Parenting Blog

"All communication is either an SOS or a care package." -- Kelly Bryson
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"If your emotional abilities aren't in hand, if you don't have self-awareness, if you are not able to manage your distressing emotions, if you can't have empathy and have effective relationships, then no matter how smart you are, you are not going to get very far." --Daniel Goleman
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"Before we're 8 years old, we have almost no capacity to filter out information that comes to us. So if parents or teachers, people we count on to nurture us, say something hurtful to us before the age of eight...it goes in quite deep and we carry those misbeliefs with us. They profoundly affect our relationship to ourselves, to others...our sense of value in the world."  -- Dr. David Simon
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"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

“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

My Aha! Parenting moment this week happened when a reporter asked me about the four different parenting styles that psychologists say describe most parents.  These were originally developed by Diana Baumrind about fifty years ago, and are accepted by most child development specialists today.

The four styles are:

1. Authoritarian- These are parents who have high expectations of their kids, which is a good thing, research shows.  That’s how kids get good grades, learn to manage themselves responsibly, and stay out of trouble.  The problem with these parents is that they don’t offer their kids much support.  It’s pull up your socks, straighten up and fly right, my way or the highway.  These parents were usually parented this way themselves, and think they came out fine, but research shows their kids end up rebellious – and looking for love in all the wrong places, like the peer group.

2. Permissive- These are parents who offer their kids lots of support. Nothing wrong with that at all.  The problem with these parents is that they don’t have high expectations.  Some of them believe that’s a good thing – they wouldn’t want to get in the way of their child’s natural development.  Others just can’t bear to have their child face something difficult even for a moment, so they make a lot of excuses for their kid.  Most of these parents are trying hard not to repeat their own parents’ tough-love parenting style, so they go overboard in the other direction.  Don’t get me wrong – you can never offer your child too much respect and empathy.  But you can certainly prevent them from learning responsibility and developing confidence in themselves by always rescuing them.  And if you let your child walk all over you or other people, what are you teaching him about relationships?  These kids are often self-centered and spoiled.  Worse yet, they’re often miserable and insecure because they haven’t been helped to learn internal discipline to accomplish anything.

3. Uninvolved- There have always been parents who can’t give their kids the love and attention they need, either because of alcoholism, narcissism, or just external pressures like needing to work two jobs to support the family.  But these parents seem to me to be even more prevalent today, at least in some communities, where we rationalize thrusting kids into daycare at ever earlier ages for ever-longer hours, and then as they grow up we push them into the arms of their peer group, so that we have little or no influence on them by the time they’re teenagers.  These parents sometimes vanish into drug addiction or abandon the family, but there are plenty of seemingly normal families where the parents are too focused on their own work or social lives to engage deeply with their kids.  It’s not unusual to see these parents lavish money on their kids instead of attention.  This is always a message to the child that he isn’t worth loving, and if both parents are uninvolved, you can pretty much count on the kid having substance abuse or other major issues.

4. The final parenting style, is, of course, the one Baumrind’s research showed raises the best-adjusted kids. The Authoritative parents offer their kids lots of love and support, like the permissive parents.  But they also hold high expectations, like the authoritarian parents.  Age-appropriate expectations, of course – they aren’t expecting a three year old to clean up her room by herself.  But they may well be working with that three year old to help her clean up, over and over and over, so that by six she really can clean up her room herself.  These parents are involved -- even demanding.  They expect family dinners, lots of discussion straight through high school, good grades, responsible behavior.  But they also offer their kids complete support to learn how to achieve these expectations.  Their kids, not surprisingly, stay close to them – they often describe one of their parents as the person they would most trust to talk to about a problem.  These kids are usually high achievers in school, and they’re also the ones that teachers describe as responsible and well-liked, simply nice, considerate kids who are a pleasure to have around.

Where’s the Aha! Moment in this?  Well, the reporter asked me to describe how each style of parent would handle a couple of specific incidents.  For instance, what do you do when your child brings home a bad report card?

Authoritarian- Yells at kid, and without any discussion grounds them until next report card, which had better have improved grades. End of discussion. Maybe a tutor is hired, which is presented as a punishment, and maybe substituted for an activity the kid loved, like playing basketball.  The kid is left de-motivated, angry, and has to figure any improvement out for himself.

Permissive- Listens empathically. Accepts child’s excuse that it’s all the teacher’s fault, and asks the child to please try to do better next time.  She may tell the child she believes in him, or even make a suggestion about working harder – but she doesn’t give him any real help in figuring out how to change things, in the form of new structure so he can actually accomplish real change.

Uninvolved- What report card?  Or, if they do see it, they don’t notice that it’s a Xerox and some of the grades have been changed.  Don’t laugh – some of my son’s friends did this routinely in high school.

Authoritative- Asks child whether he’s surprised by the report card, and lots of other questions about what happened. Listens empathically.  Asks child what he thinks he can do to learn the material and bring his grades up. Agrees on a plan with the child: No more texting, chatting, listening to music, web-surfing or tv while doing homework. (Most kids can’t handle these distractions; they’re a privilege, not a right.)  No more TV during the week to allow extra study time for catching up with the work.    READ POST