Calm the Stress, Diminish the Behavior: Parent AND Child

The parent can foster the environment necessary to calm, or regulate, the bodymind state of stress through understanding, being mindful of, and encouraging the expression of fear or the feelings stemming from it. This is the key to diminishing undesirable behavior. All behavior arises from stress. To eliminate negative behavior you must strive to trigger the oxytocin response in your child. It is the experience of the love hormone which helps the body ultimately to calm stress thereby decreasing or eliminating negative behavior.

Like any habit, the more you integrate the practice of mindfulness into your day, the stronger it becomes in your short term memory, and the more likely it is to be retrieved in difficult moments. Like love, mindfulness doesn’t change your child’s behaviors, it changes the way you experience everything. This present moment experience offers your child the opportunity to be truly accepted and loved – unconditionally – non-judgmentally for who they are. A glorious place for a child to be. With fear, threats and survival out of the way, their behaviors in turn can come from a regulated frame of mind. Calm the stress, diminish the behavior. But first of all you the parent must come from this place – and visit it often.

Choose love.

– B