Carolyn Stone
Ed.D.
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Dealing With the “Gimmes": Four Steps to Teaching Children an Attitude of Gratitude
Is Your Child a Materialist?
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Avoiding Holiday Overwhelm
Now we are into December, and the holiday season is officially underway. How can you help you and your quirky kids focus on the enjoyment and minimize the overwhelm that can come with this time of year? Self Care
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What is Moral Development?
Not long ago I heard an interview on the radio show, Humankind, about what parents can do to help children develop a moral core. The host interviewed Richard Weissbourd, a child and family psychologist on the faculty of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. What is a moral core? Weissbourd believes that a moral core involves being able to take another’s point of view, being able to value that point of view, and being able to manage difficult feelings. He believes that these and related qualities are more important to long term happiness that the much touted self-esteem.
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The Difference Between a Teaching Moment and Letting Your Child Down
Recently I had a meeting with two colleagues who, like me, are both mothers. One was distracted as we started because she had gotten a text from her high school age son that he had left his keys on the bus. How would he get into the apartment? She had an appointment for a haircut after her work, a rare time set aside just for her. By the time we met, she had figured out that he could wait for her in the library nearby, a reasonable option. All the same, she was rattled. It was unnerving that even though he’s in high school, he would lose his keys.
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Just Ignore Him—Does it Work?
I recently read a blog post by a counselor who said that ignoring your children’s misbehavior is not helpful. He said that parents need to interrupt behavior. I think that ignoring can be a very helpful parenting strategy, but it isn’t appropriate for every situation. Clearly if your children are squabbling and one is hurting the other, you should intervene. If your child is destroying property, you’ll intervene. Ignoring is just one strategy in your parental toolbox. Ignore and Attend
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Don’t Take it Personally
Several times lately I have met with parents who are hurt and angered by the things their children have said in anger. It makes sense that they are hurt. These are parents of “quirky kids” who get set off easily. Once your child is angry, she stops using her pre-frontal cortex to exercise judgment about what she says. Parents report remarks like, “You’re the worst Mom ever.” “I know you hate me.” “Go ahead, kill me now.”
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How Does Screen Time Affect My Child?
I thought when I chose this topic that I would dash it off quickly, but I found myself doing some research about what we know about how much children in the US use electronic entertainment and the research on what the effects of this are on children. It turns out that we know a lot. We know that on average the use of electronic entertainment went up almost an hour and twenty minutes a day between 2004 and 2010. We also have good research on what behaviors and habits are associated with higher amounts of TV watching, video game playing, and computer games and social media.
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Helping Your Rigid, Anxious Child with Gift Giving and Receiving
Is gift-giving stressful at your house? Do you try to find things that your child would like, hoping to surprise her, but then learn that it was not what she had in mind at all? Gift giving for children who are inflexible in their thinking can be a disappointing exercise in miscommunication. It takes some careful communication ahead of time to have a happy gift-receiving experience. If you want to surprise you child with a gift, you probably should let go of that. Children on the spectrum simply don’t do well with surprise.
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Say Please!
How do you get your children’s respect? How do you know that they respect you? Is it that they obey? That’s a big part of it when they are young. When parents of young children come to me for Parent Coaching, they often ask for help with compliance. Their children don’t “listen.” I think that most parents have this problem at one time or another. I know that I did. Parents find themselves telling a child over and over to do the same thing. Often they report, “He doesn’t do it until I yell. I don’t want to yell all the time, but that’s the only way he’ll listen.”
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Strength in Community
I recently wrote about the complicated feelings that parents have when their child is diagnosed with a learning disability. While these feelings are all a normal part of coping with a special needs child in your family, they can interfere with your well being and your ability to advocate for your child unless you find ways to support and take care of yourself.
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Your Child Doesn't Like Your Great Solution? It's a Puzzle
Here’s a scenario I see often in my work. Parents are having difficulty with their child over Problem X (doing homework, getting up in the morning, getting ready for school, or managing time on electronics). Parents join me and the child for a meeting about this, and the parents have been thinking about the problem and have come up with a proposal. Very often these bright and successful parents have really good ideas. They say, “I’ve been thinking about this, and here’s what I want you to do from now on.
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Tricky Balance
Lately I have had balance on my mind. I am thinking of the difficult balance between a parent’s desire to protect a child and the child’s normal desire to be more independent. This balance is more tricky when with an atypical child — whether due to ADD, learning disability, or Asperger Syndrome. Now add the child’s normal desire to be more independent in middle school and the significant increase in the complexity of work in middle school, and you have a situation that can become a crisis.
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