Archives for 2013

Episode 192 Hissy Fit: Conquering the Temper Tantrum

Hissy Fit by rafa2010 at Flickr

Join me as we discuss:

A listener call in question on what to do with the dreaded hissy fit!

What is the origin of tantrums and how it’s very, very likely not what you think.

Three major facets of temper tantrums and the foundations to making them stop.

SHOW NOTES

Regardless of whether of not this picture kinda trips you out, we all recognize what the author was trying to capture here. That parentally-dreaded explosion of doom that always seems to occur in places like Walmart or in the middle of God-and-everybody.

Believe it or not, tantrums don’t actually come from your kids desire to make you want to pull your hair out, but from the desire to communicate in the one way they’ve known how to communicate displeasure. Now, am I saying we can let them continue to do it this way. Most certainly not!

The answer lies in teaching our kids how to handle their emotions in the way we would like to see them do it. It lies in weaning them off of the fits and fights, and into healthy expressions. It lies in sometimes learning how to meet-in-the-middle with them from time to time.

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Episode 191 Unschooling: What Is It? How Does it Work? Can My Kid Get Into College With It?

Unschooling Rocks

Join me as we discuss:

Unschooling: what is it, how does it work, and can my kid get into college with it.

What is unschooling NOT.

What is unschooling?

Addressing the common criticisms of unschooling and answering how colleges look at homeschooling/unschooling.
SHOW NOTES

Many know that my wife and I have made the decision to homeschool our kids. But few are aware that we don’t actually homeschool. But before you call CPS on us, let me explain. We practice something called unschooling.

Unschooling posits that traditional methods of academia, including curriclum, lectures styled teaching, and grading system don’t align with how kids naturally learn and as such creates good factory-styled workers.

Unschooling suggests that kids learn better in a natural environment through personal experiences. So more succinctly put, kids learn more efficiently by doing things in the real world (and subsequently by doing real-world tasks).

Sources:

Courtney Clay on Unschooling with Jack Spirko at The Survival Podcast. Link can be found at http://www.thesurvivalpodcast.com/courtney-clay-on-unschooling

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Episode 28 10 Common Mistakes in Communication

Failure to Communicate by nicadlr at Flickr.

Join me as we discuss:

10 of the most common communication problems parents have.

How these problems can product a storm of issues at home.

How WE ARE TYPICALLY THE PROBLEM!

SHOW NOTES

Jeff and I have had a lot of families in our offices with a teen, a parent (or two…or three sometimes) that are furious with their kid.

“They don’t listen to me and they ignore me or roll their eyes.”

Sometimes parents feel like their kids don’t care what they say or feel that their kid doesn’t think what they want is important.

At the expense of making some parents really upset, what if I told you the majority of your issues with your kid…you taught them. We often don’t realize that we are doing these things. We rarely mean to be this way. Here are a few examples:

Talking “at” your kid.
Always saying “I’m sorry” but never changing.
Playing the victim.
Jumping to conclusions.
Being inconsistent with good communication.

But we frequently teach our kids, through bad communication, to be the very thing that sets us off. Find out how today.

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Episode 190 Let Em’ Box it Out: How to Teach Siblings to Fight Fairly

Box it Out by Flowtastic at Flickr.

Join me as we discuss:

How we often like to solve our sibling fighting issues.

How and why is not a good technique .

Alternatives to fixing problems, fights, or sibling quarrels…without our involvement! BOOM BABY!!

SHOW NOTES

We all know that sound. “MINE!” It seems to echo down halls and vibrate the inner most parts of our soul…or devil. Whatever it is we hate dealing with sibling fighting.

And it’s not even some noble thing where we want them to live in peace and harmony, but often because we hate the sound of it.

So to quench the shut-up gods we lurch out of our chairs and proceed to mitigate the problem ourselves.

“No Trevor. You are going to let your brother pick a movie because you picked last time.” Sounds fair right? I say…no. You see this denies our kids the fundamental skill called negotiation and compromise. It doesn’t allow kids to see each other as equals that have to resolve their conflicts themselves, but as those that have to find Mommy and Daddy as the judge, jury, and executioner.

What if I told you it didn’t have to be that way. What if I told you that your kids are capable of handling their own fights, by themselves, even at 4 years old?

Find out how today.

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Episode 189 Professional Parent versus Mommies and Daddies

Join me as we discuss:

The difference between being a Professional Parent, and a Mommy or Daddy.

How Professional Parenting is good on the technique, but is lost on kids without relationship.

Corrie (my wife) and my struggle on this.
SHOW NOTES

I was thinking today about some of the families that I had worked with that were good people. They loved their kids dearly, but still had struggles, issues, and conflicts with these kids regularly.

The featured picture today is a study originally conducted by a psychologist named Harlow. Harlow created 2 surrogate “mothers made from wire mesh. They found that baby monkeys would go to the one that was wrapped with soft fur and given a face, even over the one that had milk bottles attached with warm milk.

Humans are not different. Kids desire to have a connection with a warm and caring adult, even over their physical needs.

I’ve had parents in my office that have taken every training they know, practiced every parenting and discipline technique in the book with no success and they’ve all wondered why? There really is a magic-sauce that is needed for parenting to work spot on and we discuss that secret gem today.

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Episode 27 RFGP Ground Em Instead of “Beefing” Them Up

Meat by artizone at Flickr.

Join me as we discuss:

The differences between instruction and deprivation and how one is not good for your family.

How many parents operate their parenting off of a filter, seeing only the negative in their kid. They never stood a chance with us.

How we can learn to see our kids in positive lights.

SHOW NOTES

Parents often have a tendency to focus on everything their kid is doing wrong, and forget or flat out just not notice the things they are doing right.

They will begin to deprive their kids through grounding, loss of privileges, or even by spanking them and forget to instruct them what we want them to do.

When this happens long enough, parents will begin to have a filter on how they see their kid, so that even if their kid is not acting up or acting out, that is all they can see. This is devastating for most kiddos. They feel hurt and betrayed by the one person that is not supposed to do that.

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Episode 188: FPN Classic Remix: Relaxing the StrongArm

Strong compliments of EndlessHorizons at Flickr.

Join me as we discuss:

How to work with kids that are especially defiant and oppositional.

Where exactly the “you can’t make me” comes from.

What can we and what can we not control and how the strongarm approach rarely is effective for long.

SHOW NOTES

Many parents have very polarized ideas on how a parent is supposed to use their position as a parent (e.g. stronger, smarter, more knowledgable) to get their kids to do what they want.

Much to their surprise they wind up with kids that are very strong-willed and they throw their hands up and say “I don’t know where this came from!”

In most cases, we are the Dr. Frankenstein that created this abomination. But who do we like to blame: the kid.

Today we cover how to work with the mildly resistant kiddo to the openly defiant and oppositional kid as well as one of my favorite clips on persuasive versus positional leadership.

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Episode 187 How to Change a Can’t Do Attitude

Join me as we discuss:

*Listener question on how do we teach a can-do attitude to kids.

Where does this “can’t do” attitude come from?

My favorite ways to counteract the I can’t attitude and create kiddos that are confident.

SHOW NOTES

I had a listener call in this week and ask a fantastic question on how to turn an “I can’t” attitude into a can-do attitude. We have been dealing with this ourselves as a family and have put together some strategies that have turned out to be quite effective.

Simply put, the I can’t attitude is typically birthed out one of two (or a combination) things: self-worth or the desire for least resistance. Kids that don’t think they can do things…well…don’t think they can do things. If not that, kids that have realized with some whining, non-compliance, or arguing Mom and Dad will do it for me.

Today we cover 6 things that are combat-effective at teaching kids that they can do it, but also get them to believe it themselves.

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Episode 26 RFGP The Leaving Baby Blues

Photo compliments of OhKyleL at Flickr.

Join Jeff and I as we discuss:

How leaving baby at daycare, with parents, or sometimes even with Dad can be tough.

How the first step is to admit it, not pretend the fear doesn’t exist.

A 4-point strategy for lowering anxiety.

SHOW NOTES

Jeff and I tackle a questions that is often tough for men to relate with: the fears, anxieties, and worry of leaving baby with someone else. Often, many moms work outside the home and as such need to leave baby with someone throughout the day. While this is absolutely necessary in these cases, it often creates a flood of emotions for moms.

Feelings like “no one can raise my baby like me” and “what if something happens to them.” Some moms Jeff and I have worked with in the past really fear that their kiddos are going to attach to their day-time caregiver more than them.

Are these fears crazy. Absolutely not! But are there steps that we can perform that will help us handle this fear of separation of leaving baby? Most certainly!

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Episode 186 Rewarding the Why, Not the What: The Art of Motivating Kids

Join me as we discuss:

*One of the most confused concepts in positive parenting: motivating kids.

Why is it so tricky to follow these principles and get kids to follow, even when we are not watching.

Top 4 recommendations for rewarding motivation and not only their actions.

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