Chapter 1

Quotes
Are your children something you can control or something you cannot control?

Even if you could control your kids, should you?

Emotional reactivity is our worst enemy when it comes to having great relationships.
Our biggest struggle with parents is with our own emotional reactivity.

That’s why the greatest thing we can do for our kids is learn to focus on us not them. Instead of anxiously trying to control our kids, let’s focus on something we can control. Calming our own emotional, knee-jerk reactions.

How can we have any influence on our children’s decision making, if we don’t have an influence on our own. When we get reactive, we get regressive, we shrink back to an immature level of functioning.

If I get loud and scary and intimidating, I may get compliance eventually, but at what price? I may have screamed my son into submission, but what type of relationship will I have with him if I continue to parent by reactive intimidation. If we want to be influential, then we first have to bring ourselves under control. Only then can we choose our response. Only then can we choose how we want to behave regardless of how our children choose to behave.

We feel overwhelmed, overstretched, overcommitted, underprepared, and underappreciated. That’s a recipe for being overwhelmed.

If there is one area where we feel the pressure of absolute success, it’s with our parenting.

Parenting is serious business, the stakes are unbelievably high, the cost of failure is unimaginable.
You may wonder, “Is it supposed to be this hard?”
The answer is yes and no. Yes parenting is hard and it’s supposed to be. But no we don’t have to feel overwhelmed.

Here’s the most damaging lie about parenting.

We are responsible FOR our children.

Most people would define parenting as this, “It is our job as parents to get our children to think, feel, and especially behave. It is our job to get our children to be good. Right?”

Wrong.

We have a far greater responsibility TO our children, than we have FOR our children. We are much less responsible FOR our children than we have ever been told. However we have a far greater responbiity TO our children than we have ever realized.

Even in infancy, our kids start embrace their natural ability about what they will and will not do. They will begin to choose how they think, how they feel, and how they behave. I know this concept is simplistic, but it carries all the seeds of our frustration in raising kids. They simply make different choices than we want them to make. They choose to yell and scream in the grocery store. They choose not to do their homework. They choose to break curfew and disrespect our rules. If you are responsible FOR your children then you have to figure out how to program them to make the right choices and you need to do it quickly. You have to learn the right techniques to get them to think, feel, and behave according to your definition of good. All of this sounds alarmingly like obedience training. It comes at no surprise then to find parenting books at your local bookseller written by animal trainers. “What works for Fido can work for your child.” If you are totally responsible for coercing your children into being good, then it makes perfect sense to enlist some program or system like that. Such an approach may make parents feeling big and in charge, but it leaves children feeling small and incompetent. The fact that our children have been given the power of choice as self directed human beings can thwart even the best obedience training program. Children will soon realize they are in a no win situation. Either they kill their own decision making spirit in an attempt to reduce their parent’s anxiety, or they rebel against their parent’s authority.

On one hand, what will make mom and dad less anxious, on the other hand what will make mom and dad more anxious.

There must be a way to dramatically influence the life of a child without resorting to programming or coercion. ScreamFree parenting emphasizes calming our own anxiety.
We may scream, we may manipulate, we may use violence, or we may neglect, avoid, or withhold love. All of these are different ways of screaming.

The only way to retain a position of influence with our children is to regain a position of control over ourselves.

You’re responsible TO your children, your spouse, friends, and family.

Say out loud, “I am responsible TO my child for how I behave regardless of how they behave.”

If you make sure you behave even when they misbehave, you have a greater chance of positively influencing the situation.

We want our kids to be self aware, self directed, and ready to take personal responsibility for their actions.

Learn to focus on yourself. This will not be easy. Once you turn the focus inward, you will always learn more about yourself than you wanted to know. Like how easily you allow access to your emotional buttons or how much you’ve been trying to teach your children lessons you have let to learn yourself. It is all about discovering where you still need to grow. Open your eyes to your own continued maturity so you can lead your children to theirs.

Questions:
1. The greatest thing you can do for you kids is learn to focus on yourself. When you heard that line, what did you think?
For the most part I disagreed with that statement. I think the greatest thing you can do for you children is love your spouse. But my spouse won’t be happy unless I’m happy, so I guess it is smart to be self aware of my own happiness.

2. Is your reaction any different now that you’ve heard the whole chapter?
Not really.

3. Recall one of the times you felt your child was out of control. If you had a greater control over your own emotions, how could you have had a different outcome?
Right now, if things don’t go Isaiah’s way, he gets upset and runs out of the room. It’s frustrating for me because he’s literally running away from the situation. What’s important to me is that I don’t jump to anger or violent grabs. He’s pretty good in Church and he can basically sense when some situations are more important than others for him to behave. Ethan is a little less aware, but he’s one. So I tend to be more understanding of his frustrations in Church. I feel Isaiah is out of control when he continues to hit or push out of frustration. But, I think Annalisa and I have done our best to deal with that. I’m not unhappy with how quickly we deal with that situation.

4. What has prevented you from focusing on yourself?
Culture, pressure, family values. Basically, I get an opportunity to focus on myself and mental and physical well being when I exercise every day. So, I don’t need a lot more than that.

5. What do you think are your responsibilities to each of your children.
I feel responsible and accountable to Isaiah to educate him about Jesus. If I were Isaiah, I would want to know about Christ and Heaven and Hell. If I don’t do a good job educating, I’m not sure anyone else will outside of Annalisa. But along the lines of this book, I feel responsible to Isaiah to help him learn how to make intelligent decisions for himself. I feel responsible to him to help him gain confidence and integrity. I feel responsible to him to help him learn how to love well. I feel responsible to Isaiah to set a good example. I feel like I owe him that and that he deserves that.