On the Joyous Edge

Does Your Child Have Limiting Behaviors?

Parents and educators who come to me for coaching feel unclear how to handle repetitive troubling behaviors and challenges with their child. They don't know how to effectively respond to these situations in order to best help their child. They feel confused about how to evaluate their child's behavior. What behaviors are warning signs of a child in trouble and what are simply part of a child growing up?

Many troubling patterns appear to be normal child development because we see them frequently in children of similar ages. Parents struggle with issues and challenges that appear to be similar to those other parents' experience. These frustrating challenges can appear to be part of normal child development.

When you see a behavior or stressor frequently in other families or classrooms, it does not mean it is an emotionally healthy behavior."Normal" does not mean "healthy." Because a situation occurs frequently does not mean this behavior is emotionally healthy or whole. It only means it occurs often because parents tend to relate with their child in similar ways.

If nurturing your child's emotional wholeness is important to you, it is important to be able to distinguish between "normal behavior" and "emotionally healthy behavior."

While traveling in France, I observed a family interaction that exemplifies the kinds of limiting patterns parents and educators frequently experience with young people. I am walking along a trail to see the ancient Roman bridge in southern France, the famous Pont du Gard.

A family of four walks in front of me - Mother, Father, Daughter about 3 or 4, and Son about 6 or 7. They walk in a line, all four of them holding hands with the two children in the middle. It looks so loving and connected.

Suddenly Daughter angrily and defiantly pulls away from the line, turns her back on them and refuses to walk further. For a few brief moments, Son continues walking happily between Mom and Dad, holding each of their hands.

Then Mom and Dad stop and turn toward Daughter, trying to coax her back into the hand-holding line, but she refuses. She is having what I call "a silent tantrum." There is a feeling of tension in the air. I walk past them as Mom and Dad try to coax their daughter to join them.

A few minutes later I come upon them again. Their relationship to one another has changed dramatically. Now Daughter rides atop Mom's shoulders. Dad is nowhere in sight. About four feet from Mom, Son marches woodenly forward, eyes glazed over and glued ahead, face expressionless, trying to act is if everything is okay.

No one is happy. Even daughter. She looks defiantly and angrily toward her older brother as if she is staking her claim to Mom and is warning her brother to stay away.

These kinds of interactions happen frequently in families and classrooms. A child develops a limiting behavior in an attempt to get her emotional needs met. Then she repeats it often in many different situations because it seems to work.

One of the biggest problems with this girl's behavior is that she will continue to use this strategy throughout her life in all of her interactions with others. The only way to change this is for her to learn a more positive approach to asking for what she wants.

Parents and teachers unknowingly contribute to these limiting behavior patterns in their child by how they react to their child's behavior. No one wins in these situations, and the pattern continues.

What are the repetitive interactions with your child that interfere with the harmony in your home or with your joy and peace of mind? What are the frustrating situations that happen so frequently they feel "normal" to you? What are the times when you lose your loving connection with your child?

These repetitive upsetting interactions are red flags that indicate an emotional concern for you and your child, whether they last only moments or the entire evening. Parents often put off doing something to improve the situation until it becomes an overwhelming crisis, and they feel stressed to the breaking point. Then they seek support and guidance.

Nothing is gained by putting off taking action to improve the seemingly small difficulties with your child. Life passes by, and your child grows up quickly. Instead of struggling with a troubling issue, take positive action today to have more joy, love and connection with your child. You both deserve the best life has to offer. 

Exercise Your Power

Are there areas in your relationship with the children in your life where you feel powerless to change the situation? Times when "the kids" seem out of control and no matter what you've done to get them to change, they keep being uncooperative.

For whatever comfort this is--you are not alone. Most parents, teachers, and grandparents struggle with some aspect of their relationship with children. Children who ignore your requests to pick up their toys or to come to the dinner table on time. Children who scream when you tell them "No."

The tragic part of these stories is we adults too often persist in doing the same things over and over to solve these challenges even though our strategies don't produce the results we want. Parents and teachers frequently tell me the same list of strategies they have tried--bribes, threats, punishment, reasoning, explaining--all of which do not create the desired long-term results.

The commonality in all of these approaches is they are intended to get the child to change her behavior. You unconsciously reason, "If only my child would act the way I want, everything would be all right." You keep hoping you can threaten, cajole, reason, bribe, or punish your child into compliance.

Many of you have heard me say this before. There is only one person whose behavior you can change, and it is your own. Yet how much time do you devote to trying to get your child to change? Or your boss or your spouse or your parents? We waste a lot of our time, energy and power trying to get others to change. If we put that same attention, power, and energy into our own change, we might actuallyget the results we want.

The good news is your child will change her behavior in response to your changed behavior. It can seem to work like magic.

Changing your own behavior can feel difficult. Doing new things requires courage, awareness, and lots of self-love. Your new behavior feels unfamiliar and uncomfortable, and you don't know what's going to happen when you do it consistently.

Here are a couple of suggestions to get you started:

~Determine which situations are not working for you. You'll discover some things are more important to you than others. Pay attention to your highest priorities first.

~~Choose one thing you will do differently to improve your own behavior and choices in the situation. Focus on this new behavior daily so you can successfully follow through.

If you're looking for some new ideas with your child, my booklet "60 Powerful Ways to Transform your Relationship with Children" will help you.

~~Observe the results in how you feel and how your child / student acts. Are you feeling better about the situation? How is your child responding?

When you use the power you have, you can create a wonderful connection with your child and have a lot of fun. Parenting becomes so much easier, and your child flourishes as an emotionally healthy person.

Outdoor Adventures with Sebastian

Here they are!! The next exciting round of Sebastian photos. My daughter-in-heart Nichola took these photos and she got some of Sebastian's smiles. He smiles lots, and he doesn't know about holding his smile long enough for the photo to be taken. They're often over before I can capture them. Remember, you can double-click the photos to enlarge them. The cradle was used by my father in Iowa and Orion when they were infants. Very special!

Are You Training or Empowering your Child?

Recently a mom said to me, "I realize I've trained my daughter to
be afraid of me. Now I want to train her to trust me." Have you
ever wished you could change how your child perceives and reacts to
you? It can be painful to see the results of your actions and words
mirrored back to you in your child.

Since getting my horse Destiny, I've often thought about the
difference between training a horse and empowering a child. There
are similarities between these two because you're relating with
another sentient being who perceives and remembers.

Children and horses remember how you treat them, and many of their
actions are a result of your actions toward them. When you are
gentle and patient, they respond more calmly and willingly. When
you neglect their emotional needs and act in ways that are
uncomfortable to them, they don't trust you and feel cautious with
you, even when they do what you say.

Training is used to manage behavior in people and horses. Training
uses techniques, such as force, repetition, positive and negative
reinforcement, to elicit the desired behavior. Training is when you
have an agenda for the other, and you want them to do what you want.

Training is not something you can do with your child's emotions.
Emotions are their own separate entity, separate from your child's
thought-process. Emotions and perceptions of safety and
connectedness come from the inside out. The individual draws
conclusions and develops interpretations of reality based on their
unique perception of their life experience, not based on the
techniques you use.

Children, even when they are infants, perceive and make decisions
based on their own observations and experiences. You may believe or
hope that you can control their thoughts and feelings, but you
cannot.

You cannot train your child to trust you, to like you, or to feel
close and connected to you. You cannot train your child to be happy
and loving.

You may think you child needs your guidance to teach him how to be
a compassionate, successful person; but what I've seen is that
children are independent, autonomous, loving people who are
constantly figuring life out for themselves, regardless of what you
do or say.

Training creates obedience. Empowering your child nurtures his
ability to problem-solve, be creative and self-reliant. Empowering
your child helps her feel confident, loved, and joyous.

So what's a parent or educator to do if your child feels insecure
or afraid of you? Focus on nurturing your child's emotional
wholeness. Make your emotional connection together your highest
priority. Make choices from your deep love for your child. Then
you'll feel the love and trust between you grow, and those old
behavior challenges disappear.

Sebastian Meets the Horses

We recently took our five-month-old grandson Sebastian out to the ranch to meet our two horses Destiny and Echo. It was a major photo opportunity! Nichola and I were "all over" every beautiful photo. Here are some I like that she and I took. We feel blessed to have such a loving connection with Orion and Nichola and feel so grateful for the many moments we get to spend with Sebastian. Such a joy!!

If Sebastian's hat looks a little small, it is! He's grown so fast he almost out-grew the cowboy hat before we got some horsey photos. With a little tugging, we were able to get it to stay on long enough to take the photos.

I made the purple sweater Sebastian is wearing. The joys of being a grandma!

Enjoy!!

                                                                                                                             

Compulsory Schooling Age to 18?

This editorial appeared in USA Today on February 18 in response to some states possibly raising the compulsory school attendance age to 18 . It was written by Jerry Mintz, founder and director of AERO-Alternative Education Resource Organization. He states the case against it simply and brilliantly.

----- States considering raising the compulsory school age are making a mistake. The way to fight dropping out is to make better schools, not force students to stay in bad ones!

Conventional schooling assumes that children are naturally lazy and need to be forced to learn through incentives such as grades and competition with other students. They need to be kept busy with homework and forced to run an endless gauntlet of standardized tests.

In contrast, many of us involved with educational alternatives such as democratic schools and homeschooling believe that children are natural learners, and that the best education is learner centered. The main job of the educator is to listen to the student, maintain a good environment for learning, and help them find the resources to pursue their interests.

Historical figures such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, Agatha Christie, Louisa May Alcott, and more recently, such celebrities as Elijah Woods and Venus and Serena Williams have learned this way.

Children are natural learners. If they say they hate school SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH THEIR SCHOOL! Until the mid 1800s schooling was not compulsory. Yet research shows that there was a high degree of literacy. People became educated because they wanted and needed to do so.

Something IS wrong with our public school system. Everyone knows it. Bureaucrats in the system have no idea how to fix it except by more of the same failing practices: More homework, longer days, longer school years, more years, more testing, more teaching to the test. And they only know how to test the most mundane and least important things, facts that can be memorized (and then easily forgotten after the test because they are learned out of context).

It is far more important for students to learn how to learn, how to find the answers and resources that they seek. If public schools provided this kind of education, as we do in numerous alternatives, young people would find learning meaningful and have far less reason to drop out. Students in schools with a learner-centered approach are truly excited about learning and rarely drop out.

Jerome Alan Mintz, Director Alternative Education Resource Organization www.educationrevolution.org

Too Much Drugging??

I recently received this link to a funny-not so funny ad about children. It's obviously a message about how we relate with children disguised as an faux ad.I  hope you enjoy!

I'm going to write a newsletter article about this soon. If you're not subscribed to Joy with Children, you can do so here.

What Can We Learn?--No. 1

This story is from the recent issue of our local paper the Mountain View Voice.

Headline: Mr. White boy was in the Nortenos: Stabbing suspect's fate a shock to local mom who knew him as a boy

"Except for a few bumps in the road, Jacob DeWitt, 19, had a normal upbringing. When he was a boy, his dad coached the local Little League team and his mom baked cookies for parties at the elementary school."

The article goes on to mention some of the bumps along the road...divorced parents who were struggling, but worked hard. In middle school his mother suffered a stroke, leaving her temporarily paralyzed. The neighbor mother who knew him as a boy puts much of the blame on the middle school itself where "too many kids, missing something at home, have been introduced to gangs."

She continued, "Parents have to be overly protective these days. You give them an inch and they take a mile. Especially a boy who is determined to do what he wants to do."

What can we observe and learn here?

1-Normal upbringing does not mean an emotionally healthy upbringing. Especially when defined as coaching Little League and baking cookies and hard working parents. These are wonderful things in a child's life, but only when there is an emotionally healthy foundation in the family, where there is an honest, trusting emotional connection between parents and son. Obviously his parents were doing the best they could, and yet coaching softball and baking cookies cannot replace a strong emotional connection.

2-This young man's bumps in the road were struggling, divorcing parents and his mother suffering temporary paralysis from a stroke. When parents are struggling emotionally, a child struggles emotionally. This is why it is so important for parents to nurture their own emotional wholeness and  their son's.  Children need as solid an emotional foundation and connection with their parents as possible. This is what allows them to feel safe and loved.

A child who seeks connection and companionship in a gang is not getting this at home. He also doesn't have an experience of authentic, unconditional love. He is lost and struggling emotionally.

"a boy who is determined to do what he wants to do"--This is not in and of itself a bad thing. It can be a strength and asset to be determined to do what you want to do. This is what makes for great people and great leaders. The problem with this are the adults in his life. It is our role to respond to this strong drive in a child in a way that empowers him to express his desire positively, rather than in destructive ways.

Any person who stabs another person multiple times is deeply hurting emotionally. It is so easy to say the problem lies with the child, to say he was a bad kid. I suggest the problem lies with the adults in his life, his lack of a safe, loving connection with them and limiting response to his desire to be capable and strong and to have what he wanted in life.

This story reminds us all to look beyond the surface in our own life and in the lives of our children. Looking on the surface is not enough. Children need emotional wholeness to flourish and thrive.

When we

Are You a Slave to Love?

One of the things we love about babies is their joyous, loving, innocent presence. It draws us to them like magnets. We love basking in the warmth of their love and joy. We love the feelings we experience when we are close to them.

My four-month grandson Sebastian and I are a perfect example.Nothing can bring me more joy than receiving one of his magnificent smiles. It begins with the sparkle and warmth in his gorgeous blue eyes. Then it fills his entire face with joy and radiates throughout his body. He waves his arms and kicks his legs in delight. It is a full-body smile of love and joy.

Me? You might say I'll do almost anything to share one of those magical moments with him. I make direct eye contact with him. I put on my biggest smile and radiate my love and joy to him. I make funny sounds. I talk excitedly. I shower him with kisses and play with his tummy. Anything for the delight of Sebastian's exuberant smile. You might say I am a slave to love.

It can feel scary to love someone this much. We sometimes feel vulnerable and out-of-control. We fear losing this person who is so precious to us. At times, if may feel safer to keep your love tucked away inside where it's not so exposed.

The idea of being a slave to love also seems to imply that you are being foolish, inappropriate, or used and manipulated. No one wants to be a slave to any person or any thing. Yet when it comes to Sebastian, I really don't care. My interactions with him give me so much love and delight with this wonderful person.

As much as parents and educators delight in a young child's innocence, they often worry about it. They don't want her to be hurt by her openness and innocence. They want her to know life is not a bed of roses and can be tough. Without intending to, well-meaning adults attempt to socialize their child and set about limiting their young child's loving, joyous nature

Parents also don't want their child to be too full of her self, to be selfish and spoiled. I've found we don't spoil a child by loving her and enjoying her too much. We spoil her when we set rules and boundaries that limit her. We also spoil a child when we fail to set clear limits that empower our child.

Most parents and educators struggle when it comes to setting limits. Too often we set limits that break our child's spirit and limit her emotional wholeness. Effective limits empower your child to live to her highest potential. Effective limits improve your connection and harmony with your child.

What I've seen is that within every child of any age, including adults, there always lives that innocent, joyous, loving core of who s/he naturally is. We never really lose it. It just gets covered over and masked by well-meaning adults' attempts to socialize us and keep us safe.

This means that no matter how old your child, she longs to express her joyous, loving self. If you want to share more of this with her, you have to be a slave to love, to the love within your heart. You have to explore and be committed to connecting with your child in this joyous, loving, fully open and present way.

You have to do things that may seem as ridiculous to you as some of the things I do with Sebastian. Of course, I can easily get away with my misbehavior under the guise of grandmotherhood. You can also easily get away with it under the guise of full-out love for your child or students.

This joyous, loving relationship is available for all of you to experience. You just have to be willing to be a slave to love!

The Power of "Barbie"

Have you heard about Fulla, the Middle Eastern version of Barbie. Fulla is an 11.5 inch Barbie-like fashion doll marketed to children of Islamic and Middle Eastern countries as an alternative to Barbie. The product is designed by Synrian-based NewBoy Toys, displaying how some Muslim families prefer their daughter to dress and behave.

Her personality was designed to be "loving, caring, honest, and respects[ing of] her mother and father. She's good to her friends. She's honest and doesn't lie. She likes reading. She likes, rather, she loves fashion. Her dress varies depending on the country in which she is sold.

Fulla has her own line of commercial products including Fulla breakfast cereal, chewing gum, backpacks, bicycles, and even a matching prayer run and scarf. Fulla is big business.

You can see photos and read more about her at Wikipedia .