How To Stop Your Kids From Becoming Drug Abusing Delinquents

Research on how to rear happy, healthy kids is becoming pretty impressive - here are the top tips from the research:

1. Protect them from emotional, physical and sexual abuse
2. Protect them from cruel environments (teasing, criticism, harsh punishment)
3. Sort out conflict between parents in kindhearted and effective ways
4. If either parent becomes depressed, do something about it
5. Don't use coercion and harsh punishment to try to control their behaviour instead be warm and flexible
6. Feed them Omega 3 supplements
7. Teach and encourage kind and empathic behaviour by prompting it (Sarah, how do you think Kate is feeling? Do you think she needs a hug?'); noticing and praising it ('David, you were so kind to play Barbie with Katie. She looked so happy.') and modelling it yourself. 
8. Send them to a school that encourages kind and empathic behaviour.
9. Give them attention. Play with them, chat with them, be interested and caring.
10. Notice when they do the right thing. It can be so easy to react when kids do the wrong thing and ignore it when they get things right, consciously try to focus on what they get right whilst also dealing with any poor behaviour.
11. When they are learning new and difficult behaviours, such as sharing their toys or handling conflict well, break it down into small steps and set up some form of reward system (like a sticker chart) but don't overuse external rewards.
12. Where possible give them choices (and coach them to understand the likely consequences of those choices).
13. Make sure they are supervised after school - including in their teenage years.
14. Encourage them to be mindful.
15. Help them to choose their values and then encourage them to make decisions in line with their values.

If you have young children then I highly recommend the Triple P program which is summarised in this book. Not only does it have strong evidence to support it but also I used it with my kids and they would both say it was a good approach! What more proof do you need!

Why Telling Children What to Do Is Often A Bad idea

Adults teach children how to behave. One of the things we teach kids is that they need to follow instructions: 'Go and wash your hands and come and sit down for dinner'; 'Say, 'Thank you' to Grannie'; 'Come and help me with the washing up'. We praise kids when they do as we ask and punish them in some way when they don't. Eventually they learn that it is a good idea to do what people in authority ask you to do.

Following instructions with good grace is an important skill. We all know kids (and adults) who haven't learnt that skill and they are painful to be around - everything feels like a battle.

However we want our children to be discerning about this. We don't want them to blindly follow instructions. We want them to question authority. We don't want them to be trapped into being a people pleaser. We don't want them to just go along with peer pressure. ( If you are in doubt about this then read Philip Zimbardo's works on the dangers of compliance.)

So we need to teach them another more important skill. This skill involves being in contact with what is going on in the present moment (How do I feel? What is really happening here?); being able to consider the longer term ramifications of their actions; draw on some values that feel personally meaningful and then making a decision how to act.

This skill is psychological flexibility and it is strongly associated with well being.

Which is why we often need to pause when we have the impulse to just tell our kids what to do and instead coach them to come to their own decision. So when Grannie gives them a present that they don't want, we might take a moment (whilst Grannie is in the garden) to talk through how they feel (disappointed), how Grannie might be feeling (worried that she has got it wrong?), what they want their relationship to be like with Granny and then help them decide the best approach to this. Which might be to give Granny a big hug and a thank you now and perhaps on another day have a conversation with Grannie about how they would love to go shopping for their next present with Grannie and choose it together.

Would You Kill Hitler? Some Thoughts on Kids and TV

’If you could go back in time, would you kill Hitler?’ A few months ago my 16 year old daughter and I were having dinner with some friends and we started to discuss this question. My response was ‘Yes, I think that killing is wrong but think of the lives you could save’.

My daughter, Ellie, however, came up with a much more thoughtful answer, she said, ‘No, because Hitler has had such a huge impact on the world. Killing Hitler would change history and we don’t know in which direction. Someone else may have taken over the Nazi party and the Nazi’s might have won the war. What Hitler did has served as a warning to us of what people are capable of. It taught us of the dangers of racism and prejudice. We don’t know how the world would be changed if Hitler had been killed.’

I was gobsmacked. Where did this complex reasoning come from? Had she covered this in school? No. She got this from watching Dr Who. Ellie said that she learnt from Dr Who that there are points in time which can’t be changed because changing them changes the whole course of history.

Todd Kashdan wrote a great post on differentiating the form of a behaviour, in this case, watching television, from the function.  Television can just be Valium for our kids – keeping them quiet whilst we have a break (and sometimes we do need a break!) - but it can also be thought provoking. It can help to build maturity, perspective taking and reasoning skills.

I think that our job as parents is to get involved – to sit and watch the shows that interest our children and then talk about what happened. But (and this point is important) we need to show genuine interest in their view.  It can’t be like those cringe worthy ‘teaching moments’ they have in sitcoms where Mum says, ‘And what have we learnt from that?’. Instead we need to be curious and treat their opinion as valid. If we do that, I think we can make the most of that incredible window on the world that sits in the corner of the lounge room.

If You Want Your Teenager to Tidy Their Room - Do It With Them

My Mum gave me some great parenting advice recently. She said: 'When I look back on how I raised you, I wish I had realised that it would have been better for me to do chores with you, rather than send you off to do them on your own'.
This is solid advice - most of us get progressively more sad on our own (unless it is a conscious choice to have some 'alone time') and doing chores alone is even worse. But doing chores with family members is important bonding time - time to gently chat whilst doing something useful.

I spoke to a lovely psychologist last week who works with Indigenous Australian youth. He doesn't do formal, sitting in an office, talking about your feelings type sessions with his clients. They head out to the park and do stuff together and, whilst they are kicking a football, moments will arise when the young person shares something important.

So doing those chores with your teenager is a wonderful opportunity to create a space where an important conversation can flower - relish it. They grow up and leave us so soon.

The Opposite of Parental Autonomy Support

I've blogged recently on the benefits of encouraging your teenagers to develop autonomy - this is what the opposite of that feels like.

Why Teenagers Sometimes Respond Unpredictably

Teenagers 'may process emotions differently than adults'. A team led by Dr. Deborah Yurgelun-Todd at Harvard's McLean Hospital scanned the brain activity of five young teenagers whilst they viewed pictures of faces and worked out what emotions were being felt by the people in the pictures. The study found that the teenagers' amygdala was activated when they did the task.  The amygdala is a brain centre that processes emotions and memories. Whereas when adults make these assessments they tend show activity in both the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex. The pre-frontal cortex is involved in 'planning complex cognitive behaviors, personality expression, decision making and moderating correct social behavior'.


It is interesting to note that teenagers tend to be much worse than adults at identifying someone's emotion by looking at their face.


This is a small sample but I think what it is suggesting is important.    This study suggests that teenagers may be poor at identifying others' emotions because they interpret other people's emotions by noticing their own feelings and perhaps assuming that the other person is feeling the same as they are.


If you think back to what it was like as a teenager - how self-critical you were and how you assumed that others were just as critical of you - this finding makes sense of a lot of teenage behaviour.  


So how do we help our teenagers with this? I think we need to challenge the cultural belief that our thoughts and emotions control our behaviour.  Steve Hayes has written a great blog post on this.


We need to teach them something slightly different.  We need to teach them that thoughts and feelings aren't truth.  We need to teach them to notice their thoughts and feelings, notice the urge associated with those thoughts and feelings, and then pause and check in with who they want to be in the world.


And we need to be very, very kind and compassionate - it isn't easy being a teenager....or a parent.

Effective Parents Encourage Autonomy

If you want your teenager to

• Make good choices because they want to (rather than to please others)
• Handle their emotions effectively
• Pursue their interests with passion 
• Like and respect you, rather than resent you

Then you need to support your children in developing autonomy.

Practically what that means, is that you:

• Are interested in hearing their perspective even when it is different to your own (and don't act like their perspective is somehow less valid because they are a teenager)
• Give reasons for your opinions and advice
• Let them make their own decisions - but coach them to help them to consider all of the different options and think through the likely consequences of those different options
• Give them support when they need it - autonomy is different to independence.  They can get overwhelmed and feel a bit abandoned if you push them to become too independent too fast
• Live the values that you think are important.  For example, If you want them to value getting a good education then seeing you putting effort into learning new skills has more of an impact than all of the lectures you give them about how they must do well at school

Mindful Listening

‘to be quiet and still for each other, to regard each other with attention, patience and openness...to provide moments of full attention, engagement and connection’

Teenagers and Freedom

'Only people who have been allowed to practise freedom can have the grown-up look in their eyes.'  EM Forster

This is such good advice for parents of teenagers - and so incredibly scary!  How much freedom do we give our children in order to both keep them safe and give them the space to grow up properly?  I think it is about doing it in steps - giving them a small amount of freedom and seeing how they handle it.  I also tend to adopt the attitude that if my teenage children can give me a thoughtful plan for how they will keep themselves safe in a particular situation, then they are mature enough to handle that situation.

For example, my daughter, Ellie, loves to ride.  She wanted to do some jumping. I was anxious about this - pictures of her falling and terribly injured in my mind.  Ellie knows I am anxious about this, so, when she asked me if she could jump her horse, she spoke to me about what she had in place to keep herself safe.  The plans where detailed and sensible - so I said 'Yes'.

School Gardening Boosts Children's Wellbeing And Development

A new study suggests that incorporating gardening into the education children receive at school boosts their wellbeing, learning and development and helps equip them for many of the challenges of adult life.

Some of my happiest childhood memories are of spending Saturday afternoons gardening with my father - reading this study makes me think I should have been a little more persuasive about getting my own children to join me in the garden.

Why Don’t Kids Make Us Happy? | Psychology Today

Why Don’t Kids Make Us Happy? | Psychology Today:

In this article Sonja Lyubomirsky explores the 'parenthood paradox' which is that:

"Although achieving every other human motive (like satisfying thirst or hunger, gaining social status, or finding Mr. Right) makes us tremendously happy, having children appears to be the one exception. Indeed, research suggests that despite most people's widely-professed desire to have children, parenthood is associated with decreased, rather than increased, well-being. To offer just one often-cited example, working women asked to recall their previous day in excruciating detail rated taking care of their children as just slightly more positively than the unpleasant tasks of commuting and performing household chores."

She exlores how hard parenting is and how unsupported parents are in current western cultures compared to our predecessors' who lived in larger family units and tribes.

In the end she uses a quote from Stephen Colbert (The Colbert Report) to sum up what is probably going on:

"...Children are a pain in the ass, I'll grant you that, but the feeling that comes with children is a feeling that is superior to happiness...a sublime feeling."

This is not just true of parenting but of many difficult and challenging endeavours. If something has deep meaning and purpose for us then, although at times it may be painful, there is a deep joy associated with it that goes beyond happiness.

Being an unpopular parent

Sometimes as parents we have to make unpopular decisions.  We try to be democratic (teenagers with  parents who have a democratic style of parenting have better outcomes) but now and again we have to be more like a benign dictator. When that happens I remind myself of what the father of a friend used to say (please adopt a Derbyshire accent here - it works better if you do it properly!):
'I am not here to win any popularity prizes with you lot. I am just here to try to put you on the right track'

Parenting

There is a lovely book - Buddhism for Mothers - where I learnt that our children are our 'Zen Masters'. They challenge us so much. provoke such strong feelings of love, anger and fear and we can't walk away however scared or overwhelmed we feel. Somehow we have to stay and do our best and see our imperfection. If you are a parent - show yourself some compassion. And remember, when those strong feelings rise - take a few slow, deep breaths before you say or do anything!