Kids and Hygiene: What do I do when my kids go out the door looking like a mess?

0:00 Welcome to Connected Families Discipline that Connects videocast series. For more information, you can Visit us@connectedfamilies.org hi, I'm Chad Hangay and I'm here with Lynn Jackson, co founder of Connected Families. Today we're going to talk about hygiene. Yes, hygiene. You heard me right. Should I care about how my child goes out looking in public? Sounds like you had some experience with this in a recent coaching session. Could you say a little bit more about that?

0:26 Yep. Yeah, we'll call her Sarah. And she came in several coaching sessions in a row, just in tears. Quite a bit of the session over. The intense power struggles she was having with her kids. And one of those struggles was just getting them out the door in a presentable manner in the mornings. Washing your face, combing your hair, brushing your teeth. It was just wearing them down, causing conflict before the kids even left for school. So we talked about, well, who really owns that issue?

0:52 Whose problem is that?

0:54 Yeah, well, one of the things that I wonder about because sometimes it's an all or nothing thing from a parenting perspective where you feel like either I'm going to. This child's gonna go looking at, going out the door, just looking like I want them to or whatever, who cares, you know, kind of thing. What do you do? I mean, you just stop caring about what they look like.

1:11 Well, that was causing some anxiety for Sarah too, even thinking about that. But we talked about how she could guide her children into thinking about their values in the situation, thinking about how they form conclusions about people just based on their appearance and what they, you know, how they act and how the kids wanted others to think about them at school. And they sort of talked about that, evaluated that. And then she was able then to say, it is your responsibility to care about how you look at school.

1:40 And whether or not that's important to you is not important to me. It's your thing to decide. If you care about that, cool. If you don't care about that, cool. I'm gonna love you no matter what.

1:50 So really trying to help walk through the thinking for their child, not telling them what to think, but even how to think. Well, how do they want to be perceived? What does that look like? Them taking ownership for themselves. So how'd it go? I mean, what is that? What happened?

2:05 Well, they talked about it and they realized that their. Their appearance was totally their responsibility. But tooth brushing affected the family. That was a family problem. So tooth brushing had to be done. Well, everything else was up for grads. And so she, you know, she talked that over with them and they came up with a plan.

2:23 So it's an interesting distinction that if you go out with a milk mustache, that's your problem. It doesn't affect me at all. But if you're having cavities because you're not brushing your teeth, then that impacts all of us, and I may need to do something to intervene. Is that accurate?

2:38 Right. So they problem solved it and figured out how they were going to be really faithful about their tooth brushing, and then the boys could do whatever they wanted.

2:45 So what difference did it make?

2:46 Well, they were able to get out the door peacefully in a connected way. And on a number of occasions, she said, you know, I love you, rooster tails and all. So there were some really important messages that she was communicating to her kids in that. Number one, you're safe with me. I'm not gonna try to manipulate and control you to make me feel better. Number two, you're loved no matter what.

3:10 Milk mustache, rooster tails and all.

3:12 Yeah, rooster tails and all. You know, you are capable of making some choices yourself, evaluating what's important to you, and you're responsible for your own behavior. And so their mornings were more peaceful. Her third session, she was smiling instead of crying. That was a nice end result.

3:28 Yeah, amazing. So whether it's hygiene or the unique combinations of clothes your child has picked out, whatever it might be, set them up for success, allow them to take ownership of the things that they can have control over, and let us know how it goes. Tell us your stories. Thanks for joining us today.