LEADERSHIP
Each parent is the leader of the family. Parents lead children in growth and development, across all domains, toward adulthood.
Being a parent is like being the CEO, middle, and low-level manager all rolled in to one. Parents handle planning and managing across all time-frames, from long range to the most immediate concerns.
· Long-term -- 20+ years
· Mid-range -- 5 to 15 years
· Short-range -- 3 to 5 year
· Current and near future – now to 3 years.
Create a parenting vision, a mission statement (Covey). What are you trying to accomplish? Visualize the end. What will your child(ren) be like when they are grown? How will you know if you have accomplished what you set out to accomplish in raising your children? Translate this into a proactive plan.
Managing Domains of Well-Being
Parents are concerned with the development of each child in all domains of well-being. Parents are responsible for raising well-rounded children. In order to accomplish this task parents manage multiple domains of life, provide children with opportunities in each domain, and balance the competing interests of each domain.
The following domains can be prioritized in accordance with the family value system.
· Family
· Community
· Academic
· Social
· Physical
· Creative
· Spiritual
WISDOM
Parenting requires wisdom. Parental wisdom is the quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgement come together in a coherent parenting plan.
Role Modeling
The life you live is the life your child(ren) will live, despite all your efforts to dissuade them from following in your footsteps. What they see you do, how you handle stress and conflict, and how you behave is everything. You express your value system most clearly in your actions.
Change
Change is hard. Using different approaches to parenting requires the unlearning of old habits and the development of new habits.
Understanding rationally the what to change and how to change is not usually sufficient to cause the change. You will need to be motivate to change.
In order to change we need the why to change, the desire to change, the motivation to change, as well as the how and what to change.
Imagine for a moment the future you wish to achieve. Imagine your family together, happier and more affectionate with less chaos, conflict, and fighting. Imagine how much more loving your family will be, how much closer to your children and spouse you will be. Imagine the beautiful opportunities you will have spending time with your family; sharing warmth, connection, love and nurturance.
Is this the future you want for your family?
The motivation to change does not come from rational understanding alone. The motivation to change comes from creating emotional desire.
Live, Love, and Laugh Together / AKA Manage Stress Effectively
It is impossible to emphasize enough the importance of this family dimension. It is very important that parents prioritize to the best possible extent this key element of family life. Family life should be filled with love and laughter to the maximum extent.
Life conspires against parents by providing an endless and vexing array of frustrations, limitations, stressors, and difficulties in many forms.
• Marital Stress
• Financial Stress
• Housing Stress
• Health-related Stress
• Employment / Work Related Stress
• Car / Transportation Related Stress
• Neighbor / Community Stress
Parents, as leaders of the family, must work to buffer the impact of adult-world-stress from encroaching upon their child(ren)’s well-being and healthy development.
The ability to put aside life stress is a primary struggle for parents. Arriving home from a tough day in the world … parents must prioritize family well-being over adult-world stress. Greeting loved ones with joy and happiness sets and maintains the important tone for family life.
There are a variety of skills that will enable parents to contain and segregate adult-world-stress.
Argumentation, with purpose (Jay Heinrichs, Thank You For Arguing)
· Forensic: past tense, seeks to assign guilt. Dead end approach.
· Demonstrative: present tense, tribal, pits one against the other, right / wrong, dead end approach.
· Deliberative: future tense, choice and solution focused, seek win-win. How do we want this to take place next time, in the future, etc.
Argument v. Fighting
Distinguish rhetorical argument from the he-said, she-said blame shifting.
Have faith in the outcome, not in attacking each other. Be a persuader, not aggressor. Persuasion. It's not the heat, it's the humility (Yogi B.). One fights to win, argues to achieve agreement.
Safety & Stability
Safety and stability are critical elements of child development. The parental role is to ensure that each child has the opportunity to grow and develop in a maximally safe and stable family , school, and community environment.
Maximally safe does not mean pristine.
Ordinary life events and ordinary challenges are opportunities for children to learn the skills necessary for a successful life and to develop the strong positive character traits life requires. Some difficulty is necessary and healthy to key elements of child development.
However, the level of difficulty cannot exceed the child’s capacity to cope effectively. Parents are of critical importance in working to manage the degree of difficulty each child must face and overcome.
Parents should not overly cleanse the child’s life of difficulty, nor add unnecessary difficulty, nor allow excessive difficulty that is beyond the child’s capacity to cope.
Children subjected to difficulties beyond their capacity will begin to suffer from the excessive burden and / or prolonged distress.
Lighthouse
A lighthouse stands on solid, stable ground. It is a beacon. It warns of danger and guides to safety. The waters around a lighthouse can be turbulent.
Parents are like the lighthouse. Parents are strong and stable. Parents warn of danger and guide to safety.
When children are emotionally unstable, when they are in the emotional turbulence of life, parents do not jump into the turbulence with the children. Parents endeavor to remain stable and calm. Parents invite the children to come out of the turbulent waters, back to safe, stable ground.
When the parents become emotionally unstable, when they join the children in the turbulent waters … all is lost … until the parents can regain the safe, stable ground above the crashing waves.
Parents invite children to come out of the turbulence, to come to safety, to join them on the stable ground.
Intentional & Attentional Parenting
Intentional parenting essentially means to parent on purpose, with purpose and intention — to parent intentionally as opposed to casually, randomly, or reactively.
Attentional parenting means to pay attention to your children, to be present in your relationship with them. Whatever adult things are going on need to be put aside for a least some part of your time with your children. Pay attention to what they are doing in the moment, how they feel, what they like and don’t like, and what matters to them.
It’s only through paying close attention to your child(ren) that you will get to know them, have the opportunity to develop and maintain a deep and meaningful relationship with them.
What interferes with intentional parenting?
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Develop Character, Skills, Values
Parents are able to guide their children in the development of strong, positive characteristics, the skills needed for a successful life, and the value system required to guide children to right decisions as they navigate the complexities of the world.
This is a primary activity of parenting.
Your children will be challenged by many, many complex scenarios and situations over the years. Each will be an opportunity for you to encourage character development, provide them with constructive coaching on important skills, and instill in them the positive value system they will need to make right decision, to persevere through difficulty, and overcome obstacles.
Parent advocacy, a note on.
An important note on advocacy. Often times it may seem as if the systems we are required to navigate as parents are set in place to conspire against our children. There are times during which we will be require to advocate for systemic change on behalf of our children. The system may or may not respond in a constructive manner. Regardless, these situations provide us with the opportunity to coach our children on the character strengths, values, and skills needed to navigate difficulties in life.
Rules & Values Work Sheet
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The Whole Child
Problems and concerns v. health, well-being, interests, activities, hobbies, skills, attributes, characteristics, etc.
Without some caution, most of our attention will inevitably end up being focused on your child’s problems and concerns. There are risks associated with focusing only or mostly on problems and concerns.
The first and foremost is the risk that we will lose sight of the whole child and his or her many wonderful, terrific, and beneficial attributes, interests, and characteristics. The whole child will become obscured in the haze of difficulty.
The second risk is that by attending only or mostly to the negative we will inadvertently increase the frequency and intensity of the negatives. The reality is is that by attending only to the negative we make the positive qualities less important.
Your child is a whole being. The problems and concerns are only a small part of who he is. It will be especially important that we spend more time acknowledging and celebrating his positive qualities than we do attending to his troublesome qualities. More on this later.
Figure 1: Don’t get lost in problems. Problems occupy a relatively small portion of the whole child.
Jell-O, a Quick Note on Being Fun
Jell-O made just right is firm. Jell-O made with too much water is mushy. Jell-O made with too little water is hard. The best Jell-O is firm, yet fun and fruity. This is the best parent too. You do not want to be too mushy or too hard. Be firm, yet fun and fruity.
Positive Feedback
Increasing the use of positive feedback to achieve a ratio of positive to negative feedback of approximately 10:1 – this is the number one, most immediate priority.
10 positive comments about your child’s behavior, attributes, characteristics, accomplishments, etc. to every 1 negative comment / criticism. The metaphorical picture, if you can imagine it, is one of watering / nurturing the flowers and ignoring the weeds.
Your child has many excellent attributes. He is really a terrific boy with lots and lots of positive potential. We will want to encourage and support the growth of these particularly important positive elements while working to address the lesser, but significant problems and concerns.
If we attend too heavily to problems and concerns, we risk increasing these elements to the point at which they may consume and diminish the terrific positive qualities that make up the bulk of who your child is.
We will work purposefully and progressively to address concerns while fully encouraging the growth and development of positive qualities.
Motivation
Intrinsic v. Extrinsic
Flipping, Positively Flipping
Flipping negative behaviors into their positive opposites.
As we move forward, we will begin to focus our attention on enhancing your child’s skills and abilities, her ability to manage herself and navigate a complex world. Whenever we encounter a problem or concern, we will begin working to develop skills toward realizing the positive opposite of the problematic behavior.
Think Win-Win whenever possible
We are working toward a collaborative process. Outcomes that are mutually agreeable are preferred whenever possible.
Win-lose and lose-win are not sustainable solutions. These types of inequitable outcomes will contribute to growing mistrust and resentment, anger, hostility — acting-out. Avoid Win-Lose and Lose-Win outcomes.
Remember “No Deal”.
Solutions to problems have to work for both of you whenever possible. If you cannot come to a reasonable mutually agreeable solution, no deal is a good temporary conclusion. Agree to discuss it again another time.
Problem Solving, Thinking, & Reasoning
Begin to teach problem solving skills, thinking skills, and verbal reasoning skills.
We will work toward this outcome by using on a regular basis the “Plan B” collaborative process developed by Dr. Ross Greene, et al. This process can and should be used on a regular basis for routine problems, as well as, during more urgent behavioral disruptions.
To begin this process, we will focus on engaging in empathic, non-judgmental conversations with your child on various problems and concerns, working to develop a sense of trust in him that he can safely confide in us without fear of his perspective being criticized, dismissed, or invalidated.
Trust is an essential ingredient in developing the type of relationship with that will be amenable to collaborative problem solving and behavior change. Mistrust leads to defensiveness and resistance to change.
Trust is the foundational piece of the process. Developing a trusting relationship will enable us to re-build and strengthen an empathic connection with your child.
A loss of adult-to-child empathy is a typical problem encountered with behavioral children as the adults are worn down, exhausted by the frequent demands and difficulties, but this decrease in empathic connection increases the likelihood of behavioral difficulties. Think quicksand. It is important that we move toward a “non-punitive, non-adversarial, collaborative, proactive, skill-building, relationship-enhancing” approach.
“Non-punitive, non-adversarial, collaborative, proactive, skill-building, relationship-enhancing” ~ Ross Greene
K. H. Little Consulting Services
Kenneth H. Little, MA
KHLittle603@gmail.com
