Homework can bring us to our knees — “Just, will you JUST, finish it ALREADY!?” It’s hard to like ourselves as we scream, judge, blame and compare when we’ve flipped our lid. And, once we’re calm, it’s difficult to let go of the guilt. It’s crazy making stuff that we want to be SO DONE with.
Over the years, a number of parents have been concerned about their child’s hesitance to assert themselves. I wrote the tale below in 2014 with that (and a very special girl) in mind. I like to imagine living in a kingdom where our leader models assertive Confrontive I-Messages! Here’s how one such person came to be so wise.
Without a secure bond with a trusted, stable adult, kids are more prone to social media addiction. The nature of Internet communication leads to a digital intimacy that falls short of authentic, vulnerable relationships so they keep grasping for more approval and acceptance.
It's so easy to feel aggressive when we impute bad intentions to our kids -- e.g. He's deliberately NOT writing the invites to get a rise out of me. If we pause to contemplate the spins we put on kids' behaviors, we just might choose not to believe them.
He grinned down. I grinned up. Then, shaking my head in wonder, I went to my journal to record this remarkable conversation.
"Remarkable" because the old Catherine would not have known what to do. I probably would have peppered him with questions, "What's wrong? Well, have you tried approaching him again? Did you ask him why you you got that score? Have you gone over the rubric - maybe you missed something?"
Homework can bring us to our knees — “Just, will you JUST, finish it ALREADY!?” It’s hard to like ourselves as we scream, judge, blame and compare when we’ve flipped our lid. And, once we’re calm, it’s difficult to let go of the guilt. It’s crazy making stuff that we want to be SO DONE with.
It's so easy to feel aggressive when we impute bad intentions to our kids -- e.g. He's deliberately NOT writing the invites to get a rise out of me. If we pause to contemplate the spins we put on kids' behaviors, we just might choose not to believe them.
A parent recently wrote: I'm having trouble with hitting. Do you have a P.E.T.-approved way to stop physical violence between brothers?
This is tough!
In this post, we'll do a skills walkthrough on how to help -- let's call them -- Sean and Jack; in the next, we'll work on prevention.
A few weeks ago, I spent two days at your university, listening to deans, advisors and mental health professionals tell us parents how to support you and your classmates in the upcoming year. I was pretty relaxed; nothing they said was too jarring.
It all made me wonder: What would this moment be like had I not learned P.E.T.?
There's no doubt that my children are watching.
They have tried some of my strategies -- Jake, who's 15, likes the Headspace app on my phone -- but, more importantly, they see me vulnerable and open. I don't share too much of my childhood, just what I think is appropriate for them to know. But they appreciate my admission that when I fly off the handle or fall into a defensive, mistrustful stance that my behavior has nothing to do with their inherent goodness and everything to do with my own journey of healing.
And that kind of thing happens less and less. Oh, thank goodness! Working on communication skills, tending to my inner child and increasing my mindfulness helps me to choose actions and words that fit the situation and child in front of me now, today, in the present moment.
Showing partiality in a face-off between two children who despise each other at that moment is never a good thing. But I did it. And in such a subtle, indirect way that both stung and stunned.
Sigh. P.E.T. instructor notwithstanding, I am a complicated human being first.
In this latest addition to my Consciously Unskilled Series, I will walk you through my mess-up, what I did to undo what I'd done, and how I've grown. We are truly in this together.
I think most of us can accept discomfort and struggle in many arenas -- a hard work out, a longer than expected hike, even a tough manager who asks a lot of us -- but there's an added level of resistance when it comes to raising kids.
I suspect that, though we may pay lip service to the idea that Parenting is HARD, deep down, most of us still believe that it shouldn’t be.
Or, worse, that it wouldn’t be if our children were just different.
Watching Tracey Larcombe's Nobel Prize, I cringed, not only as a certified instructor of Parent Effectiveness Training but also as a mother who recognized her former self in the ordering around and the go-go-go. I may never have been quite so harsh, but I have said my fair share of things I regret.
So rather than just lambaste the characters, I thought it might be more helpful to turn a P.E.T. eye onto the situation and imagine another set of interactions.
After all, most of us are familiar with what we DON'T want to be doing when it comes to our kids. The trouble is knowing what better options would look like.
The 12 Communication Roadblocks are all around us - gosh, everyday we must hear dozens of them!
Dr. Thomas Gordon laid them all out for parents to see that, despite best intentions, our efforts to help our children can backfire.
How messy does a child's room have to be before we feel steam coming out of our ears?
That is such a personal thing.
Thank you, dear reader, for requesting a post on this very common issue. Let's start where we always do in P.E.T. with our go-to question: Who Owns the Problem?
I initially wanted to say that my values were:
But there was more to it when I started thinking about where these values came from. My mother (I focus on her because my father passed away when I was two) did not model rigid punctuality.
I realized my strictness comes from the keen discomfort I feel (less and less now but it's still there!) when people are displeased with me.
I love, love, love my job! I am invited for a while to have a front row seat at people's transformation.
With this participant's blessings -- I'll call her Flo -- I hereby share her story. Mind you, this happened a mere four sessions into the course!
I just thought maybe it’s high time I put all the Behavior Window terms in one post, with some illustrations from our family’s recent past.
Here they are from the top down -- forget about alphabetical order, we are trying to imprint this precious roadmap onto our brains!!
With my eldest now 16, I'm at the point where I can say that I'm dealing with stuff that's big by anyone's standards: drinking & curfew; faith v. organized religion; choosing a college; whether to take the SAT again; and sex, sexting & romance.
I once randomly pulled off the highway just to make the fighting stop!!! In retrospect, you could say my desperate act in Whereever-the-Heck, Hong Kong was actually a safe move. Children are, after all, recognized to be a major distraction to drivers.
I don't resort to such dramatic lengths anymore. Now, more often than not, my car is a moving No Problem bubble.
Just a few days ago, I dropped my P.E.T. roadmap (aka the Behavior Window) and ventured into the land of Roadblocks. Even though the trip lasted just a few minutes, it's never fun losing your way like that.
The Behavior Window is the handy visual that Dr. Thomas Gordon created to help parents get to where we want to go.
Upon leaving the house, I kept my mouth shut and did not mention homework in any way, shape or form nor did I discuss League of Legends (you may remember from last week that L.O.L. was his siren call). I simply nonchalantly waved “Buh-bye!” to Harrison, who was still in his pajamas. Under my breath I repeated that day's mantras: "His homework is not my problem" and "I can choose to be a new kind of mom!"
Two things happened recently that made me realize, wow, solutioning really gets my back up. (I hear it's kind of an American thing to make a verb out of a noun but I WAS born in Philly so I'm just going with it.) Don't get me wrong, I'm superb at solutioning; it's just that I don't like being on the receiving end.
Active Listening is the first thing we tackle in class and is, hands down, the most challenging to master. But build up this key skill and your children will know who to go to when they need help. And that, I think, qualifies as a parenting grand slam.
