Tag Archives: parenting

Review: The Collapse of Parenting: How We Hurt Our Kids When We Treat Them Like Grownups, by Leonard Sax, M.D., Ph.D.

A friend recommended this book and this past weekend I read a large portion of it. It’s aimed at parents and others who are directly involved in raising children, and cites some pretty striking research about the negative outcomes of giving children more freedom and flexibility than they can handle. Children being given the control over their lives that ought to be reserved for responsible adults are far more likely to develop anxiety, depression and obesity; they have less attachment to their families and adults in general, and are more likely to turn to peers for advice. Their peers, of course, are not apt to know any more than them about making wise choices about life.

It’s a conundrum for some: after all, kids have to learn how to make choices, but they can’t handle the full variety of options that many parents want to give them. Learning how to present a narrow, fair range of choices is, apparently, a challenge for parents who are desperate to be liked. This craving for their children’s approval underlies a lot of dysfunctional, but seemingly well-intended, parenting. I described a parent’s style as a “democracy” (the children are school age) and the parent took it as a compliment…as if being democratic with children, where no one is really in charge and knows best, was a good plan.

Do kids need choices? Absolutely. Do they need – or can they even handle – the full range of options that an adult might handle? Absolutely not.

For parents, teachers, grandparents and others who work with children, this book is a friendly, accessible but thoroughly footnoted guide.

Dr. Lori Puterbaugh

© 2016

Posts are for information and entertainment purposes only and should not be construed to be therapeutic advice. If you are in need of mental health assistance, please contact a licensed professional in your area.

…and still more decisions!

Decisions, decisions!

Our nephew and his wife are considering relocating. Given their jobs, they are employable just about anywhere – so the choices are as vast as these United States. They’ve created a spreadsheet to rate the places they are considering on a variety of factors: climate, culture, length of commute, ease of accessing travel to family back home…we’re looking forward to seeing how they narrow their choices as they visit cities and rate them across variables.

It’s a useful way of making difficult choices where there isn’t an obvious “right” or “wrong” choice to make. Take the job that makes less money but is more satisfying and allows for more flexibility, or take the higher-paying job that provides better long-term financial security? Take a second job or scale back on expenses? Move far from family or stay close? The problem, of course, is even ranking how important the factors are, really, in the first place.

Maybe deciding on a job isn’t the right example for you. Perhaps you have to decide on whether to downsize or stay put, or which school to attend. Whenever there are multiple factors to compare, weighing the factors in importance to you can help narrow the choice. Writing it all down – in a chart, or listing – can help, because then it’s in front of you, not rattling around in your head, where it keeps butting into whatever else you’re trying to manage in life.

Then, too, sometimes making decisions is complicated by stress and fatigue. If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed and too hungry to pick something to eat, you’ve been in this state. Likewise, trying to figure out what task to handle first, when everything seems overwhelming. Just doing something – even if you change your mind and revert to a different task – is better than paralysis.

Some people are able to make decisions quickly and easily; for others, the fear of making the wrong decision impacts even minor choices where “wrong” would be, at best, a minor disappointment. If you’re the kind of person who gets stuck in decision making, experiment with some other ways to organize the choices: a spreadsheet or simple paper and pencil chart or list, or focus on what is most important to you as a factor, or, for minor issues, take action and see if that is the better option or if starting in the wrong direction helped you discern, quickly, the right path to take.

Of course, if anxiety is interfering with basic decision-making, please consult a professional.

 

 

 

Dr. Lori Puterbaugh

© 2016

Posts are for information and entertainment purposes only and should not be construed to be therapeutic advice. If you are in need of mental health assistance, please contact a licensed professional in your area.

Decisions, decisions!

Choices are good, right? Until they’re bad.

Too many choices becomes overwhelming. We can see the results of seemingly endless choices and information when we, or someone we know, gets lost in hours/days/weeks-long process of sorting through online reviews and information in the attempt to make a decision that might have been made over a dinner conversation twenty years ago. Grownups have problems with this, and yet so many parents inflict too many choices on their children.

It’s important for children to learn to make choices and endure the consequences in small, safe, age-appropriate doses. It’s also important for children to feel like the grownups are running the show. Offering opportunities to make choices – within defined parameters – and then sticking with those choices, are great learning experiences for children.

Consider asking a five-year-old:

“Would you like applesauce or yogurt for a snack?” versus, “What would you like for snack?”

What are the odds the child isn’t going to go for fruit or low-fat dairy and will instead choose something the parent wasn’t planning to provide? With so many modern parents afraid of upsetting their children and overly eager to have their children’s approval, children are left without anyone big and safe to place limits around their world. Temper tantrums, anxiety, and entitlement are often the results.

Children benefit from parameters and calm grownups being in charge. A calm, in-charge grownup can offer safe, appropriate opportunities to learn decision-making skills and learn to live with the consequences.

Dr. Lori Puterbaugh

© 2016

Posts are for information and entertainment purposes only and should not be construed to be therapeutic advice. If you are in need of mental health assistance, please contact a licensed professional in your area.

Way 28/Day 28: Make it a great year: Corral those bup-ponies.

Oh, admit it.

You’ve got bup-ponies.

You don’t think so?

Ask a little kid about why they did something wrong. You’ll hear things like,

“Yeah, bup-pony, he hit me first.”

“Bup-pony, she started it.”

“Bup-pony, it’s too hard to (clean my room, do my homework, feed the cat, etc.).”

Well, grownups have bup-ponies but we think ours are all very sensible and realistic, not like those imaginary bup-ponies that kids have. We have reasons, not excuses; we are rational, not defensive…Bup-pony, sometimes our reasons are not as powerful as we imagine. They are fears and excuses playing dress-up.

So make it a great year; get a lasso on those bup-ponies.

Dr. Lori Puterbaugh

© 2016

Posts are for information and entertainment purposes only and should not be construed to be therapeutic advice. If you are in need of mental health assistance, please contact a licensed professional in your area.

Way 26/Day 26: Make it a great year: Live “as if”

How many people do you know who are postponing what they supposedly want to do/be until some mystical, mythical event has transpired, or a change has happened?

They’ll get in shape…once they start smoking.

They’ll get along better as a family…once the last kid is through those messy teen years.

They’ll get back to reading/art/gardening when…something.

They’ll be able to take better care of themselves when the job/relationship/weather cooperates.

…and we all know that when the weather cooperates or the teenager grows up and goes to college, there will be some new reason that makes perfectly good sense, for why the couple barely speak or the smoking continues or the brain hasn’t been challenged by a new author in ten years.

Make it a great year by living as if:

Today, act as if your family gets along.

Today, act as if you are already taking better care of yourself.

Today, act as if you are actually preparing for some major change by doing one concrete, specific thing that gets you closer to that goal.

Make it a great day. Do that 366 times and you have a great (leap) year.

Dr. Lori Puterbaugh

© 2016

Posts are for information and entertainment purposes only and should not be construed to be therapeutic advice. If you are in need of mental health assistance, please contact a licensed professional in your area.

Way 20/Day 20: Make it a great year: Mentally stretch

We humans get into ruts.

We decide very early what we’re good at and not good at – probably not accurately. Who knows how many kids decide (wrongly) that they are “not good at math” when the problem is that some well-intended grownup mistakenly tried to force them to understand a concept before their brain was ready for it. Being able to reverse operations, for example (which we need for subtraction) requires children have reached a particular level of brain development, often not attained until age 7.   This is why subtraction used to be 2nd grade material. Abstract thinking – such as in algebra – is attained somewhere between 12 and 14 (if ever – everyone doesn’t get there), so for most kids, doing pre-algebra before that can be pretty discouraging.   After all, if the grownups think you should be able to understand it, and you can’t, well, it can’t be that the grownups are mistaken (or so the child infers). The child decides he or she is dumb. This is not fair.

This sort of experience leads to us cutting ourselves off from whole areas. We have a bad experience in one class and decide history is boring (how can that even be???) or that we “can’t do art,” whatever that might mean.

Make it a great year. Stretch your brain. Try to learn something new; tackle something you once decided you “can’t do” based on some old lesson gone wrong.

Dr. Lori Puterbaugh

© 2016

Posts are for information and entertainment purposes only and should not be construed to be therapeutic advice. If you are in need of mental health assistance, please contact a licensed professional in your area.

Way 15/Day 15: Make it a great year – ask someone to give of themselves

Some people are aching to be asked to share of themselves.

They have stories to share; wisdom to give; experience and skills to pass along.

Instead of letting a parent or grandparent sadly give yet another gift card to add to the pile of gift cards, let them share of themselves: ask for time to record some family stories, for copies of special family photos, or ask for some lessons in their hobby or special area of skill.

Dr. Lori Puterbaugh

© 2016

Posts are for information and entertainment purposes only and should not be construed to be therapeutic advice. If you are in need of mental health assistance, please contact a licensed professional in your area.

Way 14/Day 14: Make it a great year – give of yourself

Give of yourself.

Give your undivided attention (no multi-tasking, no furtive glances at the cell phone – deluding yourself that no one notices).

Give of your talent: teach someone how to do something you know how to do, whether it’s how to tend a plant, bake a type of cookie, or repair a cranky lawnmower.

Dr. Lori Puterbaugh

© 2016

Posts are for information and entertainment purposes only and should not be construed to be therapeutic advice. If you are in need of mental health assistance, please contact a licensed professional in your area.

 

Way 13/Day 13: Make it a great year – listen unselfishly.

Listen unselfishly.

Listen without planning how you will respond.

Listen to hear three important themes:

  1. The content: what is the information being shared with me?
  2. The emotion: how does the information being shared affect the person speaking to me? What can I draw from strong or subtle clues in expression, tone, pace of speech?
  3. What does this mean to the speaker?

Respond with a focus on the person speaking – not turning the focus on you. Unselfish listening – listening that isn’t just focused on planning on what to say next – is a powerful force for good. It’s hard and, as far as I can tell, it takes practice for a lifetime, but it’s worth trying again and again.

Dr. Lori Puterbaugh

© 2016

Posts are for information and entertainment purposes only and should not be construed to be therapeutic advice. If you are in need of mental health assistance, please contact a licensed professional in your area.

Way 12/Day 12: Make it a great year – work hard at something.

Yesterday the message was play – today’s the opposite.

Push yourself at something on an ongoing basis. Not crazy-hard – not without careful consideration of the process of change and development in that particular arena – but consistently. Consult experts for guidance on the particular area so you know how much effort is smart and how much is fruitless and/or dangerous.

Persistent effort changes the brain. Just like stewing over resentments makes one better at being bitter and resentful, persistent rehearsal of a new skill makes us better at it. However, there are limits. The brain develops in the way it develops. Until the brain has reached a certain level of development, for example, it’s not useful to try to pound algebraic concepts into elementary school students. They might memorize stuff to make grownups happy, but the ability to think abstractly that all those pesky “x” and “y” problems require is one related to neurological development, and that happens when it happens, not when competitive parents would like it to be.  That might be age 10 but for other kids, it might not be until age 12 or 14. That’s not a measure of intelligence, it’s just a pace of childhood development.

Staying young-at-brain requires exercising it. Find something interesting and push yourself.

Dr. Lori Puterbaugh

© 2016

Posts are for information and entertainment purposes only and should not be construed to be therapeutic advice. If you are in need of mental health assistance, please contact a licensed professional in your area.