Kids These Days
“Kids these days!” Whenever I hear this phrase I think of my great great Uncle Charlie who was missing most of his teeth and smacking his gums together, he’d exclaim “Kids these days!”. He was usually responding to a perceived infraction or “stupidity” of a young person that he was observing.
I grew up in a pretty strict household. My parents ran a tight ship. Parenting was certainly different then. I had great parents! They were loving, interested, engaged and present. My mom had a way of asking questions that always gave her a ton of information and she was so subtle.
She got to the heart of the matter and was so adept at giving advice without giving advice. We went to her often when things were tough because she was calm, wise, and knowledgeable about the ways of the world. She was also tough as nails. She didn’t put up with any nonsense and she clearly had HER way of doing things.
My mom was never “out of sorts” – at least I never saw it. She was always put together beautifully, she always knew the right things to say and she was an “includer” of all people. She brought people together, saw the best in them and seamlessly brought them into the fold. Both my parents expected great things from us and pushed us to be our best. She and my dad made it look easy and as one of our family friends eloquently said, my parents raised great kids – “not a clinker in the bunch”!
So when I had kids, I thought, I’m pretty smart, I was raised by amazing parents, I watched all of my older siblings raise their kids and felt as though I had a lot of knowledge and experience.
When I had my first child and things started to go south – I was a bit out of my element. My parents and family were telling me that I needed to get “tougher” and make sure she knew who was boss. I got tougher and she escalated further. Everything I tried wasn’t working and the tried and true methods that my parents had implemented with clear rules, high expectations and tough boundaries weren’t working. I needed to soften my approach, not escalate with her, implement kind and firm boundaries, expectations and rules along with a compassionate and understanding ear differently than my parents. My kids were different from us, the world was different so we needed new techniques.
That’s when I found out that my daughter was “neuro-divergent”. She has ADHD and as I learned more about what that meant, the traditional parenting techniques, actually, the traditional expectations of performance, behavior, and social “norms” didn’t work. My husband and I had to learn new techniques.
When I went back to grad school for my master’s in Marriage and Family Therapy, I went to Adler Graduate School. Alfred Adler was wise beyond his years and his philosophies were way way way ahead of his time. And I soon learned that whether my parents knew it or not, they were likely influenced by his thought processes and techniques.
Alfred Adler and later Rudolf Driekurs developed a theory and practice of helping humans become the best they can be. Hallmark techniques of his theory turned into parenting guidelines and practices that are now understood as best practices of parenting and when dealing with children. Jane Nelson then formalized these techniques and practices into education and tools for managing children and raising children into responsible, emotionally intelligent adults that are able to take responsibility, problem solve respectfully, understand rules and boundaries, respect others, respect authority, etc. And that’s quite a feat in the world we’re living in today.
Reference www.PositiveDiscipline.org.
Now, as I work with families, I am amazed at the behavior that parents endure. Children yelling, screaming, hitting, kicking, biting, swearing and calling names to not only their siblings but their parents as well. The kids are out of control and the parents are equally out of control. Culturally we want to parent out of mutual respect but we have lost the balancing factor of discipline and boundaries. Our kindness, mutual respect, understanding of others and attempts to recognize our children’s struggles has led us to out of control kids who are not capable of managing their own bodies, emotions, and behavior. We are seeing this in every aspect of life.
Add to that struggles with neuro-divergent brains, ADHD, Autism and others, who’s conditions are literally defined by inability to self-regulate, we are headed for disaster. We are at a crossroad. There is a mental health epidemic due to the fallout of the COVID pandemic and all of these factors are coming into play as a “perfect storm” and our kids are in the eye of that storm and many parents feel helpless to stop the swirling and gain some order and balance back in their homes.
I want to give you hope! There are methods, tools, techniques to bring kids back into center, build skills of self-regulation, recognize how the neuro-divergent brains work, implement healthy parenting strategies and heal from the fall-out of the pandemic.
Kaleidoscope Coaching and Counseling is proud to introduce Parent Rescue!
Parent Rescue Tenants based on Positive Discipline
- Help children feel a sense of connection – Belonging & Significance
- Is mutually respectful and encouraging – kind and firm at the same time
- Is effective long-term
- Teaches important social and life skills.
- Invites children to discover how capable they are.
We’re offering a 6 week Positive Discipline parenting course. We will meet in person every other week for 6 weeks in Bloomington MN near the Mall of America. This course will bring balance back into your family, bring joy back to your parenting and help you help your kids build the necessary long-term skills to become productive adults. I hope you can join us! And bring a friend or two who you know is struggling!
For more information and to sign up go to www.ParentRescueMN.com. See you there!
Judy Richardson-Mahre, MA, ADHD-CCSP
Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist
ADHD Expert & Coach
Parent Coach
Educator
612.930.3903
