Stay Curious About Behavior: Parenting to Different Personalities with Kylee Maughan
Today I interviewed my twin sister Kylee Maughan.
I asked her to come on here to spotlight her parenting strength of STAYING CURIOUS about her children’s behavior.
Parenting to Individuals
One skill that she’s always been naturally great at is being responsive to each of her kids’ individual needs. Her son and daughter have very different temperaments. Her son is highly sensitive, and her daughter is more strong-willed. From when her kids a very young age, she started reading parenting books and realizing how to parent to different personalities. This evolved and evolved and she realized it’s not just her kids’ personalities that matter, but her and her husbands, their teachers. Some teachers will fit better with her son vs. her daughter.
“The Twins”
Something that has always been annoying to us as twins, is the clumping of us into one human. “The twins“ drove us crazy because we always felt like we were trying to tease apart our identity from each other. So we have been VERY sensitive to parenting to individuals because of our own experience. Our parents were great at making sure we felt like our own people. But it really wasn’t until we were off on our own, learning more about temperaments, motivators, and personalities that we found our own identities.
Parenting a Child with Anxiety
Piper started Kindergarten this year. And she had some learning struggles and worried about being wrong all day long or making friends — this put her in fight/flight mode all day long. She would throw off shoes and her mask and throw tantrums each day on the way to school. Her behavior was AMPED up. And Kylee instead of pushing and forcing STAYED CURIOUS.
They started therapy right at the beginning of the year. And they started to peel back more and more layers, including the realization that this was affecting her self worth.
For Piper, it was necessary to actually switch schools that was a better match for her. She LOVES school, writes notes to her teachers, and even sound-spells things to her mom.
Stay Curious
First thing is to stay curious about your child’s difficult behavior. Then reach out to your resources, therapist, behavior coaches, school support, etc. Get to the ROOT of the issue, instead of just doing bandaid fixes.
When we just mow over the dandelions — ie give them prizes for going to school, then the behaviors (dandelions) are just going to keep coming back. But if we can really get to the ROOT of the behavior and figure out WHY they are being defiant every time they go to school — we are going to see real results over time.
Staying curious isn’t always the fastest way. Often it takes more time and more trying, but it’s going to give us the long-term results that set our kids up for success and support a healthy relationship.
Stay Curious About Behavior: A Potty Training Relapse
Something I always encourage is to STAY CURIOUS about behavior. Instead of judging it or saying, “what is their deal?“ we can question it. I wonder why ___. This is something at the very core of the thought, all behavior is communication. If we want to understand our child’s behavior we have to stay curious. This mom stayed curious about why her potty trained child started having accidents and came up with support to help him stop having them.
So in response to one of my online training, I had a mom reach out and share her experience.