Page 10 of 25

Posted on

Parenting Through the Tough Times

By Ron Huxley, LMFT

No one likes to go through tough times. Everyone would prefer to avoid extreme challenges and painful relationship encounter but we all go through them. How we endure them reveals what we are a really made of…Difficult situations reveal our parenting character and attitudes quicker than anything else in life. 

Attachment researchers call this “rupture and repair”. A rupture can be anything from a minor disagreement to a child stealing or running away to a major incident like a death or divorce. All families have them but how do they discover how to repair? It is the ruptures that tear down old strategies that didn’t support healthy communication and connection. Ruptures quickly remove strongholds in our relationships that prevent us from having the family of our dreams. This can be considered a good thing. It doesn’t feel good but it provides an opportunity to redefine our relationships. 

One way that families repair is they break agreements with lies they have believed about themselves and their family. These are often dysfunctional beliefs learned early in life that served to protect us from painful rejections and taught us our to get needs met even if it was distorted and manipulative. Fortunately, if we learned dysfunctional and distorted ways to navigate safely in relationships, we can learn new ideas and adopt healthier beliefs about how to have intimacy and connection. Most parents never stop to reflect during rough times to discover these new truths. 

Take a moment to ask yourself what did I learn about myself and my relationship during this most recent crisis? What was identified that needs to change and what am I willing to do to change it? Are you going to keep doing what didn’t work so well in the past and lead to this recent moment of pain or are you going to find a new thought and a new truth? 

Imagine you are taking a helicopter ride straight up, about a mile high, and look back down at your situation. What do you notice that you didn’t see before being so close to the circumstance? What details stand out to your now and what new directions do you need to get yourself and your family unstuck? You don’t have to know all the steps just yet. What is the first step that you feel you need to take right now to get healthier. 

The other way that successful families met tough times is to not blame one another. Even if someone else created a mess, they look at themselves to determine what messes are on their side of the street that they need to clean up. They stand on the principle of “the problem is the problem. The person is not the problem.” It can take a lot of emotional strength to stand on that thought but the truth is that you cannot change anyone, even a small child. You have to clean up your messes and your can model/teach your child how to clean up their messes. Guiding children, not controlling children is the real goal of parenting. 

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

Love and Limits: Achieving a Balance in Parenting

Posted on

Parenting Self-Reminders

By Ron Huxley, LMFT

If you like to be productive, you probably set a reminder or two about things that need to get done. Reminders can be put on our a phones, left as little post-it notes around the house or scribbled on a to-do list. Whatever your preferred method to get things done, you need to be reminded what, when and how in order for it all to get accomplished.

As parents we set up reminders. We make sure the parent-teacher conference meetings are on the calendar and the remind ourselves of short release days at school and when to get more pick up prescriptions, etc. What if we went deeper and reminded ourselves to tell our children how amazing they were or to stop our endless list of chores to draw a picture with them or pray for our kids day. Let’s try making a soul-reminder list and see what changes in our home atmospheres and relationships with the people who NEED us the most. 

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

Posted on

Using Your Families Momentum
By Ron Huxley, LMFT

There will come a day when you and your family are not in crisis or feeling stuck. Perhaps it is already here. Whenever it comes how will use the momentum you have gained? Most families want to rest and do nothing. They have been in so much turmoil that all they can think about is taking a break. This might not be the time to pause for long.

When you are stuck all you think about is how to get unstuck. You are in survival mode. Now that you are unstuck it is time to take new ground, focus on left behind dreams, build new family skills. Take your well deserved break and then huddle together and move forward. Use that momentum strategically and with excitement.

Posted on

Your Child’s Mess Is Your Message

by Ron Huxley, LMFT

Many parents use control to manage their children’s behavior. Why wouldn’t they with parenting books and programs teaching them to do that very thing? Unfortunately, control is risky business, that when it works, leaves parent and child uncertain about who really won the battle. Rather than try to control a child, parents need to encourage self-control. This develops from taking responsibility for their actions and learning to clean up their own messes when they make them and make them, they will. This is where the mess becomes the message!

After a child makes a mess, such as hitting a sibling, lying to parents, not completing their chores, they need to figure out a way to clean it up. Messes create disconnection in relationships but cleaning them up re-connects them. The process of discovering how to clean them up is where a child learns self-control and parents find more joy in parenting. 

Parents do not get angry at messes. They require their child to clean up their mess. Because of age and inexperience, they may not be able to come up with a solution but one can be offered, by the parent, or they can try their own and then another try until the mess is completed. Parents who feel powerless don’t realize that they control the environment of the home. Children always want or need something and parents can simply state: “Of course you can have a snack sweetie as soon as you clean up that mess you make with your brother. And, by the way, I took out the trash for you since you were too busy playing video games and so you can do my chore of folding all the laundry. Take your time sweetie, the snack will be there when you are done.” 

Instead of a snack, the child may want to sit go to the neighbors to play or go to the shoe store to get new shoes or sit down with the family for dinner. The child can decide how long they want to take to clean up their messes and get the things that the parent has control over. Never fear, arguments, tantrums, screaming fits and vows of running away may be involved. They are ways the child believes he or she can control the parent. Parents must be patient and model how control is an illusion for them as much as it was for the parent. This information will serve them well in all their relationships for life. 

The good news is that this process will only take a few times (days?) until the child realized the parent means what they say and discovers cleaning up a mess is so much easier than testing the parents resolve. 

For more information, check out http://www.lovingonpurpose.com/podcast/ or https://www.loveandlogic.com/

Posted on

Today, instead of focusing on how to manage your child’s behaviour, look for ways to inspire them with experiences. Research proves that this will create closeness to one another.

Posted on

Parenting is like walking on Stepping Stones

By Ron Huxley, LMFT

Parenting can be a difficult and confusing job. We don’t have all the answers to questions about the right thing to do or the right way to handle a problem with our children. Fortunately, you don’t need to know every step of the decision. You just need to be will to take the risk to take the next step. 

If you make all your decisions based on knowing exactly what the outcome will be, you will be immobilized into in-action and your children will run circles around you. You will find that if you talk the “next step” you will gain greater vision for what lays ahead and then be able to take that “next step” in a long chain of small steps that will lead you places you never knew were possible but always hoped. 

What is your next step going to be?

Posted on

How a New Father’s Brain Changes : Dad’s mental shifts are different from mom’s

Source: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-a-new-father-s-brain-changes/

By Esther Landhuis | Aug 13, 2015

STUART BRIERS
The birth of a child leaves its mark on the brain. Most investigations of these changes have focused on mothers, but scientists have recently begun looking more closely at fathers. Neural circuits that support parental behaviors appear more robust in moms a few weeks after the baby is born, whereas in dads the growth can take several months.

A study in Social Neuroscience analyzed 16 dads several weeks after their baby’s birth and again a few months later. At each check, the researchers administered a multiple-choice test to check for signs of depression and used MRI to image the brain. Compared with the earlier scans, MRI at three to four months postpartum showed growth in the hypothalamus, amygdala and other regions that regulate emotion, motivation and decision making. Furthermore, dads with more growth in these brain areas were less likely to show depressive symptoms, says first author Pilyoung Kim, who directs the Family and Child Neuroscience Lab at the University of Denver.

Although some physiological brain changes are similar in new moms and dads, other changes seem different and could relate to the roles of each parent, says senior author James Swain, a psychiatrist at the University of Michigan (brain diagrams below).

A 2014 behavioral study of expectant fathers showed that midpregnancy ultrasound imaging was a “magic moment” in the dads’ emerging connection with their baby. Yet the emotional bond was different than it is in expectant moms. Instead of thinking about cuddling or feeding the baby, dads-to-be focused on the future: they imagined saving money for a college fund or walking down the aisle at their daughter’s wedding.

“It was interesting how little dads’ images centered on an infant,” says psychologist Tova Walsh of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who led the study. “I didn’t hear dads talk about putting the baby down for a nap or changing diapers.”

Click to enlarge. Credit: © ISTOCK.COM