I will be enjoying my last day of holiday off-time today. Episodes will resume this Wednesday (1/2/13) at our usual times. The Real Family Guys Podcast is slated to return the following Friday.
I hope that everyone has a safe night tonight, and a happy New Year. We will see you all in 2013!
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Join me as we discuss:
How to avoid resistant and defiant behavior and “come along side” our kids instead.
Dealing with heavy-duty conflict with our kids.
How do we work with our resistant kids without destroying their spirit.
SHOW NOTES
First, please forgive the occasional echoing and heavy-editing you may hear in the show today. We discovered a problem that we have now fixed.
Some of us have kiddos that are some tough cookies. They can be resistant, pushy, or sometimes downright defiant. Many parents see this defiance as a very bad sign and something they need to crush out of their kids. The problem is, that resistant behavior isn’t ALL a bad thing.
I imagine most of you RFGP listeners are like me. I don’t want obedient kids. I’ve seen obedient people before and they scared the crap out of me. But I do want kids that are respectful, kind, responsible, and engaging. My wife Corrie and I frequently hear how obedient our kids are. But really, they aren’t. They have grown into all the afore mentioned characteristics by guiding them, and not dragging them.
Today Jeff goes through his ideology of coming along side our kids rather than making them obey. One of our best episodes.
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How we demand respect from our kids, but often don’t return the favor.
How somewhere we left respectful parenting behind and traded it for behavior we would never allow others to use on us.
The alternative to treating kids like property.
How seeing kids as little people isn’t the same as treating them like adults.
SHOW NOTES
This last week I did something and my daughter (6 y/o) stopped me and told me a very sincere “thank you for being respectful of me.” This got me thinking.
[tweetable]One of the major things we do that is so against-the-grain compared to contemporary parenting, is that we respect our kids with the same respect that I give my closest friends and acquaintances.[/tweetable]
Click phrase to tweet this comment.
This is not to say that we treat our kids like mini-adults. My kiddos need to be grown, taught, and allowed to succeed and fail. No 4 year old is ready to drive a car. But this isn’t about that.
This is about using the same methods for teaching a wayward employee how to do something right with our kids. Can it work? Corrie and I are living proof it does.
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Join Jeff and I as we discuss:
How kids long for our attention, and to make us proud.
How, even with this desire, parents waste it by not showing them how to make them proud.
How we tend to focus on the negative and produce MORE negative from our kids.
SHOW NOTES
Today Jeff and I cover one of our favorite topics. Positive parenting. Some of you went “eh, I’m interested.” Others went “ahh, not this mushy always tell them they are right crap.” But it’s not that.
[tweetable]Kids have the fundamental need to gain attention from us and the goal must be to show them what we want from them.[/tweetable]
(Click above to Tweet statement)
So it is very important to make sure that we are giving them attention for the good things we can “catch” them doing. In fact, we need to be noticing them doing it right much more than when they are doing it wrong.
I mean, think about it. You ever had that boss that only came to your office or called you when you did something wrong. No acknowledgment when you did well etc. How bad does that suck. BIG TIME! And it’s not different for our kiddos.
So if we want our kids to make us proud, we have to tell them “I’m proud of you.”
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Steven Harris
Join me as we discuss:
Kids and kiddo preps.
Including kids in getting prepared for major disasters like hurricane Sandy.
Getting kids involved with activities NOW that will make them more comfortable if the power goes out.
SHOW NOTES
In the advent of hurricane Sandy over 6 million were left without power. I don’t think most recognize the ramifications of no power or the psychological impact it can have.
Want to know what I’m talking about, go and flip the master switch on your breaker box and go an entire day without power. See what things you notice.
So the question arises, can kids successfully survive a major catastrophe? Could they handle a fire blowing through and evacuating your home, or a storm knocking out the power grid for 4-5 days to a week. The answer: absolutely yes.
Steve Harris, CEO of Knowledge Publications, give us fantastic ideas on how to help kids actually feel comfortable during hard times. Many, when it comes to disasters, wait until post-facto to start working on being ready in both the physical sense, and with their kids. Steve teaches us how we can start teaching our kids easy and inexpensive skills to build resilient kids that can handle major catastrophes.
Steve’s Websites:
http://www.Solar1234.com
http://www.Battery1234.com
http://www.BeforeTheStormHits.com
http://www.StevenHarris.net
http://www.KnowledgePublications.com
http://www.iMakeMyGas.com
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Today we discuss the tragedy of Sandy Hook Elementary
How to talk with your kids about these seemingly insurmountable traumas.
How to find your kids coping skills and build them up.
SHOW NOTES
December 14th 2012 will be a day of infamy. A day where mommas and daddy’s sent of their little bits to school with the full intention of seeing them again soon.
But many of them did not see their kids Friday afternoon.
As I tried to process this all I felt myself numbing out. I wasn’t connecting to the issue. But I pulled up the list of kiddos (all my daughters age) that had died and saw other kids with my kids names. One boy looked like my son. And then this tragedy all became clear.
This would be like sending my daughter off to school and never seeing her again. How I would miss her smile, her biological curiosity, and her love for the show Weird, True, and Freaky. While I pretended, the weight of the issue hit me. Many are currently dealing with this on a real level.
But with all this said, what do you do if this is a reality for you and is there a lesson here for smaller trauma’s. Most certainly. Today we will cover the BASIC Ph model for coping and help you learn what your kids coping skill is.
How Children Cope with Trauma – NASP website mentioned.
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How your family absolutely NEEDS its own traditions.
Christmas traditions in the Emery and Gibson household. How they might not be what you would think.
Family rituals and traditions that are not necessarily linked to holidays and special events.
How to create your family traditions, even as a blended family.
SHOW NOTES
Family traditions are often handed down from one generation to the next and can bring great joy to a family.
But lets be honest, traditions can also create a lot of crap as well.
Today Jeff and I discuss why traditions are vital to a family, but how old traditions that have very little meaning for your kiddo might be having the reverse effect.
We also discuss some of our personal traditions, and even some of our against-the-grain beliefs about Christmas. We also cover how to create traditions if you do not have them or if you are a new blended family.
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Mr. Spock…not to be confused with Dr. Spock in this episode. Photo compliments of Tram Painter at Flickr.
Join me as we discuss:
What exactly is positive parenting and how it’s not about only telling them good job.
How positive parenting isn’t fluffy, powder their booties either.
A brief history in understanding how we got to where we are
What positive parenting looks like and how it has produced for us kiddos that get more compliments on “how well behaved they are.”
SHOW NOTES
The Casa de Gibson practices something called positive parenting or attachment parenting with tremendous success. When I take my kids anywhere I get assaulted with comments on how “good your kids act” and how “well behaved they are.” Now I don’t say that to toot my own horn nor do I think my kids are some types of prodigy. We simply do one thing: we practice positive parenting.
Positive Parenting doesn’t mean that we tell our kids that they are perfect…just for trying. We challenge our kids.
We set boundaries with them. We allow them logical and oft-times painful consequences for what they do (when we say “that’s gonna hurt” our kids reeeealy listen now).
But ALL of this is tempered with one thing: we treat our kids the way we would want to be treated. When you mix these things together, you get a potent combination.
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Having the sex talk with kids. How the birds and the bees talk can be just as comfortable as talking about literal birds and bees.
How to talk to your younger kids about set.
How to talk about your older kids about set.
What does the Gibson family believe and teach about sex?
SHOW NOTES
First, if you ever want to go down a Google search road of embarrassment and horror, search for sex pics. Not a good idea. Thank you Flickr and your Creative Commons for offering PG “sex pics” search options.
For many parents the birds and the bees talk has become one of the most feared and reviled conversations with our kiddos.
We postpone and put off the conversation hoping that maybe through osmosis our kids will come to understand the concept of intercourse and are quite please when we realize that their school will take them through a sex-ed course.
But what if I told you that the sex-talk didn’t have to be the dreaded conversation we fear?
That it could be as comfortable as talking about their day and that you could teach them how you believe in such a way that they are more likely to follow it? It’s quite possible and find out how today.
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Discipline, Correction, and Punishment. How they are very different things.
How most times, these concepts are completely confused and how there really are more things that just spanking.
Stories from both Jeff and Trey on failures, successes, and what we did about them.
SHOW NOTES
Today I saw a meme on Facebook (see right) that insinuated that to stop kids from becoming gangsta delinquents, we need to spank them more. Now, I get that many interpret this as “more kids need solid discipline” but there is a pervasive misunderstanding what punishment is.
Today Jeff and I touch on the tough topic of discipline, correction and punishment. Jeff summarized it best when he said:
“kids deserve to be disciplined. They deserve to be corrected. But no kid deserves to be punished.”
Today we cover why that is and how you can absolutely set good boundaries with kids without needing to “beat it into them” and how this also doesn’t make you a laissez-faire, do whatever you want parent. Also, I highly recommend you check out Jeff’s blog on this (see below). It has WAY more good stuff in it that we couldn’t get to.
Discipline, Correction, and Punishment – a wonderful blog topic written by Jeff.
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