You are spending a beautiful day at a park with your kids. While fixing a zipper on your older child’s jacket,  your toddler falls on a walkway. Apparently unhurt by the  fall, you see your two year old on the ground peering  around for you. Another mother helps him to his feet and  he smiles up at the friendly woman. Then he catches your  eye and bursts into tears as if hurt. Is he hurt? Has he  learned to cry with falls? Is he expressing emotion to  test your reaction?

This is a small example of how our reactions can teach  our children behaviors. Parenting is an interactive  process. Both parent and child may develop behaviors in  response to the others reaction. When a child first falls,  we may react with worry and concern about injury. We may  run to the child’s aid most often to discover minor  scrapes. Nonetheless the child cries – perhaps not with  injury but responding to our reaction of fear for injury.  Thus a pattern of behavior for both parent and child begins  mostly due to our reaction.

This is not about falls. Certainly some falls can be  hurtful and need sympathy but a grand majority are not.  The point is that children can subconsciously manipulate  our behavior patterns just as we can subconsciously  manipulate their behavior patterns. This can happen in  many areas. Food battles often occur as children wait for  their choice of food to arrive while watching a parent  worry over their refusal to eat. Bed times can be delayed  as children use fears to make us come for multiple curtain  calls. Sometimes kids know how to put on a face or an  emotion that pulls on our heartstrings and gets them the  reaction they want from us. Some kids learn to get  attention from parents by behaving badly. They establish a  pattern early and learn to get parent’s reactions to bad  behavior.

So what are parent’s to do? How do we measure our  reactions? How do we analyze what we are doing that is  resulting in behavior patterns we don’t like in our kids  and in ourselves? These questions are what make parenting  one of the most introspective experiences in our lifetimes.

Think for a moment about some areas of parenting where  you react strongly. Ask yourself a few questions. Do you  have some unrealistic fears that make you react to your  children? Are you afraid they will starve? Do you worry  about them getting hurt? Do you think our kids can’t  manage without you? What is so important in situations  that make you react strongly? What assumptions are you  making? Do these assumptions make sense? Or are they  false assumptions drawn from your history or heritage?

Do you take everything your child does as a reflection  of you as a parent? Do you respond to your children in an  effort to control them? What children do is a reflection  of them not you. And as much as you try to control them  they will have to assume control of themselves for  themselves.

Answer these questions for yourself. Recognize why  you have strong reactions to some of your children’s  behaviors. If we can understand our reactions and where  they come from, we can start to temper our emotions in  different situations. You will see your children  responding less in behavior and tempering themselves as a  result. As we control ourselves, many times our kids will  become better in behavior. It seems so basic but is very  difficult to see and understand when you are in the midst  of battles. It just seems to happen that the more self  aware parents are, the more self aware their children will  become.