Being at Your Best When Your Kids Are at Their Worst: Practical Compassion in Parenting

by Kim John Payne

Overview

A practical, meditative approach that can be used in the moment to help you stay calm and balanced when your child's behavior is pushing you to your limit—by the popular author of Simplicity Parenting.

When children are at their most difficult and challenging situations arise, how can we react in a way that reflects our family values and expectations? Often, when children “push our buttons,” we find ourselves reacting in ways that are far from our principles, often further inflaming a situation.
When our children are at their worst, they need us to be at our best—or as close to it as we can be. Educator and family counselor Kim John Payne, author of Simplicity Parenting, offers techniques that simply and directly shift these damaging patterns in communication and parental behavior. These grounded and practical strategies will help you:


   • Slow down the interaction
   • Be more in control of your reactions
   • Open up a much wider range of helpful responses
   • Sense what your child’s deeper needs are even though they are misbehaving
   • Respond in a way that gives your child a feeling of being heard and still puts a boundary in place
 
Payne’s meditative approach can be done anywhere, anytime; it lifts you out of old, unwanted patterns of action-reaction and prepares you so that the voice you speak with is closer to the parent you want to be. His concrete and simple techniques can help you, and your children, be at your best, even in the most challenging of times.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781611808667
Publisher:	Shambhala
Publication date:	09/29/2020
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	239,407
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Kim John Payne, M.ED., is the best-selling author of Simplicity Parenting and The Soul of Discipline. He is the founding director of the Simplicity Parenting Institute and the Center for Social Sustainability. He has served as a school and family counselor and consultant for over thirty years. He has appeared on many major media outlets such as NBC, BBC, CBC, NPR, Time magazine, the Chicago Tribune, the LA Times, and the New York Times. Together with his team he has trained over one thousand Simplicity Parenting coaches and group leaders all around the world. His books have been translated into over thirty languages. He regularly gives the keynote address to conferences both in North America and in a wide variety of countries. He lives with his wife and two children on a farm in western Massachusetts. For more information, visit www.simplicityparenting.com.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Part 1 The Problem

What Gets in the Way of Being at Our Best?

1 The Balcony and the Playground 15

2 Healing a Repetitive Emotional Strain Injury 20

3 Derailments from the Past 26

Stuff Accumulates

4 Derailments from the Past 33

Inherited and Disinherited Parenting Styles

5 Derailments in the Present 46

6 Derailments in the Present 56

What Pushes Our Buttons, And What can we do?

7 Derailments … from the Future 72

Part 2 The Key

The Compassionate Response Practice

8 The Fourfold You 89

9 The Emotional In Breath 98

Healing the Fever

10 The Moral Out Breath 106

Releasing the Blow

11 The Compassionate Response Practice 115

Phase One

12 The Compassionate Response Practice 124

Phase Two

13 The Compassionate Response for a Child in Need 130

Part 3 The Transformation

The Gift of the Real You

14 Widening Your Range of Emotional Responses 151

15 The Outcomes 170

16 Values Centered versus Child Centered 180

17 Making the Repair 192

Conclusion 207

Appendix: Verses to Prepare for the Compassionate Response Practice 209

Bibliography 215

Editorial Reviews

06/17/2019

Children who act out can tap adults’ emotional hot buttons, and the subsequent combustion is rarely productive for either party. Educational consultant Payne (Simplicity Parenting) builds on the practice of visualization he learned from sports psychologists as a young athlete in this accessible book for parents and teachers. Part one contains advice and tools for breaking from the “action-reaction” response when provoked, and understanding that children “ping,” or elicit reactions from, the adults they rely on when they’re upset. Part two explains a four-step “compassionate response” for adults that is based on the work of influential authors such as Stephen Covey and Rudolf Steiner, and which overlaps with mindfulness practices. The idea is to start with the only thing one can control: one’s response, an insight Payne likens to the flight attendant’s warning to parents to secure their own oxygen mask first. Part three explains that once tapped into this practice, one can extend it to any child one encounters in crisis. In other words, the key to helping an out-of-control child is a self-regulated adult. This book proves to be a practical guide to carrying out this centered approach, as well as an easy and encouraging reading experience. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

The key to helping an out-of-control child is a self-regulated adult. This book proves to be a practical guide to carrying out this centered approach, as well as an easy and encouraging reading experience.”—Publishers Weekly

“Geared toward both parents and teachers, Payne’s guidance will stimulate ideas for reframing how we respond to difficult family situations.”—Library Journal

From the Publisher

08/01/2019

Payne (Simplicity Parenting; The Soul of Discipline) has consulted for more than 200 U.S. schools, the South African Schools Federation, the Hungarian Ministry of Education, and the educational associations of Russia, Australia, and the UK. Growing up with an abusive mother and now a successful child counselor, Payne believes parents can break the cycle and stop living with unresolved issues of the past. Looking at trigger points, this book examines common reasons parents are provoked, including not only skills to help change that but also assistance to readers for gaining clarity on issues below the surface. Payne's Compassionate Response Practice provides a visualization and meditation technique he's used with success in his own practice. There is commonality between how we treat issues with our body and how we can deal with the emotional bruises of life. Just as a physical therapist strives to find what repetitive action is causing muscle inflammation, Payne shares ways we can avoid inflaming our situations at home even further and instead bring resolution to difficulties with our children. VERDICT Geared toward both parents and teachers, Payne's guidance will stimulate ideas for reframing how we respond to difficult family situations.

Library Journal