18 March 2024
Respectful Voice Chart: when our child evaluates the tone of our voice
Reading time: 2′
The respectful voice chart is a tool with which we can make our child the judge of whether we speak to them with respect or not.
We create a simple chart with squares for each day of the week. We explain to our child that we always want to talk to them without yelling and ask them to put a sticker for each day that has passed without us raising our voice. We commit to always speaking to them with respect.
Every evening, we ask the child if we managed to keep our respectful voice during the day. If the child decides not to give us a sticker, they have every right to do so, even if we think we didn’t yell or treat them disrespectfully at all. Sometimes, we don’t realize that our tone may be contentious. If this happens, we can ask the child why they didn’t give us a sticker and apologize if they tell us they perceived something we said as an attack.
“You think that it was unfair when I got impatient with you until you put on your shoes and we left the house. And when I raised my voice, you got scared. I understand… I apologize for that sweetheart.”
Remember that nobody deserves to be yelled at, especially a child. Think about what you could do next time to give yourself more support so you don’t resort to scolding.
If the chart fills up with stickers, you can promise yourself a special treat. It’s a great achievement!
Tell yourself
Every time you realize you’re about to yell, stop talking:
- You can bite your tongue.
- You can use the Stop-Drop-Breathe method.
- You can leave the room until you regain self-control.
- You can use magic phrases (mantras) to calm yourself.
- Relax your body through breathing and observing your sensations.
- Splash cold water on your hands.
- The most important thing is to resist the urge to react in the heat of the moment.
This gets easier with practice
This particular method has both a disadvantage and an advantage. The disadvantage is that it is difficult (!) because you have to always remind yourself to calm down whenever you get angry. The advantage is that the more often you do it, the easier and more automatic this becomes.
It’s hard to get out of fight or flight mode when you’re angry, because that’s when you think you’re in an emergency situation and your child suddenly looks like the enemy. At that moment you consider your intense reaction as perfectly suitable for the situation, while it’s usually just an overreaction since there is no real threat. For this reason, it is very important to practice your self-regulation.
No matter how many times you have told your child not to step on the carpet with her shoes, or no matter how many times you have informed her that the food is on the table, and of course she ignores you, if you shout now, things will become 1000 times worse. So, there is only one solution: Calm down and act from a regulated state!
If it helps, remember that the child imitates your behavior, and learns by your modeling, how we can react to a difficult situation.
This process of stopping ourselves from yelling may take time. At first, out of the 5 times we shouted a day, we might manage to hold back twice. Subsequently, we manage to hold back three times, and without realizing it, one day we realize we haven’t shouted at all! Through daily repetition, we’ve reprogrammed ourselves and our brain to stop shouting. We managed to break a habit that bothered us all and wasn’t effective, simply by not reacting in the heat of the moment, and instead, became better at calming ourselves in order to be able to choose our response; a more appropriate response for the situation.