A Brief Note on Parent Advocacy

Square Peg, Meet Round Hole

Parent Advocacy

Often times it may seem as if the systems and institutions our children are required to navigate are set in place to conspire against them.


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Children will face many challenges as they grow and develop.   

There are times during which we will be required to advocate for system change on behalf of our children. The system may or may not respond in a constructive manner. Some elements may; others may not.

Regardless of how the system responds, these situations also provide us with a golden opportunity to coach our children on the character strengths, values, and skills needed to successfully navigate difficult situations and systems in life.

Very few systems are perfect, if any.  The vast majority of work places are mediocre, at best.   As reported in a Harvard Business Review article, a study by Life Meets Work found that 56% of American workers claim their boss is mildly or highly toxic. A study by the American Psychological Association found that 75% of Americans say their “boss is the most stressful part of their workday.”

This is what we are preparing our children for. 

I'm not advocating for non-advocacy.  Please do advocate for your children, on their behalf.  What I am suggesting is that advocacy, while important, is only one side of the coin.  The other side is skill development, value system development, and character strength development.  These are the assets children will need in order to be ready to enter the workforce.  

As parents, our job is neither to force our children to conform to the system nor to force the system to perfectly fit our children.  

While we can work to mold the system into something more comfortable and effective, our primary job is to help our children develop the character strengths, values, and skills they will need to navigate obstacles and overcome difficulty successfully throughout life.  

Kenneth H. Little, MA / 135 Lee Brook Road / Thornton, NH 03285 / 603-726-1006 / Achieve-ES.com

Good Judgement: A Personal Reflection

Copyright All rights reserved by 

Ken Little - New Hampshire

“Good Judgement comes from experience, 90% of which is based on bad judgement.” (source unknown)

This wisdom was taped to the kitchen cupboard in my family's kitchen throughout my adolescent years. I’m convinced it was my mother’s survival mantra; her daily reassurance that all would be well in the future, that all of the mistakes I made were guiding me toward developing good judgment.

It worked and I did, but to be perfectly honest, my survival was not assured by any stretch of the imagination.

Things could very easily have turned out differently, very badly in fact. Things did turn out badly for many young people growing up at the same time. 

Too many of my peers during high school and in the years shortly after died, but many more were impacted by lasting and often debilitating injuries, for example: skiing dangerously, jumping off cliffs into quarries, driving dangerously, and using drugs and alcohol in a way that damaged bodies and brains. 

The harm continued to resonate into the future. (see Consequences)

An old friend died from a heart attack in his early 40s – probably the result of the damage caused by using cocaine earlier in life; his past poor judgment coming back to haunt him well after the harmful behavior had ended and he’d established a successful business and loving family. 

Another old friend, one of the most intelligent people I knew growing up, ended up permanently damaging his brain. He continues to work in a low level, low-income job. Such great potential lost permanently to youthful decision-making error.

Youthful errors can leave lasting damage.

Teens and young adults lack the judgment, experience and decision-making skills required to reliably make good decisions. 

It’s not that they always make bad decisions.  In fact, the vast majority of decisions teens and young adults make are typically good and constructive.  It's just that the probability of making bad decisions is higher during adolescence and early adulthood. 

Teens and young adults are out in the world without adult supervision, physically grown but not fully ready to go.  Out in the world without the skills and abilities they will need to navigate the often complex and difficult predicaments life brings to them.

This is not really a fully preventable reality. Perhaps younger children might be supervised more closely, but teens and young adults do move out into the world on their own. This is both expected and necessary. 

Teens and young adults cannot develop into effective and capable adults by keeping them under close supervision at all times.

According to the CDC, 40% of the deaths between age 10 and 24 are due to unintentional injuries. This is the leading cause of death in this age group. As a society we attack this problem with laws, policy changes, systems changes, etc. We work to wrap teens in a safer world. For example, the #1 risk to a teen is driving in a car with another teen. This elevated risk is primarily due to inexperienced drivers making poor decisions. In an effort to reduce this risk, we are changing licensing laws; we have seat belts laws and air bags. These are all changes that can and should be made around teens and young adults.  They are much needed to reduce the risks. 

But what are we doing to help teens learn how to make better decisions?

For over 25 years I've been teaching children, teens, and young adults the "how to" of decision-making they need in order to make better decisions. 

Over the years I’ve learned a lot about what works and what does not work and I've developed concrete, usable decision-making systems that teens can be taught, that they can practice, that can be incorporated into their habits of thinking. 

These practiced skills will give them the decision-making advantage they will need to make better decisions, decisions that will lower the risks of navigating adolescent life.

Kenneth H. Little, MA / 135 Lee Brook Road / Thornton, NH 03285 / 603-726-1006 / Achieve-ES.com

Begin, Wherever You Are

It's never too late or too soon.

Wherever you are in your parenting journey, whether with newborn child or young adult, begin teaching problem solving skills, thinking skills, and verbal reasoning skills.

Problem Solving, Thinking, & Verbal Reasoning

There are other important skills (like, how to do laundry, dishes, math, and weak-side layups), but these are the Big Three. All are skills. All are taught, coached, encouraged, trained, and ... practiced, practiced, practiced to mastery over time.

Please keep in mind that skills are increased gradually, incrementally over time only through repetitive practice.

Practice to mastery is the only path to skill development, the only path forward.

We will work toward developing these skills (problem-solving, thinking, verbal reasoning) by practicing on a regular basis the *Collaborative & Proactive Solutions (CPS) process developed by Dr. Ross Greene. This process can and should be practiced during all routine problems and more urgent behavioral disruptions.

Patience Required

To begin this process focus first on engaging with your child in empathic, non-judgmental conversations about her perspective on various problems and concerns, working to develop a sense of trust in her that she can safely share her views with you without fear of being criticized, dismissed, or invalidated. 

Listen carefully, for deep understanding. Thank her for sharing her views. 

Tell her you will think about what she has shared and agree to come back to talk with her after you have had the opportunity to think things over. This is a great way to model and practice delayed gratification. 

Do not allow the situation to devolve into argument and hostility. Just listen carefully. If you begin to feel frustration. Say so, then take space and calm down. Promise to come back when you are feeling calmer. See post "Calm Down & Take Space".

Trust is the essential ingredient in developing the type of relationship with your child that will be open to a collaborative problem-solving process and behavior change. Mistrust leads to defensiveness and resistance to change.

Open communication built on trust is the cornerstone piece of the process. Developing and maintaining a trusting relationship will enable you to build / re-build and strengthen an empathic connection with your child.

Note: Parental Burnout

A loss of adult-to-child empathy (burnout) is a very typical problem parents (and staff) experience with behavioral children. The adults are gradually worn down, exhausted by the continuous demands and difficulties, but this decrease in empathic connection (heightened frustration, anger, discouragement) increases the likelihood of ever more severe behavioral difficulties. 

Think quicksand. 

Unless you are able to take a step back, to reconnect with your long-term vision and rebuild your capacity to see the whole child, you will get sucked deeper and deeper into the quagmire.

It is important that we move toward a “non-punitive, non-adversarial, collaborative, proactive, skill-building, relationship-enhancing” approach; reconnecting with love and empathy.


*Collaborative & Proactive Solutions (CPS) is the non-punitive, non-adversarial, trauma-informed model of care Dr. Greene originated and describes in his various books, including The Explosive Child, Lost at School, Lost & Found, and Raising Human Beings.

Kenneth H. Little, MA / 135 Lee Brook Road / Thornton, NH 03285 / 603-726-1006 / Achieve-ES.com