Stress Free Discipline

 

The problem is that emotional upheaval between parents prevents them from changing or improving their discipline styles.

Feelings are playing ping-pong with their thoughts.  Feelings are in the driver’s seat, not in the back seat.  Feelings are designed by God to support and motivate action after it has been thought through. 

After thinking through the problem, getting useful ideas into your head does not mean you have mastered the techniques which save you stress while enhancing your family interdependence.

What does it take to master stress-free techniques?

It takes getting help and practice, using personal reflection and supportive group activities.

Why do people resist change?

Kotter and Schlesinger (Kotter & Schlesinger, 2008, 130) offer four basic reasons that people resist change and several methods for overcoming resistance in their article illustrating change in the world of management. The most common reasons they cite for resistance are

1. A desire to keep something of value
2. Misunderstanding of the change and its complications
3. A belief that the change does not make sense
4. A low tolerance for change in general (Kotter & Schlesinger, 2008, 131).

If you write down your reasons for not wanting to change your child discipline, you will probably find out that the above four reasons keep reappearing on your list.  Are you willing to look carefully at your reasoning?  Are you uncomfortable enough to make positive change?

How can people overcome their resistance to change?

Couples, like the managers cited in the article, can determine which form of resistance they are facing and choose to overcome it with a number of techniques.

Some of those techniques are: education and communication, participation and involvement, facilitation and support, negotiation and agreement.

This research, in the hands of a sensitive and experienced mentor or counselor, can help guide couples to gradually gain skill in making functional changes in their family dynamic.

Resources:

Kotter, J. P., & Schlesinger, L. A. (2008, August). Choosing strategies for change. Harvard Business Review, 86(7/8), 130-139.

Technorati Tags: parenting,

peer pressure,violence,pain,sex,power struggles,self-confidence,attention,parenting

A bad mouth and a bad temper with pushy behavior are marks of a bully.  We may feel the bully cannot change.

That bully may be any age. He or she rules a corner of the world by constant harsh “put downs” or taking advantage of others. 

A bully feels peer pressure to change, but is stuck in a hard place.

Confrontations are constant when the rights of others are squashed and they fight back.  This may be the bully’s only way to relate to others!

The bully may be a loner or a gang leader, since he or she looks for trouble and responds to all interactions by fighting, criticism or arguments.

Sometimes a psychologist will suggest that the bully sit next to or work with the opposite sex in school if relationships are obviously off base and needing modification.  Good counseling is essential if your child has progressed from small bully behavior to serious criminal behavior.

The bully rules by intimidating others but sometimes protects weak friends from other bullies.

At school, the bully often has learning problems caused by emotional distress.

At home, siblings become emotional and easily upset.

The bully leaves a whirlwind of pain behind his or her own pain.

Parents may be promoting fighting, saturating the bully in violent media or setting a bad example by dealing with problems by violence.

Parental Responsibility In Bullying Behavior

If parents are weak in discipline or too harsh, inconsistent or belligerent, they may be training their child in the dynamics of bully behavior. 

The father who is permissive while drinking and harsh when he is hung over is a bad example.

Parents may express their own pain with bullying behavior. Your temper fit only shows your failure at impulse control. You are trying to teach impulse control.

Does Mother only “mean it” when she is in a screaming temper fit, throwing things or smacking a seven year old around?

Does Dad punish without clear rules and a carefully crafted love relationship?

All possibility of teamwork is gone while time is wasted with fighting. Be consistent with discipline but gentle. 

The bully becomes special by abusing power.

While some may be frightened by a bully, others may think this behavior is funny. At home and school the bully stops all teamwork, learning and positive interaction. The bully enjoys attention he or she gets from peers and adults, even if that attention is negative.

Even though a bully knows abusive relationships are wrong, he or she needs to escape the pain of failure in relationships, insecurity or a poor self-concept.

Bully behavior could show a lack of coping skills and fear of failure in relating to others.

Bully behavior makes a person feel independent and in control of life.

Parents, do not assume your bully is tough or an extrovert for being loud and pushy.

Your bully may be in the 25% of Americans who are introverts, made uncomfortable in social situations or by our cultural hyperactivity. 

Is your bully pushed by you into awkward, failing situations?  Are you expecting your child to be your clone, forcing her into situations she cannot possibly enjoy?  When did the bully behavior begin?

Explain, if your bully is school age, that bully threats have consequences. When any threat is made, require the child to stop and think in a “cooling off time” first.

Make it clear that if bully chooses to fight after cooling off, fighting is then “premeditated,” and will carry a harsher penalty.

Dissolving the Bully

Since bullies accept bigger responsibility well, give him or her an impressive job that builds higher status into their self-concept. At home it will be something that only adults have done up until now.

Do be gentle but consistent. Use only as much power as necessary. Your best tool is loving time spent one-on-one until your child moves out of this phase.

Also, suggest that your bully say, “My parents won’t let me fight” at school or home. That will let bully back out gracefully from useless confrontations.

If the confrontations have been with a teacher, help your child identify the triggers for these fights and quietly identify your child’s own unrecognized character flaws. 

Always carry through. Never let a rebel win.  Be consistent with discipline but gentle. 

If you have trouble with this, get counsel.

Praise every step in the right direction. Love is spelled T-I-M-E.

Make your own transparency and vulnerability clear as a pattern for your bully to follow. It is strong to express your need for help, feelings of stress, and desire for teamwork.

Technorati Tags: Jihad,inattentional blindness,Personal terrorism,child discipline,Walid Shoebat

Moderate Muslims, we are told, consider jihad a personal struggle for spiritual purity.

Americans ignore the facts that over 100 references in the Koran refer to jihad as genocidal slaughter of unbelievers with only one quote referring to an internal struggle[1]. (Source: www.shoebat.com)

Muslim violence (jihad) supersedes peaceful contemplation in every country now ruled by Islam. Americans are too distracted, too comfortable, to pay attention while Islam gains a strategic foothold.

The American approach to Islam is a perfect example of inattentional blindness.[2] 

Arien Mack and Irvin Rock, psychologists, first showed that people who were paying attention to something else in their line of sight were “blind” to something that was right before their eyes.

What does this mean for you?

Pay strict attention: your children’s lives depend upon your focused attention to discipline.  

Consider your self discipline and their discipline plan.

While you are teaching your children Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, Muslim children learn lullabies and poems about flying body parts and rolling heads.

Here is an example:

“Sharpen my bones into swords, for I am a bomb, I shall eat the flesh of my (Israeli) occupier, O Killers, your blood is ‘Halal” for us, (meaning “kosher” or all right to spill)[3]

Oh, you say, “that’s not me. I’m aware of everything: I’m plugged into news 24/7. I know what is a threat to my family.”

U. Neisser, D. Simons, and C. Chabris, experimented with viewers watching a film. Viewers were focused on counting how many times a basketball was passed from one team member to another, while someone walked through the scene wearing a gorilla suit.

A surprisingly large percentage of subjects did not notice something as obvious as a person in a gorilla suit moving through the scene they were observing, if they are paying attention to something else. (Several examples of these experiments can be viewed on the Visual Cognition Lab page of the University of Illinois.)

Every country in history which has fallen has done so because of failure to perceive a threat.

Let’s look at some brief lessons in military history, you can research further through Wikipedia:

1. Carthage - fell after this city-state’s council failed to recognize the threat Rome posed. They allowed Hannibal’s victory over Rome to slip away simply by not reinforcing Hannibal when he had the upper hand.

2. Rome - many theories here, most show the failure to recognize a threat either from within or outside Rome itself.

3. Greece - the most famous lesson of recognizing a threat was told in the recently fictionalized movie 300. Recognizing the threat where his countrymen did not, Spartan King Leonidas led a personal bodyguard of 300 Spartans to hold a strategic thoroughfare named Thermopylae.

300 by Frank Miller, Lynn Varley Read more about this book…

4. Persia - failing to recognize Alexander the Great’s tactics as a threat the entire Persian empire was captured by this young Greek king.

Back to the present

“All four major Islamic schools of thought agree that jihad is not merely a personal struggle, but a call to wage war on the infidels by all means possible: giving money and recruiting and training people are also means of jihad.”[4]

It is not only your Christian faith at risk when you’re not looking. It is your life and the lives of your children.

Discipline is not just for kids. It is for you, the adult, first.

Do you “relax” for hours after work with flickering pictures and telephone chatter? Do you understand that you are being hypnotized into a passive, shallow thought pattern? 

Print media requires more logic from you.  (See “Twilight of the Books, by Caleb Crain, The new Yorker, December 24 and 31, 2007) 

Are you really going to study this, or will you dance past these issues into your chocolate paradise of brain fog?

Do you feel uncomfortable when someone needs to be confronted with facts? Like Pilate when he confronted Jesus, do you wonder, “What is truth?” Have you found ways to learn and grow smarter your whole life, or are you stuck in a high school low effort mentality?

Before you can discipline and teach your children, you must have a plan.  Stress Free Discipline provides a tots-to-teens plan for life skill mastery and lifelong family teamwork.

What’s a parent to do?

To begin:  I suggest you need to simplify your life and read more, with and for your children. Restrict the phone calls, the ipod, the wireless flood of distractions which pacify but do not satisfy your mind. See the tech junkie quiz at rd.com/tech.

Right now a flood of raw data makes you anxious because you cannot use it all or digest it, but you keep trying.  Distractions, as good as they may be, may be a real threat to your thought life.

Inattentional blindness can kill you.  Pay attention.  Read up.  Prioritize.

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[1] Why I Left Jihad­, Walid Shoebat, Top Executive Media, 2005, ISBN 0-9771021-1-4, p. 36[2] http://www.skepdic.com/inattentionalblindness.html [3] Ibid, p 20[4] Ibid, p.96

Technorati Tags: hatred,aggression,revenge,criticism,defensiveness,boredom

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I really could not understand Max’s hatred. He hated Reading, Blacks, Native Americans, Jews, and Catholics and a long list of other things. He had poor skills and no patience.  He was only fifteen.

He actually had no interests but hate. None. As a public school teacher, I knew it was a mistake to ignore, reject or force forgiveness on Max. I chose to accept him as he was. He had no friends, after all. Other students ignored him.

This is beyond negative. Perhaps your child has shown aggressive, anti-rule behavior.

Her revenge, grudges and criticism have given her power over others.

She seems unapproachable. While she has some sympathetic followers, she creates constant tension. She is unsuccessful and defensive in ways that hinder growth. Your son may do all of the above in a defensive, loner way.

Perhaps you worry about your child’s continuous and total lack of interest in activities. Your child cannot work well with others, and your usual discipline techniques are not effective.

You are angry, on edge and on guard, but must act in love if you want results.

Professional counseling is part of your plan. Stress Free Discipline is another part. Used consistently, Stress Free Discipline provides the acceptance, pain relief, trust and status these youth need.

Hate is distilled pain. A small hurt can become a wildfire of hate.

Never ignore it, react personally, judge or trivialize your child’s problem. Never discuss him with other children or think you know how he or she feels. Consider how God treats our bad temper, greed, power grabs, and pride.

Counseling is unavoidable.  Choose wisely.  What you have been doing until now needs an upgrade.  It has not been working.

A good counselor will take one or two hours to test all family members for anger management styles, personality differences, communication styles and problem solving techniques.

With those tools you and your family can work through the tough times.  Stop your entertainments and time wasters and focus on healing work.

Memorize the tools.  Learn to use them. Get help when times are tough.  Sacrifice time and effort for teamwork and lifelong love relationships.  You do not have forever.  Every day that passes makes healing more difficult.

Technorati Tags: stress,consistent discipline,colds,sharing,leadership

When I was Drew’s age, I thought that if I gave my cold to someone else I would not have it anymore.

Now I make sure my grandchildren understand they’ll both be miserable if they share a cold.

 The passage of stress is much like sharing a cold. 

I can accept Drew’s stress that he is not getting what he wants when he wants it. I will feel miserable and he gets spoiled. I can make exceptions to the rules. I can slide around rules the easy way, being inconsistent. I become a bad parent, or in my case, grandparent. Good parenting is too much work!

If your children are constantly testing you, they have been conditioned to obey you only when you are stressed: (1) standing over them, (2) constantly repeating directions and giving them all of your attention, perhaps (3) screaming at them or hitting them.

Only then, they notice, do you really mean it.

When you aren’t looking, they are doing as they please. As they grow, you age. When you want shared goals, they’re “doing their own thing.” Your family is fragmented. You’re a nag. They’re escaping responsibility, piling it on you, or getting even for your on-again, off-again discipline in underhanded ways.

When you accept your child’s stress, you’re burdened and angry.

It’s no favor to them to let them have their way, but you’re too weary (from the stress you have chosen) to do what is right. Poor discipline is too much work!

Make that child obey!  Discipline is not punishment most of the time but it is consistent consequences.

Ask yourself: Does my child put stress on me to give him or her what she wants? Have I trained her to be bad by changing the rules?  Is this good in the long run? Is this like a cold: we’ll both be miserable?  Whose problem is this? 

“Meaning it” is stressing the child enough so that he or she chooses to obey rules over getting his/her own way.  If you are consistent, poor behavior will self-destruct in a couple of weeks.

  

In the Navy, sailors inform the commander and then follow his orders.

Researchers gather data, organize it, submit it upline, filter it through their knowledge, experience, values and sometimes bias. Artificial intelligence is interpreted by human intelligence.

View full resolution, size: 1024×768px, 76 KB, Author: Jon Sullivan

Yet, no matter how intelligent the sailors are, they submit their lives and their skills to the greater good. All good commanders are humbled by their responsibility and the awareness that it was their team which achieved the victory, not their own brilliance.

A 17 year old sailor influences the course of thousands of others on the carrier.

In the same way, feelings inform thinking and should submit to conclusions thoughtfully made in your home.

When feelings are in command, we are tempest tossed, up and down with any tide. Yet without the support and information of our feelings, thinking is weak, unbalanced, and blind.

Feelings are a source of power only when they are under the control of thought.

Feelings can send us into a perfect storm of a life if they are not disciplined by thought. Imagine a commander who has mind-bending irrational fits ten days out of every month or when berthing a ship.

Feelings are manipulated by ad agencies, politicians, media and spouses for their own ends. Our children are taking notes.

Their ability to discipline themselves, control their impulses, enrich their lives, and inform their future all depends on us.  We translate the world for them.

It is scary. Will our family values survive? Media myths are confusing everyone. How will children make choices for their future?

The Navy has commanders. Football games have coaches. Cheerleaders have a Head Cheerleader. Families have leaders.

"You can’t have all Chiefs and no Indians" as my Grandma used to say.

But wait! Who is the leader in your family? Do children make the rules because you lack leadership skills? Do husband and wife fight constantly without settling basic leadership issues? Where will you live? How will you live?

Consider your family.  Who is the sailor and who is the commander, responsible for the whole ship?

Imagine a commander with responsibility but no power.

Perhaps that is your husband.  God has given him responsibility for the whole family.

Wives, have you grabbed command of your ship? Has power been stripped from your marriage because your feelings have sent your family into a whirlpool of emotional choices?

Are you really the one who should be making the basic decisions in your family?

I suggest that God’s plan is the one most likely to succeed. Superhuman power is behind it.

Everyone submits to Christ, the High Commander. Then husbands make the decisions after consulting with counselors and family members. They make a reasoned choice.

Wives, take it from Grandma DeSelm. Stop fighting your man.

Those power grabs will finally exhaust you and they are rough on your body.  Your adrenals give out.

They are part of the Genesis 3 curse when Adam and Eve got evicted from the Garden of Eden. Eve was cursed to desire to dominate her husband, but Adam was to rule over her.  Women, then, need to get used to that reality.

The godly family functions as a team without bickering over who will submit to whom in the end.

Every member has valuable skills, personality traits, and insights. Commanders know that.

Husbands know that or find it out in God’s time, not ours, ladies.

God holds men directly accountable for every family member, as the commander is held accountable for the welfare of every sailor.

Family members need to follow all moral orders as sailors follow commands and angels follow God: with joy, in detail. That is how it is done in Heaven. Practice now.

Technorati Tags: greed,competition,power struggles,distraction,complications

Have you ever noticed how you get overwhelmed and poor when you are not paying attention? Part of stress free discipline is simplifying and focusing your life.

I’m angry at myself for spending $3,000 on storage for family photos, old papers, projects I’ll never do, and stuff belonging to other people.  Why accept stress from unfinished business?

It reminds me of the greedy child who sucks out more and more privileges when you are tired or distracted. Maybe those distractions are your media time. Maybe you do not feel like paying attention. Maybe you’re not getting enough rest.

At some point you realize that your distractions have complicated your life by locking you into expensive storage while ignoring current business.

You cannot find money for what you would rather do because it is tied up in storage. You cannot deal with today because you are busy dusting off or paying off yesterday.  In personal terms, you’re constantly pushed past your patience into an unhappy relationship with your greedy child.

When you are distracted, you give your child the nod, and he or she gains power over your time.  You give in to make the problem go away but it becomes a monster instead.

You realize that you do not like yourself or your child. Arguments, nasty competition and power grabs have become routine. Other children are hurt by the greedy taking behavior of the Prince or Princess. It’s all unfair.

Pushy behavior gets extra privileges for a greedy child. He or she wins, and even assumes that greed, power and status make him or her attractive!

First, find out if teachers and others are having the same problems you are.

If the pushy Prince needs it, do a conference with your child and affected adults. Put all responsibility for immature behavior on your child.

Explain that the secret of maturity is not grabbing things, getting older, or being experienced. The secret is growing out of the grabbing phase into the giving habit.

Your pushy Princess must stop demanding special menus rather than what everyone else is eating. Beginning at age three, if you give in,she will build her “success” with you into a lifetime of eating disorders.

Nobody can afford the consequences of letting greed go or be justified.

God’s word says “Even a child is judged by his works.” (Proverbs 20:11)

You are the judge. Do not think God will let you escape your duty. This is not a time for modeling non-judgmental behavior.

Here’s your challenge

Remember the difference between discernment and judgment (or critical thinking.) Critical thinking is the highest order of thinking skill.  It is essential for your own well being.  You need to teach it to your child and to yourself, if need be. 

You are responsible. Remember Eli (I Samuel 2:22-25ff).  He was punished by God for not disciplining his sons. 

God holds you accountable for your child’s bad behavior just as the law does.

You can still be kind, speaking the truth in love.

Begin by defining and exploring what greed is. 

Greed is a type of attitude or behavior which demands special privileges for one person at the expense of others, grasping things that others need or own…etc.

Once you have a definition everyone understands, apply it to simple situations which make the meaning of the term very clear.  A greedy person buys a dozen donuts and eats them all himself.  A greedy woman may control others by dominating their time with demands, complaints, and manipulation.  A greedy child will not share with others even when she has had a toy to herself for a reasonable time.

Then ask your child to define the opposite of greed.  Find examples, then reward any small unselfish action in your child.

You could do something as simple as give three cheers for good manners. “Hip, hip, HOORAY! Hip, hip, HOORAY!  Hip, hip, HOORAY!”  Recognition, clapping and enthusiasm go a long way toward inspiring a child.

 Stress Free Discipline rewards every good choice and gives grace on top of that. It also recognizes achievement, services, manners, and family friendly thinking. If your Prince is doing better at school,  Stress Free Discipline provides a format for following through on and rewarding those good choices.

Do be firm, consistent, and strong. Every poor choice must have consequences.

Remember, it is gentle abrasion that breaks a cliff into a pebble. Your child can wear you down by endless small demands if you are not strong, firm, and consistent.  Everyone will be stressed by your weakness.

–By the way, how is your relationship with God? Have distractions abraded your love down to a small memory? Where do you fit in the Parent-Child greed picture?

Is your love affair with God in expensive storage?  Pay attention.

Do you have a child who demands all of your attention, defying you and picking on other siblings? This child usually asks unnecessary questions, trying as well to gain attention by saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. He or she is usually loud and disorganized, often late getting things done at school and at home. Everyone else tends to put this child down and avoid him/her. You are angry. Brothers or sisters are angry. Your focus is often broken.

This child does everything imaginable to let you know that he (any pronoun includes both sexes) exists. He is trying to prove himself, perhaps in an effort to “belong.” He may have a basic need to learn better social or academic skills!

Stress Free Discipline allows you to reward the attention-getter with skill-building activities with you. He receives double attention: points and praise at the time of his performance, and rewards time in educational activities later.

It’s a mistake to exclude this obnoxious one or assume she doesn’t have the skills to do the job. Listen carefully to what she is saying.

Don’t try to figure out what kinds of situations cause her to misbehave or think you can generalize and understand her thinking. Do not try to keep her from getting any attention! We want plenty of positive attention.

Her message is very important. She needs success in something.

• Give her an important role of responsibility or leadership.
• Take time for listening to find out what she really feels. BE CONSISTENT, KIND, POLITE AND FIRM.
• Keep that chart and those points going without fail.
• Monitor your body language.
• Make a special effort to recognize all your children individually with one on one time daily.

Just before bedtime, when they’re relaxed from their warm bath, talk a few minutes quietly about what made the day positive. Never make your child feel anxious, or the behavior will become worse.