Posts Tagged ‘parenting’
A neighbor frequently asks for help with her elementary-age daughter: rides, baby-sitting, meals. But she never reciprocates. Do you say no, knowing the child is the one who will suffer?
My client, Dr. Fran Walfish says, “You should continue to be generous and help this defenseless child. Someone else might say that saying no is creating reasonable boundaries, but it all depends on your point of view.
“I treat many adults who were raised alone,” Walfish says. “They always talk of one special person who saved them psychologically. Perhaps it was a grandmother, uncle, schoolteacher, the parent of a classmate. As a neighbor to this limited mother and her elementary-age daughter, you have the privileged opportunity to be that special person and rescue this child from a world of isolation.”
You can read the full article here.
Dr. Walfish is the author of The Self-Aware Parent: Resolving Conflict and Buiilding a Better Bond with Your Child.
My client Betsy Brown Braun, development specialist and best selling author of award winning Just Tell Me What To Say & You’re Not The Boss Of Me, has just posted this amazing blog on raising kids by example. Check it out below.
YOU ARE WHO YOU ARE WHEN NO ONE IS LOOKING
The mother unwrapped the straw, poked it into the little box, and handed the drink to her toddler as they walked out of the grocery store. The sliver of straw paper slipped from the mother’s hand. I doubt that she even noticed it.
Rolling my grocery cart back to its stable, I looked around to see how many carts were randomly parked, willy-nilly throughout the lot, nowhere near the stable. Who leaves her cart to roll into the next parked car?
Since my greatest interest and life’s work centers on parents and kids, the world is my lab. I notice random acts, relationships, and interactions wherever I go. Observing, noticing, gathering data, storing information, wondering. That’s me. Today at the grocery store I couldn’t help but think about where and how children learn to do the right thing, to make the right choices. Of course, “right” means different things to different people, but I’m thinking of generally accepted right. The answer is kind of complicated, but not really.
To do the right thing, children have to do the wrong thing. Sounds crazy, but it’s true. Much of growing up is trial and error, testing limits and boundaries. Do it wrong, experience the consequence, then do it right the next time. At least you hope it works that way. That’s certainly one of the ways kids figure out what is the right thing to do.
However, even without actively teaching your children, they learn from you because they copy you. Think about the things that you automatically do because that’s the way you’ve always done it. There is the great old tale of the mother who is preparing her Thanksgiving turkey with her adult daughter. The daughter asks, “Mom, why do you always cut off the end of turkey before you put it in the roaster?” The mother who has no answer, knowing only that she cut it because her mother had always done so, calls her own mother. “Mom,” she asks, “Why do we always cut off the end of the turkey before putting it in the roaster?” The grandmother replies, “So it will fit in my roaster.”
Over and over I remind parents that your kids are watching you all the time. It’s about how you live your life every day. If you ALWAYS hang up the clothes you tried on before you leave the store dressing room, the habit will become your child’s too. If you ALWAYS put you trash in the wastebasket, your child will do the same. If grocery shopping ALWAYS ends by returning your cart to the stable, not doing so won’t be a choice. Behaviors, right and wrong, become automatic when they are habitual. And so it will be for your absorbent child. Doing the right thing has a good chance of becoming ingrained in him, whether or not you are there watching.
Next week starts the Jewish High Holidays, the time of reflection: What has been in the year that has passed, and what will be going forward? Whether you observe the Jewish holidays or not, the fall is a good time for everyone to reboot. Are you a person who does the right thing when no one is looking? If your answer is yes, then it’s likely you’re teaching your child to do the same.
The May/June issue of Calgary’s Child features an article by client, Karen L. Schiltz, PhD called “Why Don’t They Like Me: 30 Social Skill Shortcomings.” In this article, Dr. Schiltz discusses the importance of positive peer relations among children and what are the signs that your child may have problems interacting with other children.
Karen L. Schiltz, Ph.D., is the author of Beyond The Label: A Guide to Unlocking a Child’s Educational Potential (Oxford University Press, September 2011).
My client, parenting expert, Betsy Brown Braun, recently appeared on MyFoxLA to talk about the preschool application process.
Here’s some of her tips:
1. Consider the location – Traveling too far, too long in the car, is not good for the child, for the parent, or for the environment.
2. Consider the philosophy of the school – Every school has a different philosophy the educational philosophy and approach to child development. You need to agree with it.
3. Consider the director – Are you comfortable with that person? They hire the teachers who disseminate the educational philosophy – this is the person who will help and support you through all the trials you will experience in raising a young child.
4. Consider the culture of the school – This doesn’t refer to the ethnic culture. It is who the families are and if you feel aligned with them, if you speak the same language (they will be your friends forever.)
You can find Betsy’s books – Just Tell Me What To Say and You’re Not The Boss of Me on Amazon.
Dr. Nina Shapiro, Director of Pediatric Ear, Nose, and Throat at the Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA, and Associate Professor of Surgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA speaks about her new book Take a Deep Breath: Clear The Air For The Health Of Your Child (World Scientific, January 2012) on WGAU.
Heidi Stevens, who writes the Parenthood column for the Chicago Tribune asked my client, Karen L. Schiltz, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist in private practice, specializing in the clinical and forensic neuropsychological assessment of children, adolescents, and young adults what parents should when their middle schooler brings home a “D.” Dr. Schiltz, author of Beyond the Label: A Guide to Unlocking a Child’s Educational Potential (Oxford University Press) says this is the “time to be your child’s advocate.” She goes on to say there is often “more” to the story than just the D. So talk to your kids. For the full article click here.
Vicki Balint, who writes for Raising Arizona Kids thought she new plenty about newborn babies but she didn’t know that they are obligate nasal breathers, which means they cannot breathe through their mouths until they are around four months old. This she discovered when she read Dr. Nina Shapiro’s new book, Take a Deep Breath: Clear The Air For The Health Of Your Child (World Scientific, January 2012).
Dr. Shapiro is Director of Pediatric Ear, Nose, and Throat at the Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA, and Associate Professor of Surgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.
Click here to read more of the review.
One big question for parents is what to do when the grandparents idea of discipline is more harsh than their own.
When Heidi Stevens, who writes the “parenthood” column for the Chicago tribune asked family psychotherapist Fran Walfish and author of The Self-Aware Parent (Palgrave Macmillan) to weigh in, here’s what she had to say. “Children from age 3 and up are able to differentiate between their parents’ authority and their grandparents’ authority,” says “A grandparent who misses a child’s emotional cues and doesn’t encourage expression of feeling is not nearly as impactful on the kids as a parent who does so. Not even a fraction.”
To read more click here.
Executing Your Teens Laptop May Feel Good, But It’s Bad Say Parenting Expert Betsy Brown Braun
2012
Parents are angry about their teens abuses of Facebook, but should an angry dad wielding a .45 pistol, posted a YouTube video showing him firing bullets through his daughter’s laptop computer? Parenting Expert, Betsy Brown Braun says, “the difference between a sane, mature person and a child is that the mature parent is able to stop their impulses and do appropriate things that can help a child grow. It may not be what you want to do right now, what feels good, but it’s the thing that’s going to benefit the child three months, six months, years from now.”
For more on this story click here.
Betsy Brown Braun is the bestselling author of Just Tell Me What To Say and You’re Not The Boss of Me.
My client, child and family psychologist, Dr. Fran Walfish was interviewed by CBS Los Angeles about the recent scandal at Miramonte Elementary School that has swept the attention of parents across the United States.
Dr. Walfish is the author of The Self-Aware Parent: Resolving Conflict and Building a Better Bond with Your Child.
While its hard to understand how so many kids could be victimized by a teacher for so long — Dr. Fran Walfish says part of the reason is fear.
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