Many parents and teachers use "time-outs" when a child is dramatizing an upset.*
For example:
- "Go to your room. Come out when you can tell me ... (insert your criteria)." i.e. "How you started the argument." or, "What you did to cause me to send you to your room." or, "When you are ready to responsibly acknowledge your infraction, your abuse, your cause." **
Bedtime clearings**** prevent the accumulation of unacknowledged perpetrations/good deeds. Read about incompletes.
Here's an option to "Go to your room."
Hand your child a copy of the Meditation Labyrinth Process and a sharp pencil w/eraser. Instruct them to go to their room and draw a path into the center of the labyrinth, to not come out until they have completed your assignment.
Usually they will go to their room, slam the door and continue dramatizing the upset. Once they realize that the only way out of their room (so as to join everyone for supper) is to complete the assignment, they complete the assignment.
The Meditation Labyrinth Process itself requires that one focus on the task instead of the content of the upset. As in life, staying centered, as in the middle of the labyrinth path with a pencil point, requires consciousness.
To complete the assignment the pencil line must be centered [ | | | ] in the path (without touching the sides of the path). If you can do it correctly/neater then they can also. Pencil erasures for corrections are OK. If you see a pencil line that touches the side of the path, repeat the instructions and send them back to their room. If you let him/her correct it in front of you you reward sloppy work and deceitfulness. You lied—you didn't mean what you said.
* Recall the time when your child first misbehaved. How you handled that first incident determined all behaviors afterwards. If you yelled, if you were verbally or physically abusive, and you have not told your child that you know that you were abusive, that you know how you handled it didn't feel good, then your child will dramatize that incomplete for life. An unacknowledged abuse is referred to as an incomplete, a communication that was not mutually satisfying.
** If your child immediately verbalizes the truth as to their cause then there's no need to send them to their room.
*** If you are withholding a thought from your partner then you are dooming them to another day without joyous love; it's referred to as premeditated abuse for which there are undesirable outcomes (most always, eventual divorce). What's also true is your withhold automatically (non-verbally) granted him/her permission to withhold an equally significant thought from you—I have not found any exceptions to this entanglement phenomenon. —Gabby
**** Bedtime-Clearings: Another tip is the Clearing Process for a Parent and a Young Person/Teen. The process creates space for upsets and withholds to be verbalized responsibly, thereby greatly reducing the need to thwart you—to remind you that there is an incomplete, a breakdown in communication between you.
- Children are integrity meters. Children misbehave, pout, fail in school, or even get sick so as to draw to someones attention that he/she is not in-communication with anyone; specifically, that his her parents have become stuck doing their imitation of communication. The joyous love that once was between everyone has not happened for a long time.
Note 2: You may have your child practice the The Meditation Labyrinth Process when they are happy and clear. They will eventually discover that the process is much more difficult to do if they are processing an upset. You may also ask him/her to do, say, five processes in a row (it's a bit more challenging to hold on to an upset that long).
Here's where to make free copies of the Meditation Labyrinth Process. Meditation Labyrinth
Last edited 12/30/17
Click to view Labyrinth and print copies. http://www.comcom121.org/images/labryinth.PNG