Tag Archives: discipline

Stuck in a Rut

It’s still snowing in Utah—it’s April, what happened to spring?

I recently had the opportunity to teach a friend visiting from the warm climes of the south how to drive in our Utah snow. To be honest, I’m not sure there was a lot of teaching; it was more like a lot of shoveling, and with the aid of some helpful ice fisherman, a lot of pushing and pulling to get the car out of a ditch.

For her first snow-driving lesson, I decided to pick a place without other vehicles, buildings, or people to run into. So we went up to a nearby lake and used the road leading to the boat ramp. It had just snowed and there was about a foot of new snow on the road. The road to the ramp looked perfect. Only a few ice fishermen had driven on it, so the snow was still rather pristine and there was not much of a tire path created in it yet. When I put my friend behind the wheel, my instructions were for her to get a feel for the snow, experiment with a little acceleration, stopping, starting, little movements right and left—to just get a feel for it all, but to stay in the center, watch out for the ditches on both sides, and drive to the end of the road. She did really well. Actually she did really well for about 10 seconds. Without any real ruts yet in the road, and with only a couple squiggly pickup tracks, it only took a tiny turn off center and a little acceleration to put us in the ditch. It would have been a whole lot easier for her if there had been good ruts in the snow. Once she was stuck in the rut, she could have easily moved forward and reached our destination.

The idiom “stuck in a rut” is all about negative connotations, but I think we need to reexamine and perhaps change the meaning to something like: to establish a path, a direction, develop a plan, and stick to it.

I had about eight months last year when I was stuck in a diet/exercise rut. I established a really good diet and exercised and lost about 25 pounds and felt great. As long as I was stuck in my rut I was super. Unfortunately the holidays came, lots of entertaining folks at home and in restaurants while on the road and just a bunch of stuff. I kept wiggling out of my rut, then lost it altogether and gained most of the weight back and lost the corresponding health benefits. I haven’t been in a rut, I’ve been out of the rut and need to get back in it. Hopefully I think I am back now.

Think about changing your perception. Create a path for your children, for yourselves, and work hard to find and get stuck in your rut. You might get to where you want to go a whole lot faster.

He’s My Best Friend’s Boy

NACD BlogYesterday I saw one of my favorite moms. She’s a great, dedicated mom who works very hard with her two boys. Her oldest boy has some significant problems, but he keeps progressing and is on most days her “easy” one. His little brother is very bright, doing great, and tends to drive her nuts. Because he is bright and still a little guy, he still does little kid things that get her; and more often than not, they are designed to do exactly that–get her attention. If asked the following questions, her answers would all be “yes”: Is he smart? Yes. Is he a nice kid? Yes. Is he a good kid? Yes. Is he a sweet kid? Yes. Then why should such a child drive her nuts? If he were her best friend’s boy, and not hers, she would love being around him and he wouldn’t drive her to distraction.

Parents, sometimes you need to take a step back and look at your kids through some new eyes and gain a little perspective. Most of us as parents take our jobs seriously, and often that means we try to give our children feedback on everything they do, all of the time, and particularly, anything and everything they do wrong. It is sadly all too easy to ignore all those things they do right.

Imagine how you would treat your best friend’s child. Your best friend is important to you, and if you were to have their child with you for a day, they would be important to you as well; and so you would want to protect them, take care of them, and give them good feedback. If during your watch they were to do something dangerous or harmful, you would give them feedback; but if they were doing little irritating things, you most likely wouldn’t even particularly notice and very likely wouldn’t comment if you did. You wouldn’t want your remarks and “helpful” input to be perceived as picking on them. You wouldn’t want them to go home and report to their mother that you don’t like them and that you were mean, and that being at your house wasn’t fun. But is it really okay or helpful to be on your own kids all of the time? No, it isn’t.

Most of the time we would all be better off treating our own kids as if they were “your best friend’s boy.” Nagging isn’t providing quality feedback, and getting on them all of the time is not quality feedback. Nagging just creates a negative environment, destroys your credibility, and makes your child wish he or she were someplace else.

He’s my best friend’s boy.

What do you think?



frustrated2As I talk with parents about behavior, it becomes clearer and clearer that child management, behavior, the establishment of boundaries, creating a positive relationship with your children, and creating a positive environment for your children that helps them grow into successful, mentally healthy, confident individuals who feel secure and who have good self images–all of these things start with one very simple concept: “No” means NO.

I see family after family that is struggling with their children’s behavior and compliance–households with a never-ending stream of “stop that,” “cut that out,” “If you do that again, I’m gonna…” and “no,” “no,” “no,” “no,” and ”no“ until mom or dad lose it, scream and go into their insanity act. All of this creates a very negative home environment, a home without real guidelines, without consistency, a home where the children never know when the explosion is going to come, where the children are trying to read their parents’ mood and boiling point and become compelled to push things until they produce “Crazy Mom” and “Crazy Dad.” A home in which the child is in control and out of control, where the child is making poor decisions all day long–“Should I do it?” “Can I do it?” “Can I get away with it?” “Did she really mean it?” And perhaps worst of all, it creates children who learn simply not to think, they learn just to do whatever they would like to do at the moment, because simply why not? These children are well on their way to having emotional problems, attention problems, behavior problems, compliance problems, school problems, confidence problems, etc. and joining the growing ranks of unhappy kids who become impossible teens and then unhappy, insecure adults, many of whom end up being thrown into a category, labeled, and medicated. All of this because “No” doesn’t mean “No.” It means later, not right now, I don’t like it, I’m tired, you have once again pushed my buttons and have my attention, etc.

If “No” means “No,” as in “that is not okay, now, later, tomorrow, next week, or next year,” and we succeed in communicating that, life becomes so very much easier for everyone. You can’t have a positive home when so much is negative. So often parents are afraid to punish children because they feel they are being mean and negative. Saying “No’ without meaning it all day and ultimately yelling at the children is extremely negative and I believe abusive.

Teaching your child that “No” means “No” is really easy. When your child does something that is wrong, harmful, or dangerous, simply say “No” with intention. Intention means that you say it, mean it, and say it in such a way that you really communicate, “Don’t ever do that again,” and provide feedback, a consequence–preferably an immediate consequence–a time out, or whatever. Generally the consequence itself is not of huge importance. It should be immediate and significant, such as time out, but the really important piece is the consistency with which you use the consequence.

It is so sad that so many parents have bought into “No” as being a four-letter word. It’s not. It’s a two-letter word and a word that may help stop your two year old from bolting out into traffic, your five year old from throwing your two year old out a window, your twelve year old from drinking the booze in your liquor cabinet, your fourteen year old from trying drugs, your sixteen year old from getting pregnant, and your eighteen year old from getting into a wreck going 100mph. “No” saves lives.