The Protective Ethic

Years ago, I had a conversation with a man about corporal punishment. He was in favor of it.  Then I asked him what he thought of older kids beating up on little kids.  He was opposed to it, stating that when he was young the rule was that little kids could not be hit or harmed and the older kids looked out for them, protected them from bullies.

Then he got it. 

Growing up, it seems, many of us held an ethic that required older kids to protect younger kids from being harmed.  Neither we, nor anyone else was allowed to hit the little kids.

What happens that causes parents to lose touch with this ethic?  

How do people become transformed from holding a protector of little kids ethic to being parents who think it's their right and responsibility to harm little kids?

The vast majority of all forms of child abuse happens inside the family. In certain US states (a wee bit under half), corporal punishment in public schools is still legal. 

More on this topic coming soon. 

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

Failing Forward: Into Safe, Loving Arms

I watched as the toddler tumbled down a full flight of stairs.  I held my breath a bit while his Dad went down to retrieve him, we all did.

Will he be OK?

Kids make mistakes – a lot of them. Parents make a lot of mistakes too. 

The goal of parenting is to embrace and celebrate errors, mistakes, injuries, and failures; turning them into resilience, achievement, optimism, and success. If your child falls while learning to walk:  exude confidence, cheer!, pick them up, dust them off, and set them back on their feet again. 

If they are hurt, take a moment to empathize and reassure.  If they are injured, apply compassionate care and seek medical attention as needed.  No matter what the mistake is, always "set them back on their feet".  Continue to do this for the rest of your life.

There are, however, some critical errors that do need to be prevented.  For example, it's not beneficial to children to experience traumatic brain injuries, get hit by a car, or experience death; drowning is not life enhancing.  While we each will weigh out the risks and benefits based on personal perspective, I'm certain we can all agree that some things need to be prevented to the best of our ability.

Risk-Benefit Analysis

What to worry about, what not to worry about? How do you decide? There is a straight-forward risk-benefit analysis that can be applied to parental decisions and children's activities. We each must weigh out these choices on our own, but it's sensible to have accurate information about risk and benefit to start with. 

If the risk is high and the benefit low, skip the activity. If the risk is low and the benefit is high, go for it.

Legality, ethics, morals, all fall into the risk category.  If an activity is illegal, unethical, or immoral this pushes the risk assessment up.

Mitigating Risk

We all want our children to reap the maximum benefit of being engaged in a range of healthy activities as they grow up, while minimizing the potential risks.

Examples:

• Bike riding is beneficial, but there is some risk involved. Wearing a helmet maintains all the benefit while reducing the risk.
• Snowboarding and skiing are both beneficial outdoor activities, but they do come with some risks. We can mitigate the risk by having our children wear helmets, take lessons to increase competency, and by keeping them off terrain they are not skilled enough to tackle.
• Soccer is a team sport with risks and benefits. We can support participation in soccer safely and advise against heading the ball.

Your child's brain is critical for thinking: learning, problem-solving, and decision-making; not for hitting things with. The risk of head injury while engaged in any of the above activities is real. Head injury can lead to contusions, fractures, eye injuries, concussions, permanent brain damage, or even, in rare cases, death.*

Keep in mind that your child's brain governs everything in her life -- all current and future potential, opportunity, and success.

There is no benefit happening on the soccer field or other sports activities that is worth risking your child's brain health.

Basic Facts

• It is impossible for a child to live without making and experiencing errors, mistakes, injuries, and failures.
• It is impossible for a child to grow in the absence of errors, mistakes, injuries, and failures.
• Errors, mistakes, injuries, and failures are critical and necessary to healthy development.
• It is impossible to be a parent without making and experiencing errors, mistakes, injuries, and failures.

Given the above, I  recommend judicious, careful, thoughtful, and pro-active parenting; intentional parenting that is neither overly protective nor overly restrictive or critical of errors, mistakes, injuries, and failures.

Harsh, restrictive parenting is a high risk-low benefit activity.

Proactive Parenting

The risk of critical errors can be reduced by providing proactive, anticipatory guidance early and often.  Proactive, anticipatory guidance is knowing about the challenges ahead and preparing children to have good knowledge and the necessary skills ahead of time, before they will encounter any given challenge. Knowledge and skills take time to develop.  Proactive parenting initiates the teaching and skill development process well in advance of when the need will arrive.

Teaching begins at birth, in developmentally appropriate ways.  Many parents are not comfortable or knowledgeable in discussing some things with children and often end up trying to increase control over adolescent behavior far too late, often after the fact.

I watched a toddler tumble down a full flight of stairs recently.  The dad had declined the advice of the elders in the room to move the toddler away from the stairs.  Down he went.  Dad hurried down to retrieve his crying son.  I think we all held our breath for a bit, waiting hopefully to see that he was alright.  The big bruise on the boy's head was readily apparent as they returned to the top of the stairs. His first head injury?  An event for the baby book?

Important note: Don't make up a risk assessment based on some sort of intuitive sense of how dangerous something is.  People chronically misjudge real risk. Do the research.  The Dad above who allowed his teetering toddler to wobble precariously near the top of the un-gated stairs was exercising poor judgement. All the elders knew this and tried to offer guidance.  The likelihood that a toddler will tip and the injury risk of falling down the stairs is real  (Child Injured on Stairs Every 6 Minutes), but there is very little if any benefit to allowing the precarious teetering. The child learns nothing of value in this scenario.  I can only hope the father did.  The risk of injury falling down the stairs is high, the benefit is very low or non-existent.

Trust & Faith (Although important, I moved this to a separate post. Click link to see discussion on trust and faith elsewhere.)

Given the absolute inevitability of errors, mistakes, and failures … the only reasonable parenting option is to embrace and celebrate them as learning and growth producing opportunities.

• Life is a practice-to-mastery activity.  Only through practice do we get better.
• Punishment may suppress unwanted behaviors, at best, and only temporarily.  It never teaches what to do.
• Studying and celebrating mistakes compels learning and success. What went wrong?  What might work better?
• Parents grow as parents by learning from their mistakes.  What went wrong?  What will work better next time?
• Children can grow by learning from their mistakes. What went wrong?  What might work better?
• Learning from mistakes requires self-reflective analysis: what happened, what went wrong? What might work better next time?

When children fail, they should fall into the safe, loving arms of parents who will dust them off, help them get back up again, provide some guidance, and send them back out into the world ready to go again, and again, and again.

Try it out and see how it works. If it doesn't work well, analyze the outcome.  What went wrong?  What might work better next time?  Do I need to practice this more or try something new?

Celebrate both successes and failures, trials and tribulations, wins and losses. Celebrate life.

Printable Version (includes Trust & Faith)

Additional Resources: 

Failing Forward: Turning Mistakes Into Stepping Stones for Success, by John C. Maxwell

* Head injuries. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11347686      

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

Developing Character Strength (part 1)

Character strength is required in order to overcome the obstacles, challenges, and hardships of life.
 
No life goes unchallenged, is free from hurdles and hardship.  As parents, it is our purpose to endow our children with the skills, characteristics, and values they will need, not just to survive periods of intense difficulty, but to be ready and able to rise to the occasion.
 
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Many parents understand this.  However, some parents believe they must subject their children to hardship and drive them relentlessly as preparation. 

I disagree with this perspective on parenting.

Note: All of these blog posts are based on case compilations involving 100s of the children and families I've worked with over the years. 

A safe, secure attachment and a safe and loving home is the strongest foundation for success in life.

Parents do not prepare children for hardship by being harsh or cruel to them.  Parents prepare children for hardships by providing a safe, loving environment at home; by gently and intentionally instilling the necessary values and nurturing the character strengths that will be required to face the challenges of the outside world.

It's the challenges of life that provide children with the opportunities to hone character, values, and skills; not the hardships imposed at home.  

At the end of each day, we come home to a safe, loving environment in order to recover speedily from the challenges faced in the world and prepare to go back out again. 

Love nurtures successful children.  Cruelty only weakens and depletes.

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

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

The Tragedy of 'No' (Draft)

Draft

The “No” Word 

As many parents have pointed out, the word "no" can create an avalanche of horribly cascading dysregulation, and not just among toddlers.  A toddler's tantrum can be taxing, although sometimes cute, but a toddler's tantrum is never as difficult or as dangerous as the tantrum 'tweens and teens can throw. 

A 'tween's tantrum can become a property destroying rampage; and anything a tween can do, a teen can double-down on.    

Note: All of these blog posts are based on case compilations involving 100s of children and families that I've worked with over the years.   

Mom of an 11 year old: My son can go from zero to tantrum in the blink of an eye.  

me: What's the trigger?   

Mom: When he hears the word "no".  

me: What's the tantrum look like?  

Mom: Oh, it's hell on wheels.  He swears, tips over furniture, breaks things, threatens me, slams doors, punches holes in his bed room walls."

me: What did you say "no" to?

Mom: He wanted more juice .... 

Special note:  No, a "whooping" won't help.  I'll explain another time.

There are three basic rules for the "no" word.

~ Rule #1) If you say it, you have to mean it and make it stick.

~ Rule #2) Don't say it if you don't mean it.

~ Rule #3) If you say it but don't really mean it, ignore rule #1. 

Wait, what? Why ditch rule #1?  Doesn't my kid just have to learn to accept a simple "no"?  Yes, she does.  How many years have you been trying?  How's it going so far? 

If you are happy with the way things are and want to persist along your current path, carry on.  

If you want to try something different, read on.

The reasons we ditch #1.

First, if we said "no" when we did not mean it, saying it was our mistake, not the child's.  We can own the mistake, take responsibility, and work to fix the problem.   

Second, it's just pragmatic. The tantrum is not worth living through.  There is no truly important issue on the table worth tipping the entire family and household over.    

Most importantly, teens, tweens, and younger children who still tantrum tend to be (no, not brats) ... cognitively inflexible. It's a neurological thing.   

Their brains gets stuck.   They need to learn new skills.  

They can have tremendous difficulty shifting mental sets: transitioning from one activity to another; transitioning from a preferred to non-preferred activity; adapting to changing plans, circumstances; etc.  

Stress can make people even more inflexible and life, if nothing else, is highly stressful to kids who are cognitively inflexible.    

Adult inflexibility is not a helpful response in the moment.  It does not role model flexibility. In other words, adult stubbornness teaches and reinforces child stubbornness.  Adult inflexibility supports and encourages child inflexibility.

The adults are responsible for leading by example; to model flexibility. 

Try to meet inflexibility with flexibility, a maladaptive response with an adaptive response.  Role model the adaptive opposite. The opposite of inflexibility is flexibility.

So, what happened to rule #1 above? 

Reserve the word "no" for situations that matter.  

If your 8 year old wants to camp-out in the living room, say yes.  If he asks if he can build a fire pit in the middle of the floor, "no" makes perfect sense.  Or, if your 12 year old asks if she can drive the car down to the store, "no" makes sense. 

These are logical, hard "no" situations.  Safety is at stake.  You say "no" and make it stick.  It's hard to argue with and it really matters.  

There is always room for some skilled finesse in how you say "no", but "no" is the only possible answer in these situations.

You might say, "camping out in the living room is so much fun, but, hmmm, having a fire in the living room might turn out badly.  How about if we make the fire in the back yard?"

This is saying "no", then suggesting (redirecting the child's brain to) a better idea. 

You can say "no" firmly, but empathically.  

Example, "sorry, Buddy, absolutely no to the fire in the living room.  It's not safe.  Our house will burn down." 

Logical "no"s make sense. Kids can understand them even if they do not like them.  

On the other hand,

• Casual "no"s
• Kneejerk "no"s
• Habitual "no"s
• Convenience "no"s

... all tend to be fairly arbitrary.  They don't make sense and can be infuriating. Kids know they don't make sense.  Parents know they don't make sense. It's a no-win situation.  

Tween arriving home from school: "Mom, can I have juice?"

Mom: "no, it's too close to dinner."

Bam!  The tantrum hits in a great explosion.  Swears fly, the book bad soars across the room, smashing the lamp; tween stomps off, slamming doors and crashing around.    

Immediately, Mom knows her  mistake.  This is just not worth fighting about.  What to do, what to do?     

Arbitrary rules and enforcement can be infuriating, not just to children.  Adults get frustrated with arbitrary rules and enforcement.            

There are options. 

Think for a moment about what you really mean before speaking.  Instead of "no, not today", try "yes, we can do that tomorrow (or this weekend, etc)."

Think about how you frame your response.  If you are not sure, be honest.  For example, "hmmmm, I'm not sure.  Let me think about it for a few minutes."  Doing this models thinking things through. Ask a few clarifying questions: how much, how long, what's your plan?  

If you say "no" then try to make it stick but eventually give in to the tantrum, you have sabotaged your authority.  If you say "no" to a situation that does not matter, you come across as thoughtlessly arbitrary ... and sabotaged your authority.   

It’s better if you only say “no” when you really mean “no”. 

If you do say 'no" when you do not mean it, do be open to changing you mind, if possible, when your child uses positive verbal reasoning skills to explain her perspective.

Allowing yourself to being “persuaded” by your child when he uses positive verbal reasoning skills is a good way to help him develop a sense that verbal reasoning skills are valuable and can be used effectively.

Using verbal reasoning skills is the positive opposite adaptive behavior to tantrums and misbehavior.  This is what we want to help our children practice more of.  More verbal reasoning, fewer, less severe tantrums. 

Verbal reasoning is a primary life skill.

Interpreting Behavior

You can't. Don't do it.

Ok, so we can a little bit, to a point. Some behavioral gestures are so common, like smiling, laughing, etc., that we can safely infer meaning.

But, if we go past the basic observation, we can also get our selves into some pretty deep trouble ... pretty quickly ... by over reaching - interpreting more complex behaviors, one's that matter a bit more.

We can see that a client is angry, but we cannot know what specifically she is angry about -- even if we observe a conflict in action. The client may have been angry about something that happened early in the day, last week, a few years ago, and / she may be trauma reactive (more on this another time), and then brought her pre-existing condition into a current situation.

Note: We all bring our pre-existing condition into current situations.

The problem with interpreting behavior is ... it requires us to become psychics, to read minds. We can observe a behavior, but we cannot know what it means without asking the child, who may or may not know.

We all try to interpret behavior. It's like a behavioral staff hobby. But, it's pretty disrespectful to interpret behavior without any input from the client / child and ... we are most often wrong.

An observed behavior is like an ambiguous situation.

We observe it but we don't have all the facts, the whole story, then we make up a story about what we think is happening. This is the same thing that happens when psychologists give projective tests, like the Rorschach or Thematic Apperception Test (TAT). Subjects are asked to look at an ink blot or picture and tell what they see in the ambiguous image. Observing behavior is like peering into an ink blot or TAT image. We often project our own stuff into the behavior and make up a story about what we think we see.

We even do it with pictures of animals.  Most people who looked a the cat image above had some inkling ideas about what the cat is thinking flickering through their mind.  It's that automatic. But, we cannot possibly know what the cat is thinking. Go ahead and try it, if you did not before.  Scroll back up and look into the cat's eyes, examine it's posture.  What happens to your mind when you do?

Really good behavioral observationists know the limits of interpretation. They resist the temptation to over-reach.

It's best to observe the behavior then suspend decision-making about what it means until further information is obtained.  We might be able to see a look of anger written onto a child's face, but is it anger, concentration, determination ... ?  We will need to ask.

Asking the child is a really good place to start.
  
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A cautionary note: if the behavior we observe is dangerous, if it poses a risk of significant and imminent harm to self or others, we must act. The key operational words here are: significant and imminent. The potential for harm has to be large enough and likely to happen very soon in order to warrant the risk of a direct intervention. This can be a difficult judgment call. If the risk is not imminent, it's best to slow the process down and wait.  If the risk of harm is not significant, it's better to utilize de-escalation techniques to try to avert a behavioral crisis. Behavioral staff should always adhere strictly to the policies and procedures manual at their work place. Safety and well-being are always the highest priority. 

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

Bad Words! Bad!

No, not swear words.

There are certain words we use to describe children and their behavior that are counter-productive; one of the most destructive of which is the word "manipulative".

Bad words!  Bad!  Words matter.  To keep one's head straight, it's important to think about and describe behaviors in a constructive manner that makes success more likely.  

Using the wrong words makes success less likely.

Have you ever had a phone call from someone trying to sell you something, during which you felt like you were being manipulated?

If yes, what did you do?  

I hang up, cut the call off . Bam!  Discussion over. Problem solved.

As parents and mental health professionals, the last thing we ever want to do during our work with a child is to "hang up on them".  We can take breaks, this is sensible, but we never want to cut the conversation off.  

Try this.  Re-conceptualize "manipulative" behavior as a maladaptive behavior to get a need met.  

By changing the way we describe the behavior, we also change our relationship with the behavior. 

When we think of a behavior as a maladaptive effort to get a need met, we feel compelled to wonder -- what is the need and what would be an adaptive way to get that need met?

This is what parenting and treatment are all about, the process of teaching adaptive skills to children so that they can cope with and navigate the complexities of life in a better, healthier, more effective manner.

And, yes, we all want our needs met.  Let's not be 'judgy' about this. The challenge is to get needs met in an adaptive manner.      

When we think of behavior as manipulative, we feel a strong need to disengage, withdraw from the child (see Counter-Transference).  When we think of behaviors as maladaptive, it leads us to ask ... how can we help this child and what would be the adaptive opposite behavior?   

What we really want, is to keep the communication open, to figure out what the need is and how to teach, train, encourage more adaptive ways for the child to get his needs met.   

It's best to be very careful what terms we use to describe behavior.  

Always respond to maladaptive behaviors in an adaptive way.

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