Fix The Kid

Parents frequently call for counseling when they're tearing their hair out, furious and frustrated. Their child is flunking, fighting or giving them attitude and they want the kid fixed.

They want back the young, loving child they once had who gave them sticky-faced hugs and mispronounced their words. That kid was afraid of the dark or bugs or his own nightmares and he knew you could always make everything better. That kid thought you were a god.

Being a parent is the hardest thing--next to romantic relationships--you will ever do on this Earth. You take a very small child and nurture her through a thousand stages, protect her and shelter her against storms...all the while earning a living and dealing with your own stuff. It's difficult and the kid can seem to be bent on making it harder.

What with the blossoming of the behavioral sciences field, we claim that we have a label for every tendency and drugs to handle most of these. It's understandable that parents--in the midst of the craziest part of parenting--want professionals to fix their kid. Something must be off: brain chemistry, allergies to something or some inherited tendency toward mental illness.

You're desperate and you want answers. You need this to be different.

The good--and bad--news is that you have a bigger part in this whole mess than it seems. You may have tried your very best. You've walked the floor at night. You've corrected his table manners. You've worked like a dog to provide for your child. You given the kid more than you could ever have dreamed of as a child. You probably even wonder if you've given your child too much. He's texting between bites at dinner and surfing the web on his iPhone. You wonder if this crazy world is making him--and you--crazier and if we should all become Amish.

Don't hesitate to talk to a therapist and ask for guidance in the parenting choices you're facing now. This isn't saying that you're a bad parent or that you've somehow screwed your kid up. It's just that this is a big, big job. You'd consult with an architect before building a big addition on your house. You'd ask a physician's advice if you had a major health issue to respond to...asking a therapist for input isn't different.

Don't hesitate to incorporate the therapist as your assistant. And don't think you're being told you the problem. You might be afraid that we'll diagnose you and try to put you on more medication. (You might actually be ready to talk about the medication part, if the kid's really driving you crazy.) You might wonder if you're responsible for the troubles your child is having.

You may be afraid that going to a counselor/therapist will just confirm this.

You know this kid is smart. Despite the stupid choices she's making. The smarter the kid, the more challenging she is to raise. You know she's part of this problem. She's making bad choices and she doesn't listen when you point this out.

Give yourself a break. A counselor will know that raising kids is a complicated, challenging thing. A good therapist isn't going to give you all the responsibility or all the blame for what's happening. But a counselor ought to have some ways you can better get through to your child. He or she might point out some natural consequences to your child's choices that you've been blocking and which might help him to learn.

A good therapist is going to hear you...and help. That's the point. Don't try to haul your kid in--protesting--to get the therapist to fix her.

Make an appointment yourself. Get someone on your side.

SHAKE THE STUPID OFF

Everyone screws up sometimes. Most people screw up over and over, and this doesn’t have anything to do with how smart they are. When it comes to relationships, even the most intelligent people sometimes make goofy choices or say things they don’t really mean or do stuff they shouldn’t do. It happens.

The most important part of making mistakes is what you do afterwards. The common, human tendency is to try to defend yourself, to explain why you did what you did or didn’t do what you didn’t do. It’s as if you think that the other person’s understanding of the situation, and why you acted the way you acted, will somehow make it better, certainly make you feel better. Only that’s not usually how it works.

You still feel stupid and usually the other person still feels offended and doesn’t understand it anyway. That’s because defensiveness—explaining yourself—doesn’t work. It sounds as if you’re excusing what you did (or didn’t do) and usually things don’t get better between you and whoever.

So, you feel even more stupid and now you feel misunderstood.

When you’ve made an unfortunate choice or a outright mistake, it’s normal to feel stupid and to beat yourself up. It feels pretty bad, though. Sometimes, you even feel stupid in situations when you didn’t particularly mess up. You might just have expressed something awkwardly or missed a social cue. This happens to everyone, but it can haunt you, making you cringe every time you think about it.

You need to learn to shake the stupid off. Tell yourself—as many times as necessary—that yes, it might have been a not-smart, crazy thing you did and that this wasn’t new to the human race. People mess up sometimes. Remind yourself that you aren’t a terrible, horrible person, then work to understand the choice you made.

It’s important to step back from your guilt or shame about this in order for you to fully learn from the moment. If you made a relationship choice with unintended, unforeseen consequences, you very much want to make sure you don’t make this choice again. You need to learn from this.
One definition of insanity is to repeat the same actions, expecting different consequences. You don’t want to do the same kinds of things(stuff that doesn’t work)in relationship after relationship. You want to see what you need to see, but you have a greater chance of doing this if you stop beating yourself up about it.

If the regrettable choice you made was, in your eyes, really bad or if it had some distressing relationship consequences, it may seem like stepping away from the stupid feeling is avoiding deserved consequences. Maybe you think you ought to feel stupid. Trust me on this, it doesn’t help.

You need to learn whatever there is to learn and in order to do this most effectively, you need to stop beating yourself up.

TOO AVAILABLE?

Break-ups are painful, particularly if you don’t want to break-up with your significant other. And few things are black-and-white. Maybe you can work it out. Every relationship has bumps along the way. You might have done or said some stupid, unkind things and you’re sorry for these. If your partner is walking away, it’s understandable if you want to beg him to stay.

If he’s willing to work through the relationship conflicts the two of you had, that’s a different thing. You and your former mate can work on fixing what was broken in the relationship. Jump in with both feet and start working on the problems, by all means, but you need him to be as committed to this as you are.

This can’t happen if she’s already seriously dating, living with or married to someone else. Don’t fall for the line that she’s been hurt and she wants to make sure you’ve changed before she ends whatever other relationship and gets back with you. Don’t keep working at this, if she’s not working on it, too.

Hope may keep you hanging in, but be very careful you’re not waiting around, running to do whatever your former partner wants because you want to keep the relationship going. Don’t be too available.

This sounds wrong, I know. After all, you want to be available. You want to get back together and for things to go back to like they were when you first fell in love. There may be stuff you’ve continued apologizing for. You want to patch this up.

Still, don’t be too available.

When your ex asks a favor or calls to tell you about her life or wants your take on things that happen with her dates, it may warm your heart as much as it is hard to hear about the dates. After all, you want your ex to turn to you, to seek you out and want to talk to you. You’re still in this thing. You might be really glad to get a call and relieved when she seems to need you.

But you being too available not only gives your ex the illusion that he can have his cake and eat it, too, it tortures you with possibilities that may not be founded. If you give the message that you’ll take whatever scraps he throws your way, you’ll probably continue to get scraps.

Don’t give the impression that you don’t have a life. Make sure you have a life. Make friends. Get a new hobby. Move forward. Don’t just tread water. Yes, I know you want this relationship, but you’ll be a much more attractive mate if you go on with your life.

Don't just hang around waiting. You deserve better.

TAKING THE CHALLENGE

Going for the job you want, but are afraid you won’t get. Sticking by your word and following-through on difficult, but educational consequences for your kid. Actually asking for—and listening to—your mate’s feedback on what you do that makes him/her crazy. Standing up for what you believe, even when it’s unpopular and may lose you some friends.

Doing the hard thing.

This is what really takes guts, what earns you hero status, although you might not get the cheers you deserve. There are situations and choices you face everyday that are difficult and complicated and could bring you rough stuff. These are the things you really feel you need to do, but you’re afraid to do or you’d just rather not.

For some people, the hardest thing is to leave a comfortable, but unhappy relationship. For others, the truly hardest thing is to stay in a relationship and try with all their energy to learn what needs to be learned.

Taking this most difficult challenge means listening to the stuff that makes you cringe, things about yourself that you’d rather not acknowledge. It can be brutal, but this is how we learn—by facing what needs to be faced.

Only you can decide which challenges when met will help you be a better person. Don’t let anyone else tell you what you should do. Instead, look at what’s tripped you up in your life and turn your energy on fixing this. Whether you’ve depended on a substance to change your distressed feelings or walked away from relationships where you were cared about, but challenged more than you liked—you have choices to make.

More than extreme sports or bungee jumping or climbing to the top of the Himalayas, dealing with your own personal challenges takes major courage. These are the decisions that will bring you the greatest rewards and make you the best person you can be.

Don’t join the military or ride a crotch rocket a 100 mph through rush hour traffic or pour yourself into making a million dollars in hopes that you’ll feel fearless. These won’t make you a better person. Even the best person feels fear. This is normal. It is the small moments—the hard choices—that make you better. Facing your own fears and demons usually involves a smaller scale than the big, splashed-all-over-the-media choices (and doesn’t risk collateral damage to others).

Owning up to your responsibilities. Paying your debts. Choosing to benefit someone else and, in doing so, benefit yourself. These are hard, best, most rewarding choices. Even if the good consequences aren’t immediate or aren't visible to others and you don’t get on the evening news, you will still have invested in yourself.

DON’T MONITOR GROWN CHILDREN

I know they screw up. I know you love them and you don’t want them mess up their lives. You’ve been down a few roads and you know a thing or two, but that doesn’t mean you need to be monitoring your adult children. You don’t get to tell them how to live their lives—or how not to live their lives.

Whether they are parents at this point themselves or teens still or young adults starting their careers, you still don’t get to tell them how to live. They need to learn their life lessons on their own. While you may have one or two stories about how your parents guided you, I’m guessing you had more instances of being angry and frustrated that they were telling you what to do.

Your parents may have been right in their advice and, looking back, you now might wish you’d listened more, but that doesn’t change the fact that children want to live their own lives, even if that means making mistakes.

Some of those may be big mistakes and your children might choose avenues you hate and fear will earn them ugly consequences. You may shudder to watch their mistakes, but you still don’t have a right to straighten them out. Don’t rescue them from the consequences of their mistakes (this is how we learn) and don’t tell them what they need to do.

I know this is hard, maybe the hardest part of parenting. You still need to let them manage their own lives. Be very careful what you say, even when they ask for your advice.

One of the most difficult aspects of this is watching what may be taking place with grandchildren, if you have them. Grandparenting offers the beauty of being a central part of a child’s life without having the tremendous responsibilities of parenting. It also puts you in the tough spot of having a ringside seat to all your own child’s mistakes and the results on their children.

Resist the urge to tell them how to live, though. The best, most powerful lessons are the ones we make for ourselves and the surest way to poison a parent-child relationship is to tell adult children what they should do. They won’t thank you for it and, chances are, they’ll just stop telling you about their lives.

You need to believe in them, even when they’re messing up. And you need to refrain from commenting. When your children were young and growing up, they needed your direction. It was your job. Having a parent manage a kid's life is an important part of childhood, but now that they’ve grown to adulthood, they don’t need you directing them or commenting on their choices or pulling them out of bad situations.

They won’t thank you for it and they won’t learn to believe in themselves. You love them. You want them to know they can fix their own lives. Let them do it without a running commentary from you on how they're messing up.

MARITAL MULTIPLE OFFENDERS

It is very natural to want a relationship, someone to cherish and comfort you. Someone who loves you and is committed to being with you. Most human beings want just this.

Relationships, though, are challenging, frustrating and maddening. They are the hardest thing we do in this world. Even the most highly intelligent individuals with great and wonderful I.Q.s and very expensive educations struggle with how to have a happy, fulfilling relationship.

But even though marriage is hard, we keep trying. Some marriages fail. As legal and societal restrictions have fallen, divorce is now common. Close to half of all marriages end in divorce and individuals who have multiple marriages, have an even higher incidence of divorce. Folks don’t usually give up after just one or two, either. They keep trying. Few things are more attractive than a one-on-one commitment. Given the human desire to form connections, it is understandable that lots of people are racking up lots of marriages.

The real challenge is not to carry bad, dysfunctional habits and expectations from one marriage to another. Naturally, you have grievances with your spouse and you have a right to these. After all, your former mates were far from perfect. They had issues (as does your current spouse).
The hardest part of a hard challenge is looking at yourself. Your issues. Your stumbling blocks. You are, if you look at it, the common denominator in all your marriages. This doesn’t mean you’re a bad person or that you should just accept that you’ll be alone for the rest of your life. The important thing to remember is that every relationship—and it’s failure—has lessons for you. Things you can learn about yourself.

It may be painful—and hard not to beat yourself up—but seeing your own bad habits can help you make different choices on the next go-around.

From personal habits to communication issues, you need to look at yourself and what you’ve contributed to your failed relationships. This is hard, but vital. Understanding your own challenges and addressing these improves your life and your future interactions with others. Whether you marry twice or a dozen times, you need to see what you’ve offered in the mix.

Remember, success in marriage isn’t based on just finding the right person. You have to be the right person, too.

THE HOMEWORK POWER STRUGGLE

If you care about theirhomework more than the kids do, there’s a problem. This is the kids’ issue, not yours. It’s not about whether you’re a good or a bad parent. It’s about the kid. Even really great parents have sometimes have kids who do poorly in school.

Trying to wrestle your kids into doing homework is exhausting. Unless you’ve got the kind of child who eagerly completes the assignments given, you’ve probably struggled with this. Striking a balance between being an indifferent parent and an over-involved helicopter parent is the challenge.

Homework is the kid’s business, not yours.

It is appropriate for parents to set up a firm home structure, which allows for time to complete homework and it is appropriate to limit access to electronics during this time. Parents can also stress that, while the assignments are the kids’ responsibility, there can be longterm, life consequences to not doing these. This is the parental role in stressing the importance of homework. You don’t need to blow off the importance of this in kids lives, but you don’t need to make getting it done your business, either.

Parents can be helpful in many ways and can certainly be involved, but children have to decide if they care about their grades. They get confused when their school work seems to be more about you than them. Power struggles—you know the threatening, yelling, grounding part—leads to this confusion.

Homework is their business.

You can be around to be supportive, if they need help. You can arrange tutors in areas where they’re weak. You can certainly find help if the child has a significant learning issue. You can’t, however, make your child care about doing well in school. If you punish them for unfinished assignments, you’re missing the point. School success can only be the result of children deciding to succeed.

You need to let them fail. You can talk--without a great deal of emotion--about the difficulty in trying to find a good job without an education. But you need to let them decide. This is a massively important life lesson.

It may sound horrible, but failure provides a life lesson that everyone needs to learn. Failure and the fear of failing can motivate a change in the way your children deal with their school work. They have to decide if school success is important to them. Your job is to point out the value of graduating high school and college and then get out of the way. Do this early in the child’s academic life, rather than waiting until high school, when the consequences are more life-altering.

Remember, kids need to make their own experiences. This is massively important in life overall and really pivotal in academic achievement. Applying parental pressure to the homework dilemma doesn’t solve the problem. The biggest lesson kids need to learn is to assume responsibility for their own school achievements.