In this Issue
Feature Article
Parents and Their Child’s Privacy
by Kim Olver
Workshops
Quote of the Month
“In an all-out war between parents and child...
—David Myers, Ph.D
Book Review
Unconditional Parenting
by Alfie Kohn
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Upcoming
Events
Click on title of class for more information and to register or visit
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All teleconferences are one (1) hour in length unless otherwise stated and all you need is a telephone. When you register we will send you a phone number that you will call five minutes prior to the start of your teleconference. You will have the opportunity to ask questions, but if you prefer to just listen that’s all right too. You do not need a computer or Internet, only a telephone. Don’t delay. There are a limited number of slots available.
Inside Out Ongoing Mastermind Group, offered the second Tuesday of every month. Anyone can join in to learn about the process of IOE, Inside Out Empowerment and how it can open your heart, free your mind and transform your life.
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Coaching: Bring Out the Best in Others
February 13 & 14, 2009
8:30 a.m. - 4: 30 p.m.
Chicago, IL-- Prairie State College—Matteson Center
Do you have a knack for helping others do their best? Coaching is an exciting performance improvement model that will help you in your work as a supervisor, manager, human resources professional, or counselor. Learn how to bring out the best in people through mentoring and guided goal setting. Learn a simple four-step model to get agreement, create solutions, achieve follow-through and recognition. Create rich workplace relationships as you facilitate the success of others, thereby creating your own. Note: Managers, supervisors, project/team leaders, human resource professionals, or counselors who want to enhance their coaching skills would benefit from this class.
Parent Institute Day- Building Your Child's Self-Esteem
March 27, 2009
8:00 a.m. - 3: 30 p.m.
Prairie State College -Chicago Heights, IL
STRONG CHILDREN, STRONG COMMUNITES: A unique networking conference for parents and educators
Relationship Empowerment
April 6, 2009
Chicago, IL-- Prairie State College—Matteson Center
7:00 - 9:00 PM CT
$29.00 (Bring your partner or a guest for free)
So often, couples get stuck in a rut where each individual is waiting for the other to change their ways. In this workshop, participants will learn to engage in the seven caring habits by following the Platinum Rule: Do unto others as they would have you do unto them. Gender differences in relationships will be explored. Participants will learn the three possible relationship choices. Participants will learn a negotiation strategy so both partners win. People will leave knowing that they have the power to change their relationships regardless of what their partners do.
Introduction to Choice Theory©
April 6, 2009
Chicago, IL-- Prairie State College—Matteson Center
9:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. CT
$69.00
Choice Theory® takes the mystery out of behavior—yours and theirs. It provides and explanation for why we do the things we do. Choice Theory ® explains how a person’s perceptions shape their reality and teaches the four components of behavior. Armed with this new knowledge, problem conceptualization becomes much easier and the path to taking effective action is clearer.
One of the things I like best about Choice Theory® is its wide-spread application—you can use it in your personal, as well as your professional life. It provides transferable skills for everyday life. Choice Theory® helped me to become a better counselor, mother, life partner, friend and a better all around person. When you truly embrace its teachings, Choice Theory® becomes a way of life instead of a hypothetical theory of human behavior.
Empowerment Parenting
April 7, 2009
Chicago, IL-- Prairie State College—Matteson Center
7:00 - 9:00 PM CT
$29.00 (Bring your partner or a guest for free)
This workshop helps parents to understand the psychology behind what is happening with their children at various stages. Parents will learn how to align themselves with their child’s resistance for increased cooperation and compliance. Parents will learn how to sacrifice what they want now—strict compliance, for what they REALLY want—a responsible, caring, child who is capable of making rational decisions. Empowerment Parenting teaches parents simple skills and strategies for helping their children successfully make it through the challenging phases of their lives. Parenting children is no easy task. They don’t come with an instruction manual. Times are different that when your parents parented you! Empowerment parenting shows parents how to compromise and negotiate with their children as they gradually increase freedom as their child demonstrates the responsible behavior to handle and appropriately manage that freedom. This is a challenging way to parent. It is truly parenting for the 21st century.
Inside Out
Personal Edition
“You can't change the direction of the wind. . .
but you can adjust your sails!”
---Jimmy Dean
Kim Olver, MS, NCC, LPC
www.TheRelationshipCenter.biz
Kim@TheRelationshipCenter.biz
February 2 , 2009 - Volume 5, Issue 1
A Message from Kim
Hi Everyone,
This is the first issue of 2009 and its focus is on parenting. It was recently brought to my attention that parents and children are often locked in a battle where parents are trying to keep their children safe and children are demanding their privacy. Parents often don't have a responsible model for allowing their children space, while at the same time trusting them to make good decisions. Empowerment Parenting provides such a model.
This newsletter is designed to address issues of all relationships but if you are interested in parenting specifically, then you might like to sign up for our free Empowerment Parenting Tip Sheet at www.empowermentparenting.com.
Since it is the beginning of the year, I wanted to ask my subscribers if there are specific questions or relationship concerns you would like me to address in this New Year. Please send me an email letting me know what you'd like me to cover. It can be anything pertaining to relationships, including your relationship with yourself.
If your main focus is self-growth, then you will benefit from signing up for our newsletter at www.insideoutcentral.com.
If you are having challenges with relationships in the workplace, then you will benefit from our Inside Out-Professional Edition. You can sign at www.coachingforexcellence.biz.
I am no longer doing chats on Tuesday evenings due to low attendance. However, if you have questions or are attempting to put Choice Theory or Inside Out Empowerment concepts to use in your life, then sign up for our free Inside Out Empowerment Mastermind group that meets at 7 PM ET/4 PM PT the second Tuesday of every month. You can sign up at www.insideoutempowerment.com.
I look forward to hearing from you with your suggestions.
Make today the day you want it to be!
Unleash the power within you.
Kim Olver
Feature Article
Parents and Their Child’s Privacy
by Kim Olver
When does a child’s right to privacy begin and a parent’s right to know end? I don’t have definitive answers but I do have what I hope will be some helpful guidelines.
Let’s begin by looking at the opposite ends of the continuum. To begin at the beginning, you start off with an infant, who grows into toddlerhood. Your two year-old does not require, nor will he generally seek, privacy. He takes no offense when you help him dress. She is not offended when you share the bathroom. And he typically does not mind you rummaging through his things. In fact, all of this parental intrusion seems fairly normal and necessary.
On the other end of the continuum, I have a 54 year-old friend whose parents are 87 and 88 years-old. They talk to him almost every day and want to know the details of his life, even those details my friend would like to keep private, such as when he isn’t feeling well. He doesn’t want his parents to worry. Now, there probably aren’t many parents who can’t relate to wanting to know things about their grown children that those children would prefer to keep personal. There may details about their intimate relationships, their finances, their children, their work and their health, among other things that they may not want their parent’s to know. Doesn't a grown child have the right to decide what information he or she will share with a parent?
Since I am a parent of grown men in their twenties, I understand the desire of parents to know about their children’s lives. After all, for all the years they lived with you, you pretty much couldn’t help but know most of what was going on in their lives simply because you lived under the same roof. Add to that your concern about their safety and well-being and you were motivated to know as much as possible about your children. Just because a child grows up doesn’t make that desire evaporate.
So, what’s a parent to do? When is it all right to violate your child’s privacy and when is it taboo? The issue mainly comes down to what you ultimately want for your children, how you teach them responsibility and trust.
Most parents will agree that there is no need for privacy before a child is two. Many, but not all, will agree that by the time their child is grown, the child should have the right to maintain privacy about any area he or she chooses, even though it may cause the parents dismay.
For those years in between, ask yourself the following questions:
1. What do you ultimately want for your child? Do you want an obedient child or one who is ultimately independent and responsible?
If the answer is that you want an obedient child, then I don’t believe you are looking far enough into the future. It is most likely that your children will outlive you. Who do you want them to obey when you are gone?
If you can agree that you want them to be able to be independent, responsible adults by the time you are gone, then shouldn’t you start to prepare them early since we never have any guarantees of how long we will be around?
Once your child reaches the magical age of two, he or she will be seeking some independence. Children at this age want to start doing things themselves—eating, drinking, dressing, choosing their activities, etc. Take this as a sign that your child is beginning to see him or herself as separate from you and may be looking for some personal space.
As a parent, you want to gradually increase privacy as you teach your child responsible behaviors to manage the new freedom.
2. How do you teach responsibility? Do you tell your children what to do or do you model, show and provide opportunities for your child to try out his/her new skill?
If your goal is to raise an independent, responsible adult, then you will provide learning opportunities in that direction. When parents tell their children what to do and how to think, what they set up, in essence, is either a rebellious child or a child who becomes very fearful and dependent.
You want to model for your children the behavior you expect. If you hate doing chores around the house, how can you reasonably expect your children to want to do theirs?
3. What do you believe about trusting your children? How do you respond when they let you down?
Once you have discussed and demonstrated a new behavior with your children, you need to trust them by providing opportunities for them to test it out. How will you ever know what responsible decisions they will make if you protect them from environments where they will be put to the test?
How will you respond when they don’t act in the way you’ve agreed? Do you punish them for “bad” behavior or do you take that opportunity for further teaching and education? Scientists have discovered that people do not learn when they are afraid. They act from the back of their brains, their reflexive center. They are programmed to do whatever is necessary to survive but they won’t learn anything new. Therefore, punishment may not be your most effective route.
The best approach is to take back some of the freedom until they can formulate better responses to the situation and then reinstate your trust to allow them to try again. How many times should you do this? As many as it takes.
All of this said, I know that as parents you still want to know what is happening with your children. The best way to do that is to follow the guidelines above and maintain open, honest, non-coercive, non-threatening communication with your child. When you do, they will be more likely to seek your counsel when they need advice.
So don’t read their diaries, go searching through their rooms, check the trunks of their cars, listen in on their phone conversations, invade their email inboxes or spy on their myspace accounts. Be the type of parent your child will trust. Be the parent your child can come to when he or she is in trouble. Be the parent your child will want to share his or her life with and you will have no reason to ever violate their privacy.
If you would like to learn more about how to do this type of parenting, then click here to sign up for our free Empowerment Parenting Tip Sheet.
Copyright © February 2009 Kim Olver. All rights reserved.
About Kim OlverKim Olver is a life coach and public speaker who has a graduate degree in counseling, is a National Certified Counselor and a licensed professional counselor in two states. She has worked in the helping profession since 1982 and has spent her entire life helping people get along better with the important people in their lives. Kim works with couples, parents and children, and individuals seeking to improve their lives. If you would like to learn more about how to do this type of parenting, then click here to sign up for our free Empowerment Parenting Tip Sheet. |
Click here to read some of Kim's other articles
Quote of the Month
“In an all-out war between parents and child, the child will win,
usually at a great cost to her.”
—David Myers, Ph.D
This quote really tells the story. When what you do is try to control your children, they naturally resist that control. No one enjoys being controlled and the force you are exerting on your children creates a counterforce in them to ultimately resist and/or fight back. Often this leads to your child engaging in some activity that will be more harmful than if you had never exerted the control in the first place.
Think about this next time you and your child engage in battle. Ask yourself what is it you are truly trying to win? Is it worth the damage to your relationship? Is there another way to make your point? Can you say something that your child can actually hear?
Check out this month's tip for an idea of how to do just that without engaging in the battle. It's generally in your presentation. If you come off as the authoritarian dictator instead of as concerned parent, you may win the battle and lose the war.
Book Review
Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason
by Alfie Kohn
I cannot say enough positive things about this book. It is my favorite non-Choice Theory© parenting book thus far. While I know Alfie Kohn has not been trained in Dr. William Glasser's Choice Theory© concepts, he certainly understands them in his writing of this book.
On the cover of the book is the statement, "A provocative challenge to the conventional wisdom about discipline." That's an understatement, however it's too long in coming. We need to challenge conventional discipline. It is no longer effective if it ever was.
I say the world is different than when we were children and our parents parented us. The methods they used will not prepare children of today to be ready for this world. As parents, we need to stop telling our kids what to think and start teaching them how to think. Kohn does that in this book as does the work of Dr. Glasser on Choice Theory.
If you truly want to raise a responsible, independent child, then this book will definitely help. It is also filled with research examples for those who want the evidence. Please, you owe it to your children to read this book.
Join our book club at Inside Out Central
Tip of the Month
Instead of being critical and corrective of your children, try formulating questions instead that will help them critically analyze things for yourself. For example, if you want to say,"Don't hit your brother. You really hurt him," instead ask the question, "What do think happens with your brother when you hit him"?
The idea is to ask, rather than tell. Self-discovery learning is more effective than lecturing. Children will take more away from the experience when they figure it out for themselves.
The good news for you is that it will actually increase the strength of your relationship with your children. When you criticize, discourage or correct your children, they automatically go on the defensive. They don't see you as an ally, but as a adversary. When you ask questions and trust your child to come up with responsible answers, he or she sees you more as a trusted adviser--someone whom they can trust.
Relationship Q & A
Question: I really struggle with getting my son to clean his room. It is a constant battle. He just doesn't see what the problem is and I can't stand having him live in such chaos and have a room in such disarray in my house. What can I do?
Answer: Believe it or not, this is a common problem and one some parents don't like my answer to. The first order of business is to decide who owns this problem you or your son? By owning the problem, I'm asking which one of you is most upset by it? Obviously, you are. Your son probably doesn't even think about the condition of his room.
One of the biggest problems in relationships is that someone has a problem and then proceeds to try to get someone else to solve it for them instead of taking responsibility themselves. For example, your son's messy room is actually your problem but you are trying everything you can think of to make him fix it for you. How's that working? It usually doesn't work very well.
Since we've identified the messy room is YOUR problem, now let's look at your options for fixing it. There is nothing wrong with asking for what you want from your son. My guess is that you've "asked" several times and he is resisting your requests. So, one option is to keep asking. Another is to raise the ante by punishing him until he agrees to do what you want. Or you can resign yourself to the fact that this is just not important to him and he is unlikely to do what you want.
Now, accept the fact that he is not cleaning his room as you would like. Acceptance means giving up resentment. If you are resenting him, you are still attempting to get him to see it your way and clean the room. Accept that this is simply not a priority for him. Your other options are to close the door to his room so you don't have to look at it. If you normally go in there to put clean clothes away or for other reasons, stop so you aren't reminded how upset you get at the condition of his room.
Another option is that you can choose to clean it yourself but if you choose this option, remind yourself that you are cleaning because it is solving your problem. Don't clean resenting your son, thinking you are doing HIS job. He is content with his room as it is. You are cleaning to make yourself feel better.
Another option is that you start telling yourself different things. Instead of feeding your mind thoughts of, "What an ungrateful brat! After all I do for him, he can't even keep his room clean!", try telling yourself, "What a wonderful son I have. Look at all the wonderful things he does. Soon he will be grown and he won't be so active in my life. I sure want to fully appreciate every day we have together." You get the idea. Changing your thoughts, changes your perception. Changing your perceptions changes your emotions. Changing your emotions will change your actions. Create the actions that in line with the person you really want to be.
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