Everything you’ve learned in school as ‘obvious’ becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There’s not even the suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines.

R. Buckminster Fuller

Banish Wishful Thinking or Let go of Hope

Part of being mindful as a parent is accepting reality as it is, not as we wish it to be. This is hard because our ability (or habit) to engage in wishful thinking about our family or children or jobs or whatever is persistent. This form of denial is powerful because it doesn't seem like denial. It seems more like 'hope'. And what's wrong with hope, right? Whether Hope or Denial, wishful thinking prevents us from being present in the moment, from acceptance and from taking appropriate action when necessary.
When our children are acting out in any number of ways we often secretly hope or wish it will not happen again. If we banished wishful thinking we would know that in all likelihood it will happen again and we can prepare for it. We can strategically plan what our response will be, we can experiment with different responses and consequences. We can take a more detached and less personalized perspective on our child's problem behaviors. Accepting what is going on with out false hope or wishful thinking is actually freeing. It frees us to think things out, think strategically and prepare. If we know that our child is going to act out in some way then when it happens we are not caught off guard and we see that it is not a crisis but another opportunity to help our child learn.

Picking Your Battles and Letting Go

As we raise children we notice that the environment is 'target rich' for parental intervention. Part of learning to be an effective parent is learning how to discern between what needs to be attended to and what needs to be let alone.

If parents confront every problem behavior they end up exhausted and ineffectual and the child is taught that there is very little to distinguish between mild negative behaviors and serious negative behaviors. Everything becomes a battle.

Learning how to 'pick your battles' is easily talked about but sometimes hard to do. I often teach parents a simple rating system. Parents rate problem behaviors on a scale of 1 to 10. 10 being life threatening and 1 being merely irritating. If a particular behavior rates 6 or higher the parent 'takes action' and is willing to be firm and consistent and use whatever behavior modification skills she or he has learned. If the behavior rates a 5 or less the parents 'lets it alone.' There is no one size fits all solution but this technique can help parents who have become very frustrated at having to consistently get into it with their child or children.

This tactic fits in well with Strategic Parenting addressed elsewhere in this blog. My version is fairly simple but there are other versions of the same idea. One suggestion is Dr. Greene's book, "The Explosive Child." He introduced a slightly more sophisticated version of the same idea. This is also similar to what RIP (Regional Intervention Program) teaches.

Combining this tactic with 'catching your kid being good' is very powerful and usually quite effective.

something I read today and wanted to pass on

FRIENDLY WISHES
May I be filled with happiness
May I filled with love
May I have a good life
May I have wonderful dreams
And may I live in peace.
May the world be safe
May the world be in peace
May the world be a wonderful place
And may the world be a better place
-Afsafu