My Biggest Parenting Aha Moment Was Born in McDonald's Playland
How I Got My Son To Leave Without a Power Struggle, Meltdown Or Emotional Outburst and How You Can Too!
Hey You!
Have you ever had one of those moments with your kids where the stars aligned and you were able to get them to do whatever it was you needed them to do without a major insane power struggle, meltdown or emotional outburst?
Well, I had my biggest AHA parenting moment pre-pandemic in McDonald’s play land. Yep, that’s right, inside the germ infested, oh so unhealthy McDonald’s play place.
Here are the deets…
This is a picture of my boys, Mateo (4 at the time) and Nico (2 at the time) playing in our living room. Well, one day when they were 4 and 2, we went to McDonald’s for lunch and to just get out of the house. When it was time to leave, Mateo climbed to the top of the playscape and refused to come down. He was having so much fun playing, he of course thought I was nuts that I was ready to go home.
I tried all of my tricks. Bribing him with a treat, telling him he could have screen time when we got home, offering him a chance to cuddles and story time with me without his little brother…none of it worked.
He was set on moving in and staying up there forever.
“Crap!” I thought.
“How the hell am I supposed to get him down here so we can leave?”
I knew that I didn’t want to climb up myself, ew gross. I knew that I didn’t want to threaten him or yell to get him down…Shoot then what else would coax him to come down?
Then it hit me.
At the time my husband and I were working with a DBT therapist to teach us DBT skills to help one of my step daughters. The main principles in Dialectal Behavior Therapy are skill building tools to help build emotional regulation, distress tolerance and interpersonal effectiveness.
One of the main points she was teaching us was that when a person is activated and angry/upset/etc - that is NOT the time to rationalize with them.
That is when it is most effective to offer EMPATHY for their experience and VALIDATION for their feelings even if you disagree or even if they are ranting about the most insane things. Empathy and Validation can greatly impact a person’s ability to feel seen and heard for their experience, therefore these tools can help a child learn to self regulate.
At the time I had also been working with a woman who founded The Language of Listening - which had a big impact in my early parenting learning curve. Her focus was teaching parents how to help their kids move towards what they could do or what was possible rather than focus on what they were doing wrong.
So now back to the gross play place situation….
I decided to combine the three creative aspects from The Language of Listening with the empathy and validation used in DBT. I implemented these three tools with Mateo by offering him:
Empathy for his experience by saying: “It looks like you are having so much fun up there! You are such a big boy climbing all the way to the top!”
Validation for his feelings by saying: “You love playing at the top and you don’t want to stop playing because that would be boring. You look like you are feeling happy up there!”
Imagination for a solution: “I bet you wish we could build a slime slide and you could slide down to the bottom or what if there was a big jelly pit you could jump into…”
This might sound totally counter productive, but the more I EXPANDED his imagination, the more engaged, curious and cooperative he became!
He eventually came down on his own, walked with me to the car and buckled into his carseat without an argument, screaming or meltdown. It was magical!
As we walked to the car hand-in-hand, I had this crazy thought: “What the hell just happened? How did I get him to cooperate without manipulating him or threatening, yelling or bribing him?”
That is when The Meltdown Makeover Method was born.
Since that day my clients and I have used this amazing tool to help children with separation anxiety, sleep issues, sibling rivalry and more!
Evolved Parenting Podcast Episode
I actually talked to therapist and podcast host, Sarah Walters on her podcast Bloom about the experience.
At the time I called it: “The Tantrum Takedown” but that sounded too negative so I changed it. You can check out the podcast episode below. We talk about how traditional parenting sets us up to fail and what is driving misbehavior, it’s not what you might think!
Here is my challenge to you this week:
Use The Meltdown Makeover Method with your kids and share with us how it goes! Seriously, I’ve had some cool stories come out of this one tool, it’s powerful!
If all of this resonates with you and you want to learn more parenting tools, tips and tricks to connect with your kids, book a call below. We can chat and see how I can help you become the badass parent you were born to be. You got this!
Don’t allow where you’ve come from to determine where you are going! You deserve more and so do your children:)