Family MattersPractical Parenting Blog

Approval Trap (1): Birth to Adulthood

This entry is part 1 of 4 in the series The Approval Trap

It was a lovely day on my life coaching deck and Talia came over wearing her gorgeous bright-colored dress, but it did not help lighten up her spirit. She was very sad. I had known her for a while and admired her deeply. Talia was an example of perfection for me. She was beautiful, she was friendly, she was knowledgeable, she was in a relationship, she had a perfect job and she was amazingly smart. She played musical instruments (yes, more than one), already held several degrees. While other people struggled to manage their time, she had worked full time and completed 6 university courses with high scores. She had traveled the world. And she had done all that by the age of 25.

Still, Talia was a very sad and tormented woman, because nothing she did seemed to please her mother.

Talia was in what I call the approval trap.

Unfortunately, we are all born into that trap without a choice. The way things are structured when we are young, we seek our parents’ approval to learn about life and build our confidence. Living every day of our life around them makes them almighty gods for us and we do everything within our tiny power to get their approval.

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How Organizations Can Stop Bullying

This entry is part 21 of 35 in the series Bullying

Bullying at work is a big problem in our society. In fact, many employees are abused regularly as part of their job description. The owner of the business, organization, farm or factory rules everyone and often bullies them on a regular basis. I take my hat off to those courageous people (past and present) who fight for justice and do all they can to prevent this bullying, because it is so widespread and “built in”.

As an organization, the first thing you must understand is that with every bullying incident in your workplace, you lose productivity and, as a result, money. It is in your best interest to stop it and as soon as possible. It may not be easy, but it is a must. In workplaces where there is bullying there are many problems that quickly affect the “bottom line”.

Some companies even close up because they are unable to manage their people properly.

Workplace bullying can be caused by individual factors and cultural factors. It is very important for every organization to understand those factors and address them as a matter of course.

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Raising Hope … in Uniform?

This post is about school uniforms, but it is also about how parents make decisions in life, especially those related to their children.

I recently found out that the parent body (called Parents & Citizens in QLD or P&C, Parents & Friends or P&F in other places and Parent-Teacher Association or PTA in the US) at my daughter’s school has the authority to choose the school uniform. There was a group of parents sitting around our dining room table, having brought Noff’s classmates for a Whacky Hair party, and a few of them were involved in the P&C. When I mentioned my views on the school’s over-emphasis of dressing “properly”, give the fairly restrictive and grossly outdated uniform code, one of them said, “Then come to the P&C meeting and propose to change the uniform”.

“What?!”

“Yeah, the parents can change the uniform if they want to, so if you convince enough people at the meeting to change, go for it”.

So my first lesson was that we parents have a lot more authority and influence over what our kids go through than we realize. Having worked long hours away from home while Eden and Tsoof were in primary school, I had never been close enough to the way schools operated and just assumed…

Inspired by my newly-found power, I immediately started to lobby for a new dress code for the school, something more up-to-date the kids will like to wear. This is when I learned about the many ways in which some people defend their views and how irrational they can be.

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How Workplace Bullying Bystanders Can Break the Cycle

This entry is part 20 of 35 in the series Bullying

In the previous chapters, I wrote about how helping the victim at work is a good way to stop bullying in society in general by breaking the cycle of victims becoming bullies who bully other victims and make them bully others too in a futile attempt to regain lost power. The cycle must stop somewhere and this can only be done by courageous people who understand that by helping each of the participants in the game, we can reverse the cycle towards a considerate, supportive, understanding and caring society (can I get an “Amen”?).

In this chapter, I want to offer some tips to help the bystander of workplace bullying. Just to refresh, workplace bullying bystanders are the people who watch others bully and take a stand by participating, encouraging the bully actively or with body language, doing nothing or defending the bullied victim.

As you probably understand, most of the people in our society are bystanders (thank God!) and by watching or being aware, they become either bullies or victims (fearing to defend) themselves. Their help in changing the bullying phenomenon is crucial, because not being directly targeted, they have more power than the victim or the bully and are in a better position to make a difference.

Here is a list of suggestions and tips for workplace bullying bystanders. Sometimes, using a single tip can make a difference in someone’s life. Never underestimate how much power you have to make a difference!

Read How Workplace Bullying Bystanders Can Break the Cycle »

In My Opinion

This entry is part 4 of 4 in the series Excellence

As a parent, you must have found yourself facing a stubborn child who will just not do what you ask of them. No matter what you want – clean your room, do your homework, stop nagging me to go home – kids sometimes seem to insist on doing the exact opposite.

If that is not enough, your partner may suddenly have strange notions of what should be done and how it should be done with money, around the house, in the yard or on vacation. You find yourself wondering if they have “lost the plot” and if you are the only person who can see things clearly.

These sorts of clashes can be very unpleasant and distressing. They also have the nasty habit of escalating to scary proportions very quickly. Whatever you do to make the other side “get it already”, they grow more persistent, until both sides start throwing hurtful comments, calling each other names and absolutely fuming.

Well, I am here to offer another way of looking at things, which is likely to help. But first, a couple of stories.

The Experiment

Last week, Ronit and I watched a movie called The Experiment. It is loosely based on Stanford University’s prison experiment, but instead of students, a group of adults who really need money are promised $1,000 a day for a “perfectly safe” 14-day experiment. They are taken to an isolated warehouse (the real experiment was in a campus basement), where they are divided into Guards and Prisoners. The guards are given simple rules and told to respond “commensurately”, which means “in proportion to the offense”, and never to use violence. In the “guard” room, there is a red light that will come on if the experiment has to be terminated.

Read In My Opinion »

How to Stop Workplace Bullying (2)

This entry is part 19 of 35 in the series Bullying

Stopping the bullying at work has a very important impact on the bullying in our society. Many bullies come from bullying homes or are subject to some form of bullying at work and try to regain power by picking on the people around them. It is a cycle we can break by helping each participant in the “game” break their powerless perception.

In the previous chapter of the bullying series, I wrote 30 tips to help the bullying victim at work. Here are the next tips and I am sure that implementing each of them can make a huge difference in your life.

Remember, if you are a bullying victim, you have the power to break the cycle.

Read How to Stop Workplace Bullying (2) »

How to Stop Workplace Bullying

This entry is part 18 of 35 in the series Bullying

Workplace bullying has an enormous impact on other bullying on our society. To gain some power back, workplace-bullying victims search for weaker people in order to take that power from them. They search all around them for any person who appears weaker, even if that person is their partner, family member, friend or child.

If we want to stop bullying completely, we must have a holistic approach to it. We must help everyone involved in bullying, because bullying is a cycle that start with big bullies who feel inferior in some way and bully others to regain their sense of power, which makes their victims feel inferior in some way and bully others to regain their sense of power… can you see the cycle? Let’s stop it!

To stop bullying at work, we can help three entities: the victim, the bystanders (those who witness the bullying) and the organization who is suffering from it directly or indirectly by loss of working days, motivation and productivity. In the upcoming posts, I will write tips to each of these entities and what they can do to stop the workplace bullying. Find out who you are and use these tips to make a difference where you work.

Bullying it is everyone’s business and sometimes, a single tip can make all the difference. You can stop workplace bullying by stopping the bully, but also by changing the behavior of the bullying victim.

Read How to Stop Workplace Bullying »

Labeling Kids

Boy in grass with zombie mask

Labeling is humans’ way of making things easier to deal with, or so they hope. I think it is probably because of our limited language. For example, if you had to pick a color, you might call it blue, but if you check carefully, you would find many shades of blue. In the graphics world, they do not even call it blue. They use numbers. Labeling is our way of understanding that when somebody says, “Oh, I love it when the sky is #87CEEB”, they mean “a medium-light shade of blue”.

I am not against labeling. I use labeling a lot in my work, especially with kids, because it saves a lot of time explaining the range of each label. Instead of saying, “On a scale of 1 to 100 of being scared, you scored 30”, I say, “You are very cautious and that should be really appreciated”.

But what happens when professionals become too attached to the labels they give kids?

Recently, I watched a video done by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights. I would like to support their cause by encouraging all the parents in the world to watch it and I know you will enjoy.

Read Labeling Kids »

Who’s in Charge, Anyway?

Back in the olden days, kids were punished, flogged and told off by their parents for “misbehaving” or “having no discipline”. The definitions of proper behavior and good discipline were very clear to the parents and everybody else in their community, so they felt justified in applying whatever pressure to control their children and get them back “in line”.

But we no longer live in the olden days.

Nowadays, formal manners and other phony requirements glide off our children like cooking oil off a Teflon pan. As soon as parents start using force to inspire some specific behavior, action or result, modern kids realize they have leverage over their parents in a game of control and power. Moreover, as soon as they are old enough, they get so good at this game, many parents have zero chance of getting what they want and can only go backwards.

Let’s say your kids have a royal mess in their room and you want them to clean it up (or stop watching TV or get off the Internet or whatever). You ask, you ask again, you say it louder, you yell at the top of your voice, you add ultimatums and threats, you hiss, you fume, but nothing works. Promising a reward for doing what you want makes it even worse, because the price keeps going up and still nothing changes.

Read Who’s in Charge, Anyway? »

How to Help Bullying Bystanders (2)

This entry is part 17 of 35 in the series Bullying

In the last bullying post, I wrote 25 tips to help bystanders who are involved in bullying. In the bullying game, there are the bully, the victim and the bystanders. Each of them is very important in eliminating the bullying phenomenon.

The bystanders are the people that watch a bully act and either get themselves involved or not in favor of the bully or the victim. As a reminder, here are the 5 types of bystanders:

* Ring Leaders
* Associates
* Reinforcers
* Outsiders
* Defenders

On average, when another person gets involved to defend a bullying victim, the bullying will stop within 10 seconds. Think about it: 10 seconds are enough for the bully to take a step back and for the situation to improve for everyone. Therefore, I am sure you understand how important it is for us to give power to the defenders (and inspire more of them), because they hold the key to making a big shift in bullying elimination.

Read How to Help Bullying Bystanders (2) »

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