Category: Family - Jim and Bonnie

Start Small

5/5/2014

To modify children’s behaviour you need to remember the golden rule: “Change one thing at a time”. The only real and effective change comes through this method. If you try more than one change, you will find yourself fighting a losing battle.

When you are looking at what to change start small. Everything that is huge started small. Their attitude and response to you may not be good but to change that you need to undermine it by changing small apparently insignificant things first. You are then demolishing the roots that support and nourish that attitude. It is easier, more effective and will create change.

Agreement, within yourself as well as in your partnership whether together or apart, is the first step to a better future for you and your family. If you can agree and be consistent, you will see change. Add an excessive amount of praise and affirmation to a healthy atmosphere of love and tenderness with deep respect for your child and you will be successful in forming loving, good, healthy children. You will earn their respect and that of the rest of the community.

When you start on this process, to change one thing at a time, remember it is as much about you changing as it is the children changing. You are learning new skills in terms of relationships. You are exercising new parenting muscles and at times you will ache from the process. But don’t be too hard on yourself. Give yourself room for error and time to change too. Expect that you will blow it and totally mess up at times. That happens. When you do, forgive yourself, then keep going and start again. Don’t throw in the towel or quit. Simply start again tomorrow. A new day - a new start!

You will grow as a person through the process and so will your children. The process of change will become second nature and you will soon find that you have a very happy home. Praising your children will develop strong people who will be a blessing to you, their parent.

One thing at a time!

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The Power of a Hug

21/4/2014

The role of affirmation, affection and respect is vitally important in bringing changes to your children’s behaviour. Having come to agreement with your partner over the changes that are going to be instigated, having had the meeting with your children to explain the changes and having initiated the first action followed by the introduction of a star chart, you are well on your way to positive change. Remember to keep praising and affirming your children. It will bring you rewards in more areas than the one you are focusing on. You are building self-confidence within them.

The power of affection is incredible in bringing changes. A gentle touch upon the arm, a warm smile, a hug and soft gentle words are the desire of every child. They want to feel loved not just be told that they are loved. When you extend love through tenderness of voice and touch, your children will feel the love. They desire to know they are loved and important to you.

Unfortunately what often happens within the family dynamics is the situation may get so out of hand that you find it particularly hard to feel love for one or more of your children. Their attitude and rebelliousness may have been grinding upon your soul for a long time. The constant battle and the disrespect for your words can build a wall of bitter feelings. You find yourself in a real dilemma. You love your children deeply but you resent them as well. It is very hard to extend tender loving touches to someone who has been so irritating and rebellious in relationship to you.

This is a difficult thing to acknowledge to yourself let alone anyone else. There is the embarrassment and sense of failure associated with feeling this way. ‘How can I feel this way towards my own child?’ Ignoring your feelings does not make them go away. Others, including your children, can tell you are unhappy with them. It’s communicated through your tone of voice, choice of expressions and lack of gentle touch. At this point you have a choice: you can go on pretending that all is well and have the bitterness undermine your love for your child, or you can acknowledge to yourself the level of resentment you feel and then forgive them as well as yourself. Forgiveness creates a fresh start. It won’t immediately stop the behaviour that has wounded you but it allows you to start again and reach out in love. Oh, yes, you will feel hurt again and again by your child’s actions but forgiveness will allow you to show them love. Remember they are children and they truly don’t know what they are doing when they are young. They are not out to get you back for not loving them. They are simply self-centred. But love truly does conquer. If you combine love with praise, you will see changes.
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Somebody Praise Me!

14/4/2014

In the whole arena of behaviour change the most important key is agreement between the parents or caregivers. This is crucial. If you aren’t in agreement you will not be consistent in your actions, standards and practises. Children are masters of the ‘divide and conquer’ strategy. To bring change you must agree together on what you want to do and the importance of following through.

Having decided what you want to change then, there are three things that are essential for bringing effective change – affirmation, affection and respect. Let’s say the area you have chosen to change is the “mess”: toys, books, clothes, dishes, papers and shoes everywhere. If you have three children, as an example, start with one area of the house, probably their room. Have a calm, cool and collected meeting with your children explaining to them that you and your partner have come to an agreement over the ‘mess’ the house has been in. If you have tried to correct it and not been consistent, you can explain that this has happened up until now. You may want to apologize to them for not keeping your word regarding tidying the house (obviously optional to you). Tell them that now from this day forward we are going to work on keeping your room tidy. (If necessary, buy supplies like storage bins, staplers, hangars or whatever is required to facilitate the chore. If there is nowhere to put their stuff, then the task will be impossible.) Tell them how much you appreciate them and love them (affection-affirmation), express to them your confidence in their abilities to organise and sort their possessions (affirmation) and that you know they can do it (respect).

It is so important at this time that you affirm them positively. You do not want to point out what isn’t done but what is. So when they clean their room up for the first time, help them so that they are not overwhelmed with the task. Make it fun. Every time they pick something up and put it away, praise them effusively (go over the top). It may feel completely strange and unnatural but do it anyway. They will love it. Remember that at this point the issue is to encourage. If they miss picking something up or they are getting off track, don’t jump on their actions instead help them. Affirm them, affirm them, affirm them! Praise will bring positive responses.

Follow through with the one change for at least a month before you look at bringing anything new into the picture. You want to reinforce the behaviour with positive affirmation and consistency. Consistency will create good practises and habits in your children.

After the first initial step of organizing, you can use a praise sandwich to bring correction. If you see there is something they are not doing, start the conversation with something positive like ‘Wow, your room is looking so good, you’re doing a great job, I’m so proud of you.” Then say, if its clothes that aren’t being put in the laundry bin, something like ‘Do you think you could put the clothes on the floor in the laundry bin if they are dirty, or the dresser if they are clean?” Then come back with how wonderful their room is and what a great job they are doing. Bless them. Tell them they are great. Make the necessary change incidental not primary in the conversation. They will make the change easily as they are feeling good about themselves.

The emphasis needs to be on the positive, what’s been achieved, how happy you are with them and what a good job they are doing. They will respond to any correction easily as it does not emphasize failure or unhappiness. Praise and affirmation work miracles in bringing about change.

(image courtesy of StuartMiles/FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

Small Beginnings

24/3/2014

Often when I look up an address on a map programme on the Internet I find I have to keep zooming out from the original map to get a proper perspective of where the address is. The ‘zoom out’ function is necessary in more areas than just map reading. As I explained before you need to do it with your family to get a realistic perspective of what is happening within your home. Don’t keep living with the frustration but take the time to back away. When you do this, it is wise to make a list of the things that you are unhappy with so that you can bring change.

Remember the most effective and lasting change will come through changing only one thing at a time. If you try to change too much at one time, the results aren’t pleasant. Usually what happens is everyone involved gets totally upset, resisting all attempts to reform, leading all efforts to change onto the scrap heap of unfulfilled resolutions. Very few people welcome change. It threatens our security and comfort. It brings in the unknown and due to our great inherent strength to adapt to the most extreme conditions, we would rather stay the way we are then face change. So to bring change you have to do it slowly and in small doses. People can cope with changing one thing. It doesn’t scream at them that they are a failure or that everything they are comfortable with will be scrapped.

Now the prevailing wisdom regarding change would be to attack the big issue first, thinking that all the small issues will then fall in line. This is really an ineffective method of creating change. It’s like cutting the dandelion off at ground level. For a few days it looks like you dealt with the problem. But soon that lovely yellow flower is in full bloom in the garden once again. To get the dandelion you have to go after the root. To bring change in the family you need to deal with the root issues. The root issues are those seemingly insignificant activities or events that were ignored for whatever reason. The problem is these become the roots of what will become a much larger issue in the near future.

Everything starts from a small beginning, whether good or bad. Tending to small issues is the best way to deal with the large issues. Is your list of potential changes one of small items or one large one? If it is only one or two large items, can you break them down to smaller components? What do you think?

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Forest for the Trees

17/3/2014

Before you can bring change you need to decide what has to change. You may have a general sense that says this chaos has to go and yet not be able to put your finger on what to change that will make a difference. What we need to do is get a fresh perspective on our family scene. We need to remove ourselves from being in the midst of it so that we can see it as an outsider would.

Why do we need this change of perspective? Well, the problem we all face is our incredible ability to adapt to uncomfortable situations. Once we have adapted we no longer see or feel the discomfort the same way. Human beings have adapted to living in the harshest environments and survived, so they can certainly adapt to the extremes of behaviour in a family environment.

We moved into one house that had the most horrible kitchen that either my wife or I had ever seen before. It had one window in the eating area that was positioned so far up the wall that the only one who could see out of it was me. I am 6’ 1’ and could barely see over the ledge. Then the kitchen was painted the most disgusting puke green that I have ever seen. As we were moving furniture in we said the first thing we would do is paint the kitchen. While it didn’t happen immediately for various reasons and soon I never noticed how awful the colour was. In less than two weeks we had adapted to something we could barely stand to be in before. After a time you stop seeing what is there. You adapt and make the best of what initially frustrated you.

It can be the same way with family dynamics. You get used to saying the same thing over and over again. You no longer hear how loudly the children are yelling. You tolerate the back talk and verbal abuse. You raise your voice and shout at them without realising you are doing it. They argue and fight with each other and you think its normal. Every once in a while there are these moments when you hear the children mimicking you. They put their hands on their hips, feet apart, look at their little brother or sister and shout orders at them. You think where did they get that? Then it sinks in, oh my gosh, its me!

That kind of moment is what you need if you are going to make a difference in your family dynamics. You need to become aloof enough that you can see what is actually happening and then write it down. Don’t let it escape by thinking I’ll put it down later or you’ll miss it. Better yet take the luxury of some time alone or with your partner and contemplate what is going on at home, what drives you crazy but you’ve learned to tolerate it, what is happening that you never wanted to see happen in your home. This is the beginning of change. Until you know what needs to change nothing will.

(image courtesy of JamesBarker/FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

Deathbed of Best Intentions

10/3/2014

Why do our best intentions get waylaid? Why is January the deathbed of all our New Year’s resolutions? I have been sharing that we try to change too many things at one time. When I went to one of the weight loss programmes, they said that people want to lose 3 stone or 42 pounds today. The question they put to us is ‘how long did it take you to gain that weight?’ You didn’t gain it in 2 weeks so why would you expect to lose it in 2 weeks?

Well, equally with children, we tend to want to change their behaviour immediately. This is not Spring cleaning where you can charge through the whole house in a couple of days and feel satisfied that all is as it should be. This is developing positive lifelong behaviours that will stand your child in good stead as an adult. Change takes time. Character takes consistency and time. Worthwhile practises take time.

A worthwhile practise is brushing your teeth. When our children as babies had their first teeth come in, we did three things. One, we started brushing that little tooth so they would get used to the brush in their mouth and not refuse it later. It is so much easier to get a toothbrush into a baby’s mouth than an active two year old that has never had their teeth brushed. Two, we did not let them go to sleep with the bottle in their mouth. We did not want them sleeping with formula or milk pooling around their teeth. Overly cautious, maybe! But when you have had problems with your own teeth, it becomes far more important that your children don’t. Three, we gave them calcium pills as they grew up to supplement the natural source from their everyday diet. Teeth need calcium to grow. We brushed their teeth faithfully until they were old enough to do it well themselves. Doing it well is the operant qualification for trusting them to do it on their own. That took until five or six years old. Then we asked them every night at bedtime if they brushed their teeth. That happened consistently until they were thirteen at which point they demonstrated that they had and we could stop asking. Good practises take time to internalize. Were the time and the hassle worth it? Definitely, not one of our four children has ever had a cavity.

Wow, I’m exhausted thinking about the work! When it is all written down like this, it appears to be over the top. But it isn’t that much on a daily basis. Five minutes maximum for the teeth brushing, a couple of minutes to give them a chewable calcium pill, five seconds to say, ‘Did you brush your teeth?’ It all comes down to consistency. Do not give up because it seems overwhelming.

So, how do we bring change to our child’s behaviour? Ahhh! …Next week.

(image courtesy of arztsamui/FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

The Stick Of Fate (by Toby Willmott, our son in law)

30/1/2014

We were late.

LATE late.

I was freaking out. Not only was I unemployed, I was 24 and I had not yet learned to drive. I did not have the necessary skill to transport my own wife to the hospital. That is about as emasculating as a fact gets. Even if we did manage to take a bus ride over that particular speed bump that left the secondary issue of the fact that I did not want to have a kid. Not yet.

It was time to consult the white stick of fate. As we waited for its decision, I could feel my life of leisure balancing on a precipice, and I was sure it was going to edge over into oblivion. Then the stick of fate wrote those sweet words.

Not pregnant.

You see, life without kids is bloody great. This is something everybody knows. If you are a parent then you know because you remember how bloody great it was. If you don’t have kids, then you know because your life is bloody great. Despite this, there often comes a point in a couple’s life together when one of their respective brains decides that it is time to abandon all reason and continue the human race. This has been happening all around us for a long time, and we have managed to stay cool, but then one day my wife wanted a baby yesterday. It was still not a good time, because as my brain was quick to point out, we were still in debt from my prior unemployment and my current income could never cover what we needed if we did have a baby.

Also I still couldn't drive.

Then a couple of years later, life had changed. I was working for myself, we were working our way out of debt and I was working my way out of excuses. So after a lot of discussion, we stopped trying to not have a kid.

I was ready to have a tiny Toby in my life, however with each month that passed without a
pregnancy I did not feel disappointment. Instead I felt quiet relief. The stick of fate had granted me another four weeks of lying in every day, haircuts, swearing during daylight hours and all the other delights of a childless life. This was until one morning in January. I was shaken awake and there, being waved at an inappropriate distance from my mouth, was the stick of fate.

Pregnant.

1-2 weeks.

Bloody great.

The bun was in the oven. The train had left the station. The toothpaste was out of the tube. I had to go on a long drive to think about things. I had to listen to a Snow Patrol* album. This was because the knowledge of this new life was a death knell to my old one. I found myself
pining for the things I hadn’t done before we decided to have kids. Debt had been holding me back from many of them and now, just as it had started to get out of my way, something else had taken its place.

I was surprised at what happened in me after this. As the dreams I’d had before were forced to fade away, I found that my new dreams were even bigger. I realised that instead of looking back, I was now looking ahead to a life full of even greater possibility. I could feel it in front of me, it was like a wave rising up and I was ready to turn around and ride it. I found myself full of creative energy. I had new business ideas. I had new ideas for writing. I exercised more than ever. I started reading a self help book about success. Doubt gave way to hope and many of my concerns dulled in the light of the love I felt for my unborn child. I was going to be a dad and it was going to be great.

Then... (to read more click here)

(image courtesy of renjith krishnan/FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

Quality Time

21/1/2014

A number of years ago I read about a day in the life of Benjamin Franklin and his father. (Unfortunately I did not record the source at the time. I have since tried to find it to no avail but I believe it is an accurate account.) The two of them went fishing together for the day. His father, Josiah, wrote in his diary that it was the biggest waste of time as Benjamin hardly said a word to him all day. Ben wrote in his diary that it was the best day of his entire life. Wow, how incredibly different the two perceptions of the same event were! One said it was a waste, the other a life changing time.

Time spent with our children one on one is never a waste of time. Their actual expectations and demands are very low especially the younger they are. Bonnie would ask me to take one of the children out into the yard and throw the ball to them. My inward response was I don’t know if I have the time for this. After 5 minutes of trying to catch the ball my son or daughter was happy and finished. I was always amazed at how little time was really involved. I would take them out to go sliding on a little hill and we would be back in 10 minutes or less. It took longer to put on their snowsuit and boots then it did to slide.

When I was a teenager my father would often arrive home while I was throwing a football with a friend. He would put his briefcase down and ask for the ball. He would throw 2 or 3, at the most 5, passes to us and then go into the house. It was more than enough. Each pass was like a lethal weapon that hurt like crazy when you tried to hold onto it but boy, were we impressed. Any more time and we would have needed medical care.

Life for adults always has so many things demanding our time. We need to prioritise those items that are most important to us and invest into them. Our children are our legacy and are far more important than one more committee meeting. To top it all off such a small amount of time will provide huge results for our children. They will feel loved and valued because you invested your time in them. Happy children who feel loved are a blessing.

(image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

Who’s The Teacher?

13/1/2014

Consciously or unconsciously there is a very strong tendency to defer to the one seen as in authority. We defer to ministers, to teachers, to lawyers, to doctors, government officials and to officers of the law. Without thinking about it we feel safe letting these people make decisions that affect our lives. Often their decisions are not in our best interest. Their perspective may be completely limited due to time constraints or lack of interest or simply a need for expediency as they have so many more to deal with. (I am not advocating anarchy, i.e., everyone doing what is right in his or her own eyes.) I am saying we need to maintain a sense of responsibility.

Our children often can’t wait to go to school. As parents it can be a wonderful, emotive time. The fact that they are growing up and becoming such independent little people makes us proud. But there’s also the trauma of letting them go because they’re so small and loveable. We entrust them to the school and to their trained teachers. We think these people know what’s best for our children and will teach them far better than we can. So we trust.

That trust can be a problem. It allows a chasm to occur between our children and us. The world of education can overwhelm us and so we feel inadequate to ask them questions about their day, what they learned, how they felt about things. We become outsiders to our children regarding their education. This feeling can be even more exasperated by parent – teacher interviews where the teacher may inadvertently resort to using their educational vocabulary which leaves us completely confused and feeling even more disempowered.

We end up with children who say they did nothing at school when asked what they did during the day. They answer fine when we ask how was school. Essentially blanking us.

We need to push past this for the sake of our child and their teachers. To do so we need to recognise that we are our child’s first and most primary teacher. We taught them to walk, to talk, to behave, to have manners, to be nice, to share and often some of their numbers and alphabet. We are not incompetent. After the school year is over we will still be their primary teacher while next year they will have a new one.

Bonnie and I are trained teachers. When we had our first children, the twins, we taught them to count to 20, to recognise numbers and letters. At 4 Joel was ready to read. He was tracing letters with his finger asking us what it was and what the word said. We were unsure of teaching him to read for primary school (grades 1 to 3) had not been our area of expertise. The nursery school teacher said not to worry that the kindergarten teacher would teach him to read starting in September. Our mistake! She didn’t teach him anything, seriously!

We were so mad at the end of the year for not teaching him ourselves. His interest in learning to read disappeared (for there are windows of readiness for learning in a child’s life that don’t stay open for ever). Bonnie taught both of the twins to read at home the next year. Becky was now ready and took to it easily. Joel had lost interest and it was much harder to teach him. In fact he struggled with reading until he was 9 when once again he took off.

If we stay involved in our children’s education, they will benefit hugely. The teachers will also find it helpful, as your child will probably be more eager to learn. Your assistance and awareness can smooth learning difficulties and social problems. If there is a problem, you are on top of it at the beginning not after it is deeply entrenched and more difficult to correct.

We, the parents, are our children’s teachers. Authorities are not our adversaries but are there to assist us as we live up to our responsibility. We are the cake and the teachers and other authorities supply the icing.

(image courtesy of rakratchada torsap/FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

Christmas Hope

18/12/2013

This Christmas Bonnie and I are celebrating with Bonnie’s parents in Canada while our children and grandchildren celebrate Christmas in England. It is a very weird sensation to be celebrating the event without children.

Since we knew we wouldn’t be there for Christmas Bonnie left gifts for them in October on her last visit. This year we don’t have any last minute rush to find gifts or to stay up late on Christmas Eve wrapping them. The house is beautifully decorated with no fear of any little hands to topple the tree. Bonnie baked some lovely treats. But when we offer it to friends they refuse as they are trying not to gain weight. Never a problem with children around!

There is no rushing this month to event after event. The Christmas pageants and parties are all on the other side of the pond.

Christmas as we celebrate it in the West is really all about the children. It is a time of awe and hope birthed in their little hearts. Sears, a department store in Canada, has a commercial that follows young children from their beds to the Christmas tree on that special morning. At the end of it the message that is etched onto the screen says: “They may not always remember this moment but you will.”

I truly hope they could remember. But as a parent I certainly do. Jesus, whose birthday we celebrate, says: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” This time of the year is to be a time of remembrance of the fantastic gift He gave to us to bring us peace with God and our fellow man.

The tree with its ornaments speaks of the tree of life. The star on the top is a symbol that led wise men to our Saviour. The gifts are a reminder of His love for us as they are to our children of our love for them. Little children believe, hope and receive. Nothing complicated. Simple!

They may not remember the moment but we will. Let’s remember that it’s more than commercial hype. It’s truly our hope for our eternity.
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