Making positive change: Problem Two
Does your nine-year-old leave after you tell him to stay home? It is a common event. The problem here is that parents think their leadership skills are good when in fact those skills are ineffective and obsolete. Group dynamics can help the whole family.
Group learning has a big impact.
Knowles and Bradford state that “groups can induce learning in individuals of a kind and depth that an individual teacher cannot, by himself, induce (Knowles & Bradford, 1952, 12).” To expand on that idea: group learning often has more impact than a nagging parent, lecturing or coercing a child into following rules.
The interaction between your child and your family may be more productive with group activities like role playing, buzz groups and reflection, listening teams, and personal summaries of group action. These are big challenges for your leadership.
Play “You be the parent, I’ll be the child.”
Ask neutral questions when in doubt about who did what: questions like, “What happened?” “Could it have been done better?” “What could be changed so everybody wins?” “How could we share so it is fair to everyone?”
According to Knowles and Bradford, “One of the primary educational objectives of the leader, in fact, is to train members to take over functions that once were reserved as the exclusive prerogatives of the ‘leader.’
Parents are really training children to be independent first, but then to form interdependent family teams of lifelong learners.
Why should parents give up their power as children grow more mature?
A child’s judgment is only trained through experience in making judgments and seeing results. Sometimes children learn from other people’s experience, sometimes only from their own experience. Children grow as parents explain the consequences of behavior.
“If you bite your playmates or do not share being the boss, they will not want to play with you.”
The next step is a well disciplined, self-governed child.
Knowles & Bradford put it this way: “The more mature and self-directing a group becomes the more effective it is an instrument for producing change in individuals.”
Ideas for development of parent leadership skills are clear. The goal of parents is to raise children who are self-reliant, lifelong learners, choosing to work as a family team with their parents.
The team dynamic created as children grow toward self mastery and interdependence will provide functional group dynamic skills useful in the world of work.
Few parents welcome change in their habitual methods, but positive family dynamics reward those who do make positive changes.
A Family Plan: dignity, equality, unity
Technorati Tags: family planning, positive peer pressure
How can we create a family of dignity, equal worth and unified purpose? Doing what comes naturally (nothing) will not do it.
As Zig Ziggler said:
If you fail to plan, you plan to fail,
How do you plan?
Start with the end, the goal, in sight. That’s good advice from Stephen R. Covey, planning expert (stephencovey.com). If you want to stress-proof your family life, you must make a family plan. Here’s a start.
Consider what we have to know in order to create the best family life.
We need to know what every family member considers most important, and what each person needs to do and be (willing? organized?) in order to get there.
To do first:
- Make copies of my “What is Family” list below. Feel free to distribute this plan to others if you give me credit and list my blog address.
- Have each family highlight the words which describe your family now.
- Have each person circle what your family should be when you work your plan.
- Brainstorm ways to eliminate the negatives and accentuate the positives in each list.
Brainstorming rules are few:
- First, respect each person’s opinion, no matter how much you disagree or how crazy it sounds.
- Secondly, find agreement on rules for eliminating those ideas which are unrealistic or outside your family values.
Your Family Vision: An Essential Foundation for building a strong family
Find the purpose of your family.
(To be read out loud in a quiet place…each family member separate from the others).
Is family a place where, when we knock, they have to let us in? A resource? A refuge? A learning center?
Is family a millstone,
touchstone,
milestone,
bulwark?
(If you don’t know these words, look them up.)
Is family a burden, a standard, a fortress, something you pass by on your way to personal fulfillment? Is it a source of enrichment?
Is family a labor force which produces leisure for us? A safety valve for venting? A nuisance? A service organization? An embarrassment?
Is family a critical, negative, no grow force? A hostile communication environment? A place where nobody cares? A bad example? A lost childhood? A fragile identity? A den of thieves?
Is family a sense of roots? Is family something we use and abuse? Is it security in the midst of our adventures? A fantasy? A team? A sacred duty? A place to go when we are old and broken? A warrior-priesthood band of brothers?
Is family a survivors program? A listening post? A source of bragging rights? Who, on their deathbed, ever said, “I wish I had spent more time at the office?”
Tell me if you can: what’s the point of having your family?
Now, work through what you have to be and do in order to bring about your family plan.
- Write down and post the positive ideas in several places around the house. Move them (slightly) often so they are noticed better.
- Review them daily together.
- Give three cheers and a group hug to the family member who can identify the most positive or negative behaviors. No blame for the negative, just identify it. Write it down for consequences later. See if it persists three weeks before judging it as deliberate sabotage of the family plan.
- Remind each other that love is emotion in motion. Unlove is obstructing lifelong love and growth. Pray.
- Create positive peer pressure for your friends. After they get over being jealous, they will want what you have and you can share it with them. Dignity, equal worth, and unified purpose are extreme strengths.
Raising a Cheater
It is easy to do. Raise a child to want success without teaching him or her the skills that bring success.
Make everything easy for your son or daughter. Do chores for them rather than teaching them to do for themselves. Serve them without asking them to serve the family. Let them watch four hours of media every night, the American average.
Those hours are lowering their attention span, making them less able to compete in the world marketplace, and reducing their ability to think logically. (Check out Caleb Crain, the New Yorker Critic at Large ,Twilight of the Books.) This is a recipe for failure. Cut off your child’s thinking skills at the knees by plugging them into media for hours each day.
That will take away self confidence so your daughter does not believe she can achieve without cheating.
Feed your son junk food or let him skip breakfast. Let him go to bed any time, even though the Harvard Sleep Study says children through age eighteen need eight or nine hours of sleep per night in order to learn. (Check out Matthew Walker, October 17, 2002 Harvard University Gazette Archives. Also see Beth Potier, December 11, 2003 of the Harvard University Gazette Archives.)
Intimidate your daughter by criticizing her weak first steps so she will not risk running. Take away your son’s responsibility by saying the teacher is picking on him rather than holding him accountable. Let the children have after school jobs and cars even though their grades are suffering.
Cheating in college is on the rise. The pressure to succeed is great. Give your child tips on how to steal essays from friends, frat brothers and the internet.
If you want a child to cheat, make success everything, the learning process nothing.
Teach your child that he or she is just an accident of nature, so moral behavior is no longer a useful choice. (See Crosswalk.com, Chuck Colson’s Breakpoint 2/29/08)
Your Challenge
Be close to your child. Know his or her attitudes and actions. If a teacher says your child has cheated, use the “worried-concerned” approach. Express your doubts and disappointments quietly and privately, not in front of siblings or friends. Remember that to your child, success is everything. Say, “Son, I don’t think you’re being completely honest on that test.”
Punishment for cheating may or may not help your child.
Remember that your goal is to support the right behavior, preventing a character defect from developing into further lies and loss.
If you want to change the cheating behavior, punishment might only make your child determined not to get caught.
Use Adam and Eve as examples. Adam and Eve appear to be sorry for being caught, not for their own responsibility in their fall. Your honesty as you talk with your child will encourage changes. Shallow, knee-jerk punishment may reinforce a failing, cheating cycle. Decide what you want to happen.
Accusing your child bluntly, ignoring the problem, and emotional reactions will reinforce a failing, cheating cycle.
Instead, realize that needs are not being met. Help your child learn the skills and earn success. Help her assert herself or himself and be responsible in every aspect of family and school life.
Walk with your children through their mine field of uncertainties until they can navigate on their own.
Make sure they are eating right and drinking enough and getting enough rest. The Harvard studies prove that learning is a lot more effective when you sleep on it. Chuck Colson’s research shows that a strong moral foundation prevents cheating.
Parents, go for the gold!
Teaching Money Management / Crime Prevention
Technorati Tags: jail,ministry,rules,consequences,money management,boundaries.
When my sons were pre-teens we had a small jail visitation ministry and they saw first-hand the consequences of writing a lot of bad checks. This experience was very motivational for them, and part of training in conscientiousness (a key element, according to research, in long and healthy life).
Consider involving children early in the process of helping you write checks and balance the checkbook. A second grader can help you add and subtract. Grocery shopping is a time you can give cash for your child to pick his or her favorite fruit and vegetables. As soon as computer skills become important to your child, have them watch you with QuickBooks, then watch them as they help you enter expenses, sorting out tax items as you go.
A three or four year-old can learn how you choose what you buy at the market. Soft fruit, green fruit–teaching the gentle squeeze helps with defining what is O.K. for pet handling as well as fruit choices. Unit pricing on the shelf tags can be a learning experience for older children. As soon as children can understand what money is, they can use a dollar to find a toy at the 99-cent store.
The idea is to help them understand real world limits and luxuries. Real Consequences are essential. You don’t have the grow your own food, but you do have to afford it.
When one of my sons was five years old, he scratched his name all over the outside wooden paneling of the preschool building. I explained to him that since I could not pay a painter and had the skills, my consequence was to refinish that wall.
His consequence was to pay a fine: his weekly “donut money” (routinely given by a sweet church senior). He paid in person to the principal for three weeks.
While the principal said it wasn’t necessary, it did teach a well-remembered lesson. When he was six and bowed in a plate glass window by leaning on it, all I had to say was “WOW! Look at that window bend. If it breaks, that is A LOT of donut money.” He jumped away from the window like it was a hot griddle.
Children can remind you to set aside savings. Play “You be the parent and I’ll be the child” to test learning. Teens can help you to prioritize your spending.
You model and teach them important concepts. What is important long term that needs to be saved for? What sacrifices now will make a big difference later? They master the concepts through practice. They minister the concepts through service to you. Remember that learning needs reinforcement to become mastery. Sacrifice is part of love.
Money management concepts are crammed into one or two classroom hours of Senior Economics class in public schools. Sacrifice and love are not taught there. An economic survey course is useless when students need many hours of practice and discussion. Most of them won’t absorb enough financial vocabulary and basic ideas at school to prepare them for success in life. You are responsible for teaching money management.
Buy Ron and Judy Blue and Jeremy White’s new book: Your Kids Can Master Their Money by Tyndale House Publishers.
My book just touches the surface of what can be done to give children financial skills.
Be aware also that many states impose severe consequences on parents for their child’s misbehavior.
For example, your state may fine or jail you for letting your child participate in theft or gangs. Clearly you want to establish the kinds of bonds with your child which will prevent their need for re-parenting by gangs.
In many states you can be evicted from public housing if your child is using or selling drugs. Laws constantly change, so it is good to educate yourself on juvenile law.
Prevention of criminal behavior depends on showing your child the consequences of not following the rules. Rule-following behavior is something you teach early in life. Your three year old needs consequences every time he or she disobeys a rule. Rules need to be simple and posted in print.
I recommend a family trip to the courthouse, jail or D.A.’s office. It is very educational for all of you. Interview the D.A. Ask about common errors teens make that get them in trouble with the law. Your children will never forget a real lesson.
Check out the American Bar Association’s Division for Public Education (www.abanet.org).
Crime prevention is all about consistent consequences. One way to teach consequences is to have a mini-jail ministry.
Part of good parenting involves teaching what to do. Another part is teaching what not to do. It is up to you.
Fishing—For Responsibility
Technorati Tags: delinquents,responsibility,consequences
Five delinquent teens and I plunged through dry sage and scrub oak for at least a mile on a never-maintained jeep trail.
We came at last to a fantastic fishing spot on Navajo lake.
It was their lake, they said, but Anglos took it over.
An expensive-looking white boat was anchored in the glimmering water of the silent cove. This tiny Eden greatly surpassed the sun-baked, well-trodden areas we passed up in order to get there.
The water was Spring-water high with boulders strewn artfully around the edge: just enough climbing places, just enough level trail, just right reeds and grasses.
It was an artist’s paradise, a child’s dream, a teen’s wonder.
We left my scratched up Ford high on a bluff and scrambled down with three borrowed poles and picnic supplies.
As we fished and then ate hot dogs roasted by the lake a teen said, “I’ve never had this much fun without being high.”
They had never gone fishing. I had to teach them all the basics. Three borrowed poles were passed between the five of them. One made his own pole from fish line and a stick. He caught a fish to everyone’s surprise.
About three in the afternoon, enthusiasm wore thin and feet slowed down. One of the boys set a pole on the boulder and it slid into the lake. I told “Yazzi”[1] to dive for it, since it was a $120 pole and he was responsible. He set his shirt by the coals of the fire and tried to get it, but failed. Then his friends also tried but the pole had sunken out of sight. When the sun began to set we had to give up trying, dry off and drag ourselves up the rocky trail to the car.
Neither Yazzi nor his parents ever paid for the fishing pole. They just didn’t feel like being responsible. I paid for it, since I had borrowed it from another teacher.
Here’s your challenge
If you do not teach the basics, like how to be responsible for their own behavior and how to live up to their promises, your children will end up being re-parented by someone else. Maybe it will be a gang. Or a boy who promises your girl love without work, romance without responsibility. Maybe it will be a coach who imposes down time for poor grades. This story is a picture for parents who end up paying for military school, probationary measures, and other shame, because they did not teach responsibility.
How do you teach responsibility? Impose consequences every time your child breaks a rule. Live up to all your promises. Ask forgiveness for the few times you fail to be a good example. Above all, be consistent. Rules for your child should never change between husband and wife, caregiver and grandparent. Do not tell me you cannot do this. If you can eat regular meals you can be consistent in discipline. It’s your feelings that betray you if you say, “I can’t.” Be accountable for every day with a prayer partner or your spouse. It’s up to you.
[1] Not his real name
Shiprock Stories: Building Respect and Creating Credibility with Rebellious Youth
Building respect and creating credibility with rebellious youth is simple but not easy.
Building bonds between you and your rebellious or strong willed child may take years of work on your part before you see fruit.
When I first began teaching on the Navajo Reservation, I worked with sophomores who had been expelled from schools all over the 25,000 square mile reservation. A select group!
One of them, a gang leader, said to me, “It’s OK to kill a Bilagaana (Anglo). We just don’t hurt our own.”
I’ll call him James. The school administrators had asked teachers to mentor the students, since all of them needed re-parenting in order to turn their lives in a positive direction.
I was looking for a way to show Christ to Native Americans steeped in Medicine Man and Peyote religion. Talk means little when a soul is in pain.
During three years at the school, James saw me take him on a 400 mile trip to pick up a car given to him by his mother—whose whereabouts had been unknown to him for years. When we entered Albuquerque gang territory he suggested that I ought to be afraid, but could not understand why I was not. “Protection now is God’s job,” I said. “I do my best, He does the rest.”
I waited for the teens to ask questions, and the questions always came when my behavior did not fit their assumptions.
I commuted to school with him after his cousin killed six relatives driving drunk.
James was following that car and held dying babies, aunts, and his uncle in his arms while the Anglo ambulance delayed a short trip by two hours. Two Anglo truck drivers stopped but made no effort to help or comfort. Others watched the victims die without leaving or helping.
I created a way for James to detox his trauma by doing an independent study project (for credit) with him. We talked for 30 miles each way.
James saw me drive six students to the funeral of a loved victim of “Russian Roulette.” I was the only Anglo teacher who took unpaid leave to attend.
I stopped a fight at the risk of getting punched out myself.
I was the only teacher there: the sensible thing would have been to go for reinforcements. Twenty teens had already gathered for the show. This really confused James. I felt bold because I had prayed for protection that morning. It was not a daily habit, but an impulse.
“Why did you do that?” he said. “It was across the street from the school. You didn’t have to stop it.”
“Because I didn’t want anyone to get hurt,” I said, “I’m responsible for students during the school day whether or not they’re on the school grounds.”
Again he said, “Why did you do that?”
My behavior did not compute.
After I had a reputation for being an Anglo favored by their “South Side Brown Pride” gang, I took a girl from a rival gang to live with me for two weeks. She and her parents needed housing for her while she waited for a dorm vacancy. I was taking James home, with his sawed off shotgun in his school bag, on the same trip. “Why did you do that?”
Selflessness confuses people.
James saw me take his girlfriend to the hospital emergency room and stay there until midnight when I learned she had a headache for three days. I told them she needed instant attention since it could be an aneurysm. I was very close to tears. James and two other gang members saw compassion and boldness when it made no sense to them. After all he had seen me do, James told me that the only Anglos whom he could trust were Christians.
I did it because I was focused on living the Bible, not just denying the problems or talking about them. How does this apply to raising your child?
Too many parents are in denial about their discipline effectiveness. Then they wonder why they get no respect.
If you say one thing and do another, your credibility is zero. Give instructions face to face, eye to eye, and do it once only before you take action. A forgetful child may self-distract, in which case you need to ask him or her to repeat your instructions as soon as you say them. Then make sure the consequences you impose are understood and related to the "crime" in severity.
Say something like, "If you hit your brother, you will sit in the corner for three minutes. Do you understand?" Remember that the consequences must be unpleasant enough to guarantee obedience. Also, consequences must be imposed EVERY TIME your child hits his or her brother, from now on, whether Grandma or another caregiver is watching or it is you there.
If the rule is disobeyed again, increase the time out until your child chooses to obey you. Wear a stop watch so you can set a count-down timer for the time needed. Stress Free Discipline has other ideas for the use of a stop watch.
When a small child leaves the corner before you give permission, a judicious spanking is needed to guarantee obedience to the time out. This is not abuse unless it is done when you are uncontrolled in your anger.
When you tell your tot or teen something, take a deep breath or two before you say something you cannot back up with action. Think through your consequences ahead of time.
Too many warnings and not enough tickets creates disrespect for the rule of law. Too much talk and not enough action creates disrespect for your rules.
After three years of confusion for James, he and his pregnant girlfriend walked the isle of the local Native Baptist Church to accept Christ. Your purposeful living and consistent discipline will produce God’s fruit when it’s done for the Lord.
Alaska Stories: Pruning for Greater Growth
Technorati Tags: CFS,EBV,Alaska,Peer Pressure,teaching,chronic fatigue,disabiity,homeless,incurable,grief,suicide,medical expense
It was 65 degrees below zero wind chill as I walked to school in Bristol Bay, Alaska.
Wolf’s fur around my hood could have avoided the frost build up, but I couldn’t bring myself to buy a pelt. They hung around the general store, the “Farthest North Grocery Store” in Alaska. Other teachers, my peers, felt no discomfort about buying wolf pelts. I never quite fit, it seems, into the survival mind set. I wrapped a scratchy wool scarf across my face so it wouldn’t freeze off.
Crystalline air glowed around a few street lights. The still darkness was broken only by the crunch of my boots on ice-crisp snow. A porcupine moved leisurely across my path. I could hardly see what it was until I crept up close. Whew. It was too close for my comfort.
The Dillingham city limits included wildlife and tundra.
During “break-up” the snow melted and refroze in spots. I fell twice despite my care…dislocated my shoulder…couldn’t sleep for 3 months. Students had to do my writing on the whiteboard.
The romance of the northern lights was dimmed by pain.
On top of that I struggled with mysterious illness which made me feel like some alien had sucked out my blood and replaced it with water. Teaching became a nightmare.
Every spare dime was spent on medical expenses: I flew to Anchorage for medical care several times. The principal told me to leave mid-year but I needed the income and fought leaving through the teacher’s union. I slept on the floor of my supply closet as soon as school was over so I could get up again to do schoolwork before collapsing again at home.
I failed my first year of teaching in Alaska. After 19 years my career was over.
I was not a pioneer. In June I left teaching and moved to Anchorage where there was more medical help.
My diagnoses included mercury toxicity, Chronic Fatigue Immune Dysregulation, fibromyalgia, Epstein Barr virus and adrenal exhaustion. Doctors shrugged their shoulders and tried various means to make me functional. None worked.
I slogged through trying to work off my co-pay until my insurance ran out.
I became disabled, homeless, and unable to do anything for more than two or three hours a day. I felt like a broken doll face down in a muddy ditch. I considered and rejected suicide.
I was convinced that God had a plan for my life. Four years passed with no relief and no answers. I sold my car to a couple who defaulted on the payments and disappeared.
A few kind people helped me. I slept six weeks on my doctor’s home office floor.
Most of my peers misunderstood the nature of my illnesses. I didn’t look ill.
They pressured me to be like them, to get over it, to straighten up. They told me to work harder, spend more, move on.
Perhaps they thought I was lazy or mental. I thought that at first. A nurse who had rented me a room in her large home told me to leave when my money ran out. I went to the Anchorage Rescue Mission in tears.
Other posts detail the first 18 months of disability, homelessness and ten months of down time in bed.
Where was God during that time? He was pulling me through, although it was a tough road to travel.
Why? He never explains Himself to people in the Bible. I couldn’t understand if He tried to tell me why bad things happen. God was silent, but He gave me hope on the shoulder of life’s highway.
Insights and Applications
Listening to three or four radio sermons daily focused my mind on "things above" my own misery. It was essential to pain management to put my thoughts somewhere besides on myself.
Ten years later my life focus has completely changed. I am still disabled, but have grieved the loss, then learned more ways to manage and enjoy what I have. I may never have the stamina to teach full time, but I manage 48 apartments instead.
I have learned to pace myself rather than seek the highs and lows of kamikaze living. Previously, I would run full speed in an emotional high, collapse from exhaustion, run full speed again, collapse again.
Now I walk, enjoy the sights in depth, rest, meditate, listen.
I don’t know what is next. I see greater growth through the pruning God has fostered in me.
John 15:1-5 and Jeremiah 29:11 have become so important I read them over to myself again and again.
I consider the Bible essential for my well being. It was that which persuaded me that God has a purpose for everything under Heaven.
Dissolving Negative Peer Pressure
Our Culture: Paris Hilton. Pro Wrestling and Steroids. Lindsay Lohan.
It’s an unfortunate fact of life that uncooperative, sometimes hostile, bored, disinterested behavior is catching. Sometimes it can get so bad that desperate parents feel they must resort to outside sources in order to break the cycle. From Teen Options Blog:
Military teen boot camps are known for their no nonsense approach to dealing with out-of-control-teens. In many cases, boot camps are the right solution for a teen teetering on the edge of a full blown discipline problem and likely only needs a wake-up call.
Negative children, especially teens, appear to have dropped their lifelong love for you and your values in favor of something which makes all their problems worse. They may be very good or very poor students. They not only disconnect with you but with most of their peers at school.
They may be gang “wannabes.”
For Parents Fighting Gang Involvement
You may feel intimidated, confused, rejected, helpless and angry. How could they do this to you? Their gang seems all powerful. You feel weak. If you are facing a tag team within your own family they will support each other behind your back, sharing and negating everything you say. Suddenly your influence is nil. Years of effort are gone—useless. Don’t believe it.
Your child, your gift from God, is in that gang because of a need. It may be a need for power, influence, achievement, status. A negative group may help your child escape from the pain of social failure with more positive people.
If relationships outside the negative group improve, your child may prefer to leave the negative status or power group.
Peer Pressure Analysis and Combat
Study recent events which reinforce or cause the negative turn. Does Negative Ned need active listening? Do you need information? Are there biochemical causes? Is this evidence of physical growing pains?
Go into computer mode in your head: feelings are your enemy. They push you into adrenalin-driven rejection of others and stupid choices of correction. Deep breathing is essential to your health.
Pinpoint precise wrong behavior and the consequences. Deal proactively with wrong choices. Impose immediate consequences every time the wrong choice occurs. This is simple (not easy) with Stress Free Discipline. Do not attack group membership or make awful generalizations about the future.
Stay specific and impersonal in spite of their identity with poor choices. Never let them see you sweat. After all, you plus God are a majority. You have taken this to Him, right? Offer a positive course of action after prayer, Godly counsel and lots of active listening.
Stress Free Discipline can fill your child’s needs to be assertive, to have influence and to achieve. You cannot force your child to choose the positive action, but it is really hard to keep up the negative one when you show a willingness to open up, listen, and investigate mutual solutions.
Have you been withholding personal power development by not allowing your child to make some choices? We all learn by wrong ones, within reason. Remember that over-protective parenting is disastrous to personal growth. At the same time, do not let your child work together with a negative peer. Keep your contacts positive ones. I moved into a different town to remove my pre-teens from negative influences. Above all, don’t nag.
Christian Steps
Have you provided a Home Fellowship group which is real, available, and interested in your child? Your child will be more likely to leave the negative peer group if his or her need for status can be filled in a positive, God centered way. You don’t need to be watering the seeds of Truth if your child prefers to connect with a personality unlike yours. Make ways to provide that.
Negativity is so fatiguing and self-defeating your child will gradually begin to desire the relief of real, positive relationships. People usually act in line with the expectations of others.
