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Do you know your child’s Love Language?

To love and be loved is the most basic of all human needs. People will go to extremes to get this need met. It forms the basis of the world’s religions. Society has capitalized on it commercially through the marketing of Hallmark cards, chocolate candy and diamond rings. Whatever its form or expression, getting the love you need and sharing it with others is a life-long process.

 One of the best books on the subject, for me, was the book “The Five Love Languages”by Dr. Gary Chapman. In a very practical manner he listed the five love languages as:

1. Words of Affirmation

2. Receiving Gifts

3. Quality Time

4. Acts of Service

5. Physical Touch

 According to the author, every one seeks to get their love needs met through these five areas. Some of us have more dominant love needs through positive words of affirmation while others feel more love through the application of touch. Regardless of the specific dialects you might speak, all of us have one or more of these basic elements in our emotional vocabulary.  

 One of the easiest ways to determine someone’s love language is to observe how they express love. We tend to speak love to others in the way we want to be spoken to. This can result in frustration for people in close relationships who persist in expressing love in ways that met their own needs but don’t take into account the language of the other person. For example, my wife might like acts of service to fulfill her needs for love while I like to receive gifts. Bringing her candy and flowers for Valentines Day might be appreciated but it will not have the same impact as cooking her dinner and drawing a bath.

Take a moment to remember the last time someone did something for you that made you feel loved. How did that action fit into the five love languages? Was it a hug? An evening out? A gift? An act of service? A kind word?

Take another moment to analyze the love needs of those closest to you? How do they fit into these five love languages? It might be more than one. Have you spoken this language in a way that meets others needs?

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Are Non Traditional Families the Same as Traditional Ones?

One of the biggest hurdles that nontraditional parents must jump over in society is the feeling of being “less than” traditional, two-parent families. Nontraditional families suffer under the weight of guilt and grief as a result of their particular family structure. They often feel isolated and alone, as if no one else could possibly understand the struggles they are going through. The reality is that most nontraditional parents feel that they do not met with societies standard of acceptable parenting and labor under the same feelings of guilt and grief. One way to help nontraditional parents adjust to their family structure is to look at their situation as the “same but different” and “different but the same” as other family types.

Same But Different

Nontraditional families do not have a clear job description or they try to use an inadequate model of the two-parent, traditional family when operating their blended or broken family. This model only frustrates them further. A new, more relevant plan is needed for nontraditional families. The motto: “same but different” can be used when creating this new job description.

Nontraditional parents may have the same values as traditional parents but the way in which they exercise them may be different. The need to have a strong executive or marital subsystem is the same but the makeup of that subsystem may be different. It may be made up of remarried individuals, grandparents instead of actual parents, nonbiological rather than biological parents, or a single parent instead of two parents. Birth order is the same in the nontraditional family as in a traditional one but is different or more complicated where a first-born child in a remarried family changes roles due to the inclusion of new siblings after the remarriage and becomes the middle or last-born child. This can lead to a difficult adjustment and the need to continue respecting the child’s old position along with their new position. Boundaries are the same as in the traditional family but where and when these are set will be different due to the different structure of the nontraditional family. The perfect parenting standard will be the same in the nontraditional parent but differs as nontraditional parents fall farther from the parenting ideal. And power plays will be the same in the nontraditional family as in the traditional family but detriangulation or diffusion take place differently from traditional families. Focusing on nontraditional parenting as the “same but different” helps normalize parenting for nontraditional parents while acknowledging their uniqueness.

Different But the Same

Likewise, focusing on being “different but the same” is also important for the nontraditional parent, to a point. They need to accept, if they are to move through the states and stages of grief, that they are very different in structure and composition from traditional families. Therefore, their experiences and feelings will be something traditional parents may not share. To believe that nontraditional parents are carbon copies of traditional parents and to attempt to live according to principles establish on their terms, will result in further failure in balancing love and limits.

Another way for nontraditional family to balance love and limits is to focus not of differences or sameness but on solutions. Finding what works, regardless of the traditional or nontraditional family parents find themselves in, will assist parents in achieving a greater balance of love and limits.

Love and limits represent two sides of the parenting coin. To have a balanced home, nontraditional families need to have both a “relational discipline” based on affection and communication and an “action discipline” style based on firm limits and structure. How a nontraditional family organizes these two principles of parenting will be similar and yet different from traditional, two-parent homes. By keeping in mind the concepts of “same but different” and “different but the same” nontraditional parents can better manage this balance of love and limits in their own unique fashion.

What are your thoughts on non traditional vs. traditional families? Share here or at http://www.facebook.com/parentingtoolbox 

Try our Micro-Education for more parenting answers!

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Glancing at your problems

Sometimes the problems we experience in our family relationships can feel so large that we simple stare transfixed at them. It can overwhelm us and cause us to give up hope. We may resign ourselves to the idea that we cannot over come them and this is the way our family will always be…

The unfortunately result of this immobilization is that we often believe the lie that other people (or ourselves) are the problem. I am fond of quoting a line from Narrative Therapy that goes: “The person is not the problem. The problem is the problem." 

It is only when we partner together, against the problem, externalizing it from our person that we are able to overcome that problem. Blaming one another as bad, damaged, or toxic only intensifies shame and keeps us stuck. I am not saying that people don’t make bad choices. We all say things and do things we wish we hadn’t done that can have destructive consequences on our families. The point here is that if we are to have the dream family we deserve to have, we have to work together against the problem. 

Instead of staring at the problem, try "gazing” at your loved one and only “glancing” at the problem. It is still there but it is not where your attention needs to be glued to. Reconnect with your family, work together against the problem and start making changes, however small that will restore relationships and rebuild connections. 

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Ten Ways the Parenting Toolbox Helps You Become A Better Parent

An unsolicited endorsement by Kathleen Karns of the Toddler Tamer.

“Raising a family today can be an almost overwhelming challenge with the diverse differences in the family both socially and culturally. We are a society of single parent families and mixed families that do not fit within the parameters of the traditional, two parent family. When tackling everything from step-parenting to behavioral problems with children, the unprepared parent can feel as though they are drowning.

To provide solutions for this social chaos, family therapist Ron Huxley enters the fray with his phenomenal system called the Parenting Toolbox. By utilizing the vast array of services and educational tools available with a subscription to www.parentingtoolbox.com, struggling parents can find the information and resources that will equip them to face the challenges associated with raising their children in today’s world. The Parenting Toolbox offers an array of tools that will enable you to become a better parent:

  1. Knowing that the most important role that you can have in life is being a parent and learning to express the value of parenthood everyday provides the beginning steps to face all of the challenges that children can bring into life.
  2. You will learn new and variable ways of disciplining children without always resorting to corporal punishment that will stimulate the mind and instill respect.
  3. Either open or improve the lines of communication between parents and their children.
  4. You will be able to learn what more about the ways you were brought up affect the way you raise you own children and provide the means to change these parental patterns.
  5. Not only will your own self-esteem get a boost that it needs, you will be able to teach your children about their own innate value.
  6. Parents are given healthy ways to deal with their anger and stress in ways that will be helpful and non-abusive.
  7. Creative strategies are introduced to deal with challenging behaviors in children in safe and productive ways.
  8. Games, puzzles, and other creative exercises both strengthen the parent’s ability to communicate important concepts to the child but also enable the child’s ability to think and reason in social settings.
  9. Parents no longer have to be in the dark when it comes to ways to raise their children that will promote spiritual growth. Parents can learn ways to incorporate their spiritual heritage into the lessons and sources provided by the parenting toolbox.
  10. More than this, Ron Huxley and the parenting toolbox will equip you with something even more valuable: guaranteed life long support. This is the real commitment that parentingtoolbox.com makes. It will be there through every stage of a child’s development to provide not only just the right tools to make you a better parent but also support through groups of parents and professionals who have been there before.

Whatever the situation, you will be able to count on the resources of this amazing system to give what you need when you need it.”

How has this blog helped you? Leave a comment here or on Facebook at http;//www.facebook.com/parentingtoolbox

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Can you teen handle responsibility?

Provide Only the Help Your Teen Needs

1. Whenever possible, communicate indirectly — using a note or text message. The idea is to create distance between you and your teen, so that the cue can work without both of you being in the same place at the same time.

2. Send notes, don’t nag. A voicemail, note, or text message reminding your son to empty the dishwasher before he goes to the dance may get him to do it. Nagging won’t. In the case of regular chores or routines, try reminders for a few weeks. Then stop prompting him and see if he does the chore on his own. If not, return to the reminders.

3. Ask your teen to develop his own cues. This is a way to hand off the skill to the teen, so she can remind herself in her own way.

4. Edit your words. When it comes to reminders, parents talk too much, include lessons and lectures, and use an irritated voice. This frequently leads to conflict.

5. Use an outside expert to teach your child a skill. If teens are going to be independent problem solvers, they need to use people and information, not their parents, to help them. While we all feel good when our teen asks us for help from time to time, this does not increase their independence, unless they internalize the information and stop coming to us.

Identify One Challenge and the Times It Occurs

6. Let your teen choose which challenge to work on first, and how to address it. It could be moving too slowly in the morning or driving carelessly. Anything that increases your teen’s interest in the problem increases her investment in solving it.

7. If your teen is open to help, choose a goal for which implementation is shared. By letting your teen decide in what way you can help, you decrease the burden the task places on you. The objective is to fade out your help over time, but not so quickly that your teen fails at a task.

8. Start with a problem that is small and easily tackled. This will build your teen’s confidence and will increase the likelihood that he will be willing to work on other problems. In the morning routine, you can move from waking your teen to having him wake himself.

9. Address a problem that puts your teen at immediate risk. This is when parental judgment and decision-making must override teen choice. If your teen has trouble controlling emotions or sustaining attention, which you fear may pose a risk of unsafe driving or substance abuse, closely monitor his behavior. This will strike your teen as intrusive, but a parent’s job is to keep the teen “in the game.” This does not mean that parents should lock up their teen during his adolescence, but it does mean that parents find ways to balance choice and risk management.

Meet Resistance with Creativity

10. Be open to negotiation. If you have approached a problem as a “have to” or a “do it or else,” consider offering an exchange. You’ll give up something you want if the teen will give up something she wants (or do something you want). If you want chores done in exchange for using the car, change the chores to errands you need done and offer the car if she’ll run a couple of errands for you before she goes off with friends.

11. Use your teen’s personal goals to teach executive skills. Virtually any goal requires planning, time management, sustained attention, task initiation, and goal-directed persistence. Focus on personal goals that are a high priority for your teen — saving to buy a car or going to Europe next summer. These are ideal vehicles for learning executive skills, and have the advantage of built-in motivation if they come from your teen.

12. Consider more rewards. Parents are often cheap in terms of what they will offer their teen, because they are annoyed at having to offer anything at all. If you accept that these are difficult skills for your teen to learn, understand what is needed for her to make the effort.

Excerpted from Smart but Scattered Teens: The “Executive Skills” Program for Helping Teens Reach Their Potential, by Richard Guare, Ph.D., Peg Dawson, Ed.D., and Colin Guare. Copyright © 2013. Reprinted with permission of The Guilford Press, New York.

Can you teen handle responsibility?

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Parenting One-Liners

My wife and I were recently listening to some parenting workshops on audio and the speaker was talking about parenting one-liners used by the Love and Logic organization.  I forgot how amazingly simple and powerful these one-liners are for parents who want to stay calm and regulated during potential power struggles with their children. 

Some examples of one-liners include:

  • “Probably so.”
  • “I know.”
  • “Nice try.”
  • “I bet it feels that way.”
  • “What do you think you’re going to do.”
  • “I don’t know. What do you think?”
  • “Bummer. How sad.”
  • “Thanks for sharing that.”
  • “Don’t worry about it now.”
  • “That’s an option.”
  • “I bet that’s true.”
  • “Maybe you’ll like what we have for the next meal better.”
  • “What do you think I think about that?”
  • “I’m not sure how to react to that. I’ll have to get back to you on it.”
  • “I’ll let you know what will work for me.”
  • “I’ll love you wherever you live.”

Instead of getting hooked into an argument or fixing a problem for child, use the parenting one-liners to facilitate more independent problem-solving skills by the child. Genuineness, on the part of the parent, is important when using them. 

Get a free pdf here: http://www.loveandlogic.com/documents/one-liners.pdf

Do you have any other one-liners you use that disrupt power struggles? Share them here or on Facebook at http://on.fb.me/1703QiT

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Parenting Toolbox Sweepstakes!

Win a free ½ coaching session with Ron Huxley, founder of the ParentingToolbox.com and get help with your parenting challenges. Winners may pick a friend to get a free ½ session as well so enter now. Winner announced 6/19/13.

Click here or cut and paste this into your browser: http://on.fb.me/1703QiT

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Two Secrets Teens Want You To Know!

Two Secrets Teens Want You To Know!

In my years of work with teenagers, I have learned some
very important secrets that might interest parents. It
wasn’t easy getting these secrets. Your teen will probably
deny all of them. For some, it is so secret, even they are
not consciously aware of it. But trust me, once they know
that you know about what most of them know, it will improve
your relationship. What do I mean? Let me show you by
telling the first secret…

Click here for the full article and “like” us on FB while your at it!

Two Secrets Teens Want You To Know!

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Parenting Self-Talk: Improving Your Parenting By What You Say To Yourself

By Ron Huxley, LMFT

How you feel about yourself as a parent has a lot to do with how you talk to yourself. I’m not inferring that you have mental disorder or that you hear voices. I often tease friends and family members when I catch them talking to themselves if they are answering themselves too. Everyone talks to themselves with little awareness of it. Self-talk is automatic and carried out repeatedly through the waking hours. Hidden behind parents self-talk are their thoughts which are rational and 
irrational. Rational thoughts create positive, realistic feelings and behaviors. Irrational thoughts create negative, unrealistic feelings and behaviors.

Most parents assume that events around them produce these feelings. You can see examples of this in young children who say, “You make me angry!” The reality is that events cannot make you feel anything. Situations can 
be stressful but they cannot dictate our emotions. Take, for example, the parent who becomes angry at her children for running around the grocery store while another parent just brushes it off as “having too 
much energy” with no feelings of anger. Regardless of whether children should be running around the store, attitudes determine parents emotional and behavioral reactions.

These thoughts get expressed in our self-talk which, in turn, reinforce our thinking. Changing our thoughts, and by that some of our negative feelings and behaviors, can be as easy as changing what parents say to themselves. By easy, I mean, they can be consciously controlled. Like anything, parents must make them a regular part of their daily routine till positive self-talk comes naturally.

Some examples of negative self-talk would be:

“I am a mean mother.”
“I never get a moment to my self.”
“Everyone takes, takes, takes and no one gives to me.”
In contrast, some examples of positive self-talk would be:
“I sometimes make mistakes but I always try to be the best mom I can be.”
“I deserve to take some time for my self and not feel guilty.”
“Children need to learn boundaries and respect.”
“Although it is nice to be appreciated, I do not have to have the approval of my family to feel good.”

The first examples overgeneralized and focused on the negative part of parenting. It is easy to focus on the problems. Finding solutions and positive reframes of the parenting job is much harder. To help, parents 
can make a self-talk plan.

A self-talk plan empowers parents to look at the positive aspects of parenting or view it in a new light. Parents can identify several situations which usually produce negative or distressing feelings. Next, parents can identify their automatic thoughts and feelings about those situations by listening to what they say to themselves. And finally, 
parents can create more positive ways of talking to themselves about those situations. Here is an example:

1. Children walk through the house with dirty shoes (distressing situations).
2. My kids have no respect for me or how hard I work around here (automatic thought).
3. I know how hard I have worked and I need to provide consequences for walking through the
house with dirty shoes (positive reframe).

Every time a parent starts to feel those negative emotions bubbling up, they must stop immediately and evaluate what they were just saying to themselves before 
the emotions started. Most of the time this will be the self-talk that needs changing. Here are some more positive self-talk statements:

“I am a good parent.”
“I do the best I can.”
“I may make mistakes but that does not determine my worth.”
“It is O.K. if I feel frustrated or anxious. Emotions will pass as quickly as they come.”
“I am not helpless. I have people and resources to call upon if I need to.”
“This is an opportunity to teach my children about life and not ‘the end.’”
“I just need to take one step at a time and everything that can be done will be.”
“I can stay calm when my family members are being difficult.”
“I can get my child’s cooperation without having to threaten or yell.”
“He/she is responsible for their actions and feelings, not me.”
“In the long run, who will remember anyway.”
“In the big scheme of things, this is really a very small matter.”
“Other people’s opinions are not important to me.”
“I do not need other people’s approval to feel good about myself.”
“I won’t put pressure on my self to be the perfect parent.”
“I will not make assumptions about my families actions. I will ask them directly.”
“I will not react, but act on problems with my children.”
“I can still enjoy life, even if it is hard.”
“I will respect others even if they do not show me respect.”
“I do not have to be abused or mistreated. I can change my life to be more satisfying.”

In addition to using these self-talk statements, read books like “Don’t sweat the small stuff. It is all small stuff" and others that encourage positive affirmations. Daily reading materials, spiritual texts and devotionals, and songs can also change what you say to yourself so that you can change your parenting experience.