As a working single mum with two young boys aged ten and six and a half, my life involves much plate spinning. I’m ashamed to say that one of the casualties of this busy lifestyle has been my capacity for patience. Particularly anything that doesn’t go according to plan, include my children’s behaviour. But I consoled myself with the idea that I was a ‘good enough parent’; generally firm, usually fair and very devoted. And so it shocked me when my children recently began to refer to me as ‘stressy’ or ‘shouty’. Oh horrors, what had I become? I realised that as pressures mounted, I had started raising my voice more often, as a short cut to getting myself heard. On further inspection I saw that sadly the only effect the shouting had was a negative one, to wit the children hated it. In quieter moments I would heap on the praise , hoping that it would make up for shorter tempered spells. Or I would use rewards based inducements, usually involving a complicated mental tally of computer or story time lost and gained according to their behaviour. I had to admit that my crisis management methods were now exhausting me. Since this was a common experience amongst my parent friends, I assumed that periods of conflict, followed by times of peace, which sometimes had to be bought, were just the way things were in parenting world.

So when Carole and Nadim shared with me some of their parenting tools, assuring me that things could be different I was intrigued. Could these relatively simple new methods really work on my children, weren’t they already too old, wouldn’t they see through my new upbeat reasoning methods? I put a few of their tools to use and to my joy they worked almost immediately. I needn’t have worried about appearing ‘fake’, naturally the children were too delighted by their newly relaxed mum to want to question my methods. Moreover dropping the criticism felt natural.

It took no more than a day to see the huge difference my new techniques were having on our family life. The relief that came from recognising that using a calm, reasonable voice was having a calming effect not only on my children, but also on myself, was immense. Instead of falling into the ‘I am upset that they are upset that I am upset that they are upset ad infinitum scenario’ I was now experiencing the ‘I am calm and therefore they are calm’ equation. And so ‘If you don’t stop arguing you can forget your bedtime story’ became ‘I’m really looking forward to reading this story to calm children’. ‘If you don’t stop fighting over the trampoline I’m getting rid of it’ became ‘I’m really happy for you to get back on the trampoline as soon as you decide to share it together’.

The more I used respectful reasoning the simpler our life together became. Rewards started to become irrelevant and praise was implicit. The boys seemed more relaxed and communicative because they felt I was stopping to consider their feelings rather than rushing over them. We were in it together, and together had become a place filled with joy. Of course there are wrinkles and the odd ruction, I’d be worried if there weren’t, but I no longer feel that I am constantly fire fighting. Best of all, compared to all the parenting gurus I’d tried to follow unsuccessfully, Nadim and Caroles’ ‘do as you would be done by’ method seems a breath of common sense fresh air.

By Katie Sampson