You know that positive thinking has the power to make your plans successful and make your dreams come true – thinking positively and visualizing success is a very real phenomenon. But did you stop to consider that the opposite is also true: negative thinking creates a cycle that produces negative outcomes. When you think and speak negatively a self-fulfilling result is almost certain to result.

My mother would routinely accuse my teenage sister and me of all kinds of wrongs that we were wholly innocent of at the time. But these negative comments put into our heads, “why not do the deed, since we are already being accused of being guilty anyway?” This negative thinking cycle becomes a bad habit that self perpetuates and like most habits is very hard to break. Even recognizing it as a problem takes some effort since we hate to self-criticize.

Positive thinking is more than just empty praise of a child. Saying “you’re always such a good boy” is different from internally thinking and really believing “I know Johnny will do the right thing”. But what you say externally does send a strong message to the child, so watch your words.

“Be good for mommy and daddy while we are out” implies that you were expecting bad behavior and the child needs a reminder to be good, which is negative thinking. Better to expect and express your thoughts in a positive way, “We know you’ll have fun and enjoy your time with the sitter while mommy and daddy are out”.

Another advantage of positive thinking is that it helps to make distasteful tasks seem painless, because you have framed them as positive instead of negative. “Your room is such a mess! – it must be cleaned by the end of today or no allowance this week for you!” has the child grumbling and groaning throughout the unpleasant task. Instead, a positive frame can make a big difference in perspective: “There are a few things that need attention in your room… – once you finish them up, there should be time to do that weekend activity we planned on”. The goal is the same – to have the room cleaned by the end of the day- but the secondary goal is to make the recurring responsibility not feel so daunting that it becomes oppressive.

One way to cultivate a positive outlook is to make sure to do at least one enjoyable thing every day. A day without mental sunshine is a dreary day indeed.

COMMUNICATION TAKE AWAY: Making time to do the things you enjoy can affect your whole outlook. Positive thinking is not only a good habit but a necessary one for optimal mental health. Like all habits, positive thinking that can be cultivated with effort, if needed, to become automatic, and negative thinking can be erased, with self-discipline. Children that develop a positive thinking habit receive a lifelong gift from their parents.

There has been a gap between the generations as long as there have been parents and children.  So the generation gap is not a new concept, rather an old idea that keeps cycling around every time we need to explain a broad difference in understanding between different age groups.  When this gap in understanding drives a communication wedge between people of different ages it is truly unfortunate.  When there is no effort made to try to bridge that gap in understanding, the generation gap becomes a reliable crutch to lean on and an excuse to stop trying to communicate.  Can you hear the words below being practically spat out?:

“You’ll never understand technology; you’re too old to get with the 21st century!”

“Your music today is nonsensical – how can you stand to listen to that garbage?”

“You call that dancing? You have no idea of what real dancing looks like!”

“How can you possibly help me with my math?  You do know that math today doesn’t use an abacus anymore, right?  Oh, yeah, I forgot – you still have your fingers!”

Since conflict in society is not only inevitable but it’s also necessary for productive growth and change, conflict in families is also to be expected.  As Marx extolled, the greatest source of societal fraction is over the distribution of property.  Do you find that your biggest generation gap battles are over property issues (my toys, my room, my possessions)?  When you add to the mix talk like, “when I was your age, I didn’t have…”  then the battle lines are drawn and each side digs in ready for the fight.

You are only human, and that human element says that you can’t be expected to rise 100% of the time over your innate selfishness [see blog post  10/10/12 for more on the selfishness subject] or to control your emotions fully (with anger being the easiest emotion to flare up and the hardest to control).  Other human qualities that can strain and break relationships include misrepresentations (you necessarily perceive the world through your own reality filter) and betrayals (many times lies are necessary [see blog post 4/29/13 for more on lying].

When human frailty factors are stirred into the generation gap pot, there will be flare ups.  Recognizing this fact and dealing with it with skill, a real interest to learn, and much patience can create a bridge to span the generations.  Toss in genuine affection and the irksome differences become fond memories.

COMMUNICATION TAKEAWAY:  There will always be a generation gap as long as there are generations.  Knowledge continually runs ahead, sometimes faster than everyone can keep up with.  But that gap in understanding need not become a communication barrier unless you allow it to happen.  We all like what is familiar and comforting as reassurance that all is right in our world. When things change too quickly and you feel like you are being left behind, you may stop wanting to play catch-up.  Insightful communication skills allow for a bridging of the generation knowledge gap without either side losing face.

You love your children equally, right?  You are extremely fair in not showing favoritism – or at least you try… but in reality, it’s not possible to love each child in equal measure.  Just as we love adults and all other people in varying degrees, so it is with our own children.  When you are being honest with yourself, you recognize that at differing times and in differing amounts you favor one child over another.

This is fine and totally natural, even if it is not blatantly admitted.  Yet, horrors should you say aloud in playgroup to another parent that one child drives you crazy and you really favor your good child – the other parents would think that you are a terrible parent for admitting the truth.  You might think yourself that you are failure to the difficult child.

The favoritism subject is not often discussed or openly admitted, yet is universally felt.  The reason it is not a conversation subject is because the child may overhear, which would cause real damage. In an unfair world no developing child wants to hear the truth; they are not ready for the harsh inequalities of life.  These will show up soon enough – there is no need to jeopardize the safety of the parental relationship while they are still growing.  So keep your thoughts to yourself, even while knowing that they are very normal.

So what happens when one child is infirmed, disabled, or has a long-term condition that requires prolonged attention that the other children do not get?  This is the same issue, on a different scale, that children feel it when a new baby is introduced into the home and gets all the attention.  When one child receives undue attention, the other children can’t help but resent their lack of receiving similar parental time.  The prolonged sick child becomes the favorite.

It certainly can be hard to find the time to spread around to all the children when a long-term disabled child truly takes so much of the available time, but the other ignored child(ren) will have repercussions in their development, depending on the length of the situation; they are simply not old enough yet to fully understand the necessity of their being overlooked.

Jodi Picoult’s excellent book My Sister’s Keeper dealt with this subject, in addition to the larger subject of using one’s own child as body parts to save another own child.  The two sisters involved were bookends to a middle child who was largely ignored in the ongoing drama. This son began to start fires in a realistic portrayal of crying out for attention.

The Wall Street Journal contained an article of a family with an asthmatic older child and the advances of a device that allows children with breathing difficulties to participate in physical activities.  In looking at the picture of this family I couldn’t help but notice that the two younger children, who were not asthmatic, were unnecessarily overweight due to a similar lack of physical exercise.  The access attention paid on the oldest child had definite repercussions on the younger siblings.

COMMUNICATION TAKEAWAY:  Attention on chronically sick, disabled, or troublesome children which causes inattention on healthy/good siblings has long-term effects on those developing personalities.  Remembering that negative attention is better than no attention at all, is knowing that these children will find the attention they need somewhere.  Time invested in the ‘normal’ children (and not just as designated ‘helpers’ in the situation) on a regular basis is important for their future healthy development. 

This is a huge topic and hardly done justice in a single blog post, so the treatment here will be light, but should in no way diminish the importance of the depth of this subject.  Children with good self-esteem grow up to be confident adults, who know and most importantly like themselves for the people that they are.  Only by liking/loving ourselves can we love others.  It starts with self-love, which has self-esteem and self-confidence at the core.

Many things that parents do hurt a child’s developing self-esteem, with punishment as a prime offender.  You might argue that punishment (some call it discipline, but they really aren’t the same thing) is necessary to teach children, but there are alternatives to punishment that work better because they do not erode self-esteem or cause the child not to develop self-confidence.

What punishment does is to shut down communication – when parents take a punishment stand and stick by their word (“I’ll show you that I mean business!”) the child is backed into a dead end corner with no way out (with options of crying, yelling, getting mad, withdrawing, arguing, wheedling, planning future retaliation – all undesirable  communication stoppers).  Punishment may stop the behavior now, but it does not promote self-correction of the bad behavior.

And punishment undermines self-esteem, as it reminds the child of just how powerless they are in their world of total parental power.  They feel de-valued as people, pushed around, and that their thoughts and feelings are unimportant.  Hardly a way to build self-confidence, necessary if the behavior is going to self-corrected, which is the ultimate goal.

When I worked in schools, I would see some lively, energetic, “full of it” middle-school kids that the teachers hated having in class.  Certain kids were labeled as challenging because they would ‘disrupt’ the class with their multitude of questions, some antics, and just general excess energy (forgetting that excess to an adult is not abnormal to a pre-teen).  Teachers love the ‘good’ kids – politely contained, studious, they do as they are asked/told.  Some teachers take it upon themselves to ‘break’ the wild child, like breaking a wild horse – they take on the hard cases, determined to “make him mind’ in their classroom.  This military style of thinking is hardly appropriate; who wins when an adult succeeds in breaking an 11-year old child?

I had such a wild child – my 4^th baby – and I also WAS a wild child.  My teachers hated having this straight-A student in class, primarily because I determined early on that I was not going to be broken. I may have driven my teachers crazy but I turned into a confident, self-assured individual determined to add value to the world.  When these ‘handful’ kids are broken, when the teacher or parent is successful in breaking their spirit by repeatedly putting them in their place, what a loss!  For the ones that survive childhood with their self-esteem intact grow up to become our future leaders, business entrepreneurs, mission driven visionaries. (Yes, perhaps criminal masterminds too, but that’s due to poor parenting on a different level.)

COMMUNICATION TAKEAWAY:  The development of strong self-esteem in their children is an important part of the job of parenting, as they will take it, or the lack of it, into the many years of adulthood.  Many things can help or hurt this development.  Often parents erroneously praise their child repeated for who they are (“you’re such a good girl/smart boy/sweet child/special, etc”), thinking that they are building self-esteem.  While this may not hurt, it does the child a disservice, and leads to “that’s just my mother’s opinion, which doesn’t count” kind of thinking.   Children need to understand their specific behavior that leads to skills that then gives them self-esteem that comes from accomplishments.

Making friends is easy, right?  No – making friends can be so hard!  We all want our children to have friends, be liked by others, and enjoy the company of their peers.  For some children the socialization process is rather easy; for others it’s not a bit easy. What if your child is in the latter category – and it pains you to see them in psychological pain – how can you help?  Should you help?  What can you do to help?

We are all social creatures, enjoying the company of others, needing the cooperation of others for our actual survival (only a very few can live completely alone off the grid).  We crave the attention of others that cooperative society affords; we like to help others and be appreciated.  Our children grow emotionally by interacting with their own age group and learn exponentially by seeing the example of others’ behavior.

When my daughter, a middle child, was in first grade she was not relating well with the other girls in her new school.  She wasn’t relating badly, she just didn’t know how to make friends.  I knew that having at least one special friend would make the schooling experience easier.  I also realized that she really didn’t know how to make friends on her own.  So I engineered a friendship that stuck and endured throughout her elementary school years.  How? First I identified a classmate that I decided would be a good best friend.  Then I started to send in to school an extra snack to share with the girl.  Another day I sent her with 2 jump ropes.  It didn’t take long for a fast friendship to form.  What child doesn’t like special treatment?  For that matter, what person doesn’t like special attention from another?

When that same daughter was in middle school (also a new school for her) I saw similar problems – school was OK, but not great, and she had no good friends.  I didn’t do anything in 6^th grade, but by 7^th grade I stepped in again, by signing her up for group trip to Japan, with preparatory work (fundraising activities, culture and language lesson nights) being done throughout the year.  The yearlong group activities bonded this diverse group, culminating in the overseas trip during the summer.  Those friendships carried through for her 8^th grade year as well.  Today that daughter, now an adult, has many fast friends and knows how to make and keep them.

Joining any group is a good way to make friends for children as well as adults.  Sports teams work nicely as groups to join, as well as music groups,  drama productions, etc.  Obviously we’re talking about common interests here.  Sharing time and working on goals with like-minded others can be a nice garden for friendships to bloom.

Once a friendship is started, how is it then maintained?  Attending to the friendship, really caring about the other person, getting to know them well, often placing their needs above your own is tending the friendship garden and allowing it to flourish.

And what happens when a friendship fades for one or for the other person?  It happens that some friendships are good for a period of time, but then run their course and come to a recognizable end or stagnate unproductively.  This occurs when one person has grown/changes and the other person either has not or has moved in a different direction.  When this happens and there is no desire on the part of the other person to try to rekindle the embers of a dying fire, it’s for the best to recognize the end for what it is.  Sometimes time and/or distance does this and both sides move on with their lives.

COMMUNICATION TAKEAWAY:  It is easiest to have friends that are close by because proximity allows people that are paying attention to roll with the changes in the other person while in their company.  Some friendships are opportunity friends (neighbors, schoolmates), without a solid base of really getting to know the person created, so those friendships easily fade when the situation changes (school ends, people move).  When one side is reluctant to let go, feelings can be hurt.  Most childhood friendships are of this kind, with the school setting as a teaching ground on how to make friends and get along with others outside of the family.  Since friendship skills are not taught, this is largely hit or miss for children, so parental support in this area is entirely warranted.    

No one wants to think that they are raising a child to lie, but since lying is necessary to function well in our society, we teach our children to lie by our example.   We lie all the time with an average adult lying multiple times a day – largely social or ‘white’ lies, but lies none the less, which is any variation from the truth.  We lie about how we really feel about some things (“that meal was delicious!”), and what we really think about other things (“you look great in that new haircut”), telling ourselves that as long as no one was hurt, it’s OK.

Children learn to lie from their parents by 3 years old, and by 6 years are lying regularly.  (“Thank your grandmother for the lovely sweater and tell her how much you like it.”)  As they learn to speak, so they learn to lie.  Lie, wash, repeat.

So from early childhood were trained and in turn train our children to express ourselves indirectly by coding our messages – by asking questions at bedtime the child is really saying: “Stay with me a little longer”.  All this message coding carried right through to adulthood takes guesswork to understand the meaning and decode properly.  Often it’s hard to get at the real message under the deception.

Culture teaches us to repress or distort our feelings:”I don’t care how you feel — do it”, “You don’t know what’s good for you”, “Don’t be such a scaredy cat” or to get along in polite society: “Be nice to your sister!”, “Stop crying!””Let the other children play with your toys”.  When a child is not allowed to express true feelings and is taught to repress them, there is a mixed message about being honest yet deceptive at the same time.

Many would argue that a lie told to make someone feel better is not a real lie, but the truth is that any lie doesn’t help the person as much as you may think.  If the other person is feeling sad or bad, a lie doesn’t help them feel any better.  If they are truly happy, a lie doesn’t add to their happiness.  A lie is just an easy way to not engage.

If someone is feeling low or sad, the best way to help is to be with them and understand their feelings.  This is more comforting and supportive than a lie: “Cheer up – things aren’t so bad” (ouch!).  And when they are happy, you can comment positively without lying or diminishing their elation: “Your hairdresser is certainly creative!”

COMMUNICATION TAKEAWAY:  Children learn to lie by following their parents’ example.  However, many lies are not only socially necessary but can also be beneficial (happier, friendlier, psychological benefits).  So lying isn’t all bad, but know the truth that we indeed teach our children to be happy liars.  Call it what you will – an evasion of the truth is still technically a lie.  A lie is just an easy way to avoid engaging and interacting, which may be appropriate for the situation.

My mother was famous for her many sayings – well at least famous to me and my sister, who heard them all incessantly over the years. Some of the more memorable ones were:

“A word to the wise is sufficient” which I seriously always thought had something to do with fish

“Waste not, want not” which became a life philosophy of recycling, upcycling, and becoming a packrat (but to another child perhaps becoming a hoarder)

“There’s a place for everything and everything in its place” which had a positive organizing effect

“Children should be seen and not heard” which was sadly followed and spoken every time I tried to say something when the adults were talking

“I’ll send you to the moon eating your own teeth” which I never got and still don’t get today

“I’ll break off your arm and hit you with a bloody end of it” which is rather gruesome when pictured, although I never really thought of the words visually…

While these trite expressions may come across as even laughable today, they landed with great effect yesterday.  I long remember hearing these words over and over again – how can they not become ingrained?  Along with the words, the meanings also ingrain at a subconscious level.

Usually parents who don’t know any differently do not say things like the above to purposefully inflict pain and are truly unaware of the damage that their words can cause, especially when the words are negative and then are repeated over years.

I think my mother thought she was being clever and she had a decent vocabulary which was largely wasted on toddlers. She never explained the meaning of different words, instead telling us to look up any word we asked about in the dictionary (pretty hard to do when you’re too young to be able to spell “sufficient”).

Some expressions that are passed down are obviously positive,

“Work hard and you will get everything that you deserve”

“When life knocks you down, pick yourself up and get right back in”

“You can be anything that you want to be”

Perhaps you can remember some frequent expressions of your own mother, father, or grandparent.  Consider the effects those expressions may have had on you as you heard them in the developmental years. What are you saying now to your own children – some of those same expressions?

COMMUNICATION TAKEAWAY:  Our words are very powerful influencers to our impressionable children while we are raising them. Sometimes the child doesn’t understand what we are saying because of their limited vocabularies, and they don’t always ask, so the meaning is lost. Clichés repeated over many years can have an overt or subconscious impact which an aware parent recognizes and tries to keep positive, not negative.

Every day parents affect to a greater (younger children) or lesser (older children) extent their children’s likes and dislikes, based on their own likes and dislikes.  While this is easily seen in the foods that are served, food likes and dislikes can change greatly as a child turns into an adult. But other things like behaviors tend to lock-in.

Who likes to wash dishes? No one that I know really likes to do that chore, a necessary by-product of cooking and eating, but I remember each child of mine at four years old clamoring in turn to be able to help with the dishes that the older sibling was grumbling about having to do. And what was the response? “You just wait until you’re older; you won’t like doing dishes as much as you think you will!” Why do we turn off such helpful enthusiasm?  And if the child does grow up to actually like cleaning (I hear some people find that it’s relaxing) society succeeds in dampening that enthusiasm with cries of: “I can’t believe you LIKE to clean! Come to my house any day!”

So chores become hated and other activities become regarded as chores that don’t need to be boxed in to that thinking.   Mowing the lawn, shoveling snow, raking leaves, detailing the car, spring cleaning, weeding the garden, the chores list goes on and on.   We make the behavior even less desirable by indicating that we will pay money to get out of having to do it ourselves (allowances are commonly tied to chores).  So chores become hated with the offsetting fun activities as the potential reward for getting through the nasty jobs.  And they become the nasty jobs because we label them as such based on our own preferences.

Gardening is the number one hobby in America and weeding a beloved garden is not a chore to the person who enjoys their hobby. But when it is presented as a ‘have to’ by a mother who hated it, and unconsciously passed on that hatred instead of a love of gardening, it certainly becomes a chore. Mowing the lawn, shoveling snow, raking leaves are all good physical exercise activities enjoyed in the great outdoors.  But when a coach potato parent reflects their dislike of these physical activities to their children, how are those children not also going to internalize the dislike?

COMMUNICATION TAKEAWAY:  Our beliefs hang on our values which we pass on to our children one way or another. Our strongest positive values are worth passing on, to build the character in our children. But our negative values that make us judgmental, sometimes intolerant, and not always nice also get passed.  Don’t we have a responsibility to look at what were passing and at least try with the negatives to show another view in addition to our own? 

Are you scared that if you give your child everything he wants he will grow up with a sense of entitlement instead of working to earn his gains in life?  Do you fear you will fall down on your parental responsibility to build your child’s character? – that you owe it to her to say ‘no’ to the gravy train and make her earn everything she gets?  The fear of raising an entitled child is justified in some cases, but usually when this is the case the parents involved have no such fear.  The parents that do worry about these things are the very ones that have intact values and behaviors that have nothing to do with money.  Those strong values and behaviors are what are actually passed on, building good character.

My parents unfortunately had a dim view on their responsibility as parents and did not take the job seriously at all.  They cared very little for the developing people that my sister and I were.  Consequently we were ignored through much of our childhood and grew up with very little by way of childhood possessions or parental attention.  When it was my turn to be the parent I overcompensated with my children and admittedly went overboard both on attention and on material possessions.  The result was that my children could never show enough gratitude for what they were given, no matter how grateful they were.

The negative lessons that we learn in childhood become the mistakes that we pass on as parents.  It took me years to recognize that the hole I felt while growing up could never be filled, no matter how much I tried to load up my own kids, with all the things that I missed out on having.  Vicarious redemption is just that – it’s hollow because it’s not really yours.  When children take the brunt of these displaced emotions, it is more than unfortunate when it becomes damaging.

So we worry that our children do not appreciate all that they have.  We worry that they will grow up to be ungrateful adults with a sense of entitlement.  We coddle to the point of outrageous self-esteem that the child has no sense of how what he did to earn it other than simply being alive.  And we wonder why children who had such a promising start (“we gave him everything “) turn out to be so arrogant.   Could the fault be ours?

In reality a lot of love, a lot of structure, good communication skills go a long way towards raising healthy children and our fears become unfounded.

COMMUNICATION TAKEAWAY:  Parents who worry that their children will grow up with a sense of entitlement are the very ones that this doesn’t happen to because due to their worry they are actually passing on the good values and strong behaviors that have nothing to do with money.  By modeling a strong work ethic, a healthy respect for money and what it can and cannot buy, and a concerned and caring for the well-being of other people these lucky children grow up just fine.

Sometimes we really hate change, or at least we are uncomfortable with it – we love our familiar world; the known is so endearingly comfortable!

I stopped into the car repair facility we have been frequenting for 20 years over multiple cars, which is now under new ownership, having been bought out by a large local company.  So when I popped in with an issue recently all the faces, except one, were different!  Same location, same building, same services, but suddenly everything felt so different.  Where was ‘my’ shop?  Order, structure, the familiar gives meaning and value to all the previous hours spent (invested) there.  These new guys don’t know me, haven’t shared my history, don’t really understand my needs and concerns…

Children feel much the same way, but even more so since so much of life is new to them (depending on their age) and change can be pretty near constant to a baby.   When things stay the same, when they can count on things not changing, they can understand the world better.

The two year old wails “No not the red plate, I said I want the BLUE plate!”

Or “Read The Diggiest Dog again.”  (With the parent lamenting “But you’ve heard it 100 times already!  How about let’s read another story for a change?”)

Or when the hurried parent is trying to condense the bedtime story into 5 minutes and they are stopped with, “No wait! You skipped the part about …”

Kids need and want structure.  Delivering  it in the form of boundaries and rules is key to their development and their safety.  And when they get older and start to push the boundaries, to see if they are real and where the outer limits are, it’s important to stick by your expectations and hold firm.  Those reasonable rules you put in place will be tested, but your child really wants is for you to tow the line.  No amount of wheeling, cajoling, or going to the other parent should cause you to buckle and give in.  If you do, what’s the lesson that’s learned?  Of course it’s: “If I whine and complain long enough she’ll give me my way!”  Or, “He’s a softie – he can’t resist when I pucker my lip.”

It’s hard to be the unyielding parent, especially when we’re tired and it’s so easy to give in and not do battle today.  Besides, how much can one time hurt, just this one exception?    Another reason to give in is because you really want to make your child happy – and you will make her so happy with you if you give in to her!  You have the power in your hands to ‘buy’ her love, just by breaking your own rules!  How tempting it is to gain that adoration; so much better than the flip side, which is hearing, “You’re so mean!”

So stop and tell yourself that you’re only thinking about yourself here – you want the love (of course you do) and you want to spare yourself a fight (it’s been a long day) – but it’s not about you, it’s about your child.   What is best for your child?  To learn that you set the rules for a reason, that you stand by your convictions (and she learns to stand by hers too), that your values are more important than being considered nice?  It’s not always easy, but no one said parenting was going to be easy.

COMMUNICATION TAKEAWAY:  Children really deep down want rules and boundary structures that help them understand their world.  Parents give that structure, but too they often back down from it when the boundaries are challenged.   A better answer is to revisit the structure periodically and see if it still make sense or if it needs tweaking, rather than abandoning it with a “I give up! Do what you want!” which just teaches that badgering works, if you just do it long enough!