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Parenting and the Serenity Prayer: Acceptance and the Peaceful Home

By Ron Huxley, LMFT

If parenting could be summed up in a prayer, that prayer might be the “Serenity Prayer”:

Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

This is part two of a 5 part series exploring the essential points of this prayer and how it can help parents find grace and peace in their family relationships.

Acceptance and the Peaceful Home:

Finding serenity in our lives is a matter of achieving balance. This balance can be precarious at times as parents deal with the many stressors of work and family life. Parents might look to outside sources for this place of peace. They might even hold others responsible for upsetting that peace, blaming them for the hurts and rejections they might have caused in themselves and their home. The cause of this imbalance might include drugs, alcohol, affairs, gambling and many other vices. It can also come from non-malicious sources that we don’t have control over, including job loss, divorce, death, illness, etc.

In order to create lasting peace in the home, we have to look inward to our values and beliefs. Parents can identify a “value system” that keeps them focused and motivated despite all the outside trials and tribulations. These beliefs will guide parents behaviors, help them make choices, and keep them intentional in their efforts to support one another.

The deepest beliefs come from our identity about what it means to be a good or bad parent. It is hard to create peace if we feel like a bad parent. We will try to avoid doing what we feel a “bad parent” would do and work to do what we belief a “good parent” should be doing. Of course, this isn’t always as easy as it sounds. This often occurs because parents belief that being good is the same as perfect. They hold themselves and their family members to a standard that is impossible to maintain. When they fail and fail they will, they think they are now a bad parent.

The reality is that there is no such things as a perfect parent or a perfect child. It is important to have the courage to be an imperfect parent who raise imperfect children and can still love one another through our mistakes. This road of unconditional love and imperfect relationships will require a constant review of our values and a lot of forgiveness, of ourselves and our family members.

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Parenting And The Serenity Prayer

Parenting and the Serenity Prayer: Asking for Help

By Ron Huxley, LMFT

If parenting could be summed up in a single prayer, that prayer might be “The Serenity Prayer”:

Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

In this 5 part series, we will explore the essential points of this prayer and how it can help parents find grace and peace in the family relationships. 

Asking for Help: 

If parents want to find more balance in their relationships with their children they must be willing to ask for help! Whether that help is from God, a higher power, or other people, parents will need support to help the through the many challenges of parenting.

A common denominator of stressed-out parents is trying to parent in isolation; they do not realize that they need help or can’t find healthy support and in moments of crisis, do things they wish they didn’t do and say things they wish they didn’t do. Parenting from a place of regret is not a “happy place to be.” Additionally, it may result in child abuse and neglect that will cause the legal system to become involved in the families life. This is not the type of help you want to happen if you can help it. 

In other to accept help parents have to accept that parenting is difficult. I know that seems obvious to most of us but many parents believe they can do it all or feel shame if they don’t do everything perfectly which keeps them from seeking support. 

Support can come from natural and artificial sources. Natural sources would including the help and advice of family and friends. Aunt Melba might come and watch the kids so mom and dad can get our for a break once in a while. Grandpa John might offer some helpful advice about managing teenagers. Unfortunately, not all family advice is helpful like when they suggest you get a stick and start beating some butts. The idea of taking more authority in the home could be a great idea but physical abuse will get you in trouble. 

When natural help is not helpful, parents need to find artificial help in the form of professionals. Family therapy or parenting classes may be what parents need to shift the home from crisis to calm. Some cost may be involved in this but you get what you pay for, right? There are lots of non profit organizations in every community that will offer inexpensive, if not free, help to parents. 

Take action: What kind of help do you need the most? Who in your natural network of family and friends could help you? If there are not natural helpers available to you, who in your community could provide you will support? Let go of feelings of embarrassment and do what is necessary to get the help you need. 

Come back to RonHuxley.com to read the other 4 parenting tools based on the Serenity Prayer…

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Bossy Children

by Ron Huxley, LMFT

Are you tired of power struggling with your children? Do they believe they are the parent and boss their siblings around (and maybe you too)? Many children have a natural leadership tendency that need parents to direct in a healthy, non-annoying direction. 

Try playing a game I call “Follow the Leader” to create more democratic relationships. Invite children to take turns leading the way or overseeing an activity to give them more focused leadership skills and then allowing the natural, low energy followers a chance to be in charge. If you are taking a walk around the block or going into the store, have one child direct the rest of the group or spice it up and have them walk in a “funny way” that everyone has to emulate. It’s goofy but it will reign in those high energy children by making a daily challenge fun. Perhaps the leader can choose a song to sing in the car on the way to school or pick the board game for the night. Choose a day of the week that each child gets to pick out the book for bed time or the desert after dinner. After a while each child will know what day is there day and the group will manage itself (instead of mom or dad playing mediator). Even the quiet ones will assert: “This is my day to pick, not yours.” As the parent, you can also state: “This is your sisters day to pick the desert. Your day is tomorrow.” This will provide more parenting power. The game/rule/day will be the bad guy, not you. It is easy to argue with you and hard to argue with the “rule.” It also eliminates the dreaded “because I said so” statements. No one wins with that statement!

Strong willed children will still want to dominate but you have to set a new, fairer precedent that allows everyone a chance to pick, talk, control. As the parent, you guide your children with this game/parenting style and step out of the emotional tug-o-war. Use this tactic whenever the bossy child starts to become the dictator. Be creative with the game. Short cycles taking turns might be necessary to prevent meltdowns and don’t let those low energy children give up their turn to the more dominant ones. It is easy for natural followers to let others take charge but they need to be empowered too! 

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I just woke up. It’s a new day. Nothing has happened yet. I can determine my future, my choices, my mindsets. I can decide how I will react and feel today. My moods are mine to master, not the other way around. Today is a new day and I can have the family, relationships, joy I choose to have.

So can you…What do you choose?

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Divorce and Parental Alienation

Parental alienation syndrome (abbreviated as PAS) is a term coined by Richard A. Gardner in the early 1980s to refer to what he describes as a disorder in which a child, on an ongoing basis, belittles and insults one parent without justification, due to a combination of factors, including indoctrination by the other parent (almost exclusively as part of a child custody dispute) and the child’s own attempts to denigrate the target parent.[1] Gardner introduced the term in a 1985 paper, describing a cluster of symptoms he had observed during the early 1980s.[1]

Parental alienation syndrome is not recognized as a disorder by the medical or legal communities and Gardner’s theory and related research have been extensively criticized by legal and mental health scholars for lacking scientific validity and reliability.[2][3][4][5][6] However, the separate but related concept of parental alienation, the estrangement of a child from a parent, is recognized as a dynamic in some divorcing families.[2][7][8] Psychologists differentiate between parental alienation and parental alienation syndrome by linking parental alienation with behaviors or symptoms of the parents, while parental alienation syndrome is linked to hatred and vilification of a targeted parent by the child.[9]

The admissibility of PAS has been rejected by an expert review panel and the Court of Appeal of England and Wales in the United Kingdom and Canada’s Department of Justice recommends against its use. PAS has appeared in some family court disputes in the United States.[10][11] Gardner portrayed PAS as well accepted by the judiciary and having set a variety of precedents, but legal analysis of the actual cases indicates this claim was incorrect.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_alienation_syndrome

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In Defense of “Broken Families”

By Ron Huxley, LMFT

I have been noticing this term “broken families” pop up a lot recently in various professional writings and parent blogs. Each time I read it, I shudder. The underlying connotation is that a family that has undergone a divorce, death, adoption, abuse, etc. is somehow broken and unrepairable. It is a fatal diagnosis that leaves families without hope. I know, I know, it’s just language but words do have power. They percolate in the brain and become belief systems and self identifying references. The more we hear the word, the more we start to belive them and then we start to give up.

When someone witnesses a teenager with substance abuse issues, for example, people will comment: “You know they come from a broken family”. Everyone who goes through foster care, adoption, or experiences a divorce is going to have mental issues, right? Wrong. Many families deal with teenage substance abuse, not just nontraditional families. While it is possible that children of divorce may act out in antisocial ways, this doesn’t mean that all children of divorce will have issues in life that impair them. The same is true for adopted children or someone in a foster home or raised by a grandparent.

I am not denying that families do suffer from going through experiences like divorce or death or adoption. Loss is central to each of these things but that should not be a life-sentence resulting in mental and relational problems. Life is full of suffering. The focus here needs to be on how to help others cope. How can we learn from those who survive and thrive and teach it to everyone. I take affront at these comments and attitudes because they assume a dark, gloomy fate just because they have undergone a loss. That is just one path.

A recent national study on foster care and adoption in the child welfare system listed that 48% of children, in the system, have significant behavior problems. At first glance, that feels devastating but what about the other 52% that don’t? Who studies them? What makes them more of a survivor, better able to cope, more reselient? Let’s see those studies. Perhaps we could learn some useful tools to help us build strong families.

My challenge is too guard our language. This means we have to closely guard the thoughts that produce them too. We have to start looking at loss for what it is, a painful experience and not as destiny. To counter these negative connotations, try identifying the strengths of families and individuals in them. What have they done well that we can build upon? What new words can we use to describe them and assume their inevitable success in life?

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Dream Parenting: Act/React or Act/Counteract?

Parenting can be considered a dance where two people, one big and one little, move in response to one another. Usually, there is one person in the lead and one person who follows. In families, it can be unclear who is leading. At times it is alright if a child leads but in the long run, parents must be in charge if the family is going to get the most out of their relationships. In order to do this, parents may need to redefine how they choose their dance steps. 

Try this new step: Instead of act vs react, try act vs counter act. Parents tend to react toward a child’s mis-reaction and this almost always ends in frustrated dancers. Don’t react to a child’s actions. Plan a counter action. Problems are predictable in that they will come up day after day after day. If what you tried to do (react) today doesn’t work, you can plan a counter act for tomorrow because the problem will be ready for you again. Parents can have a lot of practice with their new steps until it feels comfortable and natural. 

Parents don’t like the idea of act vs counter act because it sounds like a lot of work. It can be but it isn’t as frustrating as dancing the steps of act vs reaction. Parents will dislike that outcome even more. The key to dancing successfully is to be consistent with your counter action to your child’s action. Don’t fall back into the reaction with yelling, threatening or giving in. Try questioning, letting natural consequences be there own teacher or redirecting the child’s misbehaviors. There are many ideas available for counter action. Be creative. Do the opposite of what you usually do. Let the other parent cut in and take the lead in the dance when on is too tired. Sing your request, say nothing at all or whisper instead of lecturing. Do time in instead of time out. Or, just go walk the dog.