Even More on Dealing With Rebellion In Children

For more on what parents can do either to prevent or to respond to rebellion in their children, check out my last few posts.

There is one other valuable technique Dale and I picked up from Lessin's book, "How to be the Parents of Happy and Obedient Children." That is sustained eye contact. We found that establishing eye contact individually with our children and then sustaining it for about 30 seconds was quite effective for connecting us and them on a deeper level. It sounds so simple, though it proved to be an effective bonding ritual. In those few seconds, we were able to communicate in a powerful way how important each child was to us. They always got the message: no one and nothing else mattered more than the love we shared with each other. It was as if the world stopped and everything just calmed down, providing them with a wonderful sense of security, an unspoken and yet palpable sense that they were safe under our care. It also seemed to motivate them to be even more responsive to our instructions or guidelines for their behavior. Oh yes, one more thing: our times of sustained eye contact were almost always followed by a good old fashioned hug. It was a wonderful, relationship-building and rebellion-diminishing technique.

We also used sustained eye contact following occasions wherein we had to discipline. For the reasons mentioned above, it just seemed to help recalibrate everything to the way it was supposed to be.

Dale and I were not (are not) the perfect parents. But we were blessed to learn about the importance of establishing and sustaining eye contact as a way of blessing our children and building into their lives.