Episode 30 RFGP Getting the Ball Rolling on Speaking Positively

Speak Positively by Dunechaser at Flickr

Join me as we discuss:

How to get the ball rolling on speaking positively to our kids, when we’ve been stuck in the negative.

A wonderful article on 52 Things to Say that Will Make Your Kids Feel Great.

Jeff and I cover our favorites on this article, why they are our favorites, and how we have been successful as well as crashed and burned.
SHOW NOTES

In a society that seems to encourage us to be negative, our kids often don’t come out on top. Being able to say nice and kind things to our kiddos is underdeveloped and essential to happy parents.

Today Jeff and I discuss speaking positively and our favorites of of the 51 kind things you can say to your kid.

RESOURCES:

52 Things You Can Say – article Jeff and I reference in the show.

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Episode 194 The Parental Temper Tantrum

Join me as we discuss:

The parental temper tantrum. Yes, we do it too!

Where parent tantrums stem from.

How these surreptitious behaviors actually teach and reinforce our kids tantrums.
SHOW NOTES

Many of us have seen and heard the dastardly temper tantrum in our kid. The screeching yell. The flopping the flailing, the overall makes-me-wanna-punch-you-in-the-face behaviors. No parent likes them.

But what if I told you that many of these behaviors are taught to our kids from us? That the very fit we loath in our kids, came directly from us? But don’t despair. This also means that there are things we can do to curb the nasty in ourselves, and inherently…our kid.

References

The Libertarian Homeschooler – probably one of my top 5 favorite FB pages. Wonderful understanding of parenting and a person after my own heart in terms of schooling.

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Episode 193 Shame, Shame, Shame: The Worst Parenting Technique…Shaming

Shame on You by jacicita at Flickr.

Join me as we discuss:

What exactly is shaming and and how so many parents turn to it without even thinking.

How most parents condemn the idea of shaming, and then shame their kid.

Why is it such an issue when we know by the definition alone that it sucks for kids?

New ways to approach where we once would shame.

SHOW NOTES

Grant, you should know better son.” “Anna, why in the world did you think it was okay to…” “Cora! What were you thinking babe?!?!?!” All of these are statements that I’ve popped off at one time or another to my kids.

But I think that the question lies in this: would I ever let someone talk to me like that at work? The answer is: it’s unlikely.

Shaming is simply this – compeling our kids through painful emotions resulting from awareness of inadequecy or guilt. Do you know what guilt defines as? Remorse caused by feeling responsible for something. Does ANY OF THIS sound like something you would want to experience? NOOOOOOO!!!!

Today we talk about changing the shame-moster into something that actually grows and teaches kids.

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Episode 29 RFGP Good Grief: How to Handle the Death of Animals and Loss

Good Grief by cplbasilisk at Flickr.

Join us as we discuss:

Handling grief from the death of a pet, to divorce, to mass shootings.

Why we are so reluctant to discuss these difficult topics.

Good-to-practice techniques on helping kids process, grow, and even get better at handling loss.

SHOW NOTES

The are few things that are absolute in life. There are so many things that we can change, even things that we think we cannot change that we really can. Life is so transient that if we are truly motivated it is quite impressive what we are capable of doing.

But there lies one irrefutable fact that we hate, and I mean absolutely hate to admit to: we will all experience death one day.

I will. You will. Our kids will. And there is nothing that we can do to stop it. Postpone it. Sure! And I think that we should. But we simply must accept that it is inevitable.

So you might be thinking “oh. Thanks for that little pick-me-up Trey.” You’re welcome! I kid. But what if I told you that you can actually get good at handling loss and deaths. Doesn’t make the pain go away, but it can get easier to deal with. And it all starts as a kiddo.

You see, when Elvis the hamster dies, it is a great time to practice teaching our kids how to hurt, express, and cope healthily.

In reality, loss and the pain that comes from death and loss, is actually the sign of intimacy. The by-product of closeness that shouldn’t be avoided, but celebrated in some ways.

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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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