As a parent coach, I field a lot of questions from people who are doing their best in the face of wild tantrums, sleepless nights, and crazy-busy schedules … to name a few common challenges. One question that comes up often, and one that I love to weigh in on, is "how do I use peaceful parenting to get my kids to cooperate more — especially when I really need them to?"
This is such a great question because it's so real; it reveals our desire to treat our children with dignity AND get the behaviors we need from them. What happens to most of us is that we try to rush them along when we are already behind schedule. This backfires, because the last thing children like is to be rushed to do something they don't find all that important – like, getting to school on time, for example. We rush and our kids put on the brakes; it's a standoff that's likely to end in us pushing harder, saying or doing something we later regret, and feeling awful about it later.