Social-Emotional

We see a behavioural therapist with our one son and she had a really profound thing to say a few sessions back that I have been meaning to write down for awhile!

She explained that as parents we all parent slightly differently (obviously), but specifically she pointed out that as people we are generally a little more social or a little more emotional in our approach in parenting. Some people swing wildly into the emotional side and some swing wildly into the other.

Let me explain the difference in how I understand it: Emotional parents are much more emotions based. They ooze love and make you feel loved just by looking at you. I bet you know someone just like that! I know I do! When a bad choice is made by a kid or something gets broken by a kid, an emotional parent quickly jumps in and checks that the kids emotions are ok! "how are you? are you hurt? how do you feel?" stuff like that.. then they will slide in the correction of behaviour (almost subtly per my observations - as a more social personality I occasionally pass judgement on their techniques - i'm learning however!).

Social parenting (which is ME) - we are rules oriented parents. "Say please. Say thank you. Do it this way. Do it that way." We raise our kids to be socially appropriate. We struggle with free spirit personalities because it doesn't follow 'the rules'.  We love our children but we aren't touchy feel in our approach. If a kid breaks something or hits someone we are very fast to correct and take care of the situation. I would maybe even say we a bit more firm?

Anyways i'm not an expert but that's how I see the difference of the two. You aren't ONE or the OTHER as a parent - I mean I certainly am not lacking in emotion, and I enjoy a good snuggle and I hug and kiss my kids, etc. I would say i'm probably 70-30 on average ;) And I arguably was even less before! With my son I have to push myself to be more 50-50 or even 60-40, which is extremely out of my comfort zone!

Something we learned from this with my son is that he needs to get a handle on his emotions before I can socially direct him. I need to "engulf" him emotionally before he will even hear me. We have to connect first and foremost. He is attracted to emotionally strong people - one of his favourite women just feeds him emotionally just by looking at him! She hugs him and LOVES him in ways that are almost uncomfortable and foreign to me. I'm not saying (nor do I feel) that I am a bad parent! But I have learned a NEED of my child. I am observing emotion based children more closely to learn how to be more so with him. It is challenging and a major shift, and I can never be perfect at it, but if it brings happiness to my kids then i'll do whatever it takes.