Many times words are all we have to communicate with and yet we often are so casual in fact careless in our use of them. Many people: authors, poets, businessmen, advertisers, and politicians spend a lot of money and time trying to find just the right words. Words are so very powerful. Words create feelings in people and those feelings often manifest themselves in behavior.  How often have we said,  "Oh I did not really mean that" or "I can’t believe you said that" or we just walk away not sure what we are feeling?

 

How carefully do we choose the words we use when talking to our children and others that we love?

 

There are a couple of words I would suggest we drop from our repertoire. Only two words for a start.

 

My two words are SHOULD and COULD.

 

I dare you to try for a couple of weeks not to use these.

 

NO MORE…

 

I should haves

You could haves

I could haves

You should haves

 

How hard would be? What changes might occur in others? If it is true that as we bring value to people they will allow us influence and as we take it away they will fight us, then what do the words could and should bring to the table??

 

What would be different without could and should?

 

By the way I shared this blog with my son Robb his two words were never and always. Gee I wonder who he heard these words from!

 

 

 

 My oldest son who has two children sent me this the other day and I thought
it worthy of passing on.Your comments are welcome.  I can say without
hesitation now that my children are older  I could have a bit more time on
the picture of the boy and dog and a little less on the globe. I am not
beating myself or anyone else up. My decisions did seem like a good idea at
the time. What however is the point of getting older if you can't look back
once in a while and wonder

John Schuerholz on raising our children

"I challenge them [Brave's players] to consider seriously the great
responsibility we all have beyond simply performing our jobs as
successfully and faithfully as we must. The great challenge is doing all
we can individually and collectively to build a better neighborhood, a
better community, a better society, and yes, even a better world.  We
can begin that by doing all we can to raise our children properly.
Here's a story I like to share to illustrate that point: A small boy
walks into the room where his dad is reading a newspaper.  The youngster
tugs on his father's shirt sleeve and says, "Dad, I need to talk to you.
Can you talk to me just for a minute?  The man is consumed by what he is
reading and hardly acknowledges his son.  Without looking up, he waves
the boy away.  Only after the lad persists, does he gain his father's
attention. "Dad, I really do need to talk to you," he repeats.  At that
moment, the father had turned to a large picture of the globe in the
newspaper.  He proceeds to tear the photo into a hundred little pieces
and hands the pile of scraps to the boy, saying, "Here, when you put
this picture of the globe back together, I'll talk to you." The child
departs, barely able to carry all the pieces of paper in his hands.
The father figures he'll have his peace and quiet for most of the day.
Remarkably, within just a few minutes, his son is back holding up the
picture of the globe, Scotch tape everywhere.  "Here, Dad, I've put the
picture back together. Will you talk to me now?"  Astonished, the father
blurts: "That's impossible! How did you do that so fast?" "Well," the
boy says, "I didn't put the picture of the globe together.  But on the
other side was a picture of a small boy and his dog.  And I put that
picture together.  The moral of the story is clear; if we take care in
putting our children together properly, the world will take care of
itself."

Built to Win by John Schuerholz - 2006 (page 243-244) 

 

 

For as long as we have had the written word, adults have complained about the zany illogical actions of their children.  I saw on the news the other night that the latest drinking game is with water.  I am sure the risk appeal was heightened as a result of the death of a radio contestant in a water-drinking contest.  Not logical!

That is the point.  We as adults have an expectation that young people think in a way that reflects our logic.  When that happens, it is most often by coincidence rather than by development.  This phenomenon sometimes works well for all of us.  Marconi was only 21 when he made his first wireless transmission.  By the way, he had no scientific background and as far as anyone else could see, was being totally illogical.  Just remember, when your child does something that defies logic, it is not personal – they just think very differently than we do.

Do you remember the last time you were invited to eat, but were not hungry?  Being polite, you might have said, “Sure,” only to struggle with getting any food down.   When I was growing up (a long time ago), it apparently was thought effective to make your kids eat and eat what was put in front of them.  My dad tells of my spitting out the peas, only to have him scoop them up and put them back in my mouth until I swallowed them – kind of ugly to even think about. 

  

We as parents often force-feed our children, never allowing them to create an appetite for what we are offering.  What do we force-feed?  Our ideas; our expectations; our need to know they are all right; our need to know that we are parenting right; our dreams; our commitment for them not having to go through what we went through; our addiction to their approval and their success.  These are just a few of our offerings that come to mind.  We are so anxious about giving that we forget to take the time to receive.  Quickly, our children fill up.  If our kids are over eight, it is likely they haven’t heard anything new from us for a very long time.  Questions like – How was your day? – What did you learn today? – are offered as acts of love or interest, but are heard as questions with an expectation for the right answer.  What if we did not ask right away?   Could be by supper they might well want to share, perhaps not the first time, but after awhile.  An overriding objective of children is to please or to be found pleasing to their parents.  When we stop probing, they will have an appetite to share. 

     There are only two ways to make a dream come true.  One, give it more time and two, change the dream.  In my experience it is usually the combination of the two that works the best.  We just finished the major winter holidays.  I wonder how many of us went into those holidays with a picture in our mind of how they would be only to discover a new picture now that they are over.  As parents we face the same challenge over a great many more years.  Regardless of our experience as a child, we developed an idea of how our family will look and what kind of parent we will be.  Of course the unknown here is your child whether natural or adopted.  Funny thing, they were not privy to our dream.  As a result they merrily developed in the way they were supposed to.  The only interfering force is we parents.  I say interfering because if we insist of a dream picture outcome that doesn’t fit, either the child or the child’s developmental schedule we are caught up trying to force something to happen that may not be in our best interest.

  I say often that the only difference between a good plan and a bad plan is that a good plan works better.  A child’s behavior will always tell us how good our plan is.  It takes great courage as a parent to accept the reality of the behavior.  Bear in mind acceptance does not mean endorsement. This may require that we amend or suspend our dream in order for us to meet our child’s needs rather than have our child meet our needs.

    This reality may cause us to have some grieving for the passing of our old dream.  We may find ourselves experiencing the stages of grief. 

I came across a quote the other day that reminded me of something I often forget as a parent, a quote by Maya Angelou that said to the effect, I did the best I knew and when I knew better, I did better.  I can’t help but think to myself how often as a parent of four, I would question myself on decisions I made on a lot of things, but especially my children.  If I had only spent more time, less time, different time or  if I had forced my child to eat everything on their plate maybe they would have different diet habits, etc., etc.  I go back to what Maya said, I did the best I knew and when I knew better, I did better.  The fortunate thing about life is that we get to go ahead and advance our self. Time is really our friend; it’s our ally not our enemy.  If we are willing to give new ideas the possibility then in fact we can learn to do better and then change the way we do things.

 For years I have used the phrase, “this seemed like a good idea at the time”.  I never have worked with any parents that were deliberately trying to foul up their children.  You don’t sit across the table from your spouse and say, I have an idea honey, let’s see if we can screw up the kids today.  We are all going in to this with the best of intentions.  If you weren’t one of those people you wouldn’t be even reading this website.  So.. lets not beat our self into pulp for yesterday.  I often say, there is a reason why the rear view mirror is a lot smaller then the windshield.  Yes, it’s worthwhile to see where we have come from, though the real challenge is  to focus on the  windshield as we  move forward. So often when our children do something wonderful,  like win an award in academics or in sports or whatever, we praise them, we say, this guy is so great., we give all the credit to the child. But the minute  they screw up whatever it is, either small or large, we take a lions share of that responsibility on our self and that doesn’t really help.

  So we did the best we knew and as we know better we are going to do better. 

A couple of days ago one of my grandsons and I were off to breakfast.  He loves to ride in my 1974 CJ5.  The jeep is several years older then he is as he is only 13.  After breakfast, we pulled in for gas, I handed him the credit card and asked if he would fill it up. He looked crestfallen and said, “I don’t know how.”  Though I didn’t say it, I thought, “How can this be at 13 and not able to pump gas?”  “Oh” said I, “would you like to learn” and he said “yes”, and we had a gas pump lesson.

 In my mind I couldn’t let go of the reality that my grandson couldn’t pump gas.  Of course I had to mention this to his mother. Though I pleaded to curve my air of judgment, I  am sure she felt it.  Then she reminded me of what I had completely forgotten. “Dad” she said, “we live in Oregon, there he has never pumped gas. It’s not allowed there, its illegal for anyone other then a gas station attendant to pump gas”   Oppps… I thought , but it got me thinking that for young people it is important that they get to do things. It is important that they get to learn how to live.  Its not just pumping gas,  we see it all over.  We just  don’t have as many jobs for kids to learn things that they can feel good about these days.  Kids don’t mow their own lawn anymore, or wash the windows or help out in chores around the house. So many times those things are paid for.   It isn’t just the ability to  mow the lawn or pump gas; it’s the satisfaction of knowing how to do things, things that contribute in small ways in everyday living.

Interesting,  I worked with a group the other day and the counselor at the  program said, “ when these kids came to us they couldn’t do their wash no could make their bed.”  Once again it is not that these are huge, its that the children are unable to  contribute even in the smallest ways to their day to day support.  If they don’t learn this they will let someone else do it or they won’t try it or they will try it somewhere else and feel bad.  And… we will be like the gas station attendants in Oregon, we won’t be teaching them.  We will always be doing for rather then teaching.  And the next time….. If your not their then, then what?

 

    All too often when we think about changing the behavior of one of our kids it can seem a daunting task.  The same can be true for the kids. “You want me to do what??”  “I can’t do all that!” The fact is effective change may be much easier then we think. You know a 10% change can get 300% results.

 

Take football as an example. What is the distance, the actual measurement of being able to play the game or not?  Isn’t it only a four inch line - the width of a boundary line?  Once back inside the boundaries, one can play all over the field.  We do not have to get our kids all the way back to the center, just back on the field.

    It was mentioned the other day in the paper that United Airlines made an adjustment to the boarding procedure- the new way of boarding reduced the time it takes to board by four minutes.  By making that small four minute change, the cost savings were over a million dollars a year.

  A small adjustment…. Great results!

It’s Hot here in Georgia.  But after a most wonderful day,  I thought I would share a message from a group of girls out on a therapeutic wilderness program ages 14-17.  Earlier today, my associate Anne and myself had the prelude of joining a wilderness group high in the mountains.  They circled together for introductions and discussions and I was keenly aware of how anxious they were to have a conversation. We went around the circle introducing ourselves, our ages, and how long we had been in the program, where we were from, and what we were trying to resolve. They were from everywhere, Boston, to Memphis Tennessee.  While they discussed many issues,  the common issue was the relationship with their family, parents in particular.  They wanted to fix it. 

Towards the end of the discussion, after Anne and I explained about our family coaching,  I asked the question that I frequently  ask groups of young people: What message would you have me take to your parents?.  While the answer did not surprise me as I have heard these answers many times before, they might surprise you. 

• Tell them not to believe us
  
• Tell them don't let us talk you out of it
  
• Tell them not to give up
  
• Tell them we are glad we are here it is worth it
  
• Tell them we didn't realize how much we were hurting the family
  
• Tell them thank you for sending us here.

This group was most sincere and highly skilled at this point in their program in communicating their ideas and their feelings.  I wish you could have been there.  And as a father who has a daughter that went to a wilderness program it was most reassuring. 

A couple of cases have fallen to me in the past week. They have in common, COMPUTER ADDICTION. In this case it is not porn addiction, but rather to a game I had not heard of before. I do not want to mention the game here as I would not like to enable anyone getting there. I was struck by the depth of involvement it solicited from each of these people. Another surprise is that age range for my clients spans over 15 years. That means we have teens and adults caught in the same trap. Why did this happen and what to do??
I find it interesting that both of these cases present themselves a day apart. When I think of addiction, I think in terms of a behavior that is unmanageable and is dominating the other facets of ones life to a detrimental effect. Addiction in fact, takes away from someones life. Certainly in these cases this is true.
I asked why? Why is this game, and I am sure their are others, so devastating and so compelling? I would like to share my thoughts with you.

1. These games are a virtual social event. Those involved are able to make the necessary online relationships to reach a goal. Online players don't go through normal hoops of relationships building which presents almost no risk. By risk I am referring to the practice one goes through of learning how to interact with people in the real world.

2.These games are gratifying no matter ones level of competency. Right from the start they are a "can do" situation so one feels good right a way and does not experience the frustrations or the good feelings of mastery as one ramps up capability.

3. Their are built in points of recognizable accomplishment. Affirmation so sought after.

4.Perhaps one of the most unique aspects of these games is that there is no logical end to the game. One must just stop playing "cold turkey". It is not like there is an end and now we all go do something else. It is like a ball game that never ends so the spectators just stay in their seats.

A reminder that like all good things, even the computer has a down side.