Parenting Styles

Last year, my 21-year-old daughter Eden started studying Psychology. She said she wanted to study Psychology since she was 10 years old. Having a mother and an aunt in Special Education, another aunt in psychology and Social Work and being inspired by our amazing psychologist friend probably all contributed to her desires to learn about the human mind.

Whenever I talk about Eden and her desire to study Psychology (by the way, at this stage, she still just wants to study and being a psychologist is not on her radar yet), it takes me back to a research project I did during my own studies, titled “Why do people choose to study Special Education?”

Besides finding out why people chose Special Education, I also discovered some interesting relationships between teachers, Special Education teachers, social workers and psychologists, which I now use as models for parenting styles.

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What are you made of?

From time to time, being so involved with parents and parenting, people send us stories and video clips about special parents who truly go above and beyond what most people would do for their kids. It makes me wonder about what parents are made of.

Imagine you are in the delivery room, having your baby boy. You are overjoyed, until the doctor examines him. You already know something is not right and then you hear this, “I’m terribly sorry, but your son was born with no eyes and with a certain debilitating problem in the joints that will make his movements very limited”.

If you are feeling the urge to get up and run for your life, away from the enormous burden of dependence, struggle and hopelessness, please stop for the next 6 minutes and see how a special pair of parents, especially the father, have handled such a fate and turned it around into the most inspiring story of dedication and triumph over the odds.

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How to Praise Your Kids (5)

For over 24 years, I have been focusing on emotional strength and I believe this is the key to any type of success in life. I think rewarding kids for emotional stretches is the best way to praise them. As a special education teacher, working with kids who struggle and kids who are gifted, praising for effort was always one of my main tools. Remember, it is not the success that counts, but the emotional stretch. Although it may be a cliché, “Good try” has real power.

Research on emotional intelligence has found that persistence is a powerful ingredient in any success formula. So how do you teach persistence? My answer is “Reward every attempt and praise it, regardless of the outcome”. As I said, in special education, it is a major teaching tool and I have countless examples. Here is one from my own home that happened recently.

This post is part 5 of 5 in the series How to Praise Your Kids

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How to Praise Your Kids (4)

You can see them on the sports filed or in a lesson. They are smart kids, but they need constant reminders of their abilities and reassurance that they are OK. I often wonder how come those kids are so good, so smart and so capable, no one else around them can compete with their skills and abilities, yet are still very competitive.

It is because over-praising can backfire.

An analysis of over 150 studies about praise discovered there is a risk in praising. Being praised caused students to be less persistent, to need more eye contact with the teacher and to be less confident when answering a question (you know those uncertain answers that sound like questions). Students who were praised a lot were less independent in their schoolwork.

This post is part 4 of 5 in the series How to Praise Your Kids

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How to Praise Your Kids (3)

In 1969, Nathaniel Branden wrote that self-esteem is the single most important factor in people’s life and people need do all they can to achieve positive self-esteem. Later, as it happens sometimes in the psychology field, the self-esteem movement took this idea to the extreme. Every kind of feedback was suddenly considered as criticism and swapped with “rewards” to build self-esteem.

However, this sometimes created over-rewarding and achieved nothing, if not the opposite.

This post is part 3 of 5 in the series How to Praise Your Kids

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How to Praise Your Kids (2)

Yesterday, I wrote about Prof. Carol Dweck’s research on the difference between praising effort vs. praising natural talent. I encourage you to read about this research (if you have not already), because it highlights some of the issues with the impact of praising on kids’ self-esteem.

One big question that came out this research was “What can parents and schools do to still build kids’ self-esteem and enhance their performance (possible after the “mistake” of telling the kids how smart they are)?

Dr. Lisa Blackwell, Dweck’s assistant, conducted a research to improve kids’ math scores using the knowledge and information gathered in her work with Dweck.

This post is part 2 of 5 in the series How to Praise Your Kids

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How to Praise Your Kids (1)

A few weeks ago, when my 8-year-old daughter Noff brought her “Alien House” from school, we were all very impressed. It was a tall 3-story box house, with lights (because her alien was afraid of the dark) and she had planned and executed her plan at school and had received an A+ for the assignment. The masterpiece stood proudly on top of our fridge for over 3 weeks and during that time, everyone who passed next to it, including her older siblings, praised her and said, “Noff, your alien house is just wonderful”, “Well done”, “You’re so creative” and “You’re so smart”.

What do you think? Did we do the right thing? Should kids be praised? If so, how should kids be praised for best results?

This post is part 1 of 5 in the series How to Praise Your Kids

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Make a list: Events that Have Shaped Your Life

Events in our life shape our thinking, beliefs and overall attitude. When I ask people, “Please share the things that have shaped your life”, they come up with big things, mainly traumatic events that were hard to ignore.

I can relate to this too, because when I worked on my own list, the first things that came up were the big things – moving house, changing city, changing country, the birth of my kids, loss and painful failures. I did have some positive, wonderful, exciting events too, like the birth of my kids and winning prizes and awards, but there were not as many of them as there were hits.

Focusing on the big things is natural. However, I believe that the small things, the ones we neglect to pay attention to, may contribute a lot to how we conduct ourselves in a way that we hardly recognize.

I’m saying this is because very often, when my clients bring up their past and examine it, they talk about small incidents that were big for them at the time, even out of proportion.

This post is part 17 of 49 in the series Make a List

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Motivating Kids (19)

Motivating kids is an art. Unfortunately, having kids and parenting them is not enough to master this art. Motivating your kids requires taking responsibility for your kids’ motivation and making a commitment to keep learning and improving your motivational skills to an art form.

This post is part 19 of 19 in the series Motivating Kids

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Change for Happiness

You may have noticed this about yourself or the people around you, but being happy can be a bit of a challenge. Sure, there are moments of joy and elation, but they do not seem to last very long and then we go back into, well, “normal” life.

Why is this? Better yet, once we know why this is, how can we benefit from this knowledge to become happier?

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