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The Proportional Response: Getting Both Kids AND Adults to Avoid Blowing Things Out of Proportion

Written by: Jonathan Altfeld

Article Overview: In this article, author Jonathan Altfeld explores an NLP-based approach to keeping tense situations from escalating unnecessarily, and thereby maintaining some rapport throughout misunderstandings.

The Proportional Response: Getting Both Kids AND Adults to Avoid Blowing Things Out of Proportion

My kids are now 5 & 9 years old (oh, excuse me, almost 6 & 10!). And my younger daughter is experiencing a perceptual or behavioral challenge with blowing things out of proportion.

Do you know anyone who makes 'Mountains out of Molehills?'

Since the older of my daughters had a similar problem at about 5 or 6 years old, and I helped her deal with it well at the time (yes, using NLP), it was easy to be reminded of the first time I addressed this. And while I forgot to write to you about it, now I'm remembering to do so! I hope this helps you with calming your own kids (or... anyone else in your life!).

It wasn't hard to be reminded of the first time. You see, now that my younger daughter is having this problem, my older daughter is responding right back to her with the same old behavior. You know how 'rapport' works... it works in both positive... and less-than-useful ways.

The nature of the problem is that in any human interaction... if someone else does something, with us, or to us, or around us, etc... our anchors are fired off. And for those of you new to NLP who don't know what I mean...

Lots of people push our buttons -- whether they mean to, or not.

The brain is a pattern recognition machine. And we want to avoid (or at least be able to predict & handle) unpleasantness. So what do some of us do? We look for triggers that might indicate someone may be trying to wrong us. When we're more resourceful, we account for the possibility that while we may be the unfortunate recipient of their activity, they may not intend us any harm. That helps us be more tolerant.

But many kids (and certainly some adults) aren't yet as thoughtful. Push their buttons, and they react. Those of you with two or more kids will likely be well acqainted with the "but-that's-not-fair" button! Never mind one child wasn't intending any unfairness, they were just behaving in their best interests, the other child will begin imagining all kinds of unfairness, and feeling an anticipation of unhappiness, or worse.

Then the brain starts spinning its own imaginary internal stories of how badly things are going to go. And typically, either they begin crying, or yelling more loudly, or behaving from envy and jealousy, which typically leads to other undesireable results between kids...

Well... come to think of it... I've seen this happen at business meetings too, when one employee suddenly hears news of another employees activities and feels like their own job is being threatened. Oh, sure, the discussion may slightly sound more adult in nature, and "those are my responsibilities, not hers" may sound more intelligent than "he's TOUCHING me!" but it's ultimately the same sort of thing, cognitively.

What do we do first?

First we decide what we want, without thinking about the nature of the problem.

Choose a goal first. And my view is... the absolute best first thing we can do is to manage our situations with a proportional response. We can always layer in interesting & effective strategies afterwards. The first thing we need to do is to manage our emotions well. Control our state no matter what happens.

Then we need to figure out what's going wrong.

Which is pretty easy. A trigger occurs, whether intentional or not, and people begin predicting unwanted results even before they've happened. Chances are, they also make pictures bigger than they should be, turn the volume in their minds up louder than it needs to be, and wind the feelings up stronger & faster than ought to happen. In lay terms, we'd say, they blow things out of proportion. In NLP terms, everyone amplifies their submodalities -- all the qualities or characteristics of their internal experience. This leads, obviously, to responses that are way out of proportion to the original trigger.

Now, with adults, we have endless lists of NLP patterns in a variety of different intervention styles for people who are heavily stuck in perceptual and behavioral ruts. We can work with submodalities, we can work with values, beliefs, behaviors, you name it. We can approach it from 10 different angles.

Kids are a slightly different matter.

If our goal is to teach children to manage their state... we need to recognize what's going on behaviorally, create optimal pattern interrupts, and then add in a new piece of conscious thinking to what they're already doing.

With kids, it's gotta be simple, or they'll lose patience or misunderstand.

So I went for a rating system. Kids instantly understand volume dials on electronics. And they're not thinking consciously -- they're making rapid unconscious decisions, and they're blowing things out of proportion seemingly instantly. Of course they're making choices, but they're certainly not aware of those choices.

We need to give them a conscious choice-point.

Long before I ever needed to interrupt their problem states, I asked them to talk things over with me. And I calmly (& lovingly) described how they were yelling at each other before, and that it seemed that they weren't communicating calmly with each other, when one or the other did something that each didn't like or didn't want. Naturally, calmly, they agreed.

I explained that sometimes people did things we didn't like, but that wasn't actually meant to hurt or harm us, and on a scale of 1..to..10, that would be like... a 1. A 1 doesn't deserve a loud, angry response. If we recognize someone does a 1 to us, we should... TAKE A DEEP BREATH... AND UNDERSTAND THEY DIDN'T MEAN US ANY TROUBLE. Then it's easy to respond calmly.

And then I explained that sometimes terrible things happened, and maybe even occasionally someone might do something that's really harmful to us... just a really awful thing, and that might be a 10. Now if someone does a 10 to us, that probably deserves a really strong, loud, angry response.

Then I'd go through some different sorts of behaviors and we'd number them appropriately.

"What number is it... if someone takes your last piece of gum?"

Their answer... "A 7!"

My answer..."Well, I don't think so. I think that if someone intentionally hit or kicked you really hard, and it hurt you, that might be a 7. A 7 would be really bad, and that would need a very strong level-7 response from you. You could yell at them, then tell someone what had happened to ensure they got into appropriate trouble for their action.

Taking your last piece of gum is really more like just a 1 or a 2, don't you think?"

"What number is it... if someone is running to help someone else who just got hurt, and by mistake -- they bumped into you on the way, not meaning to hurt you... and you got hurt a little when you fell down?"

Their answer... "A 7!"

My answer... "well, I don't think so. I think it would be unfortunate if you got hurt when you fell, and I certainly would have preferred the other person to be careful with you while running to help someone else, but their intention does matter. Obviously in that situation, they didn't mean to hurt you, they did it by accident. So maybe that's a 2, or 3, or 4. But not a 7." So what would be an appropriate level-3 response?

Their answer... "Tell them they should have been more careful when helping the other person!"

(Not bad).

In short, I'd invite their responses, and then I'd reclassify things.

Then I'd explain "I think that IN THE PAST, sweetheart, you were responding to a 1... with the response you'd normally give to a 5 or 7. Or responding to a 3, with a 10 response. I think it's important to learn to properly identify the level of behavior you don't like, and give an appropriate same-level response.

My kids seem to like learning to understand things in this way.

But do you think that by itself solved the problem? Not even remotely!

None of the above really solved the problem when it's really happening. That just set up the groundwork!

The real solution is found in being with your kids when things happen. So that you can be there to help give them a real-time alternative. And for that, if it weren't obvious, you have to spend time with them. If you're not spending enough time with them, you're not likely to easily solve this.

Thus, while I'm with them... when I take them to a playground, or to a mall, or to the movies... when I'm getting them ready for bed... or choosing a movie or television show to watch, or what game to play... or which set of markers or paintbrushes to use when doing some artwork... I engage them in a range of social interactions. And the moment one of them begins to flare up and give the other a Yelling response that is blown out of proportion... I interrupt the proceedings, and put everything on hold. And I take their hands and walk them to another location, even if it's 5 feet away. This establishes a different perspective.

Once I've successfully interrupted the moment, and I've shifted contexts, I have power to solve the problem.

I ask the one who yelled prematurely "What number from 1..to..10 was it when your sister did [X] ?"

Typically she'll say "An 8!"

And we'll calmly discuss it until we've classified it more usefully, gained perspective, and then determined a same-level response, and then we walk back to where we first were... and I invite the daughter who'd yelled, to give the proper proportional response.

After that takes place, both daughters typically remain calm (or at the same level).

I then ask "Did that end the matter?"

If they both say Yes, then I ask "didn't that help to solve the situation in the best possible way?"

And when they both say Yes, I reinforce it by saying "it's always better to manage your emotions and give appropriate responses. Blowing things out of proportion may work once with people we don't know and aren't likely to see again, but never gets us what we want long-term with people we know well, see often, and care about."

After about 5 or 6 really good examples of catching & redirecting these emotional flare-up moments, I begin noticing real improvement.

And you will too.

So how about Adults? How do we teach adults this mechanism without patronizing or humiliating them into feeling like we're treating them like children?

My advice: Do NEARLY the same thing with adults. Just don't mention the numbers or rating scale. Instead, we simply adjust our own behavior with the numbers as we run them through the process. We let the numbers be our behavioral and emotional guide, not something they literally hear.

It works... like a charm. So remember, when you do this, be charming. It helps!

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Article Tags: adults, children, coaching, diffusing emotion, emotional intelligence, EQ, jonathan altfeld, misunderstandings, NLP, tense situations



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