The big question: NLP and Parenting

Posted on May 25, 2010 in Child Development | 3 comments

The sun is up, the birds are out and its only 4.50am.  How dare they wake me up the morning after my first night out in ages!!!! That was just the start of my hangover day.  Why is it that alcohol affects you so much more when you stop drinking it so often?

Then Pickles decides that today will be a grumpy day so all things normally easy, become more of a challenger for Mummy and I have to reach into my ‘bag-of-tricks’ to ensure things go easier on me.  Then to top it off over morning tea with friends I was asked a most serious question?  A question my brain just could not contemplate with the leftover Daiquiri and Lemon Sorbet Vodka Cocktails swooshing around up there.  Our friends asked what I would consider to be the most important NLP technique that I use the most as a Parent.  Although I knew the answer straight away, it needed words, lots of them, to give a good explanation and example, words which seemed mushed between strawberries and vodka and not much sleep.

The question is a valuable one and our discussion then ventured great and far but I thought it was a really useful one to post on the blog.  Here’s a quick summary:

Language, (as mentioned in Don’t Read This Blog Post,) is one of the most important skills a parent has but it’s not my number one tool.  I know language stops me getting frustrated and cranky for no real reason and has had an extremely powerful knock-on effect with Pickles, but it’s not what I think to be the crucial Parenting skill.

As a parent I get exhausted with what some days can seem like a battle, we certainly have our days and Pickles is cheeky, she is adventurous and she is learning about her boundaries and mine every day.  She lets me know when she doesn’t want to do something and she is happy to say “no” if she doesn’t want something.  The difference is, this particular skill has helped me watch, understand and articulate correctly to her needs and mine every step of the way.

The most important technique NLP gives parents, I think is:

Calibration: The art of intuition & understanding.

Calibration is a natural skill we all have. It’s the ability to distinguish behaviour and fit a label that describes with a degree of accuracy that particular behaviour. There are varying degrees of ‘proficiency’ we have with callibration and this comes down to the level of distortion from what we see, hear or feel, from being accurate to guesswork. From one end of the scale we could ‘read’ someones body language and say they are happy and be accurate and at the other end of the scale we could read the same body language yet miss some clues and say they are happy, but totally wrong.

Calibration is the art of reading body behviour and listening to tone in words and to make an assessment of what that body behaviour is. A great example is when hubby comes home and his head is down, eyebrows furrowed, low pitched voice, slumped shoulders, I know he is tired, and more than likely grumpy.  This gives me a great clue to go and grab a beer out of the fridge and tell him to promptly sit down.  (Help me if I don’t do this   ).  I know this because he has told me before when he has looked like this and confirmed my calibration.

I am sure you have had someone say to you ‘hey you look really down’ but in reality, you are just contemplative or simply staring out somewhere. They have mis-read you. They haven’t calibrated to what you look and sound like to the type of state your in.

As a parent, particularly Mummies, we calibrate naturally very early on to what our babies cries mean. Is it a wet one?  Hungry one? Tired one?  Frustrated one? etc. Babies have a different cry for each of these and early on we have to pick out the difference (sometimes subtle) so that we can act quickly to help them. Some parents however find it difficult to understand some of these differences and this creates frustration in themselves which inevitably has knock-on effects to their ability to parent and to the child.

Even though most of us do calibrating early on, most of us most of us let go of it (or gloss over it) once our baby starts to become more self sufficient.  Suddenly the innocent intention of throwing dog food on the floor goes from a calibrated understanding of learning to an intentional naughty behaviour.  But is it?

Knowing what your child’s behaviour means means we can act with precision to know what to do. Not knowing means we’ll be guessing what it is and then applying actions that are inappropriate to the behaviour of the child and we all know where this escalates to.  (Bring on the cocktails at the end of that day).

Fortunately calibration is also a skill that can be learnt and used in great detail and it makes such a difference to the ability of parenting. In short this is the life saver – or probably one of the most important parenting skill.

I learnt very early on how to calibrate to Pickles and used this skill to help her develop, grow and learn. And most importantly, to stop frustration on my part, crankyness on both our parts and exhausting days.  It works.  It works so well and now I enjoy most days stress free.

Because of working hard on my calibration skills I now have a two year old girl who doesn’t have an eating disorder, who has yet to throw a tantrum that lasts more than a few seconds, that is so flexible she will sleep anywhere, who will settle within seconds of being put into her pram instead of walking, who has rarely caused Mummy or Daddy aggravation and who just responds effortlessly to learning and instruction.  This stuff works!

More on the why’s and how’s in a later post.

Remember, look…listen.

Do you calibrate?  Has it helped you?  I’d love to hear your stories.