practical parenting / parents Tag | Family Matters

Are Your Kids All The Same?

Kids in every family are different and this is a fact. Sometimes, when you try to find the formula for a certain behavior, it is hard to take one type of behavior from one kid and expect it from another one. You can’t even expect twins to behave the same because of a different dynamic between them and the different reaction of society towards them.

Many parents find it challenging to deal with different kids in the house because of the expectation that kids all behave the same.

Many parents in my parent coaching program talk about the differences in their kids’ behavior. I explain that the reason they have difficulties has nothing to do with the kids but something to do with the parents. Kids are not supposed to behave the same.

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14 Ways to Teach Your Kids Resilience

As much as we would like to defend our kids from the difficulties in life, from experiencing crisis, change or loss, we cannot! However, we can give our kids the tools to recover from difficult times when those hit.

Many people say to me, “They are just kids. What horrible things can possibly happens to them?”

My answer is, “Let’s not wait to find out”.

For children, what seems like a simple thing might be a horrible problem. We have good friends whose 18-year-old son took a gun and shot himself in the head because he was not accepted to the course he wanted.

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Research Says: Friends Improve Sibling Relationships

Family Matters says: your attitude can improve them even more.

In psychological studies, the age gap between siblings is very important and is used to explain many behaviors and relationships. Can you imagine yourself lying on the shrink’s sofa and complaining about your brother who came into your life too early and took all the attention away from you?

In a research published by the Journal of Family Psychology, Dr. Laurie Kramer, professor of applied family studies at the University of Illinois, followed 28 sibling pairs from the age of 4 to adolescence and found that “a child’s socialization with friends before the arrival of a sibling can predict a more positive relationship between the siblings”.

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How To Help Your Fat Kid Stop Being Overweight

If you have a “fat” or overweight child, you know they suffer a lot from some associated problems. Many grownups carry feelings of self-loathing and self-disappointment following the negative treatment they got during their younger years.

Being fat is not only about what we eat. It’s also about what makes us eat more than what our body requires. A fat kid almost always suffers from low self-image too.

Overweight kids need a healthy, balanced eating plan, together with an emotional plan, which doesn’t damage their self-image any further.

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I Have a Teen Daughter and I Am Scared

It was Friday evening and our 19-year-old daughter Eden talked again about going to dance Salsa in the city. She had been talking about it for over two months and had never gone. None of her friends had wanted to join and she had not wanted to go by herself. Gal and I decided to go with her (aren’t we the greatest parents?).

It was a feel-good party. There was a band on stage and many dancers on the floor, dancing beautifully. We could watch them for hours. Many people sat on the floor around the dancers and watched with us. Eden was invited to dance with others and we were very happy to see her dancing and shining.

We looked at each other and said, “It was worth coming”, but was it?

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Would You Say "No" to Violence Against Children?

In one of my parenting workshops, I had a discussion with one of the fathers about the use of negative words and we talked about the slogan “Australia says ‘no’ to violence against children”. I explained that the brain records “Australia says to violence against children”, omits the “no” and focuses on “Australia”, “violence” and “children”. Paul thought it was a great slogan (and he did not work for the copywriting company who came up with the slogan).

At that stage, all the other participants already understood that “no smoking” only promoted smoking by focusing on the smoking, so pretty quickly, there was a lively group interaction going on.

This week, I got a video made by a great organisation, which presented the answer we were looking for in our discussion at that parenting workshop. What would you want people to focus on? We want them to focus on creating a child-friendly environment for our kids. We want them to be happy, to feel safe and to have good relationships with others.

The answer to (the pink elephant) “Australia says no to violence against children” is now “Australia says yes to a child-friendly environment for our children” and I love this new focus.

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Super Kids: When Academic Success is Just a Side Effect

Last week, on our way back home from a weekend at friends’ house, our 12-year-old son Tsoof asked if we thought he was a “super kid”.

In the past year, we talked to him a lot about three kids in his music department that everyone, including us, thinks of as “super kids”. They are older than Tsoof and are very very very smart and talented. All three of them are wonderful role models for him.

Well, this made us wonder about Tsoof too.

Tsoof was born 12 years ago in California after a lot of heartache and waiting. By the age of 4, he had already lived in 4 countries with two languages and travelled to 6 other countries as a fun-loving, happy and curious child.

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Teen Birthday Parties: Who Needs Them Anyway?

It was the third birthday our daughter had refused to celebrate with friends. For her 17th birthday, she invited a couple of girls to go out for a movie. For her 18th birthday, she spent the day crying because it was her grandmother’s funeral (and her dad was away to attend).

When she approached her 19th birthday, we had the same discussions about a party all over again.

When I was kid, most of the kids wanted to have a party, at least on their birthdays. Only the “rich” kids could have parties every year. Some rare kids had parties more than once a year and those were obviously the most popular.

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What Are You Saying to Your Teens?

A couple of clients came to me for parent coaching because of a problem they had with their teen boy, and were very surprised when we went through Pink Elephants. They said, “We tell him every day NOT to hang around bad kids, but saying it only puts the focus on those kids we want him to stay away from”.

The day after our session, the mother sent me this email:

“Dear Ronit, You won’t believe what happened after we left our session last night. I was home for 3 minutes and so many Pink Elephants came out of my mouth… It’s so hard!”

It is hard. I agree.

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Social Identity

Today, let’s explore how we form our social identity and how it can contribute to our self-esteem.

Psychologists claim that we have a social identity. From the moment kids see themselves as part of a family, they start forming their social identity. Our self-esteem, which is what we think about ourselves, is greatly influenced by the groups we associate ourselves with and by what they think and do. For that matter, our family is our first social group.

If you want to understand the influence of the groups on our life, put yourself at the center of a circle and draw bigger and bigger circles around you for your family, friend, work colleagues, acquaintances and so on. The closest the circle to you, the more influence you allow this group to have on your life.

This post is part 4 of 20 in the series Self Esteem Mini-Course

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