Tag Archives: Therapy

Round and Round

Boundaries, Counseling, Mindful Parenting, Mindfull Parenting, Parenting, Parenting Skills, Self-Control, Therapy, Uncategorized, , , ,

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Who has gone round and round with their child trying to explain, “why”.  Did they ever stop and say, “Ah, I get it.  Thanks, I will do what you say?”  Good for you if that has happened.  You don’t need to read any further.  For those that are not fortunate please let me help.

Stand in one spot and just spin.  Don’t hold me liable if you hurt yourself…actually don’t try it.  Just imagine what you may feel like if you did.  You get dizzy and if you’re like me you get a little sick in your stomach (I blame Six Flags for the weak stomach).  I will loosely compare that physical reaction to spinning to what it is like going in circles with a child who doesn’t want to listen and will do anything to keep you from that goal.

“Why”

“Other kids don’t have to”

“You’re the only parent who does that”

“You don’t love me”

“(insert one yourself)”

Most people feel they need to answer.  It doesn’t work.  I wonder if this is where the classic comment of, “Because I said so” came from.  Rarely does the child want to know the answer or care what you have to say.  The main purpose is to distract and avoid until you’re flustered and even discouraged.  Does it cause you to doubt if you’re a good parent or maybe even frustrate you to the point of feeling angry and losing your temper?

How do you get them to follow your instruction and to stop wasting your time with questions when they don’t like the answers?  What are the parenting books saying?  There are some good ideas out there.

Until you’re able to do your own research, I want to give you a simple thought.  What would happen if you just stayed calm, ignored the question and repeated the direction?

Don’t get into the dialogue just stay with the direction

What if your focus stayed on the direction you are giving your child and you choose to not answer their question until later?  Maybe it’s not so bad to wait till the evening or next day before you discuss with them the reasons behind your instruction.

I’m curious how many kids would still be interested in having the answer?

 

Words of Wisdom

“Never complain, never explain. Resist the temptation to defend yourself or make excuses.”
― Brian Tracy

 From a Child’s Mouth

“I don’t have to lose well, because I always win”

Labels

ADHD, Counseling, Fear, Mindful Parenting, Mindfull Parenting, Parenting, Parenting Skills, Therapy, , , , , ,

 

IMG_3103I spoke with a man outside of my office while at a local place of business.  He asked what I did for work.  After telling him, he was very interested on my take about a personal situation.  This is not uncommon for people in my field.

This man shared with me the issues he’s been facing with his young son who has a lot of energy.  He said a lot of people have labeled his son ADHD.  So naturally, he was very interested in my take on ADHD.  He commented, “It’s kind of a fad isn’t it”.  I don’t really have a lot to say to that statement.  Is it a fad?  I do remember a time when it seemed like it was the go to diagnosis for kids who had a difficult time with focus, but I was just getting into the field at that time.

Heck, I had to ward off people who would haphazardly diagnose me with ADHD… (Admittedly, it’s taken a long time to write this post).

He told me that his kid’s teachers have told him he’s got ADHD and friends have done internet ADHD checklists on his behalf.  In all honesty, with what he was sharing it seemed his son was a strong candidate for a psychiatric visit.  “What?”  “Meds??” “People are always going to medication as the answer?”  HA! There’s a can of worms I don’t want to open.  Listen, I could tell he was not open to hearing that and I bet he had heard it enough times before.  So this brings us to the point of my post today.

Taking the Lame out of the Name

I got a sense from this man that he was suspicious of the label, ADHD.  It appeared to me his suspicions was keeping him from seeking professional help.  How many of you are/or have been guarded yourselves with a diagnosis label?  Labels in itself have good and bad effects on people.  Any diagnosis given to a child has a risk of being “type cast”.   Ask kids in Special Ed classes.  However, what if you did find out there was a problem and it had a name?  Would it matter all the same if this label had a solution that decreased the severity of the problem?

This is what is important, getting the best possible assistance for your family.

PS- If it will help, stop calling diagnosis’ a problem and call it a challenge.

 

Weekly Wisdom

Pride is deaf to wisdom

From a Child’s mouth

“I haven’t lied because there hasn’t been anything to lie about”

Bless the Child

Mindful Parenting, Mindfull Parenting, Parenting, Parenting Skills, Self-Control, , , , , ,

 

IMG_0139-1580x11851.jpgI had a discussion with a parent about comments a parent makes about their child.  The comments could be out of frustration, a statement of opinion, or thought to be an innocent tease.  I put it into two easy categories: Positive and Negative.

I recommend you to record yourself talking about your kid/s to people over a period of time.  What do you hear?  I admit there is no way we could always be on our best behavior when we feel frustrated by some of the baffling choices kids make (even the adult children).  How many parents’ necks are sore from shaking their head at these hair-brained children?

I know I challenged my parents, and even as an adult I’ve behaved childishly.  They should be wondering how was I able to make any type of success.  Guess what, they’re not and if they have I certainly hadn’t heard it from them.  That’s very important! The words my parents spoke to me were affirming no matter what I was doing.  Yes, I was disciplined.  My rear tasted the leather and wood of corporal punishment, but never did I hear a disparaging word from them.  The sting of a belt or paddle subsides pretty fast but a critical word can echo for years in a child’s brain.

I’m going to give you two more words: Blessings and Curses.

Do you want to curse your child?  Wish the worst on them?  I seriously doubt you do, but negative talk to your child has repercussions that are very close to cursing them.  In ancient times and in some cases present time its tradition for the father to pass on his blessings to his child.  What is the significance of this?  You do the research. However, I will pass this on to you.  There is energy in a blessing that can propel a young person into great prosperity.  As I understand it, there is a research done regularly at the Harvard University on success.  I will paraphrase the study; those who were successful were asked a series of questions.  One of the common denominators was the graduates who were successful wrote their goals down.  Now what does this have to do with parenting?

Pretty simple, positive outlook creates a positive checkbook.

PS:  It also matters what you say even when your child is not around because of the mindset you maintain regularly is what you present when they are around.

 

Words of Wisdom

Positive Outlook creates a Positive Checkbook

Out of Child’s Mouth

Me: “Do you play with American Girl dolls?”

C: “No, my mom says they’re too expensive… and they’re creepy!”

Me: “Creepy?”

C: “They stare at you all night”

Fearful Parenting

Counseling, Mindful Parenting, Mindfull Parenting, Parenting, Parenting Skills, , , , ,

 

 

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Anxious mom, “something is gonna happen that he will not come back from. “  I’ve listened to variations of this statement often in my office.  These parents are worried about the future of their child, and it’s not a career or who they will marry.  No, I’m hearing the fear that they will be in jail or do something terrible.  It’s not difficult to imagine in this day and age what that “something terrible” could mean. This fear has an effect on the actions of the parent.  They make choices motivated by this fear.  They want to see the behavior stopped, NOW.  Can you imagine what mom and dad feels after everything they’ve tried and problem still persists?  Not only it still persists, but now the child seems to be getting worse.

I had this new client, a young girl.  Her dad said to me, “she has explosive anger”.  Looking at this child you would never be able to tell.  During the intake interview she was cordial, well spoken, and showed intelligence.  I did see that she didn’t mince words when she described how people had treated her.  She was very opinionated about what a teacher or a former counselor said to her, “they were mean to me”.   I could tell in very little time that she had a critical eye to how people may think about her.  It was a strong possibility that she believed people were a threat to her self-confidence.  This is fear.

The mom in the first paragraph and the young girl has a common problem with fear.  It is the motivating factor behind their actions.  You see fear has a singular action, “WARNING, DANGER!”  From that point on we have two choices, fight or flight.  This is not the place you want to be making decisions from.  I get a few adults and children, who have the flight response to fear.  These are not ones I want to talk about this week.

Fight

Does anybody know what happens in our brains when we experience fear?  If you said, “fight or flight”, you cheated cause I already told you that.  Yes, that is what happens but what happens before that? I don’t like to get technical, because I don’t know how to, so I will lay it straight.  We get dumber.  Yep, our brains dumb down when he feel fear.  It’s instinct.  Why is it there?  Well, you can Google it if you want to learn more about that.  The fact of the matter is that it is there and we need to recognize the importance of it.  You see instinct is faster than thought.  Seriously, can you name a few instances where thinking, “Is this a bad situation?” would make it a bad day for you?  So let’s be thankful for this instinct.  Yet, not so great if it’s got no experience.  Left to its own devices it could make matters worse instead of better.  Can I give you an example?

When I was in my last year of college I was visiting the on-campus house my girlfriend at that time was living in.  A few of us were in the kitchen making dinner.  She was standing by the microwave melting some butter, still wrapped in aluminum.  At that time, microwaves were very sensitive to metal.  I was on the other side of the kitchen when the microwave started to complain about the tin wrapper and started to pop and blue flashes came from where the butter used to be.  There was some real similarities to a well know 80’s horror flick, so her initial reaction was very understandable.  She, standing literally next to the microwave ran away.  I, on the other side of the room passed her on the way to the microwave to shut it down.  Here is the point.  That was not the first time I had seen a microwave do the electric blue and knew what to do.  That was not the case for her.  Her instinct was not experienced with the situation and did what it thought best.

Train

How do we train it?  Take a note from the military.  Do you know what many of the soldiers say when they report back about why they took a course of action;  Soldiers, whose job is to put themselves into harms way;  Soldiers, who all feel fear and would be worried if you did not?    They will say they followed their training.  That is why countries spend large amounts of money and time training their soldiers.  When the fear hits and the instinct kicks in it knows what to do because it recognizes the situation and acts on it.

Parents, you have to realize the situation.  You and your child are in a need of training.  This takes time and energy because consistency and repetition will lead you to success.  It doesn’t matter how smart you are and how experienced you may be with other parents’ children.  You will still need a coach.  A person who can keep your head straight when it’s spinning.  Who will keep pointing you to the desired goal.  All of this is because you’re the teacher of your child.  The coach who keeps them moving even when they don’t think they can do it.  Yes, I’m a therapist and I work with kids.  I help them share their feelings and I talk about their angers and how unfair their parents are.  Heck, that’s why you send your kids to me, “to fix them”.  Guess what, I have them for 1 hr a week,   possibly 2 hrs if you can convince me.  I’m not very good with math but it’s fair to say, you see your child more than I do.  So your influence is greater than mine.

There are plenty of great books out there with usable techniques.  Do your research find out what you think fits your situation.  However, as much as I like to read military non-fiction novels it doesn’t make me a soldier.  So you still need to get a professional who can teach you the application of those skills and to help you stay focused when you don’t think it is working.

Weekly Wisdom

Intelligence: Knowing a tomato is a fruit.  Wisdom: Knowing not to put it in a fruit salad

From a Child’s mouth

“Teenagers know how to raise teenagers”

My First Blog

Counseling, Mindfull Parenting, Parenting, Therapy, , , ,

Daniel Bolg 1

Like all of my sessions I will begin with personalities.  It is fundamentally important to know who you are involved with.  The function of the personality isn’t to label a person or disable a person.  It is used to help recognize the viewpoint they hold.  A person’s personality can be described like a well of which a person draws water.  Its water, but it may have a different taste.   At this point I will have to disclose that I tend to use a lot of word pictures to describe what I’m saying and not all of them will be an accurate use of the analogy.  As I was saying, I typically use the first 2 to 3 sessions teaching on personality.  There have been some cases when doing this made the difference that corrected the problem.  However, that is not always the case.  I recommend doing your own research on personalities.  The most accepted one is Myers Briggs Type Indicator.  There is the oldest one called “The Four Temperaments”: Choleric, Sanguine, Melancholy, and Phlegmatic. 

The one I use, which was developed by Dr. Gary Smalley and Dr. John Trent using animal characteristics: Lion, Otter, Beaver, Golden Retriever.  I have created a template that takes all four into account.

Weekly Wisdom

Accept your past, Accept your present, Dream your Future.

Analogy

Progress can be like a pinball, you have to be pulled back before you can be launched.

From a child’s mouth

Me: “I love your honesty”

K: “I hate it…being honest and nice is disgusting”

This blog will be a weekly installment of my work in my sessions without breaking confidentiality, exploiting my clients, or knowingly using another person’s intellectual property.