Tag Archives: blame

“Wait, aren’t I the parent here?” Using Your Parent Authority

The human child remains with a parent until the child is capable of making his own decisions about his health, safety, and well-being. The parent holds authority over this child until that time — usually through the teen years.

That’s the reason for parent authority. It is not to control the child to be who the parent wants or to demand obedience to make life easier for the parent. This leads to power struggles and rebellion or looking to others for authority and approval.

Your job as parent is to insure that your child does what she shouldn’t be expected to do on her own – simply because she’s too young.

Rick Trinkner of the University of New Hampshire has researched the types of families who raise self-confident, self-controlled, respectful children. Trinkner says,

When children consider their parents to be legitimate authority figures, they trust the parent and feel they have an obligation to do what their parents tell them to do. This is an important attribute for any authority figure to possess, as the parent does not have to

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January ’18 Q&A – Sharing & Hogging, School Resistance and The Dark Side

Sharing and Hogging

Q. My three-year-old has a very big issue with sharing and hogging. She has an 18 mo. old sister who is not allowed to touch anything. I understand that my daughter still is having a hard time with her arrival, she has to share me, she doesn’t get to have me all to herself, she doesn’t even get to read books alone with me and on top of it all I am three times as tired, have to do a lot more chores, can’t play with her at the drop of the hat, and she doesn’t get to have all of my adoration just for her. I still feel really guilty about that. At first I thought, fair enough the toys were hers, so I opted to buy my youngest toys for herself. I told my eldest and explained before we bought anything that I was buying for her sister so she doesn’t have to touch hers. She agreed but once the toy is bought she wants to have it and play with it. She gets so

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Empowering Boys and Girls in a Culture of Sexual Harassment

The news has been shocking to say the least. But I believe the tide is turning. Powerful men are being called to the table and women are feeling strength in numbers. How did we get here? Or rather, if this is the beginning of the end of centuries of male conquest and domination, how do we raise our children to keep the momentum going?

It comes trippingly off the tongue for us to encourage and admire the strength and competition of boys and the delicate, sensitive nature of girls. Even when we consciously want it to be different, unconscious norms take over. We’ve been this way for eons; no wonder it’s hard to change habits.

Without knowing the sex of a baby, one dressed in blue will get comments like, He’s so handsome, look at those muscles, he’s all boy; and one dressed in pink will hear, She’s so pretty, look at those delicate fingers, Dad you’d better watch out!

We don’t realize how readily we set boys and girls apart giving them different messages that bombard from all

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To Give In or Let Go: That is the Question
Power Struggles

I was stuck in power struggles with my daughter because I didn’t want to give in. If I did, I feared she would have all the power. She would learn that anytime she wanted her way, she could just dig in until she outlasted me. I couldn’t have that. So I dug in too. Until I understood how “letting go” could change our relationship.

My daughter was a won’t take no for an answer/won’t be told what to do kind of a kid. It’s hard to accept a child like this until you understand it as inborn personality rather than manipulative, oppositional behavior that must be eradicated. But that’s what I tried to do so I couldn’t give in, I couldn’t let her get away with it. As long as I believed I had to train her out of this opposition, I had to maintain control. Anything else felt like giving in.

Contrary to my initial opinion, letting go was not the same as giving in. Letting go was actually in my control. It was my choice to

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Building Defensive Behavior One Brick at a Time

Don’t do that! You know you’re not supposed to….

What do I have to do to get you to listen to me?

Stop hitting your sister. Cut it out.

How many times do I have to tell you?!

Brendan!!

Quiet down, you’re going to be the death of me!

(read all with tone of frustration and blame)

Be the child on the receiving end of these remarks. What happens to you when hear the accusations? Do you tense up, look away, run off, shut down? Where does your focus go? Depending on your temperament and how you have learned to avoid trouble, you choose a defense mechanism. So when that familiar tone emanates from your parent, you immediately hide behind your wall—your defense of choice. You do not put your focus on the effects of your behavior (a hurt sister, a tired mother), you put your focus on yourself and strategize how to keep from getting in trouble.

We teach our children early to defend themselves—unbeknownst to us—and then get furious when they do, claiming they never take responsibility for

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Self-Acceptance Must Come Before Change

Sick of making New Year’s resolutions only to forget what they were a month down the road? Why is it that we start the year with all good intentions to get organized, lose weight, be a better parent, relax more, join that gym, etc. only to once again fail so we can beat ourselves up and tell self-deprecating jokes about that resolution that never came to pass?

The reason is because we set ourselves goals rather than taking a hard look below to see what we need in order to do what we want. Goals are external motives and work only as long as our internal intentions are connected to the goals. As the saying goes, our hearts must be in it. But it’s not really our hearts that drive our follow-through. It’s what lies in our unconscious—what we really believe about ourselves, and what accomplishing that goal would really mean.

Dr. Michael Bader of the Institute for Change said in his article on Huffington Post, “The reason that New Year’s resolutions don’t work is that we have unconscious

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The Pause that Refreshes

Your child reacts uncontrollably to something you have said. You either least expect it, highly disapprove of it, are hurt by it, or it reinforces what a terrible job you think you are doing in raising this brat. What’s your immediate reaction?

Let me guess. You react uncontrollably back. You yell, you blame, and you say and do things you swore you never would and regret it. Why do we do this when we know it doesn’t work? First because we’re human and human nature retaliates when confronted, afraid, and angry. The trick is not to feel confronted, afraid or angry—then you can respond in control of yourself.

This is where the Pause comes in. Stop yourself from doing anything. Breathe. Walk away, go for a walk, take a bath, sleep on it—take a break. This is the hardest step. “She can’t talk to me that way and get away with it! I’d be letting her know she won. She’s got to be taught a lesson or she’ll never learn!”

So let me try to convince you that none of

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Lessons from “Chinese mothering”

Never have I experienced such a collective button being pushed than with Amy Chua’s revelatory story of how she raised her two girls the Chinese way. Is it the threat we feel when she throws western parenting under the bus? This is what happens to anyone of us when we feel blamed, disdained, or put down. We get defensive and either take it in as defeat or fight back. Exactly what our children do when we blame them. We are clearly getting our hackles up as she puts down what we do, especially what we have doubts about doing.

I just finished the book, and I must say I found her unabashedly honest about her dictatorial methods that would make the hair on anyone’s neck stand straight up—methods she says would be seen even as illegal in the western culture. I have a hard time believing that most Chinese mothers would say the things that Chua said to her girls. Her story points out many things we can learn from. Her girls are as different as night and day attesting

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