Teach Your Kids the Family Crazy Cycle!

The Family Crazy Cycle states the following: without love a child reacts without respect, and without respect a parent reacts without love. This cycle triggers itself on and on and on...One way to reduce the spinning is to teach your kids about it. Kids can learn. Draw a circle and write,

Ask the kids, “Does this make sense? Do you see how we keep spinning? When you feel unloved, you react in ways that feel disrespectful to me. When I feel disrespected, I react in ways that feel unloving to you.”

I predict your children will get this perfectly. Children are smarter than we sometimes give them credit for!

You might bring a scene back to their remembrance saying,

“Remember when you had a temper tantrum? You did that to get what you wanted or you felt unloved. But when you did that it felt disrespectful to me, like you had no interest in obeying me. Of course I got angry, which I shouldn’t do. Then you felt more unloved and you said something that felt disrespectful to me, and we spun on the Crazy Cycle.

“Like a merry-go-‘round we kept going around and around until we flew off! Do you understand what I am saying?”

“Do you see how you can appear disrespectful which does not warm my heart any more than you feel happy when I appear unloving?”  

“We need to work together as a team.”

“We will fail, but I am here to redirect us so we don’t hurt each other.”  

“We can talk about our frustrations without appearing unloving or disrespectful, true?”  

“You can say, ‘I feel unloved right now,’ or I can say, ‘I feel disrespected right now.’”  

“That’s the code for us to take a time-out, ok? Then we can talk about what just happened and resolve the matter, ok?”

Kids intuitively know what they are doing when they throw themselves on the floor, and you can help them understand how it affects the whole family!

This week, we encourage you to do this activity with your kids.

-Dr. E