Family Matters

Posts Tagged ‘control’

Last Sunday, Ronit ran a parenting workshop and I came in the afternoon to help her pack. When I arrived, she was still talking to the parents about rules and boundaries and mentioned the way she used “family rules” to avoid conflicts with the kids.

That reminded me of the time when I wanted to register for a software engineering course at the local university. The course I wanted was popular and all the places were taken, so I rang during my lunch break to ask to be put on the waiting list.

“I’m sorry, Sir, but you’ll have to come in person and fill out the waiting list form”, the administrator told me.

“Can you please just take my details and put me on the list?”

“I’m sorry, Sir, but it’s university policy”, she said.

Boy, was I pissed off at this. I was spewing for weeks afterwards. It may have even contributed to my later stomach ulcer. Or not.

Over the years that followed, more and more companies structured their operations in such a way that clients could not get their way. Not easily, anyway. When I rang Customer Service, I would bump into First Line staff who were basically trained parrots. The term “company policy” rang in my ears more and more often. It was infuriating.

But at some point, Ronit and I learned how to use the same trick to our advantage as parents. Oh, sweet revenge!

Motivation seems like a very tricky thing for many people, parents included. Motivational speakers make a great living out of presenting it as a mysterious art, mastered by the few, that will bring you endless prosperity if you “get it”.

One main challenge with motivation is that it is mostly subconscious. We find ourselves wanting to do or to achieve something, but when the time comes to actual do it or take steps towards achieving it, we snooze. This is frustrating and reinforces a negative identity of being incapable, undisciplined losers. We punish ourselves, blame our parents or circumstances, and try the next thing, but…

Motivating other people is further complicated by the involvement of more than one subconscious mind. We want someone else to do or to achieve something, so we try to communicate that to them. What happens all too often is that our message gets distorted – lost in translation – and they end up doing or achieving something else. This, in turn, creates frustration and bad vibes on both sides.

Many hierarchies rely on a “chain of command”. This includes schools, government departments, armies, religious organizations and corporations. Each person in the organization has an official title, an official job description and a set of official authorities, which they use as the main method of motivating other people. If you have ever worked in a hierarchical system, you know this does not always produce the desired outcome and that very often, what happens in the organization is very different from the organization’s stated vision and mission.

Regrettably, many families also function in a top-down manner, sort of like an army unit. One parent is the General or Admiral, the other is the Second-in-Command (the ranks may change for different circumstances) and they children rank anywhere from Foot Soldier to Sergeant, depending on their position in the family and their level of responsibility.

I am a very busy person. I plan every day ahead. I know exactly how long it takes me to get from one place to another and I know how much time I am going to spend in any one place – at work, at university, at home, with friends, at dinner and on the bus. It is not because I need to feel a sense of control (maybe just a tiny bit), but in order for me to be able to squeeze in all of the things I want to achieve in a day, I need to be well organized.

I love being with friends and can accommodate almost any arrangement given enough time. I am always happy to rearrange my schedule to meet friends and spend some quality time. I also live at home with my parents and it is only fair that I share my plans with them so they can plan accordingly.

My timetable is pretty full almost four weeks in advance, so in order for me to make plans with friends, I need to know when and where we are meeting at least a few days beforehand. It helps me with my own sense of organization and allows me to be able to plan my time.

In the last couple of years, I have added more things to my schedule and my need for concrete plans seems to have become greater. A few of my friends have even commented on it, saying I needed to “live a little” or “be in the moment” or plain “don’t be so needy” when I have insisted on a definite time.

This got me thinking that maybe I was taking my time management a little bit too far. Maybe I need to be a little less uptight. Not everyone is as busy as I am and not everyone needs to be as organized as me, so I decided to cut everyone some slack.

Parenting can be really challenging at times. Any parent will tell you that sometimes the challenge is so big they feel out of control – not control over your kids, but control over your reactions to what your kids do or do not do. After all, you are the “captain” and it is your job to run the “ship”.

The discussion about discipline covers many topics – the rights of the parents, the strictness of the discipline, the collaboration between parents (or lack thereof), the alignment of values between home and school (or lack thereof) – the list of philosophical discussions is very long. I have found out through my workshops that parents have only that much ability to discuss the philosophical issues of parenting and most of the time, they just ask, “Ronit, what can I actually do?”

In the first years of my work with parents, I worried about that. I said to myself that without understanding the philosophy behind things, they would not be able to manage the next challenge, but I was wrong, because parents can be awesome even if they cannot explain their theories and even if they do not have a deep understanding of the human mind. Some things just make sense to them and if they try them and they work, they just continue doing them successfully.

Today, I want to talk about a parenting technique that has worked for me like magic. It has helped me a lot not to get into arguments with my kids or with the kids I have coached.

I learned this technique from my dad – not from him being a role model of it, but from him being a role model of the opposite…

I get asked many times about disciplining kids. I hate the word “discipline”, because I believe kids do not need to be disciplined, they need to be loved and cared for, supported and encouraged. Discipline has nothing to do with being happy – not with being a happy kid and definitely not with being a happy parent. In fact, parents with discipline questions are unhappy and know their kids are unhappy too.

I guess most of the parents who ask me about discipline really mean they want to know how to help their kids behave in a way that will make life easier for them. After all, kids learn their behavior from the people around them. The challenge that people have with discipline is that instead of it being a method of guiding kids towards the desired behavior, it is used as a way to control them. But kids are very smart and when you use controlling methods to manipulate them, they quickly start using the same techniques to manipulate you, which is very annoying.

At the beginning of their life, all kids are helpless. Therefore, all parents quickly develop the habit of doing things for them – feeding them, cleaning them, dressing them and keeping them warm. Unintentionally, this also fulfils the parents’ need for certainty and control – the baby will be OK as long as the parents do things properly and the baby does nothing to mess things up.

I once said (OK, I have said it hundreds of time) that kids believe everything you tell them. The younger they are, the truer this statement is. Parents do not know they are lucky that their young kids do not question them as much as they should. In fact, because kids do not doubt what their parents say, I would like to encourage all the parents reading this post to take advantage of this phenomenon and plant good thoughts and beliefs in your kids’ little minds. So if you are a parent and you want to learn how to plant good thoughts in your children’s mind, buckle up and enjoy the ride.

Sarcasm is the weapon of disempowered people, who use information to regain some of their missing feeling of control. To find out when you are using sarcasm in your life and overcome it, here are some things you can do…

It is amazing how many people struggle with life. Life has become so hectic and difficult for most people that many can only focus on what is going to happen today, tomorrow, next month and maybe, only maybe, next year.

Kids’ eating habits are very important for parents and it is very frustrating to prepare food and find out your kids do not like it.

If you look at this issue from an emotional point of view, it has to do with control. Your kids are exercising control over what and when they eat, while you try to keep that control. Once you look at it this way, though, the solution is simple.