To my current and future clients: I will continue to stress the following 7 life truths. Once you have mastered these truths, you will be able to get unstuck and move to your greatest potential. My Friday writings will address these 7 truths. Watch for them.

You are who you think you are

You can’t change other people, only your reaction to them.

No one ‘makes’ you feel. You choose your own feelings.

Just because someone doesn’t want to be your boy/girl friend doesn’t mean there is something wrong with you. You two are just not a good fit.

You make your own reality.

You can be/do whatever you set your mind to.

You really can’t love others until you love and care for yourself.

For parents of young adults: Get a life! And get out of theirs.

Any questions?

Teens have learned what they need to say to their parents and to professionals to get a mental health diagnosis and to get the accompanying drugs. I’ve seen it evolve over the past 12 years in a very insidious way. One always needs to take a person seriously when they say they are going to kill themselves. Yes, that is true. The kids know this. They know that when they say they might kill themselves, their parents will take them to a mental health provider, psychiatrist, psychiatric nurse practitioner, or even the pediatrician who feels comfortable prescribe psychotropics, who will immediately prescribe an anti-depressant or other mood stabilizer.

A more common complaint that I am hearing is that “I’m Bipolar!” Yup. Straight out like that. Then they tell me about their mood swings. When informed that mood swings are a normal experience in adolescence, they tell me, “Oh, not like this!” I will then sit back and have them tell me about their mood swings. With this open-ended discussion, the teen ALWAYS describes what we know as common experiences of adolescents.

Generally, the parents want their child diagnosed as “SOMETHING THAT WILL MAKE IT NOT MY FAULT!” They also don’t want to dig in and do the hard work of parenting. “See, She has Bipolar. It’s not my fault.”

When I work with the parents on things like communication with their teens, ie quit screaming at them and quit begging them, the parents seem to go numb. “You mean, I actually have to learn how to parent this child?!!” Well, no. You don’t, unless, of course, you want this one to be like the other 2 you raised. The 19 year old who won’t leave the basement, or the 25 year old who has 3 children by 3 different fathers.

I will not give a diagnosis of Bipolar disorder to this teen. The family will probably not come back. They will find a psychologist who WILL give her a diagnosis and then a referral to a psychiatrist for the meds. You will give your child drugs and start her on a path of not being able to cope with life without a substance. Please don’t come back to me in 5 years to help. I already tried.

I must be watching too much TV these days because I’ve seen two commercials to which I needed to respond as noted by this and the previous post.

There was a cell phone commercial where the dad walks into the room where his two teenage children are draped over a sofa and a chair. He says to them something like, “Now you can talk and text message all you want with this new cell phone plan!” They respond, “We do that already.” Dad says, “Yes, but your mother will now be able to give up her second job!” Mom walks out in a sandwich board-type costume suggesting she is walking advertisement for a Taco place! Okay, folks. What’s the problem here?

Why in the world are we not limiting our children? Why are we giving them free reign? Why are we raising children with a huge sense of entitlement? They don’t get that on their own. We give it to them. You do not have to follow the trend. You can stand up and say “NO, STOP, I WON’T HAVE IT!” You can do this. I promise.

I need to get this out! Parents, please, please, please, do not, let me repeat, DO NOT have a DVD player in your SUV/car/Hummer! If you do, you will be missing the very best time to talk to your child/children. It is during these times together that you can get into conversations with them because they are a captured audience. And visa-versa. They have you as a captured audience. You can actually have a discussion. This is when you TEACH them about: Your values (via stories); Your world view: or whatever else it is that parents TEACH children! Do not stick your little ones in front of a TV show, a DVD (even Baby Einstein!) or a computer! YOU need to be the one who teaches them! PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE.

I’m giving a talk to a group of mothers tomorrow on the topics of sibling rivalry and behavior management. Some of the points I want to make are:

Anticipate the thoughts, feelings, actions of each child prior to the outbreak

Encourage each child to deescalate the dispute. (Mary, what can you do to not fight?)

Read Pain and The Great One by Blume and Trivas or I’d Rather Have an Iguana by Mario.

Discuss with your children how communication and empathy can prevent conflicts.

Are you comparing the children? Are you encouraging sibling competition?

Actively listen to each child’s feelings concerning the conflict without taking sides.

Parents role model ways to improve family interactions: stop the put-downs, don’t interrupt, share.

Parental love and recognition are abundant resources that can be shared by all of the siblings without any child being deprived.

Parental interference in sibling disputes often intensifies the conflict. Coach the children out of the dispute.

Basic process to assist siblings to resolve dispute: 1)State the problem 2) each states point of view 3)how does this FEEL 4)what could be done about this (brainstorm) 5)agree to a solution and implement it.

Strengthen bonds between siblings through positive recognition, fair treatment, and awareness of personal feelings. (Consequences which follow common sense)

Recognize the individual personality, needs, sensitivities, goals, and aspirations of each child and work to reduce competition. Use the criterion of “unique” rather than “equal” in the distribution of love, attention, time and physical needs (I love you each uniquely).

Hold weekly meetings during which family chores are delegated, family problems are resolved, and recognition is given for the efforts of each family member.

Have activities that involve total family and one-to-one interaction among family members.

Family members need to work together to establish a loving, respectful and cooperative family atmosphere.

There is damage caused by assigning negative family roles like bully, untrustworthy, loser, OR exclusively positive family roles like most gifted, best athlete, beautiful.

Model and affirm the behavior you hope to bring out in each of the children: persistence, responsibility, rather than identifying negative traits you want to eliminate, giving up, shirking duties, etc.

I believe that good parenting requires a lot of good old common sense. How simple is that! Obviously not so simple.

What seems to be getting in the way of this for some parents has something to do with comparisons with others, and the problem of depending on the good opinions of others.

I’ll start with comparisons. When my children were preschoolers, we lived in a small town in Kentucky. It seemed that those of us who ran around together (because of our occupations or status in the community and not because we particularly liked one another) had the bad habit of saying things like, “My son accomplished such and such today”. or “My daughter was chosen to (fill in the blank) by the teacher.” One woman in the group was particularly aggressive when it came to trying to tell the rest of us how wonderful her children were.

The truth of the matter was, their son was a little bully and their daughter would later turn into a “mean girl”. The “my kid’s better than your kid” focus deluded the parents into thinking they were being good parents. Their thought their children were “achieving” and that would reflect well on them.
What was really happening was that the parents were focusing on their need to brag and not on the child’s need to learn to be kind and loving to others in this world. It was an ego trip for the parents. Competition. Children need practical experiences of winning and losing (graciously) at a very young age. This helps to prepare them for the real world. Parents who are themselves insecure have difficulty helping their children to learn to be secure. Being the best, being number one, or even, being better than (someone else), is often what is taught.

Where did we lose our compass with regard to personal values? (I have some ideas about that…gonna have to be in another post. But just a hint…it has to do with ‘the bottom line’, and yes, greed.)

Guess what that means for you parents who are insecure in yourself, your marriage, your parenting, your life? Get secure! It can happen. You just have to work at it. And a big measure of it comes from none other than COMMON SENSE!

Stop listening to others! Go to that place inside you that “KNOWS”. You have it. We all have it. Trust yourself. This is the part about the ‘good opinions of others’. Know yourself. Listen to yourself. This is your life. How do you want to live it?

As I read back over what I just wrote, I realize a different than intended message came through. I originally wanted to talk about common sense parenting. What came through for me was this that we are focused on competition with others and that this drives our parenting. I’ll have to think about that some more. What are your thoughts on that?

My 9:00am client was telling me how cute her son was at a very young age. “He was so independent! We all thought it was so cute the way he bossed everyone around!” They don’t think he is so cute now that he’s sixteen and still won’t do what his parents tell him to do. “He’s disrespectful and he doesn’t appreciate anything we do for him!!”

I recommended that they use “real world consequences”.

For example, he doesn’t see any reason to aim for A’s and B’s on his report card (even though he is very intelligent). I suggested that he live the life of someone who makes C’s and F’s; someone who does not go to college. The real world consequence would be that he can’t afford a cell phone, the X-box system with games, access to a car, and money to eat out with his girlfriend at O’Charley’s on the weekend. Oh, by the way, he doesn’t have a job. He won’t get a job. His parents give him all the money he needs for fun and they pay car insurance so he can drive.

His mother doesn’t want him to be unhappy. Yet, when I have talked to him separately, he complains about her yelling at him or her lectures. I have suggested to mom that she stop with the lecturing already! He knows what she has to say. He’s not dumb. She wants him to agree with her. It’s not gonna happen! He wants what he wants! And he usually gets it. (Either mom or dad make his lunch to take to school every evening for the next day.) He has NO chores! He’s 16. What do you think the real ‘real-life consequences’ are going to be?

Rules one, two, and three in parenting! I: Consistency. II: Consistency. III: Consistency.
I just finished a session with a client who said, “I get so tired sometimes, well, it just seems easier to do it myself!” Another client told me that her parenting depended on her mood. If she was in a good mood, she would let her child eat in the living room in front of the t.v. If she was in a bad mood, she would yell at her child for eating in the living room. “I TOLD you, only eat in the kitchen!”
I think you can easily see the problems here.

DO NOT CONFUSE your child!! Your child needs to be able to trust what you say to them. Trusting you helps to make them feel safe! You see, they know they don’t know how to live their lives yet. They know they have to depend on you to guide them. They know they need to listen to you. But if you keep changing the rules, then they can’t trust you! They have to start guessing how to behave.

Have you trained your child to have bad behavior? You might have by being inconsistent. Make your rules. Make the rules reasonable and meaningful. Every adult in the household needs to agree to the rules. Don’t change the rules based upon your mood. Be consistent. Be consistent. Be consistent.

Just listen to yourself. “Mary Jane, please sit here so mommy can put your shoes on you. Okay?” Now what did you just do in your polite way of role-modeling? You just gave your 2-year-old of the option of NOT SITTING THERE SO YOU CAN PUT HER SHOES ON HER!!! You asked her IF IT WAS OKAY!! I have a very strong opinion on this subject. I want you to hear how important this is. You are giving your child power that is hard to take away from her later.

Now, let’s take this incident down the developmental time line a little and you will have a picture you might not like
Your child is not learning that she has to listen to you. She is learning that she has a say in what she does. Like when and if she does her homework. She is likely to not want to do any chores you assign her and therefore won’t. You will do everything for her. She will not honor your values because she will never feel the sting of having done something wrong, because, as a teenager, you wouldn’t want to upset her with consequences. She won’t learn to take care of herself. As a young adult, she will keep trying to move out on her own and always have to return to live with you. She can’t do it. You have not taught her to be responsible and able to take care of herself! She has never learned that life isn’t all about what she wants and others will take care of her. You have created a real problem by not standing up and being a parent! Your job as a parent is to teach your child the skills to launch into independent and productive adulthood!
Don’t get me wrong. Developmentally, there is a time when you start to let children make their own choices. It’s a little by little process starting in late childhood, around the 4th grade. But the foundation has to be laid down, first. It’s a difficult task and with the fact that you have chosen to have children, then you have chosen to take on this difficult task of parenting.

Do not confuse the notion of creativity and doing what you as a parent have instructed your child to do. Even young children need the chance to allow their creative nature to emerge. This can happen in the confines of a parent-structured home and teacher-structured school.
I’ll talk about how to help children make choices at another time.

I remember the day I tried to dial into the mainframe at University of Kentucky to work on my dissertation. It took all night to get in. Now, I can connect with you in microseconds! I look forward to sharing with you and I invite you to send comments to me.