Have you ever been frustrated with your children when they don’t help or clean up after themselves? Are you tired of nagging them to pick up their mess? You’re not alone! Dr. Tim teaches that how parents see their children matters more in these situations than how the kids (or the parents) act. Watch Dr. Tim’s video to learn more.
Video Transcription
Hey there, folks! Dr. Tim here from Family Good Things. Just reporting live (as if you’re watching this live, this isn’t Facebook Live). It just seems like I’m supposed to say that, because that’s what news people do. Dr. Tim reporting live from Channel 5 . . . I don’t know. This isn’t live. This is just a video I’m recording.
I’m in Mesa, Arizona. As you can see, I’m sweating profusely. I’ve been out in 110 degree temperature walking around. I’m also repping Porn Kills Love, which is Fight the New Drug, our friends over there. They do tremendous things in helping us understand the harms of pornography to the individual, to relationships, and to society at large.
NAFFA
But that’s not what this video’s about. I’m here with my wife. Well, she’s not here right now, but we’re in Arizona because I’m working with a couple different organizations that are doing phenomenal things. The first one is NAFFA. It stands for the Native American Fatherhood and Families Association.
I first came in contact with them when I was recently at the United Nations. Well, last March. I was speaking there and I met Mark, who works with NAFFA, and they do tremendous things.
They’re working with hundreds of tribes across the country, native American tribes, strengthening fatherhood and families within those tribes. They have rock a solid program, and more and more people are flocking to it. They’ve asked me to work with them to help it with research, and making the program even stronger, and I’m just honored to be part of it.
So I came down here because I thought it would be a great opportunity for me, and for my students who may intern there, work for them as well.
Anasazi Foundation
Second organization is called the Anasazi Foundation. It’s a wilderness therapy program that was started back in the . . . I want to say 80s, working with troubled teens, but also troubled parents. Many times when people think of a troubled teen, they think the teen is troubled by themselves, or the child’s behavior is just the child’s issue. I think Anasazi gets it, and they get it really well.
So the teens go out in the wilderness for several weeks, living off the land and learning more about life, and meanwhile, back at headquarters, here in Mesa, the parents are getting instructed on tremendous principles that are paradigm shifters. In fact, their paradigm or their framework that they’ve used is from The Anatomy of Peace, by the Arbinger Institute. If you haven’t read that book, you need to. It’s one of the primary texts in my parenting class. Phenomenal book.
So I was meeting with them, picking their brain because I’m wanting to know how to make my parenting class better, especially as I’m creating it for online.
So on that note, while I’m sweaty and stinky — it’s a good thing smell doesn’t come through the speakers and through the screen. On that note, wanted to share just a couple things from The Anatomy of Peace, mostly just a personal experience I’ve had. And it’s something that you all experience every day.
A Clean Home
As a father of four children, I value . . . honestly, I value a clean home. I don’t . . . if you were to ask me, away from everything, I’d say, “Yes. I value my children much more than I value a clean home.” But it’s really easy to have something become bigger than our relationship with our children.
So, for instance, my wife had to go to a meeting for something, and I was home with the four children. And after she left, I was finishing cleaning up the dishes. And everybody has their own dish job, and they were doing it pretty good, whether it’s loading the dishwasher which is everybody’s least favorite, or setting the table, which is everybody’s most favorite.
I was rinsing the dishes and getting them ready to load in the dishwasher. And it was summertime — it is summertime, and so they’re wanting to go off and frolic outside and play. And these feelings . . . you have to be aware of your feelings.
Pay Attention to Your Feelings
Lesson number one: always pay attention to your feelings, to what is welling up inside of your heart. These feelings of almost entitlement, of I deserve, like if I’m doing all of this work, I deserve children who will . . . you can fill in the blank. In this case, I went to the living room and it had just been destroyed. Not that big of a deal, but in that moment it became a bigger deal than it needed to be.
So, inside I was kind of warring toward them. And this is the moment you start to see your children as objects and not as people, meaning their desires and their agendas and their passions and their hopes and dreams and fears, they’re not legitimate. They’re just objects. They’re objects or obstructions in the way of your agenda, which in this case was a clean living room.
So, being a well-educated father about parenting, and being an “expert,” I matched my behavior to what I should say, even though inside I was warring at this room that had just been cleaned maybe an hour earlier. You all know this. Trying to clean your home while your children are growing is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing. If you haven’t heard that phrase before, there you go.
Justifications
So I asked them, and they started whining, and complaining. “It’s not my mess!” You guys know it. “It’s not my mess!” “She did that!”And then it’s all this accusing. And that only increased my feelings of, “Hey, I deserve you to clean this up because, after all I do for you . . .” You may not voice all these things, but that’s why you have to pay attention to these feelings. In The Anatomy of Peace they’re called justifications, sort of feeling why I was justified to have these feelings toward them.
And so my tone got more bite in it, and I increased my volume, and then it just invited more war and people were arguing with each other . . . We got the room cleaned up, but I’ll tell you what: the feeling in the home was not good, the feeling in my heart was not good, and they didn’t have good feelings about me.
So in essence, what happened was the living room, or the cleaning of the living room, became more important than my relationship, and really my way of being towards them, how I am towards them. And I guarantee you, your children know when they’re feeling like objects, when they’re being treated as that, when you see them as that.
Behavior Vs. Relationship
Now here’s a pointer. You have to read the book to really get this. In fact, you really need to read it several times, and you have to read it with a lot of meditating. Otherwise, you’ll just skip over these. “Oh, I don’t do that! I don’t do that.” One of the best things parents can do is spend time really pondering on when I keep running into problems — whether it’s your children eating their vegetables, cleaning up their room, bed time routines, anything else — what are my feelings like towards them and how do they perceive me perceiving them?
And if you pay attention to those feelings, you’ll start to see them more clearly and your love will help you have a more . . . a softer response, and you won’t jeopardize the relationship just for a dang room to get cleaned up, or somebody to get to bed on time.
We have to catch ourselves doing that. A lot of times we want to just use some behavioral tactic. What sort of punishment can I inflict? What sort of bribe can I give them? That doesn’t solve the problem that parents have internally. And that is, maybe I’m carrying around some sort of justification for being angry with my children or upset or . . . How come my children keep doing all these things? Or how come they . . . A lot of times we’re inviting those things by the way we see them.
Dealing with the Problem
I’m not trying to sound really philosophical, but that is absolutely one hundred percent true. So what did I do? I apologized to my children. The next day when that room needed to be cleaned up, I approached it from a much more loving way — and they were invited to join it.
And if that problem kept coming up, then we’d have to have a family meeting where I ask them questions to try to understand their perspective, because I see them as people, and their opinions are legitimate. It doesn’t mean they can get away with whatever they want, but I need to listen and learn, build my relationship, but most importantly I need to work on what’s in here.
Alright! Spend time reflecting, be honest with yourself, don’t let yourself off the hook just thinking that your children are always the problem. The problem is not the behavior. It’s always underneath behavior. Alright! See you next time!
I’ve heard this from many friends, students, and neighbors when I tell them that punishment usually doesn’t work in the way that most parents think. This question is also assuming that discipline and punishment are the same thing. They are not. Punishment is a form of discipline. Just like all apples are fruit, not all fruit are apples.
“But don’t your children have to learn consequences? How are you going to prepare them for the real world?”
Again, sincere questions but also coming from a false premise. Often times the punishments we actually give our children are not like the real world at all.
Let me give you an example. Recently on social media, I learned of a story of a child who had allegedly disrespected his teacher. The parents found out about this disrespect, and to punish him, made the child hold books over his head for an incredibly long period of time, repeating over and over “I won’t disrespect my teacher, I won’t disrespect my teacher!”
So in the real world, let’s say you get a little snippy with your spouse, or your child, or your co-worker. Do you have to hold something like your purse or your child’s bin of toys over your head and chant things like, “I won’t disrespect my child!” Is that how it is? Is that what it’s like in the real world? So at this point, you’re probably thinking,
“Well, what do I do instead?”
Great question. For more on discipline, check out my blog posts in the link below.
Please help us strengthen families by sharing this video with your friends and family! Likewise, to see more of Dr. Tim’s articles (as well as articles by Dr. Rob), please also check out the rest of our blog and our Facebook page.
Ever had a conversation like this with your child?
Daughter: “Hey Mom! Let’s play ponies!”
Mom: “No thanks. I really don’t want to.”
Daughter: “What?! Why not? Don’t you like being with me?”
Mom: “Sure I do, honey. I like you . . . I just don’t like playing ponies. Ugh!”
Daughter: “What?”
Mom: “It just sounds very boring, and I’d rather look at my phone. Sorry.”
I’ll assume that you’ve never had this conversation with any of your children. And that’s a good start. But be honest: have you ever thought or felt something like this? If you were surveyed about your feelings regarding parental involvement, you’d likely be in favor of it. In fact, research shows that most parents feel strongly about the importance of parents spending time with their children.
But as the saying goes, easier said than done, right? And while many parents know that spending time with their kids matters, they may not know that the quality of that time matters too.
Quality Time
A study published in 2015 found that the quality of time a parent spent with their child had a more positive impact than the quantity of time. In other words, simply being with your child is important, but what you’re doing when you’re with them matters even more.
Let me give you an example. I wear a dress shirt, tie, and slacks to work everyday. Some days when I get home from work I change into more casual clothes, but most of the time I’m too lazy and just take off my tie. A few days ago, I arrived home from work and went into my room to change my clothes. My 9-year-old daughter, Molly, followed me into my room and asked if I was changing my clothes. Here’s how the conversation went down:
Molly: “Dad, are you going to change your clothes?”
Me: “Yep.”
Molly: “Yes!” (excitedly)
Me: “What’s so exciting about me wearing different clothes?”
Molly: “Because it means that you’re our dad.”
Me: “But I’m always your dad . . . it doesn’t matter what I’m wearing. If I was wearing a dress I’d still be your dad.”
Molly: “I know, but it just feels different when you’re not wearing your work clothes. It feels like you are here with us and not at work or doing church stuff.”
The moral of this story is not to be more mindful of your wardrobe around your children, but to be more mindful of your mindset when you are with them. As Molly taught me, your kids notice when you’re present but not present, if you catch my drift.
Pause and Reflect
Now it’s your turn to practice!
Map out a typical day in your head and think through every circumstance when you are–or could be–physically with your child. Then try to picture the kind of interaction you usually have in each of those circumstances. Now take it a step further and reflect on how you are typically feeling or what you often think about when you are with your children. How often do you actually play with your children? And by “actually,” I mean no screens (that includes phones) and being fully present.
In order to spend the quality time our children deserve, we need to take time to think about our current parenting practices. Doing this reflective exercise is a good start to becoming a more mindful, intentional, and playful parent.
Yes, I said playful.
Benefits of Play
Maria Montessori once said, “Play is the child’s work.” And truly, children gain so much through play!
Obviously, kids receive a lot of benefits from playing. While children need plenty of time to play alone, play with siblings, and play with friends, they also need time to play with you. It can be anything from playing make-believe to reading a book to playing board games. Whatever the activity, playing with your child strengthens your bond and allows your child to see a different side of you.
Let’s focus on pretend play for a moment. This kind of play really helps you get on your child’s level. Be silly and creative! Since you may feel a little out of your element, let your child take the lead. (And don’t worry, they’ll let you know when you’re doing the wrong voice for a particular stuffed animal.)
A friend of mine who is a family therapist told me about a father who came to therapy wanting ideas for how to “fix” his 5-year-old son that liked to play with dolls. This worried the father because he thought playing with dolls is girly. Instead, he hoped to play catch with his son. In response, my friend asked him to try playing dolls with his son for a whole week. After trying this for a week, the father reported through tears that he had never felt so close to his son. What’s more, his son even branched out to playing catch (the son’s idea) and other things as well.
How to Play
If you struggle finding the time or the desire to play with your children, here are a few tips to get you started:
Set your phone down
Turn your tablet off
Put your computer to sleep (starting to see a pattern here?)
Put your own wants on hold
Clean a little less, play a little more (or you could always make a game out of cleaning)
Don’t be in such a hurry
Just go with it!
These tips may seem like little things, but little things can make all the difference! Start small with your goals to improve. Be willing to give up lesser pursuits if necessary. And when you’re struggling to make the time to play with your kids, remember what one mommy blogger said:
[Parent]hood is not a hobby, it is a calling. You do not collect children because you find them cuter than stamps. It is not something to do if you can squeeze the time in. It is what God gave you time for.
So take off your tie, put away your cell phone, and make time to play with your kids today!
Please help us strengthen families by sharing this article with your friends and family! Likewise, to see more of Dr. Tim’s articles (as well as articles by Dr. Rob), please also check out the rest of our blog and our Facebook page.
With thousands of parenting websites, blogs, and books, it can be hard to know what to believe. Ever wondered what parenting advice you should actually listen to? In this brief video, Dr. Tim talks about five pointers for consuming online parenting advice:
Video Transcript
Welcome to Family Good Things’s first ever video log! We have no idea what we’re doing. In fact, I don’t even know if you would call this a video log, or a vlog, or just a talking head… I don’t know! But we’re going to do it anyways. And what better way to kick this off than to give you advice about seeking advice online — about parenting, family, marriage, and anything else.
So what I’m going to do is I’m going to give you five principles to do (or to avoid, however you want to interpret it) when seeking parenting advice online. I decided to kick this off this way because recently a friend of mine on Facebook asked the parenting question, “My toddler’s doing this and this and this, and how do we get him to stop doing it?” Well, I think it was an honest question, and it was a fair question. A lot of the advice had the same common theme. So. Let’s just start into it.
Principle number one: Popularity isn’t proof.
Just because everybody’s saying that you should do this with your child or this is a good discipline strategy doesn’t necessarily make it healthy, or accurate, or even evidence-based. Now, as Dr. Rob and I both have PhD’s in this, we don’t try to act like we’re smarter than we really are, we do understand the value of research and we do investigate it. So. Just because it’s been shared countless times or it has millions of likes or thousands of likes, or your best friend liked it, shared it, doesn’t mean it’s actually best for your child. Okay?
Principle number two: Education should come before entertainment.
We all like to watch stand-up comedy, cat videos, and anything else that is mind-numbing and is a good break from the day. I love it. I think if you’re seeking parenting advice, it’s okay that you’re entertained by it. However, don’t make that your primary goal, because entertainment is wonderful and good, but it can’t be a replacement for value and usefulness in producing real change in you and your child. So be careful that as you’re seeking parenting advice you don’t simply just become entertained.
Principle number three (I guess that’s six, because three plus three is six) . . .
So principle number three is beware how much misery likes company.
One of the reasons I like to watch Supernanny is because I go, “Oh, at least I’m not as bad as those parents because they’re doing X, Y, and Z and they’re messing up their kids. I’m not that dumb!” One of the reasons we like to seek out certain types of blogs, because maybe it’s a mom or a dad gushing about how much they’ve screwed up. And I think that’s good, we need to be authentic. We need to realize there is no such thing as perfect parents. However, that can become a crutch or a hindrance to our progress and our change in our own parenting — and in our marriage — when we go to those blogs to feel better about doing bad things.
The phrase “misery likes company” is true, because we like to be with people who are angry about the same things, like the same things, have the same struggles, and therefore, we don’t ever evaluate, maybe this is not a healthy attitude, behavior, or belief. So. Mommy blogs are good. We love them. However, don’t go to ones just to make yourself feel better about screwing up and then therefore never changing.
Principle number four: Google can’t change your child, as much as we’d like to think so.
You need to be aware of quick fix strategies. We love Google, because we get instant answers. We love credit cards, we love fast food, we love smart phones. We love all these things because they give us instant gratification. But they’re all replacing, in an artificial and quick way, something that actually takes time, persistence, and patience. A lot of popular parenting advice focuses on getting a child to start acting or stop acting in a particular way. They don’t even question the assumption of maybe the parent’s coming from the wrong premise.
Which is kind of a segway into principle number five, but not yet. Character development is the most important thing we could focus on in our children. Shaping their desires and their character. Why? Because their desires and their character are going to be with them long after we are gone. When they’re with their friends, when they’re at school, when they grow up and move out . . . Their character and their desires will dictate their attitudes and behaviors. So. Google can’t change your child. Beware of quick-fix strategies.
Okay, final principle, number five: Avoid confirmation bias.
Again, we like to look for things that make us comfortable. When we ask questions, like this I think honest seeking mom on Facebook, “My child’s doing this. How do I discipline my toddler?” Sometimes we’re coming from the wrong premise. We’re asking the wrong question. We may not realize that, but we at least need to check our assumptions and not go in. Because if you ask . . . The computers say garbage in garbage out. If you ask a question that has the wrong premise, you’re going to get answers that confirm your premise. I hope that makes sense.
For example, how do I get my child to sleep through the night? They’re age four. Or to stop coming into my bedroom. Maybe there’s a different question we could ask that would help solve the problem more appropriately, even though that’s not a bad question. I think we all want our children to sleep through the night. Nobody wants to be zombies and try to parent when you’re — I’ve tried that before. Doesn’t work too well. Plus my kids don’t really like the *zombie noise* sound that comes out of me when I’m really frustrated and exhausted. So avoid confirmation bias. It’s also very easy to search for stuff that is comfortable and familiar. Don’t reject an idea outright just because it’s not something you’re used to. That being said, you don’t have to accept everything that comes your way through the online blogosphere and social media about parenting.
So, those are the five principles. Now, there’s going to be more to come. Don’t forget to share and like this. Maybe you’re going, “All of your principles undermine you even putting a video online.” I don’t care. I still think it’s good advice. Why? Because it’s me, and I have confirmation bias. Don’t forget to like and share this video. Also, don’t forget to purchase and read and apply Dr. Rob’s eBook which is called “3 Things You Can Do to Create a Ridiculously Happy Marriage.” Ridiculously happy marriage. I have an eBook that will be coming out shortly on father-daughter relationships. Okay, we’ll see you next time.
This is a big year for my family as we have all four children in school. Eleanor, (age 5) in particular started Kindergarten. She was so dang excited! Several times a day for a couple of weeks she would ask, “Does school start tomorrow?”
Not too long before this, my wife and I worried a bit about how Eleanor would handle this transition; in the past, she’s been slow to warm up to new things. After several days of asking about school starting, it was clear that it was going to be harder on Mom than on Eleanor.
The night before school started, Eleanor (and her sisters) laid out their school clothes and filled their backpacks with notebooks, pencils, and other school supplies. It almost seemed like Christmas Eve!
But why all the excitement? What is there to look forward to?
Certainly being with friends and wearing new clothes played into it. But deeper than that, I could tell that Eleanor was excited to learn. Learn more about reading, writing, drawing, basic math and much more!
But how many older children share the same passion for learning? What about us parents? You don’t need a research study to tell you that there is a connection between age and excitement. The older a child is, the less excited they probably are about school. Herein lies a key difference.
Learning and school are not the same thing in the mind of many students. I know it sounds counterintuitive, but it’s unfortunately the reality of kids and schools today. Professor of education and author, Sir Ken Robinson, Ph.D., believes that we are all born hungry to learn and creative, but it is educated and tested out of us. He elaborates below:
So, at the beginning of this school year, how do we keep the love of learning alive in our children and in ourselves (sometimes in spite of the school system)? There are plenty of options, but I’ll get you started with 3 principles to focus on.
1. Focus on Learning, Not Grades!
Alfie Kohn will introduce this principle below:
As Dr. Kohn discusses, getting caught up in performance can distract from actual learning. When you talk to your children about their subjects and classes, ask them about what they are learning and how it applies to life. Ask them about their efforts in the class. If your son brags about his A in math and how easy it was (like my son did), say something like: “I’m so glad you enjoy math! What did you like learning about the most?” Professor Carol Dweck, author of Mindset, counsels that parents should respond: “I’m sorry it was too easy and didn’t push you. Maybe we should try a higher level math where you can learn more.”
2. Get into Their Head.
One of my children kept telling us that there was no homework assigned in one of their classes and so we didn’t push it. When the report card finally came we saw a “C” in the class. (Here is where you are probably thinking I am going to be grade-focused….wrongo!)
So we sat down and asked some of the following questions: “Was this class really hard for you? Did you give your best effort? What did you learn?” Although we didn’t ask all these questions at once, we did learn that there had been a lot of homework not completed. Even more importantly we learned about how this child struggled with the subject and felt incompetent.
We kept the focus on learning and worked with them the next semester to incorporate better studying practices.
Sometimes we assume we know how our children learn and process different topics. While there is some truth to this, if we are not aware of what our children are learning at school, the homework they are assigned, how they feel about it and why, and the teaching style of their teachers . . . we won’t really know.
3. Have a Healthy Appetite Yourself.
Let’s say you prepare a meal for your family that you find quite disgusting, but you know it is healthy so you prepare it anyway. Now try to convince your children how good the food is while they see you choking it down. Kind of a hard sell.
The same goes for learning. If your kids never see you reading, developing a new skill, or just plain excited about new facts and ideas, then this tells us what they will learn about learning. In fact, one educational expert says that the most successful students have parents who model “a lifelong interest in learning.” So rekindle your love for learning by taking a community class, watch TED talks or documentaries, watch Do-It-Yourself (DIY) YouTube videos, take up gardening, or anything that gets you excited again!
Real learning will fuel your children’s development, and it will make you a better parent. It can increase life satisfaction and make for a better society. Stay curious. Stay hungry.
Welcome back to school!
Please help us strengthen families by sharing this article with your friends and family! Likewise, to see more of Dr. Tim’s articles (as well as articles by Dr. Rob), please also check out the rest of our blog and our Facebook page.
