Parenting Blog

"The achievement of your goal is assured the moment you commit yourself to it." -- Mack R. Douglas

"Set your goals high, and don't stop till you get there."-- Bo Jackson

"It is possible to act a little nicer than you feel, but not much." -- Nancy Samalin

Next time your kid is pushing your buttons and driving you crazy, try committing yourself.  No, not to a mental institution.  To being a parent who doesn't yell.

Research shows that when we consciously, verbally "commit" ourselves to a course of action we're likely to achieve it, especially if we work at it daily.  By contrast, simply "wishing" something would be different, or even "regretting" things we've done, doesn't usually change a thing.

So if you want to be a parent who doesn't yell, start today.  Commit yourself.  And then watch how resourceful you become in meeting your goal.

Step One? Notice that by the time you're losing it, not yelling is only possible if you bite your tongue so hard you give yourself a piercing.  That's not what I recommend.  You can't act much nicer than you feel.  So after you commit yourself, the first step in becoming a parent who doesn't yell is taking care of yourself. 

What can you do to take care of yourself today, so you feel happier and less stressed?  Can you do it right now? If not now, when?  READ POST

"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players..." -- William Shakespeare

The problem with parenting is that we don't get any prep time. We're always on stage, performing for an audience that responds to our every off-hand word or motion. We learn our lines as we go, improvising, no sooner mastering one cue than it's replaced by a new one. We spend the entire play just trying to get ahead of the action enough to think about what to do next.  But before we know it, the play is over and our little audience has grown up and gone on with their lives. Yell as we might, we're off their stage. Our chance to impact them is over.

Sound bleak?  Not really. The silver lining is that we can always rewrite the script to create the home of our dreams. The key is making time to reflect throughout the action. That's the only way to notice the places where we keep stumbling, so we can come up with ideas to course correct.

For instance, try visualizing. In a quiet moment, consider the last time you felt you blew your lines on the stage of parenting. What were the cues from your child or other players that set you off?  Visualize how you want to react the next time this happens.  Let it play out in your mind with you as the hero or heroine.  How do you handle the situation? How do you look? What do you say? How does your child react? How does it help your relationship with your child?

Visualize your new part and feel it in your bones. Practice your new lines. Next time you get this cue, take a deep breath and step into your new character. 

And if you try it and trip?  Adjust your scenario, visualize, and try again.  Practice makes perfect.  Why not write the story you long to live?  READ POST

“You’ll make mistakes, sure, but you desire to do the best you can for him. He knows that and it’ll make all the difference in the world for him.” -- Karen Reime 

Most of us find it easy to express love for our kids when things are going right. But when they do things we don't like, we assume we have to withdraw our love to show our disappointment in our child.  That's the best way to change their behavior, right?

Actually, no.  Like the rest of us, kids change because they're motivated to change and believe they can.  In other words, they're motivated by wanting to please us, and they need confidence they can live up to our expectations. 

Kids who already feel we're not on their side, and they're always disappointing us, just give up.  You can usually tell when your child gives up because she gets defiant, or because you're disciplining more, rather than less.  (When kids know we're on their side and believe they can please us, discipline becomes rare, and mild.)

So the first step in influencing our child's behavior is reaffirming the connection, letting him know we're on his side.  The next step is offering whatever support is necessary for him to achieve the desired behavior, so that he thinks of himself as a kid who can please us, rather than a kid who is always disappointing us.

How?  Psychologists call it scaffolding, but you can think of it as insuring your kid is on the right path by rewarding every step in the right direction.  More on that tomorrow.  READ POST

"The truth is that so many of the parenting techniques we have used or that were used on us as children are actually based in fear, not love.  They are fear-based techniques disguised as love.  Motivating children to behave or to respond appropriately to parental requests using sticker charts, point systems, consequences, or removal of privileges is about fear, not love."  -- Heather T. Forbes

We usually justify fear-based parenting practices by saying that kids need to learn lessons.  But kids already know what the right thing to do is.  If they don't, then teaching is in order, not punishment. 

If your child knows what's right but doesn't choose to do it, then what's stopping him?  Often, disconnection.  When kids feel connected to their parents, they find it easier to regulate themselves. What's more, they WANT to choose what will please the parent. They feel good, and they make choices that will keep them feeling good.

That's why fear-based parenting techniques don't work.  They make kids feel worse about themselves, and more disconnected from us.

When in doubt, take a deep breath and connect.  Later, when everyone's calm, there will be plenty of time to teach.  READ POST

"Do you know what exhausts us more than lack of sleep? Stress. Our worrying. Our focus on what might be wrong.  Our lack of laughter. Our lack of energy.  Our lack of exercise to blow off anxiety and boost that energy. The joy deprivation is worse than the sleep deprivation, hands down. We don't feel the physical effects of it the way we do when we've been woken up every hour all night. But the extra weight we carry is something we don't even realize we've taken on and assumed like excess baggage." -- Lu Hanessian  READ POST

"Before you were conceived I wanted you
Before you were born I loved you
Before you were here an hour I would die for you
This is the miracle of life."
-- Maureen Hawkins

When my son was born, I spent the whole night gazing at him and making promises.  The next morning, I couldn't believe that the hospital let us take him home.  Zero supervision, zero training, just two completely inexperienced parents and this tiny, fragile, brand new person.

Such an enormous responsibility, so little preparation, so few answers, such high stakes.  The sheer impossibility of our task is what makes parents so critical of each other.  We need desperately to believe we have done, are doing, the right thing.

Of course, there are no perfect parents.  I broke many of those promises to my son.  Some of them wouldn't have been good for him, but some I broke simply because I'm human.  The miracle is that most of the time, love carries us through, and our kids come out fine.

What about those times when you can't find your love, when you just feel angry and resentful and like giving up? That's human too.  The secret is that the love didn't vanish.  It's still there, under the anger.  If you can find a way to take care of yourself, so you're willing to let go of the anger, love will still carry you through.  But you're the parent, so you have to lead the way back to love.  That's the promise we all make when we bring a child into the world.  READ POST

“The most successful people are good at Plan B” – James Yorke
  READ POST