My guest this week is Sharon Silver of Proactive Parenting. The transcript of this interview appears below, and I really encourage you to listen or read all the way through because Sharon has some real gems to share!
Sharon is a mom and educator and has 17 years of experience counseling parents both in person and through her audio downloads on her website.
Carrie: You are back with Carrie at Natural Moms Talk Radio. I have with me Sharon Silver of ProactiveParenting.net. Hello, Sharon.
Sharon: Hi, Carrie.
Carrie: I’m excited to talk with you. I’ve been looking at your web site and listening to a bit of the audio you have there. I think that what you’re doing is great and very much needed. Tell us a little, briefly, about what proactive parenting is all about.
Sharon: Proactive Parenting is a site that grew out of 17 years of teaching parenting, and really trying to help parents deal with things so they don’t have to end up going straight to punishment.
I’m sure that what you listened to on my site was where I talked about the fact that every parent has a reaction, and so many parents think the only resource that they have is time outs. 
photo credit: nyki_m
But the truth is that there’s a tremendous amount of information that lives in the middle between your reaction and sending a child to time out.
And that’s what Proactive Parenting is about, ways to do this without going “Get your little fanny to time out right now.”
C: That’s interesting that you say that, because my audience is mostly people who believe in attachment parenting and gentle discipline tools. But it’s very true that even a so called gentle discipline technique can cross that line, and time out can be very laid back, “Okay, I think that we need a minute to calm down here, so let’s have a time out.” Or this can be picking up the child and slamming them in the corner. It’s not necessarily what you do so much as how you do it.
S: That’s very true. One of the top things on my web site are two completely different versions of time out. Because I have worked with a lot of attachment parenting parents, and parents that live on the fringes of that, and out of that grew my awareness, and also for my own children, that time out wasn’t accomplishing what I wanted It to accomplish.
If I was already angry when I did it, then it could be one of those close to really angry “Get your little fanny in there,” or it could be what time out was originally intended to be, which was “Let’s both take a moment and come back and talk about it.”
But there’s also a couple other things. For my preschoolers, which is seminar number two, because I’ve had to split them up, one for toddlers and one for preschoolers, the preschool one is very loving and really, it is “sweetheart, you need to do this.” So how I’m going to use time outs now is “have a seat for one minute, so you can get yourself internally ready to do what Mommy needs you to do. If you still need help with your emotions I’m right here.”
Now, a toddler can’t handle that. A toddler needs the same loving support, but a toddler is still verbally not there yet. So a toddler needs to have actions included in this. The one that I do for toddlers is stop them, and you do this in 10 seconds. It gives you the perfect words to say that are very loving and scaled down to size so they can understand you, and then have the child, while they’re still emotional, dealing with the new information they were just passed so they can pull the whole thing together. And that’s my understanding of time outs in this day and age. I think it’s time that time out has an upgrade.
C: To me, it’s more of a pattern interrupt than a punishment.
S: That it is. But it can be a pattern interrupt with teaching. That’s where I am. I’m all about solutions, and I’m all about folding teaching, which is really what discipline is, into whatever method I use.
Any moment that you have an opportunity to say “We need an interrupt,” it’s because the child’s level, they’re missing some piece of the puzzle. That means it’s time for the parent to step up and say “What do I need to teach you so you can do this?”
C: Absolutely. Tell us about some of the tools that you give parents. I love that on your web site you have a testimonial from a mom, and she talks about “You gave me the tools that I need.” She says “It doesn’t have to be so stressful with the right tools.” I think that’s what parents really need. We need tools, because we want to do what’s right, but when we don’t have tools to use, then we revert to what we know. Is that what you find?
S: Absolutely. And I would even give parents another bit of information, and say “Give yourselves a break.”
Because every human being, when they’re put in a situation with the first child, this happens with the first child, every day is a new day with your first child. You’ve never been there before; you’ve never been the parent of a three year old. What happens is when a three year old presents a new way of handling a situation, the parent will almost always revert back to what was done to them first. Because we don’t know where we’re headed, and in that moment is where we make the decision “No, That didn’t work for me, didn’t work for Sweetpea, we need to find something else.”
Then we start looking for the tools. Basically, what my goal is with Proactive Parenting is to support your own instincts. You are – I write on a blog that’s really wonderful, and she always says “You are the best parent for your child.” I agree with that 100’%. You know what works. So I support the parent’s instincts.
Things like how simple is it to teach your child two things that will really help them, especially when they have lack of words? One is “Sweetie, if you need me, you only have to say “help” and I will be there.” “Instead of trying to get my attention while you’re doing something else, I want you to come up and say “Need a hug now.””
Those two things start addressing what’s underlying a tremendous amount of misbehavior.
Because the child sees that when a parent deals with misbehavior, what does any parent do? We stop what we’re doing, we turn our entire body toward them, our eyes lock with their eyes, and for some silly reason our finger goes out, and then we begin to start to talk to them. Because they are dealing with an immature reasoning, they still have immature reasoning; they’re interpreting that as “Oooh, so this is how I get her attention.”
C: We’re reinforcing that.
S: Yes. So what we have to do is recognize and always look at it from the preschooler’s point of view, and then say “All right, this is how you deal. Now, it’s my job to see how I want to present this to you.” So those two little keys of “Help” and “I need a hug,” that’s what’s underlying a lot of the misbehavior, so let’s deal with it.
C: I love that. I’m going to remember that, because my almost three year old is in this phase of instead of asking me for help, and I could be right there, she wants to throw a little fit and scream. I’m trying to teach her that “You don’t have to do that, just ask Mommy for help.” I’m expecting her to behave rationally, and that’s too much to ask. I think that if I taught her to say “Help,” that one word would be enough for a three year old.
S: It’s not only enough for a three year old, but here’s where my skills come in to help a parent with their instincts. The child is still living with that intense emotion. We come in and we try and give them information to squelch the intense emotion. Then the power struggle starts, because they’re holding on and saying “This is true for me. I really do feel this way.”
If we honor their instincts, and say “Yes, you do feel this way, let me have you use this word, funnel all your frustration through it, and I get it. I’m right here.” We have to honor their emotions, but put it in terms that we’re willing to hear a million.2 times a day.
C: Yeah, that’s true. We know how we feel when someone tries to jolly us up, or cheer us up when we’re right in the middle of emotion. It’s very frustrating, and we just want to scream louder.
S: I say it ignites the fire. If somebody is going to start to say “You can deal with it,” it’s like “If I could deal with it, I would be right now. But I’m out of control; a little help would be helpful.”
C: You offer these seminars on demand. Tell us a little more about what that is.
S: I definitely have been around parents for a great many years. One thing that has become very apparent to everybody is the pace of life is speeding up, and we are all very busy, whether we are stay-at-home moms or working moms. It makes no difference. Our plate is really full.
Parents would say to me all the time “I appreciate that you came to talk to me at my Mom’s group.” We’re now doing that across the country, so check us out if you want me to come and do a little thing at the mom’s group. But they weren’t able to show up at the seminars. So we started thinking “Okay, how can we serve you?” Well, if you are a busy person and you want to be able to go when you want to go, – now gas is so expensive.
We’ve created seminars on demand. They’re only anywhere from 15 minutes to 40 minutes, I think. They’re very inexpensive. You can listen from your favorite chair, you can listen while you’re nursing the baby in the middle of the night, and when you start your next day you’re all prepared. You don’t have to get a sitter; you don’t have to go out unless you want to. But that’s what seminars on demand are. It’s to work with the convenience of your busy life.
C: That’s awesome.
S: That’s something that we really hope catches on, because we think that’s really valuable for parents.
C: Let’s see. I wanted to ask another question. You just gave us a great tip a moment ago. Do you have any other quick easy solutions that a parent can take away from this conversation and use today?
S: Yeah. I was just writing a blog, and we were talking about tantrums for real little toddlers. One of the things that came out that I think is really valuable is when you’re in a power struggle, or when you’re in a tantrum, because the tantrum’s going to happen with the toddler, the power struggle is going to happen with preschooler. So they’re pretty much similar in nature, but age appropriate. You can’t really say the same things to a toddler that you can to a preschooler. We start with the toddler, and we say the toddler is tantruming.
Number one, most parents know very clearly, you don’t really want to see a tantrum. We sit beside the child. We offer can we hold you, whatever? But then that still leaves a great deal of information that has not been accomplished to help the child with the tantrum and move through that phase.
One thing that might be valuable is to let the child know that we empathize with the emotions that caused the tantrum. You can say things so they understand what is fueling their fire.
This works somewhere between toddler and preschool age. You can say “It’s true, you don’t get to do these things, you don’t get to go into the garage today because Daddy’s car is in there, and that’s your play time. That can be really frustrating.”
What happens is that when you acknowledge feelings, at any age with any child, they feel heard.
Our tendency really is to go in and try and stop it. We can do that gently, we can do it lovingly, but underneath a lot of parents is “I just want this to stop.” The quickest way to make any stop is to acknowledge it, bring it to the surface and go through it. Don’t scoot around it. Go through it. Walk the child through the emotions. Address them, empathize with them.
C: Kind of like birth.
S: Oh yes.
C: Labor and birth are metaphor for so many things.
S: Absolutely.
C: You can’t stop it, and you wouldn’t really want to stop it, but you just have to get through it and not fight it.
S: I had two homebirths. The one thing that my midwife said to me very clearly is you’re going to find there are two ways to handle this. One is to pull yourself out of it and try to get away from it, and the other is to be willing to go through it. I think the same thing applies to children.
C: Tell us real quick, how would that sound like? My seven year old, really the only time he gets explosive is when his little sister goes into his room and gets into his Legos. He comes running out of his room and dashing across the house, screaming that she messed with his Legos.
S: What do you usually do?
C: I usually say something like “That is so frustrating when someone goes into your things.” But sometimes, I want to try to reason with him, which I know is not really the smart thing to do, because he’s not being reasonable when his emotions are running that high. Because when she’s in there touching his Lego, she’s not destroying them, she’s just playing with them. The rational adult in me wants to say “What’s so horrible about sharing Legos?” But I realize that’s not the right response. How would that look?
S: It kind of is the right response. This goes back to supporting your instincts. Because you’re mothering instinct is not your child instinct. The children are going on their instincts, you’re going on yours. The mothering instinct is “Come on, she’s your sister. She’s your sibling. Can’t we get along? You’re going to love this person all your life.” We want that message to get through. The child’s like “I didn’t order her. She didn’t come on my menu. It would be really nice if she’d get her hands off my Legos, please.” We have to acknowledge that. I have to say “Oh, no. She didn’t do it again!” To really go to that place again.
But the other thing that we do an awful lot with siblings is that we actually ask, of course I am the older child, so I have no experience with this, we actually ask the older child to give up something, to include the younger child. What if we decided that they had a right to want those Legos to be special? And that could be the one and only thing they get private time to do, and that the younger child then learns that “this is something where I cannot bother this person, and maybe I need to find a hobby of my own that’s very special for me.”
You might approach it that way, and say “How long do you think you’re going to need to play with Lego for? I would have to keep your sister out.” And then he would absolutely feel very heard, may close the door, then may realise “it’s actually more fun when she’s in here. I don’t really like being by myself,” or he may really relish that time.
Then you’ll see the relationship between the siblings really blossom, because he feels heard.
Conversely, when you have a smaller child, suppose you have a toddler whose 18 months old, and you have a 4 year old. A lot of times you hear the toddler screaming, and the 4 year old has come in and taken something back from the toddler. What do we do? We go in and say “Why did you take that from her?”
Instead, what I suggest is they make these really wonderful gates, they’re called circle gates. That’s what I call them. Or square gates. It’s not pretty in your living room, but it works. They create a space where you can say to the older child “Look, if the little one is getting into your stuff. Do you need some private time? Why don’t you take this and go into your special space.” The toddler can stand there, the toddler can watch, but the older child is protected. And the older child goes “I feel much better now, thank you very much.”
C: What ended up happening with this yesterday was after he calmed down, I asked him “Would you be willing to pick out some Legos that are for her to play with?” They like to play together, these two. They’re 23 months apart, and most of the time they enjoy each other’s company. He said “I can do that, that’s a great idea.” He runs and finds a Tupperware container, and picks up a bunch of Legos for her. He solved his problem, and I was really proud of him for doing that.
S: What I would say there is that’s perfect, 100% perfect. There are a lot of parents that can figure that stuff out. But there’s also a lot of children for whom that’s not quite enough.
I find that with proactive parenting, what you’re looking for is when your first take on the situation, your first remedy, didn’t necessarily work perfectly for the child.
You find that maybe the child is still having power struggles. Real proactive parenting is in the moments where you really are out of answers, but yet you still are very clear about the direction you want to go with your parenting.
You don’t want to resort to “Go sit in you room, get away from me! You’re in trouble.” Punishment. So when you are still needing to say no, when you’re still needing to set a boundary, when you’re still needing to teach, and you really aren’t quite sure what, then that’s where you come to proactive parenting.
What we’ve done is we’ve broken it down so that when you look at our seminars on demand, you’re going to see power struggles, you’re going to see quiet, and you’re going to see safety. Things that you’re dealing with every day are what the seminars are called. You know directly that all the solutions are going to help you with safety.
Yesterday I heard “I can’t get my child to stay in this car seat.” This is clearly becoming an issue. I’ve heard it enough that I had to write number 8 on safety. It’s a beautiful seminar that really gives a very gentle yet very firm way to teach a child that “these are the boundaries, honey. You cannot get out of this car seat.” That’s what you’re going to find. Whatever’s going on in your everyday life, if your first blush, your first instinct isn’t a perfect match for your child, give it a shot. You’ll find it there.
C: I wish I could think of this thing that happened yesterday. I saw my five year old daughter do something and I was so impressed with what she did, because to me it seemed like wisdom beyond her years. I said “Ilana, how did you know that you’re supposed to do that?” She said “Oh, I saw you do it Mommy.” It was one of those moments where I was like “Whoa!”
S: You bring up a brilliant and beautiful piece that I myself didn’t do well enough. I would love to tell your listeners all about that. One of the things that is the only complaint that my oldest son, who is now 29, ever said to me is he said “Mom, I really wish you would have shown me how you manage your frustration. Because I always thought that it was effortless for you, and I always thought there was something wrong with me, because it was never effortless for me.”
A lot of times, we use words. This is a really big part of proactive parenting, probably the biggest. The words that we use are not being translated to the toddler and preschooler. It’s not a preschool level. So we’ll say things like “That’s not appropriate,” or “You’re very frustrated.” The child understands the words, but the process, the step by step process of how to deal with that isn’t being translated.
If you’re in the kitchen, and all of a sudden you open the refrigerator, and you realize “I don’t have that ingredient and dinner is built around it.” Go ahead and say out loud what’s going on in your brain. “Well, I do have the majority of the ingredients. Boy, I’m mad right now that I forgot that. Sometimes I get so mad at myself. Being mad at myself is just not going to help. I think what I need to do is reconsider what’s for dinner. Let’s take a look. I know, I could make a list.”
GO on and on. Say it out loud enough that children will now have the exact same response that your sweet daughter did. “I watched you, Mom. I learned from you,” which is the basis of all preschool activity. We are the most important people in the world. They learn so much more from us than we have any idea they do.
C: That’s great. I can definitely work on that. I’m not the type to talk to myself at all. But I’m always telling my oldest, because he does that, he got that from his father. I’m always telling him “You know that’s a sign of superior intelligence, people who talk to themselves .” I’ve heard that, literally. It can be a sign of high intelligence. I could do that. It is kind of good and it’s humbling at the same time, when a child mimics something exactly like that. It is humbling.
S: It’s extremely humbling, and we don’t need to go there, because we’ve all done it. I call it eating humble pie. Being a parent of a child, you eat a lot of humble pie.
C: That’s one of the things about parenting, is how much it grows you personally. We were chatting before the call, and you wanted me to ask you one problem that you see, one issue that you see a lot with parents. Do you want to talk about that?
S: One of the issues that I see – I’m going to actually bow to you, because I think that you have wisdom here. If anybody ever wants to send me and email and tell me what their wisdom on it is, I would love it. I do a tremendous amount of radio talk shows, and a lot of writing on blogs. And people are always saying “Oh, my gosh. The solutions are fabulous. This is exactly what I wanted.” And yet I find that parents seem to have a stop block, a block against getting the solutions. And I’m not really sure what. I think when they’re frustrated, and they don’t’ know what to do, it baffles me, to be quite honest. When you find a place that aligns with your values and aligns with the way that you want to parent, … and yet, is there a fear somewhere in there about learning the solutions, attending a parenting class? I’m not really sure.
C: Okay. I think the thing that’s going on with that has to do with the parents left over sense of shame, maybe, and sense that somebody here has to be in pain, somebody has to be punished, because somebody did wrong.
It’s such a part of our culture, and a part of how we were likely parented that even though on a mental level we know that this is the right way to do things, and we want our children to be parented this way, when we take their actions personally, or when we’re tired or stressed, we think in terms of good guy bad guy.
Somebody’s got to pay. I had to pay, so you’ve got to pay. I’m sure you’re familiar with those books, “How to talk so kids will listen.” In those books, they talk about how when they did their workshops, a lot of people, especially boys because of how boys tend to be raised by their fathers, they have a lot of resistance accepting their methods even though they saw them work. Because they have that cultural worldview that somebody has to pay here. “Since I’m right and you’re wrong, you’re acting insane, it’s got to be you.” That’s the wrong way of even thinking about it.
S: I have come up against that a great deal. One of the comments that I get back is that I have been able to show parents that that is a lack of teaching that the child is crying out for. That misbehavior and doing something wrong is the only form of articulation that a child this age has.
So if you can change your mind about the fact that the misbehavior is not that you’re wrong, it’s that I’m trying to tell you in whatever way I possibly can, I don’t understand how to navigate this. One of the things that was really important to me, because I started out years ago in much more – similar to what Mazlish and Fabler were talking about. Let’s unlock that, let’s figure out why.
I always find that to be valuable ,and I always mention it to parents. But what I find parents really want is “Let me deal with my own personal process myself. Can you give me clues to how to solve this right now?” And that’s why it’s very practical, very what’s happening in your life today. It’s very valuable to look back. But that’s not the focus of what I’m doing, so I want to try and make it less threatening for parents.
I want them to understand that nobody’s wrong here. Nobody does it perfect. Probably the most important thing is life progresses. If life didn’t progress, we’d still be in the 1870s. We’d all be acting and dressing and behaving that way. But life progresses, which means our children progress as well. Our children are smarter, faster, and quicker than we were. It’s the way it’s supposed to be. Yes, we don’t have the same answers that our parents had, and their answers are not necessarily going to work with this generation of children.
C: That’s so true.
S: It is, and it’s something that’s gotta be said. It doesn’t make today’s parents wrong, it makes today’s parents very intuitive, very present. Because they get that something’s not working. We need new skills to work with the new generation. Because life is progressing.
C: I’ve never heard anybody put it that way, but that is absolutely on the money. I think sometimes that’s where there is a little bit of a struggle with parents, the younger generation of parents, when they are dealing with their parents, the grandparents. When there’s a disagreement about how to discipline children. My mom is always saying to my Dad, “Honey, that is not our world today. That was a different time, that is a different world.” That is really true, absolutely true. My teenagers are going to have a completely different life experience than my father did, and so therefore my relationship with them is going to be different. When he went to high school, he didn’t know what a joint was until he was in the workforce in his 20s, whereas my kids, I’m sure my 10 year old knows what a joint is.
S: It’s all over TV.
C: He’s home schooled, but if he was in school I’m sure he would know a whole lot more. By the time he’s a teenager, he will have faced being offered alcohol, sex, cigarettes, whatever. You name it. He’s going to have to face those things, and he’s going to have to have trust in me and the comfort to come to me and admit “Look, Mom. This thing happened today and I’m pretty freaked out about it.” It is a different time.
S: It is a different time. What most parents don’t realize is that trust is installed during early childhood. It is not something that you can diminish who they are, attack their self esteem, belittle their self worth in early childhood and then expect them to come to you when they’re a tween.
Because what’s already been installed is “I don’t have trust in myself. My parents prove it to me by the way they treat me. So why, all of a sudden when it’s important, when I’m 13, do they feel that they want to have this relationship? I have a history with them.” So we create a child’s history in early childhood. That’s where it begins.
I am not in any way saying it cannot be changed, because good lord, if that were the case we’d all be in real trouble. Human beings can change. But the foundation of who a child is is installed in early childhood. And their first bid for independence happens during early childhood. The way you handle it gets flushed out again when they’re a teenager. “How did my parents handle me when I was 4.5, or 3.5 and I was really belligerent? Could they handle me?”
I’ll give you a great example. My 17 year old, when he was going through his alcoholic bid for independence, just to be nice, … I’m a parent educator and have been for 17 years. Did it stop my children from having a rebellion? No. Did it stop me from reacting? No. It caused me to know a little bit more of where I needed to go, and I was a little quicker to go “That was over the top.”
But this is human nature. So, one day in the height of his rebellion, he decides he’s going to take the keys, walk out of the front door, and take my car. At that moment, what came out of my body was, – I always suggest that women drop their voice an octave if they can when they correct their children, because women tend to use their higher registers when they’re angry, and children can dismiss that.
I dropped my voice and said “Freeze. Give me the keys.” And he did. When the whole thing was over, I said “Why did you give me the keys?” He said “I have absolutely no idea.”
What I had done was what I call “pulling on his rope,” that was installed by me when he was in preschool. That was that firm voice. When I said to my four year old “Freeze”, he knew I meant business. I could tug on that when he was a teenager. I had him for 30 seconds, but I still had him stopped cold. So there’s a connection between early childhood and the teens years rebellion. Not a lot, but enough that when you install that firm authority when they’re little, still respectfully, you can use it again when they really need you to in the teens.
C: I like how you phrased it in a positive way. Instead of saying ‘Stop doing such and such,” you said “Freeze.”
S: Anybody that joins my web site gets a free life saving tip that teaches children the importance of the word freeze. I’ll leave it at that. It’s a really good one, and it will save a life. It did save my youngest child’s life. There’s a real difference in the way that you do that. It’s a free gift that we give people when they sign up on our list.
Yeah, the parenting that I suggest to parents is exactly what I said to the teenager. I use my authority, then I scale down the words and I make my statement. There’s no attack to self esteem. Now, after the issue is done, now let’s talk. Do you want to talk? Make an appointment. Take a few minutes. But nobody’s leaving here like this.
C: Well, Sharon, I’ve really enjoyed our conversation. I encourage my listeners to go to proactiveparenting.net and check you out. I was just quickly looking at some of the comments on your blog, and I’m enjoying the post about the 3 year old who picks her nose. My youngest has started doing this, and this is great. I’m going to do this immediately. “DO I need to take you in the bathroom?”
S: There you have it. It’s exactly the same thing. It’s a statement. Okay, everybody does it. I could tell you how gross it is, how my stomach is being turned, how I really wish you would never do that again, or I can just give you my statement.
C: Thanks again, Sharon. I appreciate this very much.
S: Thank you very much. I really enjoyed it.
