"Yes" parenting

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…

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Kids in Power Prison (2): The great debate

This entry is part 2 of 2 in the series Kids in Power Prison

This is part 2, where you will find out what happened at the camp when I gave the group of student leaders power over their friends.

Boys vs. girls, late group vs. those who came on time, punishment vs. forgiveness. The hot debate lasted for a whole hour, but in the end, did the children pass the power test?

It was scary for me to see how easy it was to fire them up, divide them and move them towards forgetting where they were, who they were and what was important for them. Many of them just surrendered to the feeling of power and control, but not all.

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Kids in Power Prison (1): The prison experiment

This entry is part 1 of 2 in the series Kids in Power Prison

Two months ago, I took a group of kids to a leadership camp for two days. During these two days, we wanted to teach kids to recognize their abilities and take the role of leadership with responsibility.

The kids were awesome, chosen student leaders in Grade 7, which is the last year of primary school here in Queensland, Australia. They came from 5 schools and had been school captains for more than 7 months. As part of their role, they needed to set an example to other kids and help solve relationship problems among the students at their school. They were chosen because they were smart kids, sensitive and with a high sense of justice. According to their principal and teachers, most of them had passed many tests to become leaders, but they were not ready for the test I had for them – The Power Test.

Before I tell you what happened at the camp, I want to tell you about a famous experiment in psychology, the Prison Experiment, which was the inspiration for my character test. I learned a lot from this experiment and even more from running it myself with a group of young kids. I hope you will feel the same.

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Dedicated kids

As a coach who works with parents, I usually meet with those who think kids need to be managed better. Coming from a family where saying good things about your own kids is bragging, it took me a while to get over that and use my kids as inspiration for others, just like they are an inspiration for me.

You see, as a kid, I lacked something that was very important for success in life and only when I found it at the age of 16, my life changed course. My kids have grown up with it. It is called “dedication”.

Dedication is the act of giving yourself totally to a course of action. An oath you give yourself to do something, a commitment or a promise that people make to themselves and/or to others to be true to a course.

This is the story of some great kids who are dedicated and therefore win awards and prizes. In ten years, they will probably not remember all these wins (there are so many of them), but they will still posses that trait so essential to winning in the game of life – dedication.

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Good Parenting is Easy

Go online any day, open your email inbox, read the papers or turn on the television and you are sure to find heaps of parenting advice, all claiming to teach you good parenting. Since you are here, even this blog is full of ideas, stories and tips on how to be the best parent you can be for your kids.

The downside of having so much information and possibly conflicting views on the same issues is that it can quickly become confusing and give you the impression that being a good parent is really hard. In fact, maybe it is so hard you are never going to be good at parenting.

Nonsense.

Good parenting is easy.

It is as easy as … 1, 2. Not even 3, just 1, 2. In parenting, the most important things are love and consistency.

Yes, really.

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Hyperactive Kids

This entry is part 4 of 19 in the series From the Life Coaching Deck

Over many years of work, I have seen many kids whose parents claimed they had ADD (Attention Deficit disorder) and/or ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder) and wanted to know what I thought about giving them Ritalin.

Luckily, I am not a doctor and I do not need to prescribe medication to kids, but when parents want my opinion, I usually say, “Try as many other things as you can before you consider Ritalin”.

In fact, this happened to me again recently.

Luke is a 6-year-old boy who came to see me because he was diagnosed with (are you sitting down?) ADD, ADHD, autism, Asperger Syndrome, ODD (Oppositional Defiant Disorder) and OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). The doctor was pushing the parents hard to put him on Ritalin, but his mom did not like the idea. She changed his diet and said there was a significant improvement at first, but felt that after 6 months of a strict diet, the effects had worn off and he was becoming more agitated and getting into trouble at school again.

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Why Can’t You Do It?

At my current job, I work with a lovely group of ladies, each at a different stage in life. Two of the ladies in the office this week were discussing how their teens seem to question their actions constantly – why they had to buy new boots, where they were going so late at night, etc.

Monica said she came home from a meeting in time to organize dinner for the family and then rush out again to another meeting. She told her girls that all they needed was to wash up afterwards. While she was on her way out, her eldest teen said, “Why do we have to do it? What have you been doing all day? You’re just going out to be with your friends”.

Of course, I have no children of my own just yet, but I have heard this before. Back in the day, it even came out of my own mouth once or twice…

Janet said her eldest was constantly questioning her actions too and that her standard reply was that she did not need to justify herself or her actions.

I beg to differ.

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Un-sense-able teens

During my parenting workshops, I ask the parents to describe the challenges they have with their kids. Parents of teens often excuse all their challenges as the result of their kids reaching the “teen” stage. “You know how teens are”, they say.

During the workshops, we discuss many of our beliefs and how they affect our kids’ behavior and I hear myself saying to parents again and again that the image teens have is worse than their behavior. Teens are considered emotional, insensitive, subject to peer pressure, disrespectful, irresponsible and moody, but what they have is just a bad reputation!

I do not think it is a coincidence that all those teens have parents who are able to see beyond their hair color, their hairstyle, their piercing, their desire to be with friends, their rebellious behavior and their academic achievements. It is not a coincidence at all. It is a formula that works. If you can see beyond what is on the surface, you will raise happy teens and you will be a happy parent.

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Sibling Rivalry

A few weeks ago, we attended a musical competition where my brother and his school band played. It occurred to me that every player in the band had a brother or sister in the crowd, some of whom were very resentful of their sibling up there on the stage. After all, it is hard to be that person in the crowd who misses out on all the attention.

When I was in high school, it was very common to hear stories about brothers and sisters who fought with each other constantly. I heard things like “My brother is so stupid. He’s always in the way” or “My sister is such a terror she never listens”.

Now that I am at university with students who are a little older, they are much more aware of the reasons behind it all, but they still seem to fight and argue a lot with their siblings. When I ask if they get along with their siblings, they reply, “Sure don’t. He hates my guts” or “No way! I can’t stand her”. One of my friends was on such bad terms with her sister she would wish on an almost weekly basis that her sister would hurry up and move out.

It is said that sibling rivalry is influenced by things like parental treatment, birth order, personality and experiences. Apparently, sibling rivalry is particularly strong when one child is gifted.

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Bullying Facts and Myth

Love Shouldn't Hurt written on woman's bare back

This entry is part 1 of 35 in the series Bullying

Bullying is part of every kid’s life, unfortunately. It is estimated that every person bullies someone, is bullied by someone or witnesses someone else being bullied during childhood.

I am writing about bullying because some of my work with kids, although it seems related to academic achievements and learning difficulties, is overcoming emotional baggage that starts with some form of bullying.

To my surprise, most kids do not know what bullying is.

So first, let’s get the facts straight.

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"Yes" parenting

Dedicated kids

Good Parenting is Easy

Hyperactive Kids

Why Can’t You Do It?

Un-sense-able teens

Sibling Rivalry

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