Houston, we have a problem.

By Rachel L Schechter, PhD & Laura Brooks, EdM

As a xenial mom, I follow a half dozen mom facebook groups and am really moved by our generation’s interest and passion for raising children. Every once in a while there’s a story that really speaks to me and I read through all the comments, sifting through solutions and getting a sense of where parents are in their understanding of child development and their efforts to put all the information together in an applied way. I’m VP of Learning Sciences at a Boston-based educational technology (edtech) company and have a PhD in Child Development from Tufts University. My curiosity about parenting began early, and until recently, I thought I was the only one who had Parents magazine a decade before I had kids!

On a recent moms’ trip, I met Laura Brooks, a mom of 5 under 11 and former elementary school teacher (and who also was an early Parents magazine subscriber!). She and I have similar goals for child-rearing, but bring to it different, complementary lenses. We recently got talking about one of the posts I saw on Facebook about what to do when you look over and see your child right in the middle of a problematic situation. She and I walked through the situation below and then put together the strategies at the end of the article.

Situation: My daughter started climbing up a steep hill and her toddler brother started following her. He doesn’t have the motor skills to handle the hill and I had an “uh-oh” moment. What do I do? There was a problem and I needed to act with “lightning speed” to keep everyone safe. 

My instinct: Yell for her to stop, turn around, and get down. If she doesn’t go up too far, everyone comes down and no problem. All set.

My quick self-analysis of my instinct: What if she doesn’t listen to me? Then what do I do? Threaten to take away her privileges? I don’t like yelling at my children (for many reasons, more on this another day!). A child in a climbing mood is probably not going to react as I would hope to the prospect of turning around mid-climb. If the focus instead is on thinking of solutions, we've moved in the right direction. There is also an empathy piece missing from the consequence approach. I want her to realize that her actions impact her brother and we all need to take part in helping everyone be safe. 

What I did: 

I called out, “Excuse me! We have a problem!”

“What?” my daughter asked.

I replied, “Your brother is following you and I’m worried that he can’t get down safely by himself.” 

After a short pause, she said “I’ll hold his hand and walk him down in a safe way.”

“That sounds great, thank you!” and then she executed the plan, and both kids arrived safely at the bottom of the hill. 

“Wow,” I thought, “That worked!” 

Strategies

Like an artist, the hard work of parenting is done behind the scenes. How can you give your kids the tools to make decisions before they ever get to the problems?

Building knowledge: Through read-alouds and family discussions you can talk about characters' problems (large and small) and how other people will react or what other consequences may come up. Then talk and talk and talk! Preload children’s brains with scenarios of problems and solutions from the storybooks will help them address unpredictable situations in the real-world. When tackling imaginary solutions ask the question, “what might happen next?”  

Setting expectations: It is vital to the development of children that they have a clear understanding of the sort of behavior that is appropriate. Mid-crisis is not an ideal time for discussion, but a time for action. Our children understand from living in our homes with the family, that there are expectations of fairness and kindness to all. Near-crisis event is not the time to set expectations. It’s clearly the time for quick response. 

You can help set expectations at non-crisis times for kindness by noticing and praising the little things they’re doing that support those expectations. “I noticed you moved your chair in to let your brother go by before he even asked you. You really noticed what he was going to need and helped him right away. Thank you for being so considerate.” That sort of specific praise helps children understand exactly what the desired behavior is and how they can reproduce it in the future. We can’t spend ALL our time noticing how wonderful our kids are, but when we do notice we can help our children grow by clearly stating what we liked rather than a more generic “nice job!”

Responding through facilitating and modeling: When you observe behavior that isn’t aligned with expectations, here are phrases that can help a child stop and question:

“Uh oh... what’s happening here?” Or “excuse me, do we see a problem?” 

"Are you helping or hindering?" 

“What can we do instead?” 

“Will those actions make the situation better or worse?”

“Let’s try it!” and then...

“How did that go?” and “How did that make you feel? And others feel?”

Note: I try to save “no” or “don’t” for things that are really dangerous and are in progress.

Through building knowledge, setting expectations, and modeling problem solving (noticing, planning, testing, and reflecting) children will be more equipped to recognize and react. They will have the words to speak up and facilitate others to problem solve when they see “uh-oh, we have a problem!” 

This article first appeared in Newton Neighbors, November 2019.