I always like to share good resources when I come across them, and this book, by Alyson Schafer, falls into the category of good resources.  It’s a book about discipline, or, really, the four goals of misbehaviour.  She’s broken down each of the goals into their own chapters, making this book one of the most thorough explorations of the topic of goals that I’ve come across.  Like her first book, Breaking the Good Mom Myth, it’s written in a casual, easy to read style, that acknowledges that this is a messy, complicated situation, being a parent, and that lofty, theoretical tomes are not what you need when your kids refuse to stop jumping on the bed. 

Her work is geared toward parents with kids up to age 10, and I think this is a great additional to your toolkit if you’ve got young kids.  With its main focus on helping those discipline-resistant kids function peacefully within the family, as well as a chapter devoted to her favourite discipline tool, the family meeting, it’s a nice rounding-out of some of the tools and approaches that we often wish we had more how-to information on.

Anyone else read it?

My Adlerian colleague Alyson Schafer (author of Breaking the Good Mom Myth) has just released her second book, called Honey, I Wrecked the Kids: When Yelling, Screaming, Threats, Bribes, Timeouts, Grounding, Sticker Charts, and Removing Privileges All Don’t Work.  I haven’t read it yet, but I’m excited to see the new insights and practical examples she gives.  Her style is very casual, girlfriend-to-girlfriend — an easy read. 

If you’re at a bookstore and decide to pick it up, let us all know what you think!

(By the way, Alyson’s work is geared toward kids under the age of 10, so if you’ve got a teenager, you may find some useful, transferable information, but just know there will be more talk of refusing to make the bed and toilet training than of curfews and dating…)

Not familiar with this term? I had heard it in passing before, but there was an interesting article by Amanda Robb in the July 2008 issue of O Magazine about this style of parenting. The term was coined by former school principle Jim Fay and psychiatrist Foster Cline, MD, to describe mothers and fathers who “hover over their children”. The article begins with the story of a Missouri mom who created a fictitious boy named Josh on MySpace to “cyber-torment” her teen daughter’s former best friend. After “Josh” lead the friend along, he abruptly told her she was a bad person, everybody hated her, and that the world would be a better place without her. A few hours later, this girl hanged herself and died the next day.

Although this tragic story may be on the extreme end of the spectrum, overly-involved parents are apparently quite common: the article quotes a study done by Patricia Somers, PhD, who found that in the 60 American universities and colleges studied, “40 to 60 percent of parents engage in some type of helicoptering, such as helping with academic assignments, and as many as 10 percent actually write their children’s papers for them”.

Yikes! How’s that for preparing our kids for the real world?

Unless you want to be doing your kids’ laundry forever – which, let’s be honest, is an option you can choose – now is the time to arm them with the tools they’ll need to be a success, regardless of their age. There is a balance to be found between helicoptering and leaving our kids twisting in the wind. While a helicoptering parent prepares resumes and cover letters for her children, a democratic parent provides feedback and guidance, suggests where to look for resources to create a resume, and offers to role play interview questions. She does not call the recruiter or interviewer personally, and insist on an interview for her child.

We all want our kids to succeed. We don’t realize, though, that sometimes our best efforts undermine this success. Some helicopter parents do what they do because they feel the pressures of modern life are too much. That may be true – as the article points out, entry level wages for college grads dropped between 2001 and 2005, and the average (American) student’s debt is out of control. The problem with picking up too much of the slack for them is that then they never learn how to adjust to the realities of their life. It may not be ideal, but it’s the life and the society and the pressures we’re all dealing with now; how does protecting our kids from all of that, well into adulthood, really help them? Are these moms going to be calling their children’s employers to negotiate salaries when the “kids” are in their 50’s? When does it stop? Or does it?

Watching our children grow can be hard on parents. But we really do them a disservice if we insist on continuing to treat them as incapable children. Alfred Adler would say that pampering a child was worse than neglecting him, something helicopter parents would do well to reflect on. Instead of sending the message, “I have confidence in you – I’m here if you need me, but I know you can do it”, over-involvement may inadvertently send the message, “You can’t function without my help – you aren’t capable of running your life on your own”. Not only is it not a particularly empowering, confidence-boosting message, it doesn’t provide kids with the opportunities to experiment, practice, and learn so that they may go on to be healthy, productive adults. As parents, we can certainly recognize that life is not without its trials; are we truly preparing our kids to withstand them, or better yet, flourish in the face of them?

One important caveat is the finding by researcher George Kuh, PhD, who conducts the annual National Survey of Student Engagement. His findings demonstrate that students with involved parents “study more, have more frequent contacts with faculty, report greater gains in critical thinking during college, write more clearly, and talk to their peers more often about substantive issues than students with less involved parents.” So clearly, parents do matter.

Striking a balance doesn’t have to be difficult. The litmus test is simply: Is my child capable of handling this challenge/situation/task on her own? If she is capable but unprepared, then education is the only missing component (i.e. being capable of doing her own laundry, but simply lacking in instruction on how to actually do it). If she is not capable, the balance parents need to strike is determining how to act as a coach or consultant to help guide and provide her with important learning opportunities without taking over and furthering a reliance on someone else doing the hard stuff for her. The world of bosses, mortgages, and adult relationships is not always kind.

But it doesn’t have to be one or the other. There is a middle ground between helicoptering and neglecting, and it’s the best of both worlds for parents and children. Involved, caring, respectful, encouraging, and well aware of when to step back and let the kids do the work for themselves: the balance for great (and effective) parenting.

I discovered, quite by accident, that Dr Karyn Gordon (known to her clients as dk) was speaking at the local Real Canadian Superstore as part of her annual speaking tour.  She gave a great talk on motivating your teens, expanding on a lot of the information she discusses in her book Dr Karyn’s Guide to the Teen Years (see the Book Reviews section for my thoughts on her book). 

One of her key points was understanding your teen’s learning style and playing to the strengths of this style.  Take a look at her book for more about learning styles and how to determine which one your teen uses most often.

I think her tour in this part of the province has mostly wrapped up, but you might want to bookmark her site and check out her schedule next year.  Take a look at her site at www.drkaryn.com.

If you’ve got kids, you’ve probably asked yourself more than once where you can get an instruction manual.  Well, if your kids are teenagers, Dr. Karyn’s Guide to the Teen Years is a great place to start.

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I’ve run into a few people in my practice lately who are what author Elaine Aron would describe as highly sensitive.  These are people who share a list of common traits (some of which I’ll share in a moment) and who are more affected by sensory input of all kinds.  Aron argues that this isn’t a diagnosis or a form of pathology that needs to be fixes, more of a temperament, a fixed part of personality, that needs to be worked with (not against) in order for the person to function at their maximum potential.

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The book Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends & Other Realities of Adolescence by Rosalind Wiseman is an excellent book.  She outlines in clear and minute detail the inner workings of your daughter’s social life, in an accessible and easily relatable way. 

Perhaps the most poignant explanation Ms. Wiseman gives in her book is the one that describes how girls end up so distanced from their family and so embroiled with their friends.  To paraphrase her example, imagine that your daughter is on a cruise ship.  There her every need is attended to: she is safe, well cared for, with a cruise director whose sole job is to make sure that she’s having a good time.  And she does, for a while.  Then one of her friends announces that the cruise is boring, and one by one, all of her friends agree.  So they decide to climb into one of the lifeboats and head out into the open sea to escape the confines of the cruise ship.  But as they sail further and further away from the ship, your daughter becomes more and more nervous about the decision to leave, and wonders if she didn’t make a mistake.  The ship seems so far away — impossibily far — and she doesn’t believe that she could ever hope to get back there, even though she secretly would really, really like to.  But now that she and her friends are all adrift, she needs to rely on her friends more than ever, even though she knows full well that they are the least equipped to really help her.  The ship is far away, she is surrounded by people she knows aren’t in a position to really take care of her because they’re feeling the same thing she is…so she floats, with her friends, further and further away.

If you’ve ever looked at your daugther and thought, “What happened to my sweet little girl??”, this book will give you the answer.  With practical suggestions and “landmines” to avoid, it is an excellent resource for parents of teens and pre-teens.