A note: It has taken me a while to be ready to share this, because it felt both very personal, and also revealing about my home life, but I think it still speaks to those of us trying to navigate this changing landscape of parenting.
My husband and I have spent the past year (Covid) watching just about every video course we could find. Recently we stumbled onto a MasterClass video series by Chris Voss about negotiation techniques. I will immediately preface this post with saying that I don’t consider myself an expert in either negotiation, or parenting tactics, nor do I have a degree in childhood development. But I wanted to share a small view from the trenches of motherhood .
Bedtime/naptime had pretty much become an all out fight for me. I had prided myself on being the parent who never raised her voice, or saw red when coping with her child, but the reality was far from matching my intentions as a parent. This was where an accidental use of tactics from an FBI hostage negotiator suddenly changed things.
The techniques primarily revolve around getting the other person to start thinking on their own rather than being reactive. This is helped by such things as mirroring (literally repeating back the last 3-4 words in a curious tone), labeling (observing an emotional or circumstance such as “it seems you are feeling X”), and then leaving enough space for the other side to employ some reflection. I certainly did not approach the next naptime intending to employ these, but maybe because they were forefront on my mind, I happened to drop into them.
Here’s what unfolded:
My son- in all his 3.5yr old frustration- “I don’t want to take a nap!” He is rolling around on the floor wailing and kicking. I can feel the tension rising in my own body and the impending despair that we are about to have another nap fight ending in failure. No amount of meditation practice is helping here. I’m about to be as wound up as he is- with the usual detrimental consequences.
I take a deep breath and calmly repeat in a curious tone: “You don’t want to take a nap?”
He pauses: “NO!!!!” More kicking
Something in the pause, cuts through my own internal tension.
Me: “Hmmm, It seems like you really feel tired”
Him: After a moment’s pause “No I’m not tired! I’m not tiiiiirreeed at aalllll!”
Me: “You’re not tired at all?”
Him: lying still on the floor and more quietly “No”
Me: “You seem tired”, He doesn’t answer- which is often his other delay tactic. I go on. “Seems like you’re also frustrated” Still no answer, but he’s stopped kicking “Would you like some mum-mum?” (Our word for nursing)
Him: “No! I don’t want to take a nap!”
Me: very gently “You don’t want to take a nap?”
Him: sitting up and starting to crawl over “It’s not naptime”
“It’s not naptime?” I can feel my own body beginning to unclench and breathe, and somewhere far off I begin to see the humor of this situation.
“Noooo… Mommy? I want mum-mum” his voice has settled and he’s crawling up on my lap
“Ok sweetie”
“Mommy I want you to put the music on for mum-mum”
“Sure thing sweetie.”
He snuggles in, starts nursing and within one song he’s out.
To give this context, prior to this a tantrum like this would have resulted in my trying to pick him up and hold him still while he thrashed, all the while contending with my own physical and mental tension. Of course after the fact it is obvious that trying to physically hold someone still to have them go to sleep is ridiculous, but in the moment it sometimes seems to be the only option. Reflecting back on this recent negotiation, I catch the humor in its midst; the ridiculousness at my prior attempts to force sleep, and the absurdity of the calmly asking a 3 year old whether it really wasn’t naptime. When I teach meditation I often comment that one sign of forward progress on a spiritual path is the presence of humor and laughter. We practice so we can laugh at our own foibles, with compassion and grace, and in that laughter something opens up. Just a crack of space where some lightness can shine through, and the internal fight can subside.
I have no idea if employing negotiation tactics will continue to break through the feedback loop of control vs fatigue, but for the moment (I have now been using different variations of these for 5 days now with decent results) they seem to be having the effect on both of us that I had been hoping for. Less screaming, more cooperation, and most importantly, better sleep.
Good luck to all the parents out there. The negotiation is real.