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This is a repost from my life coaching blog. I wanted to share this here because the chances are VERY high that you’ve experienced this at some point. What I share below has made such a difference for me and I am hoping that it can also help you! Thanks for reading!  Margaret 

I have found that dealing with people staring and offering “advice” to be one of the biggest challenges parents of children with special needs face, especially when they get brave and take their child out into the unpredictable world. It can create the perfect storm of judgement.

The scenario…

Take child out in public…to the store, to a restaurant, to the library, wherever there may be other people.

Something sets child off.

• They don’t get their way.
• They become overstimulated.
• They are hungry or thirsty.
• They are tired.
• They pick up on nervous or negative energy of the people around them – including the parent! (This was HUGE for me to realize and made such a difference because I used to get really nervous about how he would act before we even got there! He could sense this energy and responded as though there was something to be nervous about. Interesting how this works!).

The child has a tantrum (or meltdown).

The parent gets nervous or upset because their child is not behaving the way they’d like. This activates self judgement which usually consists of limiting thoughts like, “I should be able to control my child.” “I should have just given them what they wanted.” “I should have never taken them out of the house.” “A good mom would know what to do right now to make this stop.”

It also causes judgement that you may not like to hear (I know I didn’t like it at first but realized it was very true), but it is “parent judging child.” I’ve done it, still do it at times and am working to do it less and less. “Why is he doing this to me?” “Why can’t he just behave himself?” “Why can’t he just be like those other kids?” “Why can’t he just pull it together?”

The perfect storm has begun, only to get fueled by some outside sources getting involved in business they have no business getting involved in!

The parent notices the people around them who are looking at the upset child. People sense the parent’s frustration and try to offer “helpful suggestions” which comes out as unsolicited advice which fuels a parent’s feeling of inadequacy – “parent feels judged by others.” These people may or may not be judging us and our child but that’s their business (more about this below).

The parent might snap back with some response if they can speak without crying or yelling – “parent judging others.” Trust me, I have been there! I can remember a specific grocery store incident in June of 2008 when my son, who was terrified of bugs, freaked out when a piece of paper floated off of a shelf and he thought it was a bug. A woman approached us, looked at him and said, “What’s wrong with you? You’re too big to be carrying on like that!” I walked away from her after snapping, “I am doing the best I can!”, paid for the dog food that I could not leave without (poor hungry dog at home) and bawled my eyes out once we got into the car. What kind of b*#$h would do that to me?!? What was wrong with her!? I began judging her. I was wrapped up in all sorts of self judgement, judgement of my son, and judgement that other people should know how to behave.

What I’ve come to realize is that when other people stare or give advice, they believe they are trying to be helpful or don’t have any way to understand AT ALL what we have been or are going through.

If this is something you can relate to, let me share with you that it does NOT have to stay this way. I am living proof and get practice with this all of the time!

What can YOU do when you are in this situation to avoid this perfect storm of judgement?

Personally, I have found Byron Katie’s three kinds of business to be critical in times like this.

• My business
• Your business
• God’s business

My Business During A Tantrum

In the situation of a tantrum-ing child, the most important thing I can do is to stay in my own business. That means to take care of myself and what I need. That usually looks like breathing, noticing the thoughts that creep into my head about what I am making his tantrum mean and choosing to believe them or not. What I need to do most to help us all is to keep myself and my energy calm regardless of what he is doing.

I think of myself as the captain of a ship. When something unexpected happens, like a storm, how would it serve those on board for me to get involved in everyone else’s business, running around trying to make sure everyone is feeling okay. I need to stay calm in order to stay in a position to problem solve to keep the ship safe. People might be freaking out or questioning my abilities but none of that would be helpful for me to focus on. I try to remember what this would look and feel like when I am in the midst of my own unexpected storms with my son, tantrums included. Try it! Put on your captain’s hat the next time things seem chaotic and it’ll make a huge difference!

Other People’s (Your) Business During A Tantrum

This kind of business involves the other people around me. I cannot control what other people do or say. Believing that I can causes pain.

My Child’s Business

I cannot control my son’s tantrum, I can try to manage it, give him choices, distractions or remove him but essentially, what he does and how he acts is completely his business.

I used to get all tangled up in his tantrums and this always left me feeling angry, inadequate and sad – not to mention very sweaty! It was as though I felt like I just needed to work harder to prove to everyone around me that I was trying to do something to stop him so they wouldn’t think I was a horrible mom. I would expend so much energy – physically, mentally and energetically- and still have an upset child. Once I realized that this was not working and learned some life coaching strategies to care for myself in order to care for others by breathing, staying calm and noticing what I was making his behavior mean, things became so much better.

Other People’s Business

I cannot control the words or behaviors of the people around me. Believing that they should have any idea of what I’m going through, should be able to empathize and be compassionate about what he’s experiencing or should know that we just need to be left alone, is only going to cause pain because they probably won’t do any of those things. Instead, when I see looks or hear the unsolicited advice, I take a deep breath and shake it off (sometimes quite literally like an dog that shakes when it gets startled. It doesn’t have to be obnoxious, just shake like you got the chills and you’ll get rid of some of the negative energy in your body caused by your own honest, startled reaction to the other people.). People cannot know what they don’t know and while I wish they would think before they speak, roll their eyes or stare, they often don’t and that is something I cannot control. Realizing this all makes me feel like a more confident leader of myself because I CAN control my thoughts about what is going on.

God’s Business

This is the stuff that no one can influence and to believe that I have any control over this causes pain.

What can you do the next time you are in a situation like this?

• Breathe! Deep belly breaths followed by exhaling all of the way. This is the best way to calm your body and your energy.
• Mind your own business. Caring for yourself so that you can care for your child IS a reflection of you and your parenting skills.
• Do what you can to help your child but also know that what they are doing is their business and is NOT a reflection of you or your parenting skills.
• Do not focus on what other people around you are doing or saying in response to your situation. You have no responsibility to listen or respond to them. How they behave or react is their business and is NOT a reflection of you or your parenting skills.

Deep breath followed by this fabulous question, “What’s perfect about this?”

I asked myself this question as I woke up one morning to find red pepper flakes in the cast iron skillet and an interesting aroma coming from my son’s room. Turns out that he loves to spin and really loves to spin glass jars. He poured out the curry, coriander, cumin and thyme into containers and when I asked him why, he said, “Mommy says don’t spin spices because they could break and go all over.” This is true. This is an example of things that I encounter and when that question, “What is perfect about this?” comes in real handy!

Honestly, this really is my favorite question these days, especially when I am in the midst of a negative situation, such as…dumped spices…my child’s tantrum…hitting every red light when running late…spilled Green Goodness drink on the floor…dog having diarrhea on the closet carpet. Now I’m sure these things are completely unique to me so just try to pretend you can relate. 🙂

There are many things that happen in my life that are out of my control, ok, when one considers that we cannot “control” anyone else, very little in my life, other than my thoughts, IS within my control. HOWEVER, how I choose to experience these out of control times or experiences has completely changed over the past two years.

Two years ago, before knowing what a life coach even was, I let these “things” that happen control me and would spend hours and days swirling around in my head with thoughts of judgement and feeling quite honestly like a victim. This felt like crap and was coupled with the fact that “things” always happened no matter how much I planned, which was A LOT.

The things that happened always seemed over the top and never seemed like things that happened to anyone else. I would frequently think to myself, “Seriously? This really just happened to me?” Now I know that they didn’t happen to me, they just happened. However their happening ended up teaching me some pretty powerful lessons about myself.

As I began doing my own personal work as a result of life coaching, “things” didn’t really change but I did! I slowly began to notice how I was feeling in my body when these things came about. I then started to notice the thoughts that were coming up creating the negative feelings. Thoughts like…

• Why do things like this always happen to me?
• Why can’t my child be like the other kids?
• Why must my life be so much harder than everyone else’s?

I could go on but you get the idea. I would throw a little mental pity party for myself, seclude myself because at times it was too painful and I would get annoyed at everyone around me for not just knowing how I needed them to be.

What’s perfect about this? What could this possibly be teaching you?

Throughout my life coach training, I heard several master coaches (Terry DeMeo you are standing out in my mind here!) use the phrase “And what’s perfect about that?” or “What do you suppose this situation is trying to teach you?” and I’ll admit that I thought they were big time CRAZY! Perfect? Teaching moment? Seriously, you have NO IDEA what I go through.  Just tell me that I’m right, that no other person has had to go through the wild things I go through and give me my “best martyr” prize so I can move on.

What actually happened though was fascinating! Those words began to seep into my thought pattern and I began asking myself those very questions when the wild “things” would happen. This became a serious game changer for me! What those questions did was switch my thinking from feeling like a victim of my circumstances, which I already knew felt bad, to putting my brain to work finding out what I could learn from this. The lessons were simple yet powerful.

What was perfect was often a situation where I could practice…

Patience

(ex. I can practice patience when we are running late and my son has already taken a long time to get dressed and now has to do it again because the clothes are backwards. Deep breaths and lots of them. It really is okay AND he’ll probably get dressed faster and off to school in a much better mood than if I huff and puff at him.)

Setting boundaries, both physically and emotionally. Letting someone have their feelings without me getting tangled up in them.

(ex. I can practice setting boundaries physically when my son wants something that I’ve taken away and starts grabbing at me. We teach people how to treat us and what we will allow. During early practicing since he wasn’t quite understanding, I would lock myself in a room until he calmed his body. The physical boundaries allowed me to stay calm and also reinforced that I was not going to accept that behavior (grabbing, hitting, pushing, kicking) in my personal space.)

(ex. I can practice setting mental boundaries by realizing that someone else’s anger, sadness or frustration is their own. They are allowed to feel that and I don’t have to take it on as my own. “Your body is very wild right now. When it is calm, I will help you.” I have also used noise canceling headphones as a visual cue that I am choosing not to listen to the yelling or crying. Yes, I can still hear what is going on but it really helps me to remember to not engage. I go about my business, breathe and stay calm and I have to say that the tantrums diminish so much faster!)

Staying calm

(ex. I can practice staying calm when something spills or breaks. The item is already spilled or broken. I have found that getting upset makes it mean so much more and usually causes me to spend much more time focused on something negative.)

This shift in thinking allowed me to be more creative with a solution. I found myself looking at things from a different perspective to see if there was another way. I could practice realizing the reality of a situation without getting caught up in drama. I could practice staying focused on the present moment. I could practice making choices. I could practice saying “yes” or “no” and really own it.

So…the next time something happens and you feel your stomach tighten or your shoulders clenching or you feel the urge to scream at the top of your lungs,

STOP.

Take a deep breath.

Feel your feet on the ground,

look around with the eyes of an observer and think…

what is perfect about this? What is this allowing me to practice?

It makes a huge difference for me every day and I bet it’ll do the same for you!

If you enjoy hearing about ways to have more peace and joy in parenting, please check out my website www.margaretwebblifecoach.com or “Like” my Margaret Webb Life Coach Facebook page. I’m being completely honest when I say that I was a completely different parent two years ago (before life coaching) and now I have people come up all of the time and tell me how calm and peaceful I am with Andrew and I feel it too! If you are ready to have more peace and joy in your life, sign up here for a free 45-minute phone session to see if we are a good fit.

XOXO

Margaret

P.S. So what was perfect about the spices? Well, he had contained them instead of spilling them onto the floor which made cleanup much easier – for him! I got to practice deep breaths and patience, realizing that they were only spices. When I found him in his room, the aroma was so intense that he was sleeping with his comforter covering his face rather than his body SO I think he learned that he didn’t want to have to smell those smells again and hasn’t done it since. It was also kind of humorous to see how he took me literally and I believe that he honestly didn’t understand that what he had done was wasteful. When I brought him over to it to clean it up, he did want to pour them back into the jars. I sensed that he felt bad when I told him that since he had poured them all together that we couldn’t do that. Lots of perfection for both of us wrapped up in something that was not ideal. 🙂

I hope you all had a wonderful day yesterday. Halloween holds a special place in my heart, not because I love it or love to dress up or scare people (I actually don’t), but because it is the holiday that woke me up a bit to something I had been overlooking with Andrew.

We were in the grocery store a few years back, when he was 4 and was not speaking any consonants. There were decorations up all over the store and he pointed up at a witch and asked in his own way, what it was. It hit me like a ton of bricks that I had been so focused on trying to get him to talk that I hadn’t really placed any focus on things that most typical children generally pick up on at an early age. It was not that I was dying to teach him about witches, ghosts and goblins but was more about how he was noticing all sorts of things going on around him that I didn’t even realize.

I wanted to be more mindful of exposing him to vocabulary and concepts of each holiday, month and season so that he would form connections between symbols and these times of the year. This is essentially how I was motivated to incorporate themes into My Obstacle Courses, which then reminded me of how I did it so naturally as a teacher. I could incorporate fun, thematic things and concepts while building things like literacy, math, fine motor, gross motor, oral motor, sensory processing and pretend play. He loved it and still gets excited as the themes change.

A huge bonus for me came a year after this first happened and we walked into a store in September with all of the Halloween decorations up and he looked up and said, “Haween.” I said, “Yes! It’s almost Halloween.” 🙂

Engage, Encourage and Empower!

How Do You Want Your Morning To Feel?

This is the most important tip in my mind. Take a few minutes and think about how you want your mornings to feel. If your mornings are great and peaceful, than awesome! If they are causing you to feel stressed or rushed, think about what things have caused your stress in the past. Personally, I used to feel like a pinball that had been shot out into the day at the mercy of whatever issue or need I bumped into. No sense of control whatsoever!

What I didn’t realize was that this was the way I was feeling because I wasn’t leading my day, it was leading me. I discovered that I could change this by thinking about what I wanted the day to feel like and what I needed to do to make that happen, keeping in mind that Andrew was still going to be Andrew with his ceiling fan questions and comments.

Oh, the Lessons Unpleasant Experiences Teach Me!!

I will be totally honest with you , I am SOOOO not a perfect mother by any means. The tip I share above is purely based on what I learned because of our own unpleasant morning experiences (isn’t that how you learn anything?). This strategy is tied in with one of the most important things that I have learned as a person and parent and while I didn’t learn it until this year, I am so grateful to have learned it because it has made an enormous difference in my life, in my relationship with Andrew and how we move through our days.

Lessons From Horses

I had an experience working with some horses at a retreat back in March with Dr. Martha Beck (who I am training with to be a Life Coach – details about that coming soon!!) and Koelle Simpson, Master Coach and Horse Whisperer. (Click here to watch them work with Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York as part of Finding Sarah on the OWN network.) While the original purpose of the retreat was to build personal leadership skills, the HUGE lesson I walked away with was how my energy, thoughts and feelings have an immediate impact on everything around me because that is what they respond to and this carried over with Andrew. The horses pick up on everything, including any nervousness, anxiety, fear and what they actually want to know is who is leading the herd, essentially who is keeping them safe and fed – just like our children!

It was a powerful lesson of leading by a) knowing what I want or how I want something to feel, b) taking action to make it happen and c) not getting anxious, tense, obsessive or overly excited when making it happen. I learned that while I cannot control other people (especially Andrew!), I can begin to notice how I am feeling when I am with him, control how I am thinking and responding to those feelings and ask myself some key questions

• What is his behavior telling me?
• What do I need to do to lead the situation?
• How can I set boundaries to make sure I do not get tangled in his drama?

This is like building a muscle, it is challenging at first but as my ability to not react to his tantrums has gotten better, the tantrums have gotten shorter because he has no one to feed them. (This also works with people who are angry with you – if you don’t give their anger any fuel, their anger is contained within them, which may irritate them but keeps you out of it 🙂 !)

Back To the Real World

I felt the change in me with the horses but I wasn’t sure how this would actually work with Andrew and all I have to say that it was a crazy experience that proved what I learned. If I was stressed, he became stressed. If I was feeling chaotic and disorganized, he picked up on that and become flustered. If I was relaxed and feeling okay even when things weren’t going smoothly, he was relaxed as well. Amazing! This leads me to my “back to school” tip – How Do I Want the Morning to Feel? First I had to be honest with myself and identify what the problem was, what had been keeping me from having the morning I wanted?

My Problem

I noticed that mornings were particularly stressful and took notice of what was going on. This is what I found (I’m sure none of you can relate so just humor me and pretend 🙂 ):

I would leave lunch-making and backpack packing until the morning and become distracted with my computer (often putting the final touches on these posts 🙂 ). All of a sudden, I would look at the clock and start running around like a chicken with her head cut off, unable to focus on all of the things that suddenly needed to happen all at once. I would be harping on him to “Get going! We gotta leave in 2 minutes!!” He would dance around, fish lip at me (the face he makes when he is stressed and overwhelmed), follow me around repeating the same thing over and over again and I would loudly remind him (while trying to throw together a lunch he’d eat) that going to school naked was not an option. We always made it but I was usually sweating, anxious about getting there on time and he would pick up on that and worry about getting to school on time.

My Solution:

Preparation

I realized all of the frantic energy I was putting out there during this time. I thought about what was going on during the morning that was causing me to be rushed. I thought about what it would look like if I could have the ideal morning. I then thought about what I could do the night before to make the mornings flow better. For me, it was packing his lunch and having the things that needed to be refrigerated packed and only needing to be placed in the lunchbox. I would make sure his backpack was ready to go with any notes needing to go back to school in his binder. I made sure that my phone, keys and wallet were together and ready to grab.

Prioritize

I also realized that it would be helpful to do all that I wanted to do to make the morning feel the way I wanted before getting onto something that was not necessary or could wait. That meant getting us fed and dressed before even opening the computer. If a post didn’t get done by the time I left, I learned that it was okay. If my bed wasn’t made, not a big deal! It became more important to calm down, be more relaxed, take lead of the morning before it led me. This had an amazing effect on all of us and I can honestly state that our mornings are SO much more peaceful than they used to be.

The Takeaway

If there are times of your day that are stressful for you, I encourage you to think of how you can lead this time (NOTE – I do not say control) with a) how you want that time to feel, b) what you can do to make that happen (even small changes make a huge difference!) and c) keeping your own energy calm to not feed into others drama.

Engage, Encourage and Empower!

When I did a post earlier this summer on creating a water wheel pouring station, little did I know that a water wheel was going to be the thing to motivate and encourage Andrew to get closer, even into, the ocean.

My mother in law brought a bunch of sand toys, including some pails and several different water wheels. We began by filling some pails with water so that he could pour the water into the water wheels while we videotaped him on our phone. (It’s no surprise that he loves things that spin and watching the wheels spin at different speeds was very exciting for him. Being able to watch it frame by frame on the phone afterwards was an added perk!)

Video clip of Andrew pouring water into the water wheels.

After a while, we decided to use this to motivate him to get closer to the ocean. We gradually moved him closer to the water by first coming up with a plan for how far he was willing to go in. This was important so that he knew ahead of time what he was going to have to do AND he agreed to it. We would then go with him, go in the water and gently get him to the designated point.

Once he did this, he was free to go back and we filled the pails with water.

He eventually went into the water up past his knees, something I don’t think he would have done in the same amount of time on his own. This was huge for him!! Maybe next time we’ll get him to fill a bucket but for now, it was perfect for him to go in as far as he did.

Note: Andrew does not have fear of water. He knows how to swim and is very comfortable in the water. If he did not know how to swim or had water fears, we would have placed focus on something else because going into the ocean would have been too big. This was a sensory processing issue for him, working to deal with the noise of the ocean, the feel of the cold, scratchy water on his legs and the unpredictability of the waves. You can see that he is plugging his ears to lessen the noise and as the week progressed became more comfortable with the patterns of the waves, which we pointed out to him. Not much to do about the scratchy water other than get used to it! 🙂

I share this experience because it was such a clear example of finding what is motivating and exciting for your child and using that to help stretch their experiences and tolerances, even if by the tiniest bit. While your child may not care about wheels spinning (or fans as he was calling them 🙂 ) or videotaping themselves on a phone, there is usually something that they will be willing to work for, you just have to find it.

Start small and slow with things that are doable for them and gradually increase the expectations. Watch them carefully and read them for what they are telling you – (too much? too scary? too big? or Ok, I can do this. I may not be crazy about this, but I really want to do ___. ) and try to stay in the zone of nudging them a little bit out of their comfort zones while still feeling safe. Think about what you experience when you or someone else pushes you a little outside of your comfort zone for your own good. Nervous, doubtful or bothered at first but when you finish or reach your goal, you probably feel really proud of yourself. I saw all of this in Andrew as he made his way closer and closer to the ocean and by the end of the week, he was even inside pretending a pillow was a boogie board, practicing how he would wait for the perfect wave and then ride it in. Who knows, maybe that’s what I’ll be reporting to you next year! Turtle steps all the way :).

Special thanks to my in-laws (G & T) for these awesome photos – Thank You!!!

Engage, Encourage and Empower!

Just as I like to share practical ideas for ways to work on building academic and developmental skills with your children, I’d also like to share something that has made a huge difference in my life (and now Andrew’s) over the past two years – reconnection to nature.

Two weeks ago I participated in a tele-class with Michael Trotta, special educator, naturalist and Martha Beck life coach, called, “7 Ways To Help Your Child Become the Natural Genius He/She Was Meant To Be.” While listening to him describe the 7 ways, one of the things that really struck me was how allowing boredom can really help to inspire creativity and imagination. I thought back to growing up, being bored and going off to create forts armed with clothesline, clothespins and old sheets. I can still remember all of the pretending I did sitting in a tree or inside of my fort. It was so much fun to create spaces that were my own, figuring out what worked best through trial and error, really feeling like I was on my own living in this place until it was time to eat. Ah…the good old days!

I’ve been working on getting Andrew to have a balance between time spent with electronics and time spent outside (or even inside playing with things that do not require a plug or battery). Left to do what he wants, he would spend all day watching ceiling fan videos on YouTube (his version of cartoons). With him having more time at home this summer, we began setting limits on the amount of time he can spend doing this. He works well with structure and timers so we give him set amounts of time and use a timer so he can see. We also have passwords for every electronic gadget we have because he’ll sneak things upstairs. While we are the ones who are setting the limits for this, it helps to have them reinforced by something that is not us – a useful way for us to use electronics in our favor!

At first, he would grumble, complain and weep dramatically (And the Oscar goes to…Andrew for the best emotional performance of a child not getting to use electronics!) while we ignored his pleas and locked all of the electronics away until the timer went off. This is also something that I wanted to model for him so it meant that I was not going to use electronics during this break time. Let’s just say I had to be really focused to get posts done when it was “electronics time!” We started slowly with 20 minute breaks and are now up to having 1 1/2 hour breaks at a time which for us is huge! An unexpected benefit of this is that he has learned to tell time! He can even look at my watch (which is not digital) and tell me how many more minutes is left in his break.

I have really been enjoying seeing the little “games” he has made for himself when he knows he is going to be outside for a certain period of time with no electronics. Suddenly, an empty water bottle becomes fascinating to watch as it fills and sinks, rolls down a pool float or pours water on mom’s head :). He has created an OT-like obstacle course in the yard, talking to himself as he reminds himself to “get ready to jump.” He gives himself little challenges like jumping over hoses, swimming with his eyes closed and squirting water into the water wheel to make the wheels spin like they are on high-speed (sneaking in a ceiling fan reference!). The child I thought would never pretend play outside is now doing so and when he doesn’t feel like doing anything, he comes and just sits with me while I soak in the beauty of the nature around me.

If you are interested in learning more about increasing your child’s time in nature or building/re-building your own connection with nature, I highly recommend checking out Michael’s website, www.sagefireinstitute.com. He is offering a free tele-course to groups of 10 or more so if you are part of a parent group you may wish to contact him about this.

Soon I will be sharing some exciting news about something that has changed my life and have become quite passionate about – life coaching, and how it is going to be another way for me to help people engage, encourage and empower themselves (and their families through the process)! Stay tuned!!

P.S. -As I am finishing this, Andrew came in with his computer and said, “It’s 5:00. Time for our electronics break! No electronics until 6:00.” Love this! I gave him his 2 minute break warning and he just did what I asked without me having to go in and get it. He also gave himself a time limit greater than his usual declaration of wanting only a 4 minute break! Now it’s time for me to start my electronics break :).

Engage, Encourage and Empower!