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It is easy to see how parents of teenagers can become so frustrated with them. It seems like every word that comes out of their mouth is defiant and demanding. Every interaction is selfish and narcissistic. What if every time your teen talks, it was an open window to their heart? Ignore the sounds of what is coming out and use this opportunity to speak words of grace, love and kindness. Pretend they are speaking a language your don’t understand and the only language you know how to speak is positive affirmation. Blow their minds with this strategy and transform their heart as well. 

Learn more power parenting tools with Ron Huxley’s parenting book: 

Love and Limits: Achieving a Balance in Parenting

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Parents don’t necessarily need a new idea as much as they need a new perspective on their child’s heart. What is your child’s uniques gifts, talents, perspectives, dreams, needs, desires, wants, fears, joys, passions, etc? The best parenting tool is seeing children through their eyes. 

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What Is The Goal of Therapy for Abused, Adopted Children?

By Ron Huxley, LMFT

One of the first goals of therapy when working with abused, adopted children is to establish a sense of safety and security. Maltreated children learned that they parent / caregivers are to be feared. Ironically, they appear to fear very little else. Certainly, their impulsive actions place them into some scary situations for adoptive parents and they don’t respond to normal discipline. This may be due to the fact that after a child lives in terror in their own home, what else could anyone do that would be as terrible or fearful?

 In therapy, we want to help children re-learn that their caregiver is safe and to learn appropriate dangers of strangers. This is quite a reversal from the parent is dangerous and the world is not to the parent is safe and the world might be… 

If you are looking for a family therapist to help you and your adopted child, contact Ron Huxley today at http://parentingtoolbox.tumblr.com/familytherapy

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Is It Talking Back or Assertiveness: How to teach appropriate behavior

By Ron Huxley, LMFT

Parents will tell me that they want a child who can speak their mind and express themselves in an articulate and assertive manner but no one enjoys a child who argues, talks back or refuses to do anything they are asked to do. Typically, we call this latter description: Oppositional or Defiant behavior. 

Clinically, it is describe as any person who shows a pattern of…

A.  negativistic, hostile, and defiant behavior lasting at least 6 months, during which four (or more) of the following are present:
(1) often loses temper
(2) often argues with adults
(3) often actively defies or refuses to comply with adults’ requests or rules
(4) often deliberately annoys people
(5) often blames others for his or her mistakes or misbehavior
(6) is often touchy or easily annoyed by others
(7) is often angry and resentful
(8) is often spiteful or vindictive

It is hard to differentiate between talking back and being assertive. When this is the case, I suggest that parents have children “Redo” a defiant comment or action. Ask the child to repeat what they want in a different tone of voice, manner of approach or without the tantrum or door slamming. It is important that parents stay as calm as possible. Take a few deep breaths and ask the child to do the same and then have them “Redo” the behavior one to five times. The reason for the longer repetition is that not only does it reinforce the behavior in a positive manner and teach a more appropriate social skill but it also “satiates” (read “bores the child”) the inappropriate behavior. Children hate boring tasks but will feel rewarded when they get what they want through appropriate words and actions. 

Hey, try this on your husband too 🙂

Learn more power parenting tools with Ron Huxley’s parenting book: 

Love and Limits: Achieving a Balance in Parenting

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How to Parent When YOU Are in Pain?

Parenting & Pain
By Ron Huxley, LMFT

It is hard to be on top of our parenting game when you are in a lot of emotional pain. This is especially challenging if the origin of this pain comes from the children that we are trying to parent. It might be simplistic to say but pain is “painful.” It hurts! It shuts us down and drives a wall between us and others so we can’t be hurt anymore. We want to retreat to nurse our wounds before risking more in relationships. Unfortunately, the everyday tasks of life have to be completed and our children continue to need us. As a compromise to this situation we become robotic in our actions. We are hyper-functional but we are hypo-relational. We get stuff done but we are just going through the motions and have no e-motions to share. We are too raw!

If you are in this place, make a resolution to find some help through good friends, therapists, doctors, etc. There are lot of support groups and parenting educations classes in your community. Be determined not to repeat past problems. Find new ideas and new support to achieve new, less painful interactions with your family. Second, be OK with being in a place of pain but don’t let it define you. You feel bad but YOU are not bad. Hurtful feelings are normal responses to hurtful actions they are not meant to be permanent. You will have better days again but don’t allow shame to pull you deeper into that dark place of despair. Set some boundaries, find some help and get mad a shame. It is not your friend!

Take back control of your home: 101 Parenting Tools: Building the Family of Your Dreams

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FACT: 25% to 30% of “normal” families have emotionally insecure children — and are observed to need improvements in the emotional availability of their parent-child relationships.

The emotional security of children plays a significant role in shaping their lives — from their personality, confidence, success in future relationships, and mental health — as they grow. It is a widely accepted fact that children from loving and caring households go on to become well-adjusted adults, while children from abusive, broken, or neglectful homes often grow up to have serious emotional or even mental problems. But it is less well known that many concerned, caring, and well-meaning parents are still observed to need improvements in their relationships so that their children can grow up to be emotionally securely attached (vs. insecurely attached) to their parents. 30% of normal, benign relationships are found to be on the lower end of EA in our research studies.

When parents are emotionally reachable and are able to ‘read’ the emotional signals (through body and verbal language based on attachment and EA principles) of their kids, the children will perform better in a wide variety of situations.

Source: http://www.emotionalavailability.com

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Clinical competencies for the effective treatment of foster children

Source: http://ccp.sagepub.com/content/21/1/32?etoc

Abstract

Despite a high level of documented mental health needs among children who have experienced foster care, research indicates that treatment outcomes are often disappointing. In order to improve outcomes, evidence-based treatments for attachment, trauma and behavioral difficulties are often promoted for this population. However, little research exists on whether or not those interventions effectively address the unique and complex mental health needs of many foster children. While a rather robust literature exists on foster children’s multifaceted difficulties, most treatments do not fully represent that range and complexity in their interventions. This article attempts to begin to fill that gap by outlining the knowledge and skills clinicians must acquire if they are to effectively treat foster children. Treatment of foster children should be seen as a subspecialty within the field of child mental health, and trainings that help clinicians gain more knowledge of foster children’s unique needs should be more available.

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Nagging Never Works

By Ron Huxley, LMFT

Parenting teenagers can be a frustrating time for parents. They feel the need to nag, threaten, lecture and even yell to get them to be compliant. Research shows that this parenting actions create oppositional and defiant children. This is the opposite of what parents want. They desire compliant, fun-to-be-around children. 

Of course, no one likes to be nagged. Parents do not like it from their spouses or employers, so why would we think that children like it? How you show a child to do something and ask them to do it makes a lot of difference in how motivated they are to comply with you. 

Dr. Kazdin, Ph.D., author of the book The Kazdin Method: Parenting the Oppositional and Defiant Child, suggest parents have their practice the behavior they want when they parent is not frustration (which could be a rare moment). This practice is fueled by the parent being playful about it and using praise in very specific ways. Humiliation and shame is not the motive here. Even though Kazdin is more focused on behavior than attachment, the reparative actions of practicing in a playful way mimics what parents would do with younger children in a natural way which is typical of therapeutic work with traumatized children. 

What can you practice with your defiant teen that would build skills and not resentment? How can you increase cooperation with specific praise of your teens efforts to be helpful instead of argumentative? How a parent parents is a more powerful method than what tools a parents uses. 

Learn more power parenting tools with Ron Huxley’s parenting book: 

Love and Limits: Achieving a Balance in Parenting