I’m talking about “Hot Buttons.” A hot button is a sensitive, emotional topic that triggers an immediate, strong reaction. It causes anger or frustration.

We all have hot buttons, and our children seem to have a sixth sense about them. They pick up on our emotional reactions to them, and they sometimes push them out of their own anger or frustration.

We all need to examine those buttons so we can turn them off and not let them spark reactions that our “thinking” selves do not really want to do.

We may not ever make them “hot buttons” completely go away – and may not want to because they tell us things we need to know—what are values are, what expectations we have, etc.  But, when necessary we can silence them if we are very clear about what they are and what they look like and sound like.

You may find these “hot buttons” related to certain ages and stages of your children. Maybe you do really well with infants. You love the softness and cuddling of taking care of babies. But, don’t like so much the no-saying stage, or the life-is-not-fair stage, or the teenage fascination with sexuality stage. At these points, you are uncomfortable. You would rather skip that part of parenting all together and not deal with those issues at all. If you ever feel that way, your hot buttons are probably working overtime.

You can learn how to handle the child behaviors that give you special trouble:

• When you feel your emotions rising up, count to ten. It’s an old adage, but it can help.

• Remind yourself that you can think and feel at the same time. Think about what you want to do about the behavior, rather than giving way to what you feel like doing.

• Talk with other adults you trust about how they handle or did handle those behaviors, so you can have ideas about handling them the next time.

• Be confident that difficult behaviors will pass. Most likely, more pleasant child behaviors are right around the corner as your child grows and matures into his next stage.