Parenting - CoupleDumb

Real Relationship Advice

Relationships do not end with your lovers. We are in relationship with everyone and everything. For many of us, the prospect of having children was a natural process of development. We put little thought into how to parent. We placed lots of effort into making sure they had a great nursery that was both stimulating and visually appealing. We chose a name that was both meaningful and unique. We did our research into how we would give birth, what diapers they would use and weighed the benefits and drawbacks to co-sleeping over independence. Our birth-plans resembled tomes and their outfits that we picked for bringing them home from the hospital are nicely packed away in their keepsakes. In all of this planning, did you think how you would actually parent them?

Top 5 things we do to mess up our kids:

1. Making them the center of our universes: Between team sports, piano/mandarin/capoeira/glass blowing lessons, our little ones are busy. However, we hardly take a moment to see how this affects our lives. Mom Taxis are cutesy ways of saying that you have been reduced to transporter. Saturday mornings are a series of lessons, games and birthday parties that leave no time for adult activities. Make time for yourself and if you have no time, rethink the glass blowing lessons.

2. Parenting from guilt: If we are not the type of parents who over-book our kids we may be too busy to participate with them on a consistent basis. If we find that we are giving them what they want because we feel bad that we missed a game, this makes the relationship tainted. We are not in a guilt based economy and it is not healthy be remunerating your child with toys, parties or a lack of boundaries. We do what we do to survive and sometimes that means we have to work hard and miss out on some things. Make your peace with what you have to do at work and eliminate any activity that needlessly keeps you away from your family. Also, ask yourself every time you give your child something; ‘why?’

3. Who’s the boss?: In Marriage and Family Therapy we have a theory based on Salvadore Minuchin’s Structural Family Therapy where we map out the hierarchy of a family. A healthy family system would have the following hierarchy: Husband and Wife on top, Mom and Dad under them, kids on the bottom. When we allow kids to make decisions for the family, we disrupt the structure of a family. If we stop making decisions and defer to the desires of our children, our children will fill the vacuum and in turn sacrifice the safety of having the two layers of power and responsibility above them removed. This occurs more often than you think. This hurts a child and it will detrimentally affect their relationships.

4. My problems are my problems: Many parents pass down their issues to their children because they do not take the time to deal or even identify their own problems. If you have a bad relationship with your Dad figure it out before you replay it with your child. If you have a fear of heights deal with it before you find your child frozen on a ladder. Your children are taking in everything about you; the good, the bad and the issues. Minimize the bad, temper the issues and maximize the good. Our job is to train them to take on the world; not take on the mantle of our own demons.

5. Parenting from Perfection: If all parents learned the following, we would all be so much happier. Here is the wisdom of the ages and the sooner you accept and embrace it, the happier you will be: NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO YOU ARE GOING TO SCREW UP YOUR KID.

The trick of parenting is to minimize the damage. Keep your word. Tell them they are loved. Tell them you are proud of them. Tell them they are amazing creatures and you are honored to be part of their lives. Let them be independent but with an invisible tether to pull them back in case of danger.

sharebookmarx Top 5 things we do to mess up our kids

THE Relationship Blog

This was one of my Facebook statuses on Friday:

‘Let’s get this clear, the only people that are really going to corrupt your children are you. The parents are the number one source of icky information, beliefs, trauma and maladaptive behaviors for children. I love my kids and for that reason I will not have them go through their childhood with blinders. (Of course my point of view is based on being a Mom and a psychotherapist for 20+ years- I never have had a client with a perfect parent. They don’t exist.)’

What inspired this mini diatribe? Well, it could be that certain people in my life are being asses or it could be that certain people I know have decided that it is easier to deal with life with an eraser. Let me explain….

Each of us is born into a family and we are raised in whatever way that family deems appropriate. We tend to parent the way we were parented because of the sheer fact that as we become adults it is easier to lie to yourself and think Mom and Dad were perfect or approaching perfection than dealing with the hurts, traumas and issues of our childhood. We decide with a swift swish of the amnesiatic eraser to rewrite our history and eliminate the memories from our cache of times we felt small and insignificant. Then, to make sure this purging and re-write stay in place, we eschew any discussion that may tap into those vaulted memories or question the legitimacy of the world’s only perfect parentage.

Then there are those who can admit that either Mom or Dad were not perfect, but not both, of course, but promote this fearless attitude that you are a rock, an island and are unflappable. The truth is that this bravado is built on such a solid foundation of fear that the only way to manage this façade is to eliminate people from your life that challenge it. In other words, you can’t keep up this boldness if someone can expose you as a messed up little kid in big people’s clothes. So you surround yourself with the walking wounded who also do not want to be probed and live a superficial life.

Your history makes up who you are. You can choose to be a victim to your past by denying it, wallowing in it or wearing it like a scar on your face. Or, you can choose to confront it and re-parent yourself and attack those horrible beliefs you made about the world, your fellow man and the person staring back at you in the mirror.

There are no self-made people. We are not test tube babies and spontaneous generation is only seen on Loony Tune cartoons. We are the product of our parents and their parents and our ancestors. Because of this, we are doomed to repeat history unless we examine it. This is why sexual predators are usually victims of child abuse. This is why children of divorce will divorce someday themselves. This is why if you have a dysfunctional relationship with your parents, your children will have the same with you.

You can’t forget the pain. You can’t pretend the pain did not happen. You need to deal with it. Or you can continue to live this invented life and hide the pain and loneliness. It’s your choice. It always has been.

All week we have been writing about Daddy. Mommy and Daddys parent differently. Not better. Not worse. Just different.

Paul says: A real Dad can change a diaper on his lap without putting down his beer. With a real Dad, there is none of this weak-ass gagging when Junior made a poopoo. As a matter of fact, real Dads don’t say the word poopoo except in tirades like ‘You say poopoo. I say shit because I’m the Dad. You don’t say shit. You can say shit when you become a Dad. Got it?’

Throughout the week, we have eluded to the fact that Dads and Moms are different. Dad is not Mom with a penis. We have our own special message and gift for our children and I think that it is a powerful and important thing that we give to our kids. Moms tell the kid that they are taken care of. This is the Momma bear, nurturing love that we all have heard about and many have experienced. And this is a super important message for the child to receive. Please, to the Moms reading this, do not think that I am tearing down the Mommy powers by pumping up the Daddies. I just want everyone to know that Daddies have some good stuff too.

So the Mommy meta-message is ‘I got this shit handled’. Or in other words, you are safe. Daddies have a different message that takes them to the same spot. Daddies message to the kid is ‘You got this shit handled’ or, in other words, you are safe. (Yes, safety is a big deal.)

Story time. The other day, our six year old needed to bring in a case of soda for his school party. We pulled up to drop him off as we always do and I said to him, ‘get strong, dude’. Then I handed him the soda and pointed him to his class. This earned me an ‘asshole’ from Lee. What? He got the sodas into his class and the hernia went away.

Another story. The three year old was having a monster-under-the-bed week. He was getting up at night fearful of the boogie man or vampires or ghosts or snakes or… the stuff that frightens kids. The first night Lee cuddled and soothed him, putting him to sleep in her arms. It was beautiful… the first night. By Thursday, we were getting tired of the fear game, nurturing Mommy’s cradling arm was getting sore, and we wanted to watch Fringe (You need to pay attention when you watch Fringe) so Daddy kicked in. My solution to the monsters? A gun. Yes, I armed my child with a half dozen of his most bad-ass toy guns. You know what? It worked.

If Moms have the domain of nurturing then Dads have empowerment. Think of the stereotypical Norman Rockwell type of pictures of Mom with a child. It is usually a Mother holding her boneless kid. Now think about the Dad picture. The kid is probably handing Dad a tool. Put the kid to work, that’s what I say.

Note: You all know that Lee and I are proponents of same-sex marriages and believe that same-sex couples should have all of the rights that opposite-sex couples enjoy, including parenthood. I do not want this post to be misconstrued in any way as an endorsement of opposite-sex only parenting. When I am talking about Dad and Mom, I am really going beyond the chromosomal aspects of parenthood. I am writing about Mom energy and Dad energy. I am writing about a world point of view. We all know that a single parent has to wear both the Mommy hat and the Daddy hat. The Daddy energy, like the Mommy energy, comes naturally. One person will be more Mommish and another more Daddish. It just happens.

Top 5 things we do to mess up our kids

Faking Life

Real Dads

Discount Codes

Sites We Like

Search