Maintaining Your Sanity During Sibling Insanity

 I was asked this question on Skype by one of my European clients…”How do you stay your best self while handling siblings that are at each other” we of course went on talking about the details of the situation which she was referring. I will share them here in a general way to help create a scenario and a solution. I know many will relate to this story.

It was a busy day…Mom had an appointment in the morning and the family met up in the afternoon for another appointment. This beautiful family has 3 young children, so already they have done a lot…yet they also needed to stop at the store for some chicken for dinner. While at the store the middle child spotted a beautiful little potted plant and wanted it, so they bought the plant and groceries and started home. Everyone was happy and heading home, little girl holding her beautiful new plant the whole way…proud and happy!

Once inside the safety of home things turned for the worse…they live where it is cold and snowy, so once inside they all need to take of the layers of outside clothing. While doing so the oldest child got a hold of the plant from the middle child and tossed it on the floor.

His sister understandable upset was crying and saying she did not like her big brother. Mom and Dad still undressing themselves and baby, also needing to put groceries away did their best to handle the situation. It was not easy. The two children were both upset and the eldest not wanting to take off his muddy boots and wet pants…Mom was starting to feel very frustrated and upset herself (totally understandable…right!?) She continues to do what she knew to do…breathe and try to stay calm.

After a bit it just was not working anymore and she shifted into another state of being…just wanting this to be over and wanting her son to take off his shoes and wet clothing; she stopped trying to work with him and basically over powered him to get the job done…so to speak. Then the son was upset about her not listening to him and so on and afterwards Mom felt terrible about the whole thing.

These things happen everyday…all over the world! Moms trying to be calm, patient, reasonable, respectful and loving with their children no matter what; then an extremely busy day and people being tired or hungry and things fall apart! So the very first thing I will remind you about is H A L T = Hunger, Angry, Lonely and/or Tired! When embarking out or even when at home…make sure these 4 basic needs are always addressed first. Be sure that everyone is feeling their best by insuring they are well rested, not holding on to anger/resentments, feeling loved and understood and feed well! This is very important for MOM to remember for herself!! We can not function well if we are hungry, angry, loney and/or tired. So we MUST take good care of our selves!!!!

So after checking in with Self and others about where they are with HALT, address those needs as quickly as possible! After that it gets much more introspective and personal. We are talking about us…Mother’s being our best during sibling challenges. We are not talking about how to make child behave differently! Things to do in the moment of the upset or if that’s not possible, go through these steps with yourself later after things have calmed down.

1. Locate your true feelings – you felt angry, frustrated, unappreciated…
2. See if the feelings were triggered from past or present
3. Watch for self judgment or worrying about others judging (if outside of house)
4. Concentrate on the relationship – not doing anything to harm relationship
5. If feeling triggered from negative past experience work with self before proceeding with child
6. Working with self can look like nurturing that triggered part of self ( possibly inner child) or harmed adult
7. Talk lovingly/reassuringly to that part of self

The most important thing is your relationship, if you can not be kind and calm you should walk away and breathe 3 deep breathes before returning to the situation; unless of course their is a safety concern!

These seven steps can be used with all challenging relationship issues! I will be doing a FREE tele-workshop on this topic and these steps on Wednesday evening March 24^th at 7 PM EST. On the call we will go more in depth about how to actually use these steps and clarify and questions people have…time allowing. Please join my Facebook Fan Page to stay up to date on all Free calls and Special Offers! Lot’s of new and exciting things coming up this spring/summer, designed to help you Transform You, Which Transforms Family!

As always…

Peace~Love~Free~

Tracy

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010 at 6:13 pm and is filed under Uncategorized . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.