Nurtured Heart (NH) is a parenting approach designed with the DIFFICULT, INTENSE, CHALLENGING, ETC.....child in mind. However, what I love about it is that it is beneficial for ALL CHILDREN and for the parents (families, teachers) who give their all to the ideas behind Nurtured Heart. What I also love, is that it does not replace all the other parenting "ideas" I have been studying for the last 10 years, it just adds to the beauty of it all.
I would also like to mention that in the last 8 weeks of using NH with my own two daughters, I have seen a major shift in how much they ACKNOWLEDGE THEIR GREATNESS. They know they are awesome and they talk about how great they are. They compliment themselves and each other and other people. Their manners have improved, their patience has improved, and amazingly, Jill stopped hitting Alli on the first day I started this method.....How can so many wonderful things have changed so quickly?
Because the focus in NH is.....
.....about learning to enjoy, relish and celebrate all the moments that your child is CHOOSING to behave....and giving absolutely ZERO energy (attention, yelling, lecturing, warning, negotiating, etc....) to the moments when your child CHOOSES to misbehave.
Why do some children choose to misbehave? Because that is how they get the most attention. If they are to choose between being obedient (but being ignored) or misbehaving (and getting lots of attention)....they are going to choose to misbehave. We all know that negative attention is better than no attention at all - to be ignored is to wither away and die!
(See our APPLE EXPERIMENT about being ignored...)
Here are two articles I found that relate to how being ignored can alter a child's brain development. The first one is here:
EARLY NEGLECT ALTERS BRAINS
The second one is here:
EARLY DEPRIVATION DERAILS CHILD DEVELOPMENT
I cannot help but include two quotes from this second article.
This quote talks about how being ignored affected attention and comprehension problems (hmm....how many children today spend more time staring at a screen than interacting with other people?)
The harrowing consequences of these theories were most vividly brought to light in Romania in the 1980s and ’90s, when a ban on abortion led to a surge in orphanage babies. The longer these children were left in their cribs, simply being fed and changed without individualized affection, the more damage was seen, even if the orphanage was clean and well-run. Many children developed autistic-like behaviors, repetitively rocking or banging their heads. Some were cold and withdrawn or indiscriminately affectionate; some alternated between these extremes. And they simply didn’t grow like normal infants: their head circumferences were abnormally small and they had problems with attention and comprehension.
And this quote relates to how the lack of emotional love from parents can create hormone imbalances....
It may seem obvious that an isolated, parentless toddler — with or without social contact with peers — will suffer emotionally from lack of parental love. What’s not obvious is that without devoted, repeated acts of love, a child’s brain doesn’t make the growth hormone needed for proper mental and physical development and numerous other imbalances are also created.
So typically, children are choosing between three things from parents, teachers, other adults in their lives:
- Mellow positive energy
- LOUD, EMOTIONAL, and maybe even some PHYSICAL negative energy
- And being ignored.
I want you to stop and think about yourself and how you interact with your children. How do your children get energy from you?Would you say that your children get the MOST energy out of you for POSITIVE behavior or NEGATIVE behavior?
I recently started to feel like my interactions with Jill could use some improvement. She is not "difficult" but her behavior is way more challenging than Alli. I also KNOW that Jill is a kid who needs attention, she CRAVES attention - and to get it she often is loud, goofy or over the top with her behavior. At 6 she is very harmless...but this behavior as a 15 year old worries me.
She also was comparing herself to Alli a lot! She would say, "Why can't I draw as good as Alli?", "Why cant I ride my own bike downtown like Alli?", "Why cant I sit in a booster like Alli?", "Why cant I cross the street alone like Alli?"
I wanted to help her - and us - see NOW that there were other ways for her to get much needed attention and also there were many ways that she was a successful and wonderful child (without needing to compare herself to Alli!)
During the last two months, I have been making a significant effort (using the ideas in Nurtured Heart) to tell Jill all the wonderful things that she does and is capable of doing throughout each and every day, and it is making a difference. She is more confident and sure of herself. She gives herself compliments about things she has done and I haven't heard much in the way of, ".....like Alli...." since I have started this new way of parenting.
Why should we care about changing how we parent?
Most of us do a fine job parenting. Most of us could change nothing about how we parent and our kids will turn out fine. A lot of us were not raised with good parenting and we think - WE TURNED OUT FINE.....If you feel that way, then there is nothing I can say that will change your mentality. But if you are open to becoming the BEST parent you can be, read on.....
There is one important caveat with this method: If you are not willing to change the way YOU react to your children's behavior, there is no way this method will work for you. The MAIN GOAL of NH is that it is the PARENT who does the DIFFICULT work of changing their OWN behavior. The child will continue to make whatever choices (good or bad) they have always made....it is the PARENT who changes their REACTION to this behavior. We cannot expect our children to control their own emotions if we are incapable of controlling our own emotions.
I want to mention 2 ideas that I feel are INSTRUMENTAL in raising children to be the BEST they can be.
FIRST - Are you the BEST that you can be? There are lots of ways to evaluate this concept.
It matters if we say, "I'm listening to you" as they talk to us while our eyes (and attention) remain glued to the phone/computer/TV screen.
It matters if we say, "We do NOT hit our sister!" as we are give them a swat.
It matters if we say, "DONT YELL AT ME!!!" as we yell at them.
It matters if we whine and negotiate and bribe them to do what we want, as they whine and negotiate and bribe us to GET us to do what they want.....
It matters if we say, "If you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all!" after they just heard us complaining to our spouse about a friend.
They are learning from our actions and words every single day whether we want them to or not......
Are they learning LOVE AFFECTION, KINDNESS, HEALTHY COMMUNICATION, RESPECT, GENEROSITY, EMPATHY, SELF CONTROL, on and on and on.....?
What is your reaction when you break something, or forget something, or you are running late, or something goes wrong? Your child is watching your reaction to all of these events.
What if you had a bad day at work, or a friend made you upset, or the checker wouldn't let you return something, or your spouse forgot to do something for you? What kinds of conversations does your child overhear in these situations?
Think about the last time you were driving with your children and someone cut you off (or wouldn't let you in, or didn't go the INSTANT the light turned green...). What was your reaction?
Honestly, it is a good idea to stop reading this post and think about exactly what your reaction would be so that you know the kind of modeling you do for your child in a frustrating situation.
There are lots of possibilities:
You could say some choice words, you could flip them off, you could honk, you could swerve around them.......
or
You could just take a deep breath and carry on.....maybe say "Wow, that person must have somewhere important to go!"
My point is that we are modeling for our children (with OUR BEHAVIOR) how they should react when they are frustrated, angry, upset. Children absolutely have no other way to learn about the world around them and how to behave in certain situations besides watching the adults around them navigate their daily life. It is worth thinking about how you handle anger, frustration, impatience, annoyance.
SECOND - Know that your child CANNOT and WILL NOT become their BEST self, if they are reminded 20 (or 200) times a day of how (insert choice word here - naughty, bad, careless, destructive, disruptive, troublesome, slow, lazy, etc...) they are. It is a fact that children grow up to talk to themselves using the words they are told over and over. As parents, we should make sure the words we say to them are words we want them saying to themselves for the rest of their lives?
I suggest you spent a few days really paying attention to how you talk to your child. How often do you tell your child how GREAT they are? How often do you tell your child (verbally or NON-verbally) how DIFFICULT they are? It is important to shift our focus onto the GREATNESS that is within each of our children.
Honestly, even at its peak, when Jill was hitting Alli and/or throwing tantrums....that took up maybe about 20 minutes of our day. There were still 760 minutes a day when she WAS CHOOSING TO BEHAVE. I simply shifted MY OWN PERSPECTIVE to celebrate those 760 minutes that went well, instead of dwelling on the 20 that sucked the life out of me!
With NH you will learn to put all your energies into the ABUNDANT GREATNESS that exists within your child.
Click here to read a summary of the first 4 chapters
Nurtured Heart Chapters 1 - 4
Updated June 2 - I am coming to terms with the fact that I cannot do everything that I would like to do. Instead of me trying to reinvent the wheel here.....I would rather give you some good resources and then let you continue to learn about Nurtured Heart on your own if you would like.
Here is a short video to introduce you to the NHA:
9 minute video
And this the extended version:
26 minute video
And finally, below is a link to the NHA website where you can sign up to get an email once a week for 10 weeks. Every week has a different principle for you to work/focus/learn. A great resource. Way better than waiting for me to find time to review the rest of the book.
NHA in your inbox once a week...
I do not normally just quit in the middle of something I am passionate about, but with summer approaching I thought it might be a good time to pass on this information from a more reliable resource. As much as I would LOVE to talk about how life changing this method has been for us, I have to recognize that I only have so many hours in the day and sitting in front of my blog is not how I want to spend my time!!
Best of luck in your parenting journeys.