When I was growing up, the world was a lot nicer. There, I have said it. There were no computers, no Internet (and I like both), cars were simple, roads were narrow, but life felt free and full of adventures. Now, there are way too many dangers everywhere. Or are there really?
Read How Life has Changed »
As your daughter grows older and develops a relationship with a steady partner, the feeling of losing control grows too. Being the mother of a young woman (OMG, she is 20!), I see a lot of value in teaching teenage girls the difference between healthy and unhealthy relationships.
I am sometimes surprised to meet new clients who cannot understand how they got themselves into an abusive relationship. As you can imagine, getting a women out of an abusive relationship is much harder than not getting into such relationship in the first place.
If you are the parent of a young daughter, you are probably asking yourself, “How can I make sure my daughter never gets herself into an abusive relationship?” The good news is you can! And if you do it before the relationship starts, you have a better chance of succeeding.
I was sitting one evening and flicking through the channels when my favorite program had yet another long commercial break. One of the other channels was showing “The Footy Show”, and I paused on it for a few seconds.
The word “Footy” is short for “Australian Rules Football”, one of the preferred sports in Australia. It involves two teams of muscular men with tight clothes and various helmets and bandages, running around on a field and chasing an egg-shaped ball, with the aim of kicking it between two posts. It’s “a man’s game”, you see, where tackles abound.
Just as I was watching, there was a short clip of an incident that had happened during the previous week, in which two players slid on the grass, both trying to get the ball. One of them got it, and as he was getting up, turned and stuck his knee in the face of the other player, who was still lying on the grass. I was horrified at this, but not so the commentators.
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.
Behaviour management seems to be a big part of parenting. Parents struggle with their kids’ behaviour over their entire parenting “career”.
Many times, I have been asked if I had a “magic formula” to solve behavioural problems and I always say that behaviour management is not fixing behavioural problems but preventing them from happening.
The difference between fixing a problem and preventing it is the difference between a proactive mindset and a reactive one. When I need to fix a problem, I become “The Fire Brigade” and start putting out fires and that is no fun, because I am then controlled by the circumstances or the people around me (the kids).
Many parents report frustration and doubt regarding their parenting when their wonderful children reach teen age. They dread this period and express tension and even fear. Instead of getting closer to their growing children, their child’s first teen birthday marks the formation of “the generation gap”. Teens become emotional, irrational and mysterious. Parents ask themselves “Why do teens behave the way they do? Is it hormonal? Why are they so emotional? Is it normal?”
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