Parenting For Humanity Blog

Thanks for listening today everyone! I do want to apologize to whoever called in but didn’t show up on our switchboard…BTR lists a caller we weren’t aware of. Also, someone asked why the show says 45 minutes in BTR when we only go for 30 – that’s because we need some wiggle room, and they only have 15 minute increments.

We just got the following email from BlogTalkRadio:

“Lisa and Amy,

Looks like you’re getting popular! Kevin Makice has added your show as a favorite. View their profile here. You can increase the number of people who mark you as a favorite by reminding them to do so during your show. You show can also rank higher if you remind people to rate your show.”

I found the statement “you are getting popular” rather ironic since Kevin is Amy’s husband But seriously – we’d love to get the word out about the show. If you like the show, we would really love positive ratings, reviews, etc either at BlogTalkRadio, or in itunes. And please tell your friends about us!

Here are the resources we mentioned on the show today:

Patti Wipfler’s article on being in control: http://tinyurl.com/5lwbfk. If you are interested in other articles, I’ve collected my favorites here.

Twitter is a great way to keep in touch with what we are up to, get article links, etc. The most recent one is shown in the sidebar at the right, but to see all of them, or to get realtime updates, follow “parentstalk” at twitter.com .

If you are interested in discussing empathic parenting, a group of us have a discussion board at empathic-parenting.com/talk .

Lisa

Our next topic on our radio show/podcast is on the topic of parenting proactively; i.e., as one dictionary put it, “Acting in advance to deal with an expected difficulty”.

When I first starting thinking about this topic, I was trying to tie it to nonpunitive parenting from last week. I remembered Amy and my discussion on the “balance” between permissive and authoritarian/punitive parenting, and how our goal might not be to find that balance at all, but to find a new way entirely. I thought, “Can we be nonpunitive but not be proactive?” Of course…it just means reacting in a gentler way, right? But felt like something was missing…. And then it hit me – Nonpunitive…minus proactive…doesn’t that equal permissive?

And, as we spoke of in the previous radio show, many parents are on this teeter-totter, where they are permissive until they can’t stand their kids, and then punitive until they can’t stand themselves. Being permissive leads to being punitive and vice versa, because they are opposite side of the teeter-totter. Being proactive is one way to step off the teeter-totter entirely, and probably one of the most effective ways.

When we are trying to avoid punishing our children, what we are rejecting is the idea of learning through fear and shame. The reason this sometimes feels permissive is that we are afraid that the learning will not happen at all.

None of this is to imply that children won’t learn anything without direct teaching. I am a firm believer in trusting children and often, just staying out of the way. Even this, though, requires much proactivity – adjusting the environment to be supportive; adjusting our own beliefs to be trusting; and protecting our children from consequences and people’s opinions that they are not yet ready to handle. There are many ways learning occurs – from natural development, to modeling, to direct instruction – and each leads to different ways we can help that learning.

However, learning rarely occurs in the moment of conflict. Our actions and ideas in the proactive realm – the times when there is connection and calm – are a large part of what create and influence that learning and help us maintain trust in our kids. Our reactions, our actions in the moment, can be relaxed to just those that keep everyone and items safe and as connected as possible until the calm returns and we can return to being proactive.

I hope you will listen in as we discuss ways of parenting proactively and answer your questions, Thursday, May 8th, 9PST/12EST. Please feel free to leave a comment or question in response to this entry…If we don’t fill the time with callers, we may use answer your question on the show.

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When I started offering parenting workshops, one of our empirical measurements was a scale of authoritarian and permissive attitudes in parents. We considered our workshop helpful when the parents migrated from either end of the scale to the middle. There were obvious issues with the overly controlling parents on one end, and just as blatant problems on the other end, with parents providing little or no guidance to their offspring. I, along with most of my colleagues, assumed that the answer was somewhere in the middle.

I’m no longer funded by government grants, and the parents attending my workshops are already looking for a different way of parenting, so the authoritarian-permissive spectrum hasn’t been at the front of my mind, until Lisa and I started discussing how to describe our next radio show, “What is Non-Punitive Parenting.”

I suggested that we invite parents who are trying to find a balance between overly strict parenting and overly permissive styles.

Lisa came back with, “it’s not about either or,” she reminded me, “it’s completely outside that spectrum.”

I frequently get caught up in discussions with concerned caregivers- they ask “how will he learn if there are never any consequences?” If I’m on the continuum of permissive to authoritarian, the answer consists of coming up with the proper blend of stern and loving. The answers span from judicious use of the rod to a parent throwing up his hands and giving up. We would look to a snuggly parent lamenting “this hurts me more than it hurts you,” after doling out a balanced, properly logical consequence, or a creative caregiver handing out tokens for good behavior, receiving payment for missteps. We could spend hours debating the merit of various rewards, the appropriateness of certain consequences. We could get lost trying to find the perfect justice for our children.

The above spectrum has room for an array of differences, but they have one underlying commonality. They are based on fear. Instilling fear in the child that he will be hurt, that precious things will be taken away, that they will never do just the right thing to capture the elusive parent approval.

Step outside the spectrum. What if it isn’t about finding a balance, but rather, about making a connection? What if instead of teaching a lesson, we worked with children to develop necessary skills? What if we skipped the lecture and spent some time problem-solving about how to make right what went wrong tonight, and how it could be better in the future?

Instead of a linear menu of options, we could imagine a toolbox- not something filled with implements for fixing our broken children, but filled with supports for strengthening our connections.

This could be a beginning toolbox for empathic parenting. Power tools such as listening, empathizing, playing games together, snuggling, singing and communicating all contribute to building a strong family unit. One where everyone can learn. They all have a commonality as well. They are tools that build bridges that connect us with the most important people in our world.

My hope is that in exploring this week’s question, we can dig through the our new box and find tools that help us build bridges for and strengthen our family.

Thanks for reading! Please leave us any comments or questions here on the blog, and tune in for a further discussion of this topic at 9am PST on May 1, 2008 – or find it in the archives – www.blogtalkradio.com/parenting.
Amy Makice, LCSW

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This Thursday, May 1st, at 9am PST/12EST, will be our first official Live Internet Radio Broadcast!! A few of you listened to our test show last week (which was very spur of the moment) ; it went very well, so we are looking forward to a great conversation this week.

The technology we are using is called BlogTalkRadio (BTR). It’s an internet service that provides the phone line, the recording archives, etc. We call in on our phone lines, and when the show starts, our broadcast will also start playing on the BlogTalkRadio webpage as well as being saved in the archives. We can take callers live and a chat room is also provided.

In the future, we’ll be on Itunes. For now, you have three options. You can listen in live, and even call in your questions on-air or send them over our BTR chat line which will be up and running while we do the show. When you, the listener, calls in, you will be placed on hold until one of us is ready to take your call. We can only see the first 4 people waiting in the queue at once, and all we will know about you is your phone number, so feel free to drop a line on the chat line while you are waiting, saying who you are.

Second, you can go listen to archives on the BTR website, give them a rating, and offer us comments about the show. Lastly, you can download our shows and transfer them to your ipod or other mobile device for later listening. For future shows, we encourage you to send us comments, questions you would like answered, or feedback on how to improve future shows.

To become familiar with BlogTalkRadio, find archives, and see the current schedule, please visit www.blogtalkradio.com/parenting – that’s us!

Hope to talk to you soon!

Lisa and Amy