached a reasonable solution. So there you have it. Calmness equals Power!! What a gentle giant.