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.
Problem Solving in 60 Minutes
When families malfunction they may not know how to do target correction. Do not play the blame game! Use win-win techniques.
Agree on some ground rules for your quarrels.
Quality Progress (Redmond, 2007, 80) moves people closer to a solution in 60 minutes with four basic tools. Redmond’s suggestions are similar to those made by Richard Feder and John Mitchell nineteen years earlier in a ‘4-day task force’ (1988, August).
Rule 1 – Agree on time management
Both sources argue for the restriction of time as a key to efficiency. While some problems may require more urgency, sixty minutes is an arbitrary time in which Redmond demonstrates problem solving.
Please do not vent for hours without allowing some kind of decision to be made. Repeating your beef over and over just makes your family more “hard of hearing” each time you speak.
It is hard to respect someone who chooses not to be rational. Vent to an older friend who can talk with you like your grandmother might. They’ve been down that road and have seen what works or does not work.
The following are simple, but not easy ground rules for problem solving.
Inattentional Blindness: Personal Jihad
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.
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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.
[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
Mellowing out Mad Max (Maxine) #2
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.
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.
Who’s running the ship?
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.
Expensive Storage and Greedy Children
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.
Sibling Conflict Management
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.
