Finding what you’re looking for

May 31, 2012 2 Comments

This weekend is the big prom dinner, photo op, chance to dress up and after party for the kids.  What a difference a year makes.  A year ago I had expected that buddy-child and step-daughter would graduate but I wasn’t really sure if they would make it.  They were both still smoking dope every day, skipping pretty much daily and were unmotivated basement dwellers.  I wouldn’t accept anything else but really, they weren’t doing their job of living up to the expectation.

Fast forward a year and buddy is graduating and has been asked to sit on a panel between kids and teachers to talk about what the school can do to help kids “make it” to graduation.  She’s also been nominated for some kind of award that the teachers vote on.  We have to wait until the day they get their diplomas to find out what the award actually is.

The difference?  Stability and a sense of safety.  (otherwise known as step 3).

This is highly underrated.  Kids (young kids and teenagers) need a sense of stability (things that won’t change – like their parents’ behaviour and reactions) and a sense of safety in their daily lives or they can’t succeed or grow or thrive.  It effects their cognitive development (both positively and negatively) and allows them to move towards adulthood or become stuck and take a detoured route until their physiological age says they’re adults.

Kids need routines.  They need the people in their world to stay the same.  They need the adults to respond the same, act the same, think the same – especially during stressful or difficult times.  Parents can sometimes parent out of guilt and give in because they feel badly for their kids if times are tough but it is the absolute worst thing you can do.  A once in awhile “treat” is one thing but otherwise, you’re not doing your child anything good at all.  In fact, the only person’s needs that are being met is your own.

If you change and are not the same, your child’s life suddenly feels unsafe and chaotic and unpredictable and that raises anxiety and stress.  Chronic anxiety and stress in a child due to a chaotic, stressful, unpredictable and / or unsafe environment can cause brain damage and put your child at a huge disadvantage for things like learning (they’re too preoccupied with reading the environment in order to try to protect themselves) and relationships (they misread nonverbal communication and don’t know how to effectively respond to the actions or emotional displays of others because they see everything as dangerous).

Those are pretty big deals.

There is no magic here that helped buddy-child get to the point where she feels good about herself and feels successful.  She came from an environment that was not safe and not predictable.  She was suicidal and depressed.  She still sees a counselor because it’s good for her to do that and she is well connected to this counselor but she wasn’t able to just stop and be herself and try to succeed until she had lived in an environment that stayed stable and safe for a long enough time for her to risk it.

That’s also why step-daughter left.  She felt herself changing and she feared that change so much.  She put herself back in an unsafe environment where people are highly stressed and highly unpredictable with the conscious thought that this would force her back into her ‘dark place’.  The place where she felt comfortable and not ready to ‘leave’ yet.

Good or bad, they both achieved what they were looking for.

Filed under Clinical Stuff, Important Stuff Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Don’t sweat the small stuff

May 28, 2012 4 Comments

Step 2.  Don’t sweat the small stuff.

It’s so hard to do.  Things seem incredibly important at the time that they are happening.  Like almost life and death important.  You agonize over decisions and behaviours and issues and all kinds of things but 99% of the stuff you agonize about, you won’t even remember happened in 5 or 10 years.  And you know why?  Because it has no bearing on you and your kids lives.  There are some things that are important but not every-little-thing is and much less is as important as it seems at the time.  Something broken?  Big deal.  Figure out if it’s something that should have a consequence attached to it and if it was just an accident, move on.  Someone’s feelings hurt?  Apologize or make peace or work it out and then guess what, move on.  Lost something?  Let it go.  Misbehaviours? Figure out what your kid is trying to tell you if they actually used their words to communicate (they don’t, even though they know how to speak and that continues well into adolescence).  Figure out the consequence and then try again.

I spent so much time yelling at my kids and you know what, I don’t even know why anymore.  Neither do they for that matter.  It’s so easy to get caught up in everything.  In life, in expectations and in worry and stress but there are some things you have control over and there are some things you don’t.  Your kid liking hockey versus figure skating – guess what, you don’t have control over that.  Your kid wanting to wear girls or boys clothing for that matter – not something you can influence.  You might be able to control it while they’re young but it will come back to haunt you in the teen years.  The one thing you do have control over is the nature of your relationship with your child and how you chose to do your job.  Do you want to be a friend or a parent?  Do you want to teach them or control them?  Do you want them to be good people and be strong and capable when they’re older?  That’s your job and that’s worth stressing over.  Whether or not they made the A soccer team or they got 70 or 80% on the test or whether they have the same ‘toys’ as the kid down the street – not worth your time.

Chances are your child isn’t going to be the next rock star (or country music sensation or hip hop artist); or the next da Vinci; or the next Beckham; or the next Einstein.  That doesn’t mean they aren’t special and have special gifts to offer this world because they do.  It just means all the push and pull and stress over things that aren’t important can be such a waste of effort, energy and time.

The one thing people remember over the years and the one thing that is important when others move on from this world is the nature of the relationship.  Everything else is just stuff.

Filed under Important Stuff

How to be a parent in ten easy steps

May 24, 2012 4 Comments

It’s always funny to see the blogs and stories and issues that parents of young kids write about.  The struggles and worries and questions and ideas about how to raise the different children; all the plans and hopes and dreams.  Sometimes you just want to butt in and offer your two cents worth.  Okay, well maybe it’s a matter of ME wanting to butt in and offer my advice and opinion, most often where it’s not necessarily wanted.  But still, it has me thinking about all the things I would tell a young(er) parent if they would listen to me.  Or maybe I should say a newer parent since age of parent has little to do with it.  I’ve noticed that new parents are notoriously bad at listening to “old” parents.  Yes parenting styles and approaches have changed quite dramatically over the years and while it’s mostly good, it’s not all good.  Some of us seasoned parental types actually do have some good advice.

So here goes;

1. Self-esteem is earned.  Don’t get me wrong, it is very, very important that every child feels like there is an adult who thinks they’re the best thing on the planet and can be their cheerleader when needed and their security blanket when that’s needed too.  In fact, research tells us repeatedly that family dynamic and structure is less important than the nature of the relationship between adult and child (only need one but more is ideal).  Telling a kid that they’re great, even when they’re not acting great does not make them feel good about themselves and it doesn’t magically transform them into good people.  If that worked, we could take our little magic wands and spend all our time telling everyone in prison that they’re good little boys and girls and poof, they would be better or good people or whatever the issue is.  Kids feel good about themselves when they learn how to do things for themselves.  They have to earn it.  That’s everything from learning how to do the dishes (even though they complain about the task and will fight you on it once they become teenagers), to learning how to make an appointment at the hair dressers to learning how to fix a broken relationship (or when not to and how to grieve it and let it go) to learning how to patch a leaky roof.  I see a lot of parents that find it easier to just “do it” for their kids.  Easier for the parent because it’s more work to teach the task and then supervise it properly and hold the child accountable to the job they did.  Not easier for the child and in fact can be quite damaging to their self-esteem because what you’re really telling them is that you don’t think they’re capable of doing it no matter what you say.  I see a lot of parents that try to make up for or pretend when their kids aren’t acting properly, worried because they don’t want their kids to feel bad.  Since when did feeling badly become bad for you?  Trying to always make it better says once again, that they’re not capable.  It tells the kids that they’re not smart enough or strong enough or resilient enough to deal with whatever the issue is.  The end result is usually a child that doesn’t know how to do anything for themselves and is completely and totally unprepared for adulthood and all the setbacks and stressors that go along with that.

You can’t really undo a lot of things after the fact.  Childhood and adolescence are for learning all the things you need to know to survive and hopefully succeed (whatever that means to you) and hoping your kids magically learn them as adults is setting them up for struggles and failure.  And that is totally not fair.

 

Filed under Important Stuff Tagged with , ,

← Older posts