“Every culture has teachings that are transmitted from parent to child.  American parents don’t usually have to teach their kids how to deal with rhinos, but they do need to guide them in many other ways.  Parents need to forewarn their children and protect from the numerous hazards that prevail in urban, suburban, and rural environments.  There are poisons under the kitchen sink and in the medicine cabinet, pollutants seeping into the water, and escaping into the air.  There are toxic waste dumps that should be avoided.  Likewise, there are mental poisons parents must be alert to, many of them running loose on the TV set.” – page 131-132, “The Winning Family” by Dr. Louise Hart

Of course, today’s parents have much more to deal with then just television.  However, screens are still a prevelant force in our society.  Many households have computers and televisions sets on all day.  The author asks the reader in Chapter 14 to think what role TV (and i would substitute screens) play in your household?  It is a family activity or passivity? Is it a companion, lifeline, babysitter? Staring at a screen is different than real-life activities, and it may generally discourage interaction or communication with others.  TV generally doesn’t intent  to teach values or skills, but children often assume what they see on a screen is what real-life is about, or are they are influenced by commercials designed to sell products. 

The author contends that the child should be looking to the parents first in order to learn values, behavior appropriate for the culture, skills.    One can ask oneself what the computer or television shows are teaching – much of revolves around consumerism and violence.

So, what can a parent do? (and I use the term “older children” a lot here, because I feel no media for little ones is best, but of course, the portal to screens opens slowly over time)

• Monitor your children’s media and screen intake.  What are they watching?  What is the message?
• Limit viewing time.
• Use what you do watch together with older children as a springboard for discussion.
• Keep guiding them in all the moral, ethical, emotional situations that your older children find themselves in.

Chapter 15 is called, “Problem Solving,” and this chapter talks about teaching our children to solve their own problems.  Problems and conflicts are natural in life, and what many of us learned when we were growing up was to either placate people in a pleasing way or to blow up in order to get what we wanted.  We need to teach our children strategies that bring about connection and resolution of conflict.  

Asking ourselves “whose problem is this?” can be very helpful; especially with those 10 and up.  Is the problem this child is having yours to carry and solve? Or can you empower your child to start to solve their own problems?  Children need to learn to deal with disappointment, conflict, problems, loss, pain – and overcome these things and be resilient. Children who have been overprotected will not function well in life. 

Let’s encourage and support our children through their struggles, but not solve the problems for them. Children need to make mistakes and learn from those mistakes.  We can share how we handle disappointment or failures in life.   When all we teach our children is to run away from a problem, throw money at a problem, threaten our way out of a problem – we are not teaching skills.  We are teaching dysfunction.

The author lists all the barriers to problem solving:  denial, drugs, distraction, storing up pain and anger and stuffing it down and then letting it explode, blaming, rejecting people and cutting them out of our lives, fighting or withdrawing, attacking someone personally, rationalizing the situation, or just feeling defeated.

So how do we solve problems?

• We believe the problem is solvable.
• We figure out who owns what piece of the problem.  We can dissect the problem.
• We don’t blame because we are in it together.  No judging. It doesn’t help.
• Is the problem certain important to you or not?
• Use phrases like “I want” “I feel”
• Listen to the other people in the situation
• Express our own values and truths.
• Read between the lines a bit – what is the other person not saying
• And many more techniques are mentioned in this chapter!

The problem-solving steps:

• Identify the problem
• Brainstorm for solutions
• Evaluate all the solutions
• Work together and choose the best solution
• Implement the solution and follow-up with an assessment of why the solution worked or didn’t work.

All of this sounds so simple, and we probably all know these steps, but it is so easy to lose sight of this process when emotions are running high!

What did you all think of this chapter?

Blessings,
carrie

This book, by author Dr. Louise Hart, was first published in 1987, but has had a profound effect on my parenting, and I am so grateful I get to share it with you!  If you want to catch up, we have been slowly going through the chapters this school year – the last post, about chapter 12 (“Parenting and Empowerment” is here)- but we will be moving through the remaining portions of the book a little more quickly so this summer we can tackle another one of my favorite parenting books.  Our new book will be “Kids, Parents, and Power Struggles” by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka and it comes in audiobook and Kindle editions, along with the traditional paperback and hardcover versions, so grab a copy to be ready for summer!

Today’s chapter in “The Winning Family” is so powerful!  It is called, “For Your Own Good:  Discipline Without Damage” (Chapter 13). The opening is a  look at the traditional saying, “Spare the rod and spoil the child” and how this has been entirely misconstrued.  The author adds:

Children need to be guided. If they are not guided – or are misguided – they will be “spoiled.”  If an adult overindulges a child without giving guidance, this will be detrimental to the child’s character. But children cannot be spoiled by too much love! They are spoiled by a lack of love and guidance.  

Remember, the word discipline has the same root as the word disciple, meaning pupil or learner.  Discipline is about teaching and guiding children, not punishing. We guide children until they can take it over with their own internal system of guiding themselves.  This is the tallest order in parenting and comes little by little over the years, beginning with the small things.  We protect our children from hurting themselves and others, and help them develop resilience and problem-solving skills.

When children misbehave, they are showing an expression of how they feel about themselves (or, I would add, the circumstances and how they deal with circumstances). Children need adults involved in their lives in  order to learn this through adult guidance and natural consequences.  If an action doesn’t have a natural consequence, then we use a logical consequence.  The consequence needs to be respectful, related, reasonable.   The goal is mutual respect, mutual responsibility for all parties, not just the child. 

However, in order to do this we must develop reasonable expectations. In today’s fast-paced world, we often expect far too much of tiny children.  So our expectations and our logical consequences must fit a child’s age.  We also must not rescue our children from situations that are appropriate for their age and the maturity level of the child.

There is a whole section regarding “Creative Family Management,” and I love this section as it has healthier options for working with children.  There are pages of options in this chapter!  My top three favorites in working with my own children or other people’s children are  offering alternatives, planning ahead, and choosing my battles carefully.

Tell me your favorite positive discipline guiding techniques! I would love to hear them!

Blessings,
carrie