Renee Mill - Parenting Without Anger

First published in 2017 by Impact Press

an imprint of Ventura Press

PO Box 780, Edgecliff NSW 2027 Australia

www.impactpress.com.au

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Copyright Renee Mill 2017

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any other information storage retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

Mill, Renee, author.

Parenting without anger: practical strategies to create cooperative kids and happy families / Renee Mill.

ISBN: 9781925183948 (paperback)

ISBN: 9781925183931 (ebook)

Parenting.

Child rearing.

Parent and child.

Cover and internal design: Deborah Parry Graphics

Cover images: Shutterstock

Internal images: Shutterstock

This book is dedicated to my mother.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I WOULD like to gratefully acknowledge Miriam Adahan who has inspired my thought process and teaching for over thirty years. Many of her ideas have become integrated with mine to the point where I am not able to separate them.

Other authors, too, have been influential in my thinking including Stephen Covey, Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlich, Edward Deci and Daniel Goleman. Many of their theories are woven into this book.

My gratitude goes also to David Andor, Eva Jaku and Josephine Brouillard, who assisted me with input, proofreading and advice during the first incarnation of this book.

Jane Curry, my publisher, needs thanks for recognising my work and giving me the opportunity to be published. Thanks also go to her team who are meticulous and always ready to help.

A thank you is not sufficient for my personal assistant, practice manager and right-hand person Lisa Pinto. Her support, input and attention to detail are invaluable.

On the family front, I must say what all working wives and mothers realise, I could not have done this without the support and encouragement of you all. I would like to thank my husband Les for his love, support, friendship, critiques, and keeping the home running when I was unavailable. I wish to thank my children for being the beautiful human beings that they are and for giving me the opportunity to be a mother in action. I hope with all my heart that my knowledge has benefited you. My mother, to whom this book is dedicated, is owed all my thanks for life, wisdom and strategies for survival.

My clients are owed a huge thank you too. By trusting me with their stories, I gained insight into anger, parenting, love and healing, which provided the material in this book. I feel privileged to have worked with each one of you.

My greatest thanks goes to my Creator, Hashem, for giving me the tools to complete this mission. I hope I have lived up to it in some small way.

SECTION 1:

BACKGROUND AND INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE

THE ANGER TRAP

A S parents, we all want happy children. Ideally, wed like to bask in the fun and camaraderie of family life, find it easy to love our children unconditionally and have them love us in return. Right?

Right!

Yet our hopes and wishes are often thwarted even as we try our level best to do things right. Most of us love our children so much that it practically hurts, and want to do everything in our power to set our kids on the right road. Yet, paradoxically, many of you report that you are more stressed, more tired, and more angry with your children than you have ever been.

Not only do we want loving relationships and happy children, we want cooperation. Much of our lives are spent learning to live happily together, yet every day presents us with power struggles and challenges in meeting daily tasks.

Admit it. Before you had your first child, you had no inkling that everyday activities like waking up on time, getting dressed, brushing teeth, eating breakfast and sitting quietly in the car could be fraught. Chores like making a bed, clearing away toys, putting dirty dishes in the sink and tidying up bring power struggles to a whole new level. I am guessing that your dream of a happy, contented home and well-behaved kids is proving to be difficult to realise. Instead, your home has become a hotbed of anger, yelling, consequences and punishments.

Do not feel alone. I have met hundreds of parents in exactly the same situation. Like you, they were caught in the anger trap. It looks like this:

Joe, please get ready for school.

Joe, will you hurry up and get ready for school?

JOE, HURRY UP!

IF YOU ARE NOT READY IN FIVE MINUTES THERE WILL BE NO TV THIS AFTERNOON!!!

Optional: grabbing, pulling, dressing, scrambling, pushing into the car.

Joes mum drives Joe to school while seething and lectures him all the way there about his bad behaviour. After she drops him off, she has a coffee to unwind and then the guilt sets in. She feels terrible that she did not send him off for the day with love, hugs and kisses. She reprimands herself for the criticism she heaped on him. She despairs as she has no idea how to change this pattern. Anger and punishment are simply not effective but what else will work?

Anger makes you stupid

Many of the parents who consult with me see their anger as secondary to the discipline problems in their home. Parents come to me to fix their child and are looking for strategies. But guess what? No matter how brilliant the strategy I teach, it will not work as long as anger gets in the way. Anger hijacks the smart brain, preventing clear thinking and the ability to execute a plan. Humans need to be calm and collected to be rational and effective. When we are angry, we are not at our functional best.

So please, do not rush to the end of the book to grab new strategies. Learn to manage your anger first so that you can implement the new techniques calmly and you will experience long-term success. It is this sequence that will enable you to actualise your dreams of bringing up a happy child, creating a contented home and living together cooperatively.

This book will teach you:

1.Why anger is destructive and the need to say NO to anger.

2.How the brain works and why expressing anger serves to maintain and increase rage rather than dissipate it.

3.That anger is part of the fight/flight reaction and therefore is a response to danger, or perceived danger.

4.Strategies to manage your anger.

5.Strategies to gain cooperation without anger.

6.Tools for your child to manage anger.

Say NO to anger

Although every parent expresses their anger differently, a loving parent knows, in his or her heart, that their expressed anger is not good news for anyone in the family, least of all the children.