Start the week off right with examples of mirroring from the team at Connected Parenting. If you’re new to Connected Parenting and want to find out more about mirroring and the CALM method, check out this podcast by Jennifer Kolari (courtesy of Penguin Group USA).

This week’s Mirroring Moment is from Cindy Smolkin. Enjoy!

I was in Los Angeles visiting my brother, sister-in-law and niece and nephew. We decided to go to Target to buy everyone one new pair of pajamas. My son quickly declared that he wanted Spider Man pjs, my daughter Buzz Light Year, my nephew Batman, and my niece – the eldest of the crew – wanted Hanna Montana. It seemed a sure-thing…what department store would not have this reliable and popular assortment?

We arrived at Target and made our way to the pajama section and who would believe our luck: rack upon rack of pjs of all description. A myriad of choices; Batman, Spiderman, Buzz Light Year galore. Uh oh…where’s the Hanna Montana?? As my son, daughter and nephew had already dove into their new pajamas, each of them pulling the pj tops over their t-shirts, there was my niece…looking MAD.

You see, my niece is very bright, very strong-willed, very tenacious, and very dramatic. This pajama disappointment was fertile ground for a BIG reaction. So I turned to her and said:

“That’s so annoying. We found every pair of pajamas we wanted except the Hanna Montana. We came here especially for them and they are not here; that really is disappointing.”

My niece looked at me (a little like I was an alien) and said, “How do you know?” To which I replied:

“Because I know what it’s like for me when I go to a store with something in my mind that I want to buy and they don’t have it. I feel disappointed.”

And she said, “Yeah, it is disappointing.” And then we made our way to the cash. My niece was quiet, with a bit of a trance – like look on her face – almost as if she was saying to herself, “Wow, that was weird. I was kind of pretty mad and then all of a sudden I wasn’t.”

Share your own favorite mirroring moment in the comments below. Or are you stumped? Feel free to leave a comment describing a situation you encountered where you couldn’t figure out how to mirror. We’ll try to incorporate it into a future Mirroring Monday post.

Start the week off right with examples of mirroring from the team at Connected Parenting. If you’re new to Connected Parenting and want to find out more about mirroring and the CALM method, check out this podcast by Jennifer Kolari (courtesy of Penguin Group USA).

This week’s Mirroring Moment is from Kelly Parisa. Enjoy!

I am the mother of two teenage daughters. They love each other dearly, but they also love their clothes.

One afternoon, Aubrey (our oldest), came storming in: “She keeps stealing my clothes! Look! She took these pants and now they are all dirty when I want to wear them tonight! She does this all the time!”

So (torn between thinking… ”How many times do we have to have THIS fight?!” and “Oh my gosh, like I have time to battle this out again, in the midst of cooking dinner, paying bills, feeding the dog and doing laundry!”) I took a breath, and mirrored instead…

“Again? She went in your room and took those pants and you want to wear them to dance class tonight! She does this all the time! What should we do?”

Aubrey already had a more relaxed body and the hint of a smile on her lips. “Go kick her butt!”

“Okay! Let’s go! We’ll go kick her butt!” “Storming” off together I could already feel humor in the air and a change in attitude from furious to feisty.

We made our way to Sydney’s room and I gently put my foot on Sydney’s bottom… “We are here to kick your butt” I declared! Sydney laughed.

As Aubrey began to reiterate her claim to her own clothes, Sydney chimed in with the old familiar, “She does it to me all the time! She comes in my room and takes stuff and doesn’t ask me either!”

“So it happens to you too! You have things you want to wear and she’s taking them from you! It’s happening up and down the hall!”

“Yeah, so she does it to me, and I do it to her!”

“You both do it…and you both get so mad and can‘t find the things you want to wear, when you want to wear them! She does it to you and you do it to her and she does it to you…”

At this point, they began laughing (probably realizing the on-going futility of this fight) and I was able to leave them to their own devices (wrestling and giggling). Smiling down the hall I was thinking, “This isn’t the first time they’ve battled this out and it won’t be the last…”

The next week, while running errands with Sydney, I said, “Hey, isn’t that Aubrey’s jacket?”

“Yeah.”

“Does she know you’re wearing it?”

“Oh we worked all that out. We decided we can borrow each other’s clothes (except for a few things) and it’s okay.”

“How’d you guys arrive at that?”

“Oh, we just decided we fight too much about it and it’s not good. So we worked it out.”

A little mirroring and a little humor, mixed with some time and trust to resolve their own issues…a recipe for self-reliance, with a dash of sisterly-bonding thrown in.

Share your own favorite mirroring moment in the comments below. Or are you stumped? Feel free to leave a comment describing a situation you encountered where you couldn’t figure out how to mirror. We’ll try to incorporate it into a future Mirroring Monday post.

Start the week off right with examples of mirroring from the team at Connected Parenting. If you’re new to Connected Parenting and want to find out more about mirroring and the CALM method, check out this podcast by Jennifer Kolari (courtesy of Penguin Group USA).

This week’s Mirroring Moment is from Rebecca Lindsay. Enjoy!

My Connected Parenting partner Kelly Parisa and I run an after school social skills group for children in Kindergarten through Grade 2. One afternoon (our third class), one of our boys arrived with his arms crossed determined not to come in. He was escorted to our room by his teacher who warned me, “He really doesn’t want to be here today. Good luck!”

My first reaction (thankfully I didn’t act on it) was… really? Why would he not want to come? We talk… We share… We read… We play games… We do art… This class is great! How could he possibly not want to come? However, instead of being defensive and then trying to convince him that he was going to have a good time, I left Kelly with the group, went over to him, plunked myself down with him at the door and mirrored… It went something like this…

“This is the last place you want to be right now!”

“Ya… I don’t even want to come in. It’s boring!”

“So, here you are thinking that this class is going to be so fun, and you’ve been here for 2 weeks and it has been boring.”

“Yep. All we ever do is talk.”

“Well that’s no fun. You’ve come here thinking that we’re going to do fun things and all we do is talk and that’s not fun for you.” His arms unfold and he begins to come into the room peering around the corner to see what the rest of the group is doing.

“No. It’s never fun.”

“Sitting around and talking is so not fun and having fun is important to you, especially after a long day of school.”

Taking a step into the class and leaning into me, He said, “Ya. But, we did read a book last week.”

“And that was a little bit fun, but still too much talking.”

“Ya… and we colored…”

By this time, he was only half paying attention to me and was walking away from me toward the group. He turned around while he was halfway there and said over his shoulder, “Well, today is going to be my last day…”

Escalation avoided… He returned the following week without incident.

Share your own favorite mirroring moment in the comments below. Or are you stumped? Feel free to leave a comment describing a situation you encountered where you couldn’t figure out how to mirror. We’ll try to incorporate it into a future Mirroring Monday post.

Start the week off right with examples of mirroring from the team at Connected Parenting. If you’re new to Connected Parenting and want to find out more about mirroring and the CALM method, check out this podcast by Jennifer Kolari (courtesy of Penguin Group USA).

This week’s Mirroring Moment is from Janis Beach. Enjoy!

A client walked into my office last week excitedly exclaiming “I nailed it — I’m getting this mirroring thing!”

She went on to tell me that after some ‘discussion’ her 7 year old daughter had gone up to her room to put away her laundry and generally tidy her room. As my client (mom) went by the room she could hear her daughter mumbling to herself with great intensity in a way that usually would escalate into a meltdown and an exhausting scene! Taking a deep breath mom went into the room and said “Finding just the right place for those socks sure is frustrating, eh? Want some help?” Her daughter turned to her and said in a very calm way, “No thanks. I’m good.”

Perfectionist meltdown averted!

Share your own favorite mirroring moment in the comments below. Or are you stumped? Feel free to leave a comment describing a situation you encountered where you couldn’t figure out how to mirror. We’ll try to incorporate it into a future Mirroring Monday post.

Start the week off right with examples of mirroring from the team at Connected Parenting. If you’re new to Connected Parenting and want to find out more about mirroring and the CALM method, check out this podcast by Jennifer Kolari (courtesy of Penguin Group USA).

This week’s Mirroring Moment is from Cindy Smolkin. Enjoy!

This morning my 5-year-old son and I arrived at his school for our usual morning drop off. Prior to leaving the house we had a big debate about whether it was his class’s turn to be in the yard or in class before the bell rang. The debate was really about whether he needed to wear his snowpants or not. His heels were not dug in too deeply and it was quite easy for him to get to a place of agreement to put on his snowpants as the thought of putting them on in the car and missing yard time was not too appealing. However, when we arrived and saw that yes, in fact, it was his class’s turn to be out in the yard, he asked (with a bit more urgency) if I could wait until the bell rang, meet him inside and help him to remove his snowpants as it was too crowded and he needed help. My internal knee-jerk response was to giggle and say something like,

“You take your snowpants off every day by yourself. In fact, your teacher tells me that you are one of the fastest to get dressed and undressed.”

But, feeling pretty patient at that moment, and really hearing what my son was saying, instead I said,

“Yeah … there are a lot of kids in your class and the area to change in is pretty small. It must get pretty crowded. I bet people end up stepping over one another.”

He laughed and said, “Okay mom. Bye.” And that was the end of that.

Share your own favorite mirroring moment in the comments below. Or are you stumped? Feel free to leave a comment describing a situation you encountered where you couldn’t figure out how to mirror. We’ll try to incorporate it into a future Mirroring Monday post.

Start the week off right with examples of mirroring from the team at Connected Parenting. If you’re new to Connected Parenting and want to find out more about mirroring and the CALM method, check out this podcast by Jennifer Kolari (courtesy of Penguin Group USA).

This week’s Mirroring Moment is from Jennifer Kolari. Enjoy!

As many of you know, my 6-year-old daughter Olivia can be quite a handful. She gives us great joy but is a gladiator child. She knows what she wants and she fights hard for it. We follow the Connected Parenting program and as long as we stick to it, we all manage very well. She is free to be herself and enjoy life with the safety and freedom of knowing that we understand her and set loving limits. It took a while to get here but it’s worth it.

Last year she had some difficulties at school. Nothing too major but she could be impulsive, a little aggressive and a challenge for the teacher. After getting over the embarrassment and wanting to walk into the school with a paper bag over my head, she settled down nicely. This year at our parent/teacher interview, Olivia’s teacher shared a remarkable mirroring story with us that made us both very proud and confirmed why this technique is so important.

Olivia had been building a castle of blocks that she had been working really hard on. A little boy, we’ll call him David, was playing nearby and kept trying to drive his cars up the ramp to the tower she had built. As he played with his cars his feet were also dangerously close to the tower which got Olivia worried. Instead of acting impulsively, Olivia went to the teacher and asked for help before the tower came tumbling down. The teacher was pleased with this and headed back to the carpet with Olivia to help out. As they walked towards the castle David’s car hit the tower as he drove it up the ramp and the castle came tumbling down. The teacher braced herself, sure that Olivia would lose it.

Olivia went over to David and said, “That ramp looked really cool and it was pretty hard for you not to drive your cars on it. I know you didn’t knock it down on purpose.” A perfect mirroring statement with her agenda aside and full of understanding! David immediately apologized saying he felt terrible because he knew Olivia had worked so hard on the castle. A beautiful mirroring statement back! Then the two of them went on to repair the castle together. The teacher was very moved and impressed that two little children had found such a nice way to work out what could have been a very ugly situation.

The beauty of mirroring is that the more you use this technique with your children the more they use it on each other. It is a gift to your children in so many ways and a gift to those around them.

Share your own favorite mirroring moment in the comments below. Or are you stumped? Feel free to leave a comment describing a situation you encountered where you couldn’t figure out how to mirror. We’ll try to incorporate it into a future Mirroring Monday post.