The Orange Rhinoceros
The orange rhino poses a challenge. It is raised by the experience of a mother who seeks to change her son’s behavior through self-discipline. Here other qualities come into play such as patience, understanding and good communication between parents and children.
The life of parents is full of challenges and one of them is communication with children. There are times when the daily pressures of life cause you to lose patience and resort to yelling.
Why is it bad to yell at children?
Obviously, it must be recognized that losing your temper and yelling at children is not a practical method, and most of the time nothing is achieved with the child. Even if the child obeys, he does so out of fear and not out of respect.
In addition, this behavior can mark them for life, and creates in them the bad habit of yelling at other children in imitation of their parents. However, there are ways to change this bad habit, and it is what is known as the orange rhino.
Origin of the orange rhino
The challenge comes from a mother of four in the United States named Sheila McCraith. She was embarrassed, when she unknowingly discovered that she yelled at her children all the time.
His discomfort was such that he set out to change his behavior. In the meantime he discovered two important things:
- He was able to control the urge to yell at his children in front of strangers.
- What children think and feel is more important than other people’s opinions.
This event led her to confess that she had a habit of yelling at her children a lot but wanted to change this habit. So she came up with the idea of posing a challenge to herself that she called the orange rhino.
Sheila comments that the name of the orange rhino comes up because these animals are strong and only defend themselves when provoked.
As for color, for her orange evokes determination. It was precisely strength and determination that she needed to break this bad habit.
What is the Orange Rhino Challenge?
This challenge consists of holding out for a while without yelling at the children. Of course, to achieve this, this mother used some additional tips that allowed her to stay focused on her goal.
These tricks include: writing down your determination not to yell at children, tracking progress, and scoring each time the goal of not yelling at children is achieved.
This woman’s particular experience indicates that she has managed not to yell at her children in a full four-year period. Therefore, it is considered a successful tool.
How to apply the orange rhino technique
Behavioral therapy for the orange rhino has practical and somewhat implausible suggestions. Faced with the idea of inundating children with a long list of expletives and a war of words, try the following measures:
- Take a deep breath.
- Leave the place for a few moments. Go to another room or go out to the patio.
- Shake your body.
- Listen to music.
- Close your eyes and imagine yourself in a nice place.
- Wash your face with cold water and count to ten.
- Locate in various places in the house, an orange garment or object that reminds you of your objective.
Behavior change through the orange rhino challenge
While it is true that as a parent you have authority over your children, this creates great responsibilities for you. Remember that you are the role model of your children.
It is clear that accepting the challenge of the orange rhino is not a magic formula for change, but it allows you to accept and work on the following aspects:
- Recognize that you have a communication problem with your children.
- Accept that it takes willpower to change.
- Set the challenge based on easy-to-meet goals. For example, go a full day without yelling at your kids and build on from there.
- Talk to others about your determination so they can encourage you to achieve it.
- Identify the situations that lead you to engage in the behavior of yelling at children.
- Anticipate the situations that trigger the yelling and avoid them.
- Strive to control your reactions to the environment.
It is true that as a parent certain situations can overcome you and end up yelling at your children. However, the idea is that yelling is not the usual parenting pattern in your home. So go ahead and apply the orange rhino method.
