At bedtime tonight, I was reading a book to Kimbal and Kim, when Juniper, angrily, stomps into the bedroom and yanks the book out of my hands. I was shocked. What would you do in this situation? I can tell you, I naturally wanted to get angry and punish Juniper. But would that have accomplished? Instead, I take a deep breath, and accept this situation as a learning opportunity.
Today I almost exploded. To have Juniper yank the book out of my hands was such a jarring, such a disrespectful experience. I was ready to unleash the wrath on Juni, but thankfully, I took my deep breaths, and proceeded with patience and love.
Here's how I turned a potential disaster into a wonderful learning experience.
Hello, mamas and Papas. Welcome to dads smarter, not harder. This is the show for loving parents looking to do better. One step at a time. I am Jun Loayza. I live in San Francisco with my wife and two daughters, Juniper, who is four and Kimball, who is two.
At bedtime tonight. I was in bed with Kimball and Kim and I was reading them a story. It was smiley shark. We're having such a wonderful time. And as I'm reading this, I hear stomping. Coming into the bedroom. I look up and it's Juniper. She's angry. You can tell she's just very angry inside.
And I let her know Juniper. Come and join us. Come read smiley shark with us. She starts walking into the bed. And I think she's going to sit down and enjoy the book with us. But she makes a turn and she grabs the book, yanks it out of my hand and then storms out of the bedroom.
What would you do in this situation? What would you do if, while you're reading your child comes and gangster book out of your hand? It's like as if you were drawing. And they take the pencil from your hand, or if you're working on your laptop and did he come and they close it on you, it's a very jarring experience.
I can tell you, I'm like, what the hell? What are you doing? I started feeling that anger inside of me coming out, but what would that accomplish? What would it accomplish? If I got angry, yelled at her, punished her. What I wanted to do was walk over there, take the book and yank it from her hands. Give her a taste of her own medicine.
But of course. That's not going to accomplish anything productive. Instead, it's going to make her angry. It's going to make her flip her lid and we're going to lose the opportunity to teach her a lesson. Because ultimately the frame of mind that we need to have now is that every one of these opportunities where the child is acting out is a great learning opportunity for us.
I know it sounds crazy. It's really hard to get ourselves into this mindset, but really it does help. When a child acts out, they're basically telling us that they're not ready for the situation that they're put in. They don't know how to act. So they act out on us, the people that they trust the most.
And what we need to do in return it showed them that they can act out, we'll take it and we're able to show them and teach them and guide them through this process.
Okay. So she yanks the book out of my hand. And what do I do? I don't yell at her. I take my deep breath. Of course.
And then I say, Juniper. That makes me very sad. I'm reading this book to Kimball and Kim. I don't like it. When you pull that book out of my head, it makes me very sad. That's it. I leave it at that for now. Jennifer walks out. I pick another book with Kimball. We finish our bedtime with Kimball, and then I walk into the room with Juniper.
Okay. So I walk in there and I need to have the right frame of mind. I'm not going to be angry. But I'm going to be the teacher. Because Juniper just acted out and now's a great opportunity to teach her a new lesson. I walk in there and Juniper immediately tells me.
A puppy. Read this story to me.
Juniper. I'm still sad from what happened. You yanked the book away from me. Why? So I asked her why. Because I want her to explain to me what happened. I want her to start thinking about it. I don't want to accuse her of anything.
I need to work with her, to come up with a solution for next time, so that she understands why. What she did was unacceptable and what she can do next time to be better. So I asked her. Juniper. Why did you do that? And she responds. Poppy. I want to read the book in my bed with you, not with Kimball and mommy.
So I'm starting to understand. It's that jealousy, that siblings contend to have. If I'm reading a book with Kimball. Then of course, Juniper wants to read that book. If I'm reading a book with Juniper, then Kimball wants to read that book. It's something that always happens with the siblings and we need to work with them to lessen this rivalry and have them work well together.
Okay. So I sit down, open up my arms and Jennifer sits on my lap and now I know that we're ready to connect and we're ready to learn a lesson. Juniper. I see that we had a challenge tonight. You want to read the book with poppy? And then poppy want to read the book with the family together in mommy's room.
What can we do next time? Juniper looks at me and she says, next time, read the book with me. And make mommy and Kimble read another book by themselves.
And so at that point, I knew what I wanted to teach her tonight. I wanted her to teach her the concept of control. And how we as human beings. Cannot control the actions of other people. The best that we can do is being control of ourselves. And try to influence others around me in the best way possible.
So we start talking about this, this concept of control. And I let her know Juni. You can't control mommy and Kimball.
Just how I can't control you. For example, you can go walk into the pantry right now and you can eat all the treats and all the desserts, and I'm not going to control you if that's what you want to do. Then you can go ahead and do that. But the best I can do as your poppy is teach you the consequences of what's going to happen.
If you're eating all those treats, if you're eating all those desserts and you're going to get sick. Your teeth are going to get holes. All the soldiers and your little belly, they're going to die.
And then you ultimately have to make that decision based on all of your learnings. So you are in control of yourself. I'm not in control of you. And in the same way. You are not in control of mommy. You're not in control of Kim and you're not in control of me. The best thing you can do is use your words. So at the next time you can either influence us or you can talk to us and tell us what you want.
She thinks about it. Well, how want to read the book with you?
That's true. You want it to read the book with me? So what can you do next time? Um, I can use my words. Yeah. We can use our words and we can try to think of other ideas that might make the situation better. For example. Maybe I can read a book first with Kimball in her room. And then I can read a book next with you in your room. What do you think.
Mm. Maybe. Okay. So it's not like she fully accepted it, but she's open to the idea. And now as we finish talking, we're going to read the book. And Kimball walks into the room just at that moment. And she sees smiley shark on the bed. She starts running towards smiley shark to pick it up and take it away into her room. And Juniper acting out of instinct runs, jumps on it, and it's going to yank it away from her.
And I let her know Juniper. Remember, use your words. And she pauses. She thinks about it. And then she says, Kimball, wait. And then she walks over to her own book collection. Picks out a few books and says here at Kimball. Let's switch. And she offers it. As a token of peace to Kimball.
And at that moment. Kim. And me lock eyes. And I can tell we're both thinking to each other. Please. Please Kimble. Just accept this offering of peace, please. And I kid you not. Kimball drops, smiley shark on Juniper's bed. She walks over and she takes frozen two from Juniper's hand. And walks back to bed to her bedroom with Kim.
Whew. Crisis averted. No tears. Juniper walks back into my arms and were able to close the loop. Juniper. That was great. What just happened? I used my words. That's right. Juni. You used your words. Instead of taking the book from Kimball.
What did you do? I gave her another book. That's right. So you see Juni. If you had snatched the book from her hands. What would have happened?
Kimball would have cried. Yeah, that's right. Kimble would have cried. But instead. You were able to influence her, use your words and your actions by offering her another book. Wasn't that so much better. Yeah. Yeah. It was so much better. And that's it. That's what I want to teach you tonight. So let's go over some of the lessons.
Number one when your kids act out.
The frame of mind that we need to be in is hooray. What a great opportunity for a new lesson to teach my child. I know it's hard, but it's the best frame of mind to be in. Number two, let's not escalate the situation because when you escalate, the tears will happen. Your child could flip their lid and then you're not able to teach them a lesson.
And number three. When you're teaching a lesson, let them come up with the solutions themselves.
You're not going to accomplish anything by berating them or by being an authoritarian and trying to tell them exactly what they should do next time. Instead. Talk to them with questions so that they themselves can discover the best next steps to take the next time they encounter this challenge.
All right. I hope this was useful. I hope this was valuable. And I hope that you really learned a lesson, a valuable lesson tonight that you can apply to your family immediately. Thank you so much for being here with me tonight. If you have any comments or questions. You can reach me on Twitter @junloayza. Thank you so much.