Parenting

How to Get Children to do Homework

On September 9, 2013 / Parenting, Responsibility

Now that school is in session all over the country, many parents are asking for help dealing with homework—specifically how to handle a child who simply refuses to do homework.

For parents, it’s natural to think that getting children to do their homework is part of their job. As such, they may fight with their children, impose discipline when youngsters refuse to do their homework, or even beg and plead for children to complete their assignments. All of these scenarios take the responsibility for completing homework off the children and instead places it on the parent’s plate.

So what’s the solution?

First, realize that no one can force another person to learn. Children need to be motivated. If there is … >>>

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Positivity and Discipline

On September 4, 2013 / Effectiveness, Parenting

Positivity is like a magnet. People are drawn to the positive and repelled by the negative. This simple truth about human nature is so important that it forms the first part of the foundation for the Raise Responsibility System.

Positivity has power, especially when you’re attempting to discipline youth. Positivity is an attitude that, with practice, you can develop for yourself and with your children. When you do, you will be amazed at how your stress becomes significantly reduced, your effectiveness increased, and your relationships improved.

Here are 4 facts about positivity and the impact it has on discipline:

Negative comments provoke negative attitudes. Positive comments prompt positive attitudes. Keep discipline positive by always speaking in positive terms.
The pictures

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Parenting Styles and the Discipline Without Stress Model

On September 2, 2013 / Effectiveness, Parenting

A recently published “Report on the Four Parenting Styles” by Hugo M. Rabson from University of Phoenix details four prevalent parenting styles in the United States, including the pros and cons of each. It also asserts one style of parenting is better than the others. Here are each of the styles outlined and how they compare to the Discipline Without Stress method.

1. Permissive: When a parent utilizes permissive parenting, he/she provides inconsistent feedback and requires little of his/her children. Children raised under this style tend to experience low self-esteem and develop poorer social skills. While the Discipline Without Stress method is noncoercive, it is certainly NOT permissive.

2. Authoritarian: Parents who are authoritarian are controlling, punitive, rigid, and cold. … >>>

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Back-to-School Wisdom for Parents and Teachers

On August 29, 2013 / Effectiveness, Parenting

The back-to-school season is upon us, with many classrooms already buzzing with new activity and others waiting to be filled with eager students next week. As you send your children to school these first few days or welcome them into your class, keep the following words of wisdom in mind.

“Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.” –Albert Einstein
“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” – Nelson Mandela
“An education isn’t how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It’s being able to differentiate between what you know and what you don’t.” –Anatole France
“An investment in knowledge pays

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Help Youngsters Feel Important

On August 15, 2013 / Effectiveness, Parenting

The great American humorist Will Rogers said, “As long as you live, you’ll never find a method so effective in getting through to another person as having that person feel important.” He was right. When you make people feel important, you get their cooperation.

Realize that Rogers was not talking about insincere flattery. He was referring to getting in the habit of recognizing how important people are. This should obviously apply to your children.

Here’s a famous story that illustrates the power of making someone feel important.

Cavett Robert, the founder of the National Speakers Association, looked out his window one morning and saw a skinny 12-year-old boy going door-to-door selling books. The boy was headed for his house. Robert … >>>

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A Driver’s License Story about Responsibility

On August 13, 2013 / Parenting, Responsibility

After using the Raise Responsibility System in their home, a family had an amazing incident with their 15-year-old son. Here is the story in the mother’s own words:

We live on a very large piece of property and my husband was preparing our son for driving by allowing him to drive the firewood truck from one area to another under guidance and supervision. He would also allow our son to move our vehicles around in the driveway. The expectation was always the same: This was a privilege and only possible when my husband was in the vehicle. One day while we were at work, our son decided to drive the car up and down the driveway on his own. The … >>>

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Handling Tattoos with Young People

On August 7, 2013 / Parenting

I was asked how to handle a situation where a daughter wants a tattoo, but the parent does not want to see a tattoo on her body.

I responded that the most effective approach is to induce the daughter to influence herself. The key to this approach is asking reflective questions and prompting the daughter to evaluate. Here are some reflective questions that I shared with her:

“How about making a list of all the advantages and the disadvantages of getting a tattoo and then comparing the responses?”

“Project ahead five years. Is the short term fun worth the long-term frustration when you will want it removed?”

“Remembering that the emotion … >>>

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A Positive Approach to Improving Effectiveness

On July 31, 2013 / Effectiveness, Parenting

To change behavior of a young person, a positive approach always beats a negative approach. The way to accomplish this is to treat the youngster as if the person were already what you want the person to become. Perhaps Johann Wolfgang von Goethe articulated it best when he wrote,

If you treat someone as he is, he will stay as he is.

But if you treat him as if he were what he could and ought to be,

he will become what he could and ought to be.

If you have a daughter who is shy, rather than sending messages of her difficulties, treat her as if she were verbal, popular, and socially confident. This does not mean not to … >>>

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A Simple Way to Promote Responsibility

On July 18, 2013 / Parenting, Responsibility

Always encourage youngsters to look to themselves to solve problems, rather than relying on others. This is of critical importance because parents, desiring to help their children, too often do things for them that they could and should be doing themselves. In these situations, parents not only create more work and more stress for themselves, but, more important, they deprive young people of opportunities for growth and developing responsibility.

As it has been aptly said, “If you want children to keep their feet on the ground, put some responsibility on their shoulders.” If your children are to learn how to become responsible, they must experience responsibility.

When children have a problem, rather than solve it for them, ask, “What do … >>>

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One Key Skill All Parents and Teachers Must Master

On July 9, 2013 / Parenting, Reflection, Relationships

Reflection is a powerful teaching and learning strategy that parents and teachers often overlook. The key to reflection is the skill of asking youngsters self-evaluative questions. Here are a few examples:

Are you angry at me or at the situation?
Does what you are doing help you get your work done?
What would an extraordinary person do in this situation?
Are you willing to try something different if it would help you?

Unfortunately, most parents and teachers ask ineffective questions such as, “Why are you doing that?” This is a pothole question. First, most people cannot articulate their motivation and second, the youngster may answer, “Because I have ADD.” Better never to ask a child a “Why?” question regarding behavior! … >>>

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Keep Discipline Future-Focused

On July 4, 2013 / Parenting, Responsibility

When a youngster makes a mistake or does something wrong, focus on the future, not on the past. It is counterproductive to harp on past unsuccessful behaviors.

For example, if you focus on the past, it might sound like, “You should have been more careful!” However, if you focus on the future, it would sound like, “What can we think of so that it won’t happen again?” (Notice the use of the collaborative “we,” rather than “you.”) … >>>

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Are Parenting and Teaching Really Different Today?

On July 2, 2013 / Effectiveness, Parenting

The nature of childhood has dramatically changed in the last few generations. Young people spend time in front of the television, a passive activity that robs them of playtime and imagination. Hours are also spent in front of computers. These types of activities—relying on technology—are often lone activities in that people generally engage in them by themselves. As a result, learning about personal relationship skills and developing social intelligences are largely ignored. In contrast to former generations, young people today are more independent, more anxious, more impulsive, more disruptive, and more disobedient. To many parents, youth today seem like a real pain.

Although the young today are different, they aren’t worse.

Current generations are not like any other in history. … >>>

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Lyrics “Plant a Radish” for Parents

On July 1, 2013 / Parenting

Jim Cathcart’s book, The Acorn Principle, argues that an acorn is capable of becoming a mighty oak, but it will never become a giant redwood—no matter how much you feed or push it.

The lyrics to “Plant a Radish” from the musical The Fantastics makes the same point:

—–

Plant a radish; get a radish.
Never any doubt!
That’s why I love vegetables;
you know what they’re about.

Plant a turnip; get a turnip.
Maybe you’ll get two.
That’s why I love vegetables;
you know that they’ll come through.

They’re dependable! They’re “befriendable”!
They’re the best pal a parent’s ever known.
While with children, it’s bewildering.
You don’t know until the seed is nearly grown
Just what you’ve sown.

So… >>>

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“Never Say No” Lyrics for Parents

On June 28, 2013 / Effectiveness, Parenting

During my seminars I show a cartoon illustrating two young children raking leaves. The mother is saying to her neighbor that she told her children they could not rake the leaves. The humorous cartoon points out that if you tell kids not to do something, they want to do it.

I recently saw a stage production of the musical The Fantastics. One of the songs had the following lyrics, which makes the same point:

———-

Dogs got to bark, a mule’s got to bray.
Soldiers must fight and preachers must pray
And children, I guess, must get their own way
The minute that you say no.

Why did the kids pour jam on the cat?
Raspberry jam all over … >>>

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To Make Parenting Easier, Remove Assumptions

On June 25, 2013 / Effectiveness, Parenting

Some of the decisions we make as parents are based on inaccurate assumptions. We may know exactly what we are thinking and what we mean, but the child may have a completely different perspective. Consider these two examples:

A father is walking through the forest with his three-year old daughter. As they are walking, he repeatedly tells her to stay on the path. The little girl is walking all around. She looks at a tree, then a bush, and meanders here and there. The father continually says, “Stay on the path. I told you to stay on the path.” Eventually, he gets so angry with her that he pulls her over, shakes her a bit, and shouts, “I told you

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Keep Discipline Positive

On June 11, 2013 / Parenting, Responsibility

As I like to remind parents, there isn’t any empowerment more effective than self-empowerment. Because being positive is so enabling, it is best to displace thoughts, communications, and discipline practices that are destructive. Continually ask yourself how what you want to communicate or the lesson you want to instill can be put in a positive way.

For example, saying, “You are bad tempered,” has the same meaning as, “You need to work on controlling your temper.” However, the first labels the person, whereas the second enables the person. People change more by building on their strengths and aptitudes than by working on their weaknesses. This does not mean that an area of weakness should not be worked on, but … >>>

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Work Smarter; Discipline Less

On June 6, 2013 / Effectiveness, Parenting

All parents want their children to take initiative and perform certain tasks around the home. Whether it’s taking out the trash, feeding the dog, or setting the table, there are household chores that are appropriate for every age group. When children don’t take on the requested responsibilities (or don’t do them satisfactorily), many parents resort to discipline measures as a way to “motivate” the child to do the task. But this approach creates stress for both the parent and the child. A better approach is to work smarter with your child. When you do, you’ll find that you actually discipline less. Here are some tips.

Once a task has been performed, the objective should be to focus on progress—rather than

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Parents, Grandparents, and Discipline

On May 29, 2013 / Discipline, Parenting, Responsibility

Many reports have been in the news recently about adults having such poor self-discipline and impulse control that, when at a public sports event, they have cursed at and attacked the coach—and even the umpire. You may enjoy this commentary on the subject.

At one point during a game, the coach called one of his 9-year-old baseball players aside and asked, “Do you understand what cooperation is? Do you know what a team is?”

The little boy nodded in the affirmative.

“Do you understand that what matters is whether we win or lose together as a team?”

The little boy nodded “Yes.”

The coach continued, “I’m sure you know that when … >>>

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