Chapter 2

If you’re not under control, then you cannot be in charge.

We continually surrender control over our emotional responses to those around us. When we need others to accept us or validate us by doing whatever we tell them to do, we make them the care takers of our emotional remote controls.

Learning to be under control means taking responsibility for your decisions, before, during, and after you make them.

When it comes to relationships, you can only hold one remote control at a time. When you grab for someone else’s remote, you automatically give him or her access to your own.

If you come to rely on your ability to control others, you’re destined for frustration and misery.

To truly be in charge, means having the power to create lasting and continued growth, not just exerting power or demanding obedience, it means inspiring your children to motivate themselves.

This makes for a shift from controlling your kid’s behavior to influencing their decisions. Your goal is not to control, your goal is to influence.

You want to continually hold up and respect their ability to make choices. Even choices you disagree with. Unless they’re free to make their own choices, they cannot learn the connection between choices and consequences.

You should not be in the business of forcing compliance at all costs. It works for the short term and sows the seeds for long term disaster.

When you need your children to comply for your sake, you’re creating a power based exchange that asks them to be the care takers of your emotional state.

When we scream, the message is always the same, “Calm me down.”
Whenever we react to our children by screaming, we’re actually begging them to calm our anxiety.

When we put all our emotional buttons in children’s hands, we become totally focused on them. We’ve begun a sort of orbit around them. Attaching all our emotional responses to how they perform in school, whether they use good manners, or whatever other decision they are making today. The entire family’s emotional life is now tied to the whims, frailties, and growing pains of the least mature members of the family. “Calm me down son, because I cannot calm myself.”

You have to make holding your emotional responses in your own hands a priority.

Giving in to your reactivity helps create the very outcomes you’re trying to avoid. This is because of a process called anxiety transfer.

For you to have the lasting influence on your child’s choices, you first have to calm down.
In order to be in charge you have to bring yourself under control.

Q and A
1. What situation with your child seems to make you the most reactive?
Isaiah is in the habit of taking toys away from Ethan because they’re “his”. He also can hit or push Ethan sometimes. I react quickly when those things happen, especially the hitting or pushing. I also get reactive when he continually does not listen.


2. What is your typical way of screaming?
My typical way of screaming is giving a hard stare, or grabbing tightly by the arm, or using a very stern voice.

3. When you do lose your temper, who are you usually tempted to blame?
Probably whoever made me mad.

4. Has anyone ever tried to make you lose your temper on purpose? How did you respond?
Probably in grade school. Probably not well.

5. Recall a time when you were proud of the fact that you remained calm and connected during a heated situation. How did your calm presence affect the outcome?
A calm presence can help calm people down when they’re frantic or anxious or scared. I like it when people can do this for me and I like to be able to do it for other people.