What’s The Compromise?

I love these 3 words.

- They promote social-emotional learning in your child.

- They stimulate pre-frontal cortex thinking - The more advanced part of the brain for reasoning, logic and empathy.

- They replace power struggles with connection as you are working together to come up with a solution that ideally meets both of your needs.

Start, as always by modelling it. For example - If there is a request from your child that you cannot meet, say they want to play ball with you but you are making dinner. You may say "No" and explain you don't want to be up too late as your aware there is an early start tomorrow. Then out loud, pause and say "Hold on a minute, let me think, what's the compromise?" and come up with a solution. Perhaps your child can help make dinner or water the garden so that you can have time to play ball and still get to bed at a reasonable time - thus meeting both your needs.

I found that the more I modelled this, the more my child would ask me "What's the compromise?" and the more I could ask that of my child too.

I have used it during playdates too, to empower the children to resolve their own conflicts. We were going to the store, both children wanted to ride the scooter, so I sportscast the issues "You both want to ride the scooter to the store, that is not possible as we only have one scooter, what's the compromise?" You could also use the phrase "What can you do?". HONESTLY, I OBSERVED, IN AWE, MY SON AND HIS PLAYDATE, AGED 3 AND 4, WORKOUT THAT THEY COULD TAKE IT IN TURNS AND WHO WAS GOING TO RIDE IT FOR EACH STREET OF THE JOURNEY. I have asked "What can you do?" with 2-year-olds, again and again, and observed them figure out a compromise.

My son was on another playdate, he was 3. The boy whose room they were playing in was experimenting with boundaries on his toys and wanted to put the wooden fort away himself. My son asked if he could join in, the boy said a clear "No", my son then proceeded to ask "What's the compromise? Could I pass you the parts and you put them away?" to which his playdate agreed.

Each time you use this, you are re-wiring your child's brain to use pre-frontal cortex to resolve challenges, its called neuroplasticity. What a gift to your child, imagine to the bigger picture of a new generation raised to think in this way?

Please share your stories with me about how you get on, it brightens my day and supports other parents to try this.

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