Are you smarter than your kid?

As a parent, to realize that the child outsmarted them can be painful and irritating. It is tempting to feel contempt for the child for making the parent look the fool.

Here's a way to look at the situation differently. As a parent you want to affirm your child as often as possible, show them you are pleased with them and enforce compliance. This tactic will accomplish all three objectives.

A loophole is like a "get out of jail" card in Monopoly. Once you use it, you can't use it again for the rest of the game. As soon as the child figures out the loophole and shares it with you, it can't be used again. This gives you the opportunity to praise your child for their intelligence while closing the loophole in the future.

I worked with a family who had many friends of their children over at their house. They lacked the ability to monitor how many children were in the house. I worked with the parents to set limits on how many children could be over at a time.

The intervention was a success so they decided to plan a date night for the parents. As the day arrived they talked to the children about no one being in the house while they were gone. When the parents got home, 25 children were in the front yard...BUT no one was in the house! The children had found a loophole, but they were also in compliance! The parents were able to praise their children, while at the same time including the property line the next time, when enforcing expectations.

Loopholes can  not only be closed when they are realized, but they also offer a great opportunity to praise your child. And I don't know a child out there who doesn't like to hear that they may be smarter than their parent, whether that is true or not.

Building

Eroding self esteem is much easier than building it. We need to be searchers of strengths rather than searchers of weaknesses. I agree with that statement and add "not only in other people, but within ourselves as well."

A number of years ago when my sons were playing basketball I was accused by my oldest son of being too critical of his playing, and as I reflected on it I agreed. After he shared that with me I worked harder at looking at his strengths.

I had been asked to fill in for the coach of his brothers' team and I asked my oldest son to coach with me. He knew the game far better than me. After the game I asked him to talk with his brothers about what had worked and what hadn't in the game. He immediately became critical of their performance. We both smiled when I pointed it out to him. He was completely unaware that he had done it.

It is like trying to break out of ruts in a dirt road. We must constantly fight to make sure we are saying things that will build people up rather than tear them down. Sometimes being aware of what we are doing is a good start.

We shouldn't be afraid to talk about things that need improvement. And when you do, start out with positives and talk about the developmental opportunities from a context what they are already doing well.

Parent appreciation

When you become a parent your idea of time changes. Before parenting you can measure results in the immediate future. As a parent, when you do something for your child your expectation moves to years. There is no way that a child can understand the sacrifices made, until they have to make the same sacrifices.

As a parent then, your timetable moves ahead in time to the point where your child will experience pouring out their resources for the good of their child, or someone else. At that time, it is hoped that the realization and the gratitude will be there for the sacrifices made for them.

So ten years or so down the road, maybe they will be thankful I did this for them today.

Don't forget why you are here

I used to attend auctions. I had to be very careful was not to go past my ceiling price. In the heat of an auction, when competition took away all sense of reason, and winning became the ONLY goal, I could end up with something that I paid too much for. In bidding, the goal was to keep your price firmly in your mind and when it goes above your price...STOP BIDDING!

I have known parents who were very frustrated because of their child's defiance. As the dance between the child and the parent increased, the parent moves into a death grip with the child over compliance.

"How dare you disobey (Talk back,defy, insert your personal favorite) me!"

At times like that, the job of parenting is blurred and the goal becomes winning at all costs. I have seen parents who have been so locked in battle that they have humiliated themselves. Hell, I have humiliated myself locked in compliance battles with children.

At these times we need to be clear about our role as parent. Our goal is to raise children who can be responsible, self-sufficient adults? How is the battle that we find ourselves fighting help those ends?

The reality is that it does not. Much like the madness that takes over in bidding, when we get into battles with our kids, we can lose sight of the prize. The goal is not to win the contest. The goal is to get the child to adulthood with skills to help them survive in the world. Think about what behaviors work outside the family and which ones don't. Focus on that. When the child insults you, or yells at you, think about whether that gets a child ahead “out there”. I guess it would if you belong to the Wrestling Federation, but you have to be really big and muscular to get hired there!

Understand that your child is attempting to figure out what works in the world. It's not really about you, even though the actions feel that way. If we spiral up our response to the child's escalation, it will be harder to convince them that that isn’t the way to move ahead in life.

Guilt enough to go around

A friend of mine told me that her two kids are sick today. She said that she felt so guilty about it.

Maybe that is why so many moms can wield guilt so effectively. They are just peddling their own personal inner state.

Anger expressed

A mom talked to me the other day about her son who had been performing well enough that he was moved out of the kids who were not performing to a higher level class. He was upset about not being with his friends and the powerlessness he felt. In his anger he made a drawing that was filled with violence and blood. In essence it was a threat. He didn't want to see it that way, but there really wasn't any other way to look at it.

I suggested that she affirm her son's anger. It's okay to be angry. It's how we deal with it that provides us with consequences.

Years ago I got angry at something and threw a wooden spoon. It left a large hole in the screen in the kitchen window. Mosquitos found an entrance into the house. I had to fix it immediately. I HATE fixing screens. That was a great deterrent to throwing things in the future.

That he feels anger is understandable. Underneath the anger is hurt, frustration, and pain. It would be good for him to develop new ways of dealing with his anger. If he can find ways of expressing his anger that are socially acceptable he will have achieved a lot. It will be helpful in his future as well as much of life is dealing with what we didn't want or expect.

The safety bond

I just finished watching "Little Miss Sunshine" for the second time. It had been a while since I had seen it and I had forgotten how weird the family was, but also why I had liked it so much. It was a moving tribute to the resilience of families.

In the movie, the family is driving Olive, the youngest daughter, to compete in the "Little Miss Sunshine" pagent several states away. There were so many obstacles in their path, both on the outside, and what each person in the family brought with them in the form of emotional baggage.

The thing that struck me so powerfully, and brought me to tears is how we as families limp along. Families are so imperfect. It is not the weirdness of family members that breaks a family down. It is the lack of one essential ingredient. Is the family, at its core, safe? And while everyone in the family is responsibile for the safety of others, parents are the ones who model it and teach it to their children and are ultimately responsible for it's initiation into the family.

As this family limped along struggling with their own strangeness and conflicts, one thing was never doubted about the family. They were concerned for the physical and emotional safety of each other. In one scene mom had just explained to Olive that her grandpa was dead. Mom started crying. Duane, Olive's older brother, who was refusing to speak to the family, writes Olive a note that said "Go hug mom." That moment is so ripe with all the different motives involved and who was being affected. The way of handling it was strange. The point was that someone in the family was hurting and it was addressed.

I have worked with many dysfunctional families as a family therapist. What I was looking for in the family was to make sure the family was safe. It didn't matter to me what the family looked like to the outside as long as it worked on the inside. And the only way it could work on the inside is if EVERY member in the family practiced physical and emotional safety.

As an instructor I work hard to maintain physical and emotional safety of all my students. I don't worry if everyone gets along or even likes each other. But I will confront ANYONE who threatens the physical or emotional safety of my students.

Over the years, I worked with many families that when I got done, I could honestly say I was glad I wasn't a member of some of the families that were safe and nurturing. It, however, was working for them, and the proof was demonstrated by how connected the family members were to each other.