Excerpt
Positive Parenting from A to Z
INTRODUCTION
Even with a master’s degree in education, I never in a hundred years would have thought I could write a book, and it is without a doubt one of the hardest tasks I’ve ever tackled. This book is proof that you can do what you set out to do if you believe in yourself. I am a wife, a mother of three children, a classroom teacher, a parent educator, and a staff trainer, and I do believe that only my own mother, a true encourager, would have initially said, “Dear, you can be an author, too, if you want to.”
I’d just finished a day of substitute teaching a second-grade class. At home I listened to a string of messages on my answering machine. The last message caught my attention. “Karen? Jim Becker. You may not remember me, but I took your Positive Parenting class two years ago. I need some parenting tips. Please call when you have time. I wish you would write a book that I could just pick up.” Beep. I reversed the machine and replayed Jim’s message three times, trying to remember him from his enthusiastic voice and reflecting on his crazy idea about writing a book.
I called Jim, and we talked about his five-year-old daughter who would not stay in her own bed. Then he said, “Karen, I’m serious about your writing a book. When Barbara and I took your Positive Parenting class, parents raised countless problems and you always had something helpful to say. How about thinking of all the misbehaviors parents have to deal with and putting them into an A-to-Z format similar to a medical handbook?”
I’m not one to avoid a challenge, and the idea of reaching thousands of parents with such positive help was exciting. I set out to write a book that would be simple to use, like a first-aid guide. This is the parents’ emergency guide for difficult behavior, set up for ease of access in a handy A-to-Z format.
I have been a parent for twenty-three years, and I fall into the category of those who teach what they want to do better. Over many years I studied and trained with experts in the field of human development and Positive Parenting. I have taught this program to hundreds of parents on a one-to-one basis and also in group settings through hospitals, pediatric practices, community services, schools, and workplaces. The Positive Parenting material is the best I know for anyone wanting to help good people (whether parents or not) reach their highest potential. I also took this program into the restaurant world to help management work more positively with staff. Every year I continue my training, learning new ways to explain important Positive Parenting principles and techniques.
This book is the result of hours of reflecting on my many experiences working with wonderful parents and others involved with kids. I interviewed skilled professionals, all experts in their fields, whom I have admired and to whom I have referred parents. I reread books, listened to training tapes, and reviewed educational videos. I wrote at all hours of the day and night, then captured my family, friends, and colleagues to read my text and discuss it with me.
The challenges of parenting are both demanding and rewarding. Being a parent combines the demands of the most complex professions with continual opportunities “to make a difference.” We are on duty twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. When we add this to other adult daily stresses and responsibilities, it is easy to feel overwhelmed. I recently had a call from a woman who sounded both tearful and angry. The elementary school counselor had called. “Your son is being a very disruptive kid. He doesn’t seem to have any self-control. He is interruptive in the classroom and hurting children on the playground.” I clearly felt the fear in this mother’s voice. My heart went out to her. Her son’s self-esteem—how he felt about himself and what he perceived others felt about him—meant so much to her. She did what all concerned parents do, she focused on what she was doing wrong. How could she improve his behavior? Feeling guilty, she blamed herself and her circumstances for his disruptiveness. She wanted to know what to do.
I met with this mother, and we covered the Positive Parenting approach just as it is presented in this A-to-Z guide. The concept is clear, and the principles and techniques are positive. This mother learned that making positive change is not a simple process; it takes effort, time, and consistency. The encouraging principles and techniques gave her courage and something tangible to work with and believe in. She traded in her nonproductive guilt for new things to say and do. In time, good things began to happen.
This guide is written to help you help your children (and every other person you come in contact with) to be happy, contributing members of society who feel capable of tackling any situation this world presents.
What we all want for our children is for them to grow into responsible, caring, happy, creative, self-confident, and respectful beings. Basically this means having healthy self-esteem. However, parents don’t always say and do the right thing. We may know what we should not do and say, yet when faced with a problem, our words and actions seem to slip right out without our thinking. The punishing words that roll off our tongues and the hostile actions we use are often those that were directed at us as children. I have learned that punishment is not conducive to raising children with healthy self-esteem. Punishment is anything you say or do that lowers your child’s self-esteem, anything you say or do that makes him feel worse, even if you are trying to make him be a better person.
This book includes 145 disconcerting behaviors that parents have brought to me. You can see the whole list in the table of contents. I’ve approached each behavior with the same format that I use in my Positive Parenting classes when I help a parent with a concern, using strategies developed from training I have had and from my experience working with parents to help them cope. This book, in effect, is parent tested.
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Note: These behaviors occur with both boys and girls. I have used “he” or “she” singly throughout this book to simplify the text. Boys and girls are equally significant, and each entry applies equally to both.
