How to Discipline in Public | Q&A with Dr. J | The Mom Psychologist

0:00 so I recently got a question from a mom who shared about some type of misbehavior that happened outside of her watch she got word from another child that her child U misbehaved she spit at another [Music] person welcome back to my channel welcome to another episode of Q&A with Dr J I can't get over the name I just it tickles me any

0:30 anyways quick introduction before I forget because I often forget I'm Dr Jasmine hi hello um welcome if you are joining for the first time I am a mom of three and I'm also a psychologist and around here we talk about all things parenting Child Development as well as our own mental health and Sanity as parents and how it all relates with each other so if that's your jam just be sure to give this episode a thumbs up and

0:58 subscribe to my channel or follow along on podcast so anyways back to what I was saying so in these episodes I am sharing questions that I have already answered inside of my private parent uh coaching membership and I want to share them because I think that they're so good you know I get so many good questions in my membership but I'm just wanting to get into the practice of sharing more of

1:28 them because I think more parents could benefit from having this insight and this wisdom so I recently got a question from a mom who shared about a party debacle where there was some type of misbehavior that happened outside of her watch she was with the adults her children were playing and she got word from another child that her child misbehaved she spit at another person and when she went to go confront her child in front of the other kids her

1:59 child was quiet didn't say anything so she ended up like telling you know tell that person sorry her basic question for me is like oh my gosh how do I handle these situations I couldn't believe this I was so caught off guard and embarrassed like now that I can take a step back you know like what would you have done how do I have conversations with my child like what do I do girl and I love this question for

2:23 multiple of reasons and one just I want to first start off this episode by saying that I extend so much compassion to parents especially parenting in public okay during parties there a different level to this right it's a different Dynamic when we have other people around us and or we think our child is acting you know less than we would like okay for lack of better words and so

2:56 hindsight is always 2020 and we don't always show up to these moments with Grace and in our highest self okay so let me just say that but when we're in public I'm just going to talk about you know my Approach and my perspective to this how I see public interactions with my children is that 80% 90% is actually better done in private meaning I'm not going to try to

3:27 have conversations with you I'm not going to try to ask you questions about what you did and etc etc unless we are in private the same goes with my husband same goes with my relationships that's the type of person I am right we're not airing our dirty laundry out in public I think it's inappropriate okay I think that it causes a lot of pressure going back to our children a lot of undue pressure because not only are they are

3:57 we talking about something that's hard like conf but we're doing it with social pressure around them right now they've got to manage the perceptions their image in front of their friends and that's not fair for kids and it's not fair for us I mean like how would I I try to just think about like how would I feel if my husband came to me with an issue in public or you know my parent came to me

4:21 like it's embarrassing it's just too much it's too much okay so when your child misbehaves in public it's so important to pull them to the side right pull them to another room go to the bathroom go outside go to the car go somewhere okay where there is space for you guys to talk without other people around watching and listening and contributing okay so that's number one number two point is I'm trying to put myself in this situation because I

4:53 haven't had this happen but I'm just thinking if if this were true which we don't know cuz we weren't there but if this were true and my child spit at somebody I would take that as a sign that they're not doing well right something is wrong something is not going right so whether or not they tell me what happened I'm going to use that as a sign to pull my child close and now they're going to be hanging out with me

5:17 okay until we are able to problem solve and get back on track you're going to be my best friend throughout this party okay me and you we home dogs okay we're hanging out until I understand what's happening socially and what the conflict was around and it's okay if you're not ready to talk about it no worries again we're not I'm not going to force you to conversate I am not going to force you to tell me things of what happened until

5:43 you're ready we're not going to talk about this in public but I'm going to pull you close as your mama bear and we're going to hang out okay and um I want you to know I got you now what do you do with you know if it were true or not and how do you handle the Dynamic with the other children I would have said something like well thank you for letting me know um I'm sorry that that happened to you

6:08 that's not right I would have probably pulled the other child aside privately again and just said you know I want to apologize on behalf of my daughter for this that's not right and she's going to be hanging out with me you know or whatever or if your child is like disclosing what's happening then you just help them with the conflict resolution so you know there's different angles to this and nuances just depending on the the relationship are we

6:33 talking about cousins are we talking about people I my child doesn't know are we talking about classmates are we talking about true friends I don't um have all that information with me so those Dynamics matter of course as well and if you know the two children are talking in that scenario then it is important to try to help them with conflict re resolution but I also would see that as my sign that I need to do a

7:01 little bit more monitoring and supervising especially if my child is resorting to the spitting um but in this case her child was shut down did not say anything so you know that's where I would go with that and it brings up the interesting concept and idea and question about forced apologies like do I tell my child to apologize and what I want to point out about this specific story is that we we don't know what happened we didn't get

7:32 the perspectives of the children and our child Mo most importantly and that's important to keep in mind as well and we want to be very careful to rush to Solutions rush to consequences rush to you know forcing our child to do something before we have a complete understanding of the situation now again we're in public this is not always possible okay it's not always practical to have everybody's you know different point of views and be collecting all

8:03 this information and then now okay I can make an informed decision so I always air on the side of caution and when it comes to forced apologies I don't believe in them I don't believe in forcing a child to say sorry for multiple different reasons and it's why I created a whole another episode so you can catch that episode on forced apologies but the biggest reason is they're fake why would I force my child to say

8:28 something they don't mean that is not true relationships and it teaches children to just say things to get out of trouble and I don't want to teach my child that no no they're not they're not apologizing for something unless they're truly sorry unless it comes from them and also what is an apology like I would rather teach my child to take action to rectify their mistake versus using empty language to pacify the situation

9:00 and you know I know other people would maybe disagree with me and we can chat about it in the comments but that's where I come from I don't agree with forced apologies and you can catch my episode for more context that it was my answer to this mom and again compassion for the parents out there parenting in the wild okay parenting in public parenting at parties where there's a lot going on there's a lot of commotion and

9:23 also compassion to the kids okay there's a lot going on there's a lot of stimulation there's unfamiliar people I mean the list goes on we're all not at our best a lot of the times in these situations and that's okay again hindsight is always 2020 it's always like oh yeah I probably shouldn't have done that and we all have those moments and so this is not me coming down on this m at all okay because that was a

9:49 really tricky situation so I hope it was helpful hearing my responses but I also am curious how would you have handled this situation okay question of the day how would you have handled the situation if you are tuning in on YouTube I want to hear from you let me know down in the comments and if you are listening on podcast hey hello thank you for tuning in it would mean the world to me to leave a quick rating and review it

10:15 really helps to support the work that I do and that is it for this episode I'll see you guys in the next one bye for