Dear ones, Nicola Schmidt is one of my favourite people to interview because I still learn so much myself, have so many aha moments and somehow always feel better afterwards. Because her approach is not: you always have to do everything perfectly. But rather: Nobody does everything perfectly, that’s completely normal and human – and also important for the children! To see: Failure is part of life.
We are human beings, not machines. We all have better or worse days. But as long as the basic idea is a caring and loving one, it will get us through the difficult phases. Nicola says: „Accompanying children as they grow up is a great approach to raising children – if only it weren’t for the daily grind!“
There’s the morning stress, the constant sibling bickering, the mother-in-law who makes pointed remarks… As parents, we then ask ourselves how we should deal with this in a needs-orientated way. How we can do justice to our child and our family.
In her latest book „artfully through everyday family life: …because real life also needs real solutions“ Nicola Schmidt provides answers to the most frequently asked parenting questions. With very specific situations and solutions and real-life, quick-to-implement tips.
At the same time, she also sheds light on the question behind the question: What is it that is actually bothering us? Why am I so triggered by it now? Where do my wishes clash with reality? Where can we make compromises – and where do we remain true to our ideals? In this way, it helps us to overcome false beliefs and find our own appropriate path.
Today we are publishing three very specific situations plus solutions from Nicola Schmidt’s new book:
What can I do if I feel left alone with everything that concerns the family despite being in a partnership?
Nicola’s immediate help: Talk to each other. About how you imagine your lives. Talk about what it does to you, how it feels, what you want – not about who is to blame for the situation. Avoid the apocalyptic horsemen of every relationship.
The apocalyptic horsemen – there were originally four in the Bible – were discovered by love researcher John Gottman in his „marriage laboratory“ at the University of Washington in Seattle. He observed couples during arguments. He then stayed in contact with them to enquire about their marriage again and again. It turned out that those who were later unhappy or divorced had already exhibited fatal behaviours during the arguments years before. Gottman dubbed these relationship killers the „Horsemen of the Apocalypse“.
He was amazed to discover that they could be used to predict the fate of a marriage with almost mathematical precision. 10 to 15 minutes of arguing is enough for the emotional geometrician to predict which couple will stay together and which will split up – hit rate: almost 90 per cent. As they seem to be pretty central to the question of whether a conflict can be resolved and whether it is possible to better distribute the stress in a relationship, for example, let’s take a closer look at the five factors.
1. criticism.
Criticism could sound like this: „You always leave everything lying around, you’re so lazy!“ It’s better to formulate factual information about a specific situation: „It bothers me that your dirty socks are lying around on the kitchen table. Can you please put them away now?“
2. Defence.
Many people respond to criticism with a defence: „Yes, but I work all day and don’t have time to tidy up all the time.“ Although this defence is understandable, it is unproductive because it escalates the argument. It’s better to respond empathetically: „I see your point, I can understand that. I’m so tired in the evening, let’s think about putting the laundry basket somewhere else.“
3. contempt.
This blatant form of criticism is not aimed at changing the other person’s behaviour, but only at hurting: „Great, no wonder you don’t have any friends, as self-centred as you are!“ We are better off de-escalating the situation and not responding to provocations or hurtful behaviour, for example by saying: „I can see that you are upset. Let’s find out what’s hurting you and what we both need so we can find a solution.“
4. retreat.
„Stonewalling“ is another word for this widespread problem. Simply looking away. No longer reacting. Get up and leave the room. If it has happened, we can approach each other again later or the next day: „I’ve thought about our argument again and I’d like to talk to you again calmly and see how we can approach each other…“
5th demonstration of power
The science journalist Bas Kast has identified this fifth rider. A demonstration of power could go like this: „I can leave my socks wherever I want. I pay the rent here.“ This is a declaration of war that we should avoid at all costs. If we have this impulse, it’s worth talking to a third party about it. In this situation, it also helps to disclose our feelings: „I’m so annoyed, I really just want to annoy you back and then leave the contact. But I would really like to make peaceful contact with you again.“ If we approach each other like this, we have a great chance of getting on with each other.
The question behind the question
What is really behind it? What help do we need? If a partner is no longer involved in the family, there can be many, many reasons for this. It could be that he or she didn’t want children in the first place, that he or she is overwhelmed, no longer has contact with the other parent, has too much external stress, even a mental illness such as depression could be behind it. It is therefore worth taking a look and getting an outside perspective. Humans are a cooperative, nurturing species; there are always problems that are best solved together with others.
So what do we do?
We need to get and stay in touch with the people around us. It’s the only way to their hearts and ours.
How can I react when my partner labels me a helicopter mum, even though I may have simply sought a conversation with an educator?
Nicola’s immediate help: This is not a parenting issue, but a couple’s issue. And the best way to approach a couple’s issue is with empathy and even more questions, namely those that we can ask our partner:
– What is a helicopter mum for you?
– What worries do you have?
– What is the worst thing that could happen?
– How would you do it?
– What options do we have in this situation?
– How could we do it together?
– What do you want from me?
– What did you wish for as a child?
– What do you think our child needs together?
And then we can go into the exchange. We should make sure that we give the other person a „yes“ – yes, I hear you and I take your concerns seriously. It is just as important to avoid „you“ messages (i.e. sentences like „You never understand me!“) and to talk about our feelings instead of asking what is right and wrong. What we should definitely avoid are the four apocalyptic horsemen that can make mutual understanding impossible in any relationship:
1. Destructive, all-encompassing criticism: „Because you always, because you never, once again, again, your problem is …“
2. Reflexive justification: „That’s not true! Yes, but I am! And anyway, you …!“
3. Consciously hurting your partner through sarcasm, cynicism or mockery: „Great, you head honcho! Just as much of a patriarch as your father!“
4. Withdrawal: We refuse contact, no longer talk to each other and are lonely together.
If we manage to get along without these strategies, we can emerge from this initial argument into an interesting dialogue about worries, fears, external perception, our own upbringing, our wishes and desires. It can be a dialogue that brings us closer together instead of alienating us.
The question behind the question
What hurts here? These and similar points of contention are often based on our own upbringing – and the scars we have suffered that may still hurt. There may also be worries behind it, different views of people and parenting goals, but also couple issues such as power, dominance, insecurity, not feeling seen, the fear of standing out in an unpleasant way, causing trouble, making ourselves unpopular. When we talk about them, these causes become visible, discussable and negotiable.
So what should we do?
We should always try to stay in contact with each other at such times. Let’s do as the 13th-century Persian Sufi mystic Rumi suggested: „Between right and wrong there is a place – I will meet you there.“
My child throws a huge tantrum if I don’t allow a second ice cream, why does it react so violently – and how do I manage to stick to my no anyway?
Nicola’s immediate help: Why is the child like this? Let’s just imagine a young, highly networked brain that has three times as many neuron connections as ours and therefore learns incredibly quickly (for example, a second foreign language). Unfortunately, for the same reason, it also works very, very ineffectively.
Every stress impulse has many paths that it finds in this brain, and every frustration is the end of the world. This is because the child’s brain has not yet had the experience that the world is not in fact coming to an end, and the „world-coming-back-to-order“ neural connection is not yet sufficiently clear.
It takes a lot of practice before the most important pathways in the brain function stably, experiences in which the child first learns: that you can cope with frustration, that the world is not going to end after all, that there will be dinner later and a lot more. Imagine it like a forest where no one has ever gone for a walk.
There are good, flat connections between two points and rocky, dangerous ones. If someone runs wildly into the forest, they will of course always end up in the rocky, dangerous corners. But the more often someone walks the flat, safe connecting routes, the more the first small footpaths emerge, then paths, and finally really wide avenues on which the rangers (in our case the nerve impulses) can move and know: It’s safe here, this is a good path.
The brain of a three-and-a-half-year-old child is such a beautiful forest – with lots of potential for wonderful walks, but still under construction. The more often we stay calm and help the child, the better they can learn.The question behind the question:
The real question is the second one that has been mentioned: How do I put up with it? A child that age needs a lot of company and it would actually be ideal to have a big cousin or another loving person who looks after the „little wild one“ all day and gently turns everything round. And we would also need a grandparent to distract the child with endless patience, explain everything to them and keep them occupied – something we often don’t have in our world. And here we see again: we are all not kept in a species-appropriate way. And we notice it in our children.
So what can we do about it?
If we know that our toddler’s extreme emotional reactions are normal and that calmness helps the most, this can be helpful. However, it doesn’t help when we are simply at the end of our tether. Then we need help – we need more support and less pressure and stress.
Parents cannot solve this task within their families alone, because this also means: better financial security for single parents, better quality childcare and everything from tax legislation to urban planning that is consistently family-friendly so that we can get through these highly challenging times.
