Help! My Teen Is a Pain in the Neck!

 Email This Post

One day your children are cuddling up in your lap, and the next day they don’t want to have anything to do with you. That’s the behavior that’s puzzling a listener who wrote about his teenage daughter:

Or watch other videos at youtube.com/DrLaura.

Read transcript.

Shooting Pool is Great Therapy

 Email This Post

I’ve been taking lessons in shooting pool now each week for two years.  My teacher, Al Vafa, is a pro:  an interesting, funny, smart, thoughtful guy, and a magnificent pool player.

If I am in the right mindset, the average “not that serious” pool player would have a hard time beating me.  Again, that is if I am in the right mindset.  It took the better part of the first year of lessons to stop saying “I suck,” to stop crying, getting angry, and even once actually breaking my costly pool cue.

This was not just about pool.  This was a metaphor for my life.  My dad was ferocious with me.  I remember the day before a science project was due for a school science fair, I went into the back yard, picked out some flowers, pulled them apart, glued them onto a poster board, and named all the parts.  It wasn’t very neat, and it wasn’t very brilliant, but it was something to hand in so I wouldn’t get into trouble.  My dad came home, took one look at it, and went ballistic.  I was up most of the night with him, tears streaming down my face the whole time, redoing the project in HIS image.

The next day at the science fair, when the judges came to my “perfect” project, I said…nothing.  They asked me questions.  I remained silent.  They prodded me some more, but I remained silent.  Finally, writing on their pads, they moved on.

One of my teachers called my parents that night to find out what in the heck was wrong.

My dad, furious we had done all that work and then I hadn’t presented it properly, demanded to know why I said nothing.  Fearfully, I answered, “Because it wasn’t mine.”  I honestly don’t remember what he said after that, but this was the atmosphere during all my “growing-up” years.
 
Two things came from that experience:  one really good, and one really bad.

The really good part was I became highly motivated to prove to him I wasn’t “stupid” (as he constantly called me).  That gave me self-motivation and a drive to work very, very hard.
 
The really bad part was I found it hard to forgive myself the realities of a learning curve (i.e., it takes time to master things).  I was hard on myself when I couldn’t do well quickly.

What does this have to do with shooting pool?  It has been magnificent therapy.

After the breaking of the cue stick, I struggled to remove my emotions and accept the learning curve and the reality even pros miss sometimes.  I learned my mind had to be clear of self-recrimination in order for my body and brain to work on the strokes.  I learned I could have fun while not being perfect (something my dad never learned in his life).

I also got this lesson from learning how to sail:  doing my job (steering) and working with a team (the boat’s crew).

This is one reason hobbies are so important:  they help you learn life lessons in a safer environment.

I am grateful for all the friends and teachers who have helped me appreciate life more and enjoy myself in a deeper way.

Sometimes Kids Are Just Bad Seeds

 Email This Post

There seems to be a general unwillingness to point out that some people are just evil.  I was frustrated when psychiatrist Keith Ablow wrote an essay on foxnews.com espousing the “understanding” of women and men who prey sexually on children.  He “formatted” them all as mentally ill.

I was not frustrated when, years ago, another psychiatrist, answering a question about how the Hillside Strangler could capture, torture, and kill people, answered truthfully that “some people are evil.”

Dr. Ablow is dead wrong.  Although mental health professionals are trained to see everything through the pink glasses of “kids are bad because their parents are bad,” it just ain’t true.  If you are one of those parents with a belligerent, nasty, uncooperative, petty criminal, drugged-out bummy kid (when your other kids are just fine citizens), you should not blame yourself.

We’re all impressed when a kid from a really bad home ends up living a quality life - kind, hard-working, and loving.  How come we don’t recognize the opposite:  a really great home can produce a bad kid?

There’s no question that parental problems and environment do, of course, impact children, but everyday character traits also have hard-wired genetic components that cannot be remedied by loving parents and a lovely, serene home in the suburbs.

In other words, there are bad seeds.  Parents frustrated with those children may possibly aggravate the situation, but they didn’t create it.

So many people call me who are sad about their recalcitrant adult children.  In some cases, you parents have earned that, but sometimes, you just need to shut the door on what is an impossible mission.

Motivation or Bribe? That’s the Question.

 Email This Post

Here’s an interesting question regarding the timing of rewards as a factor in behavioral motivation:

Or watch other videos at youtube.com/DrLaura.

Read transcript here.

Disregard for Hands-On Parenting

 Email This Post

There appears to be a growing disregard for actual eyeball-to-eyeball hands-on parenting.

Christine, a new stay-at-home parent to a two-month-old daughter, emailed me immediately when she saw an article from Parenting magazine by Melissa Balmain posted on CNN.com about the deaths of infants forgotten in cars. I read the article and share her disgust.

The main story is about two people, married, with a comfortable house in Virginia, and two well-paying full-time jobs.  On top of that, they decided to adopt two babies from Guatemala.  According to this report, “..the end of August and start of September, 2007 had been stressful.  Twenty-three-month old Juan and his four-year-old brother had been sick on and off.  The mother’s days and been blurs of work, day care, doctors, business trips, visits with relatives and anxiety.”

The story then goes on that the older boy was home with the dad and the mother was supposed to drop an ill younger child off in day care.  She went to work, had a “normal day,” talked with her supervisor, ate lunch at her desk, drove to the supermarket and shopped for dinner and continued on to the day care center to pick the younger boy up.  That’s when the child was found dead in the back seat, having literally cooked to death in the heat of the locked car. 

Now, I don’t have sympathy for the parents.  I just don’t.  I don’t agree with the article that whitewashes these incidents by saying it is normal to forget things when you’re in your habit rhythm - a lapse in memory that you’re a parent only occurs when being a parent is an accessory rather than the main deal.  Let’s look at her stressful month of September:  business trips, day care, work, visits with relatives and anxiety.  How many of those factors would have been eliminated if she was a stay-at-home mom?  Answer:  ALL OF THEM,  and the child would likely be alive.

I wonder if it is accidental that all the stories I’ve read about babies cooking to death in the back of their parents’ car are the result of parents forgetting to drop them off at day care on the way to work.  Fobbing off one’s sacred responsibility of child-rearing and protecting to hired help tends to make one not have focus on that child.  Just sayin’.

The article talks about the “reptilian” or most ancient part of the brain which directs our habits, and habits dominate over short-term plans which are ordered by the more advanced brain regions.  If that excuse is so, then parents should put their reptilian brain into parenting and not business trips, work, and day care drops and pick ups.

The article ends up giving suggestions so you won’t forget your kid to die in your back seat while you are busy with what is more important.

1. Put something that really matters to you - like your cell phone - in the back seat with the child.  Do you realize that means that your cell phone is more important than your child?

2. Keep a teddy bear in the baby car seat.  When you put your kid in the seat, put the teddy in front, so you’ll see it and remember you have a child.  After all, you’re a “busy employee.”

3. Ask your child’s child-care provider to call you on your cell phone if your kid doesn’t get there.  Oh, so now the day care, minimum-wage worker is more responsible for your kid than you are?

4.  Put visual cues in your office and home reminding you to check the car seat.  Gee, I thought parental love and bonding did that.  Guess not.

My bottom line?  Don’t have ‘em if you won’t raise ‘em.

If I were in charge of adoptions, no one without a spouse at home would be allowed to adopt a child.  Children are not accessories.  They should be the main deal.

To Grandmother’s House We Go

 Email This Post

If you were lucky enough to grow up with loving grandparents, you know how valuable they were to your personal development.  Then why are some grandparents now shunning that role?

Or watch other videos at youtube.com/DrLaura.

Read transcript here.

Daycares Don’t Care

 Email This Post

I consider day care (outside of emergency backup) a form of child neglect, and definitely one of society’s ills, as mothers are being universally reinforced to turn their babies, toddlers, and small children over to institutionalization instead of loving parental contact for most of the day. 

One of you emailed to me a link to a website called Daycares Don’t Care…How Can A Daycare Love?  It’s at www.daycaresdontcare.org.  Here’s a sample of what’s on their homepage:

“Everyone knows it’s true, but almost everyone is afraid to say it:  day care institutions don’t care about or love your child like you do.  For years, many experts have been warning us about the detrimental consequences for children placed in day care.  This website contains an extensive index of publications about the problems with day care from well-known child development authorities, psychologist, psychiatrists, pediatricians, public policy analysts, sociologists, day care providers, and others.

This collection of day care information seeks to counterbalance the relentless pressure placed upon parents to abandon their children to these impersonal institutions.

These findings show no amount of legislation, government funding, money, early childhood training, regulations or inspections can make a day care LOVE your child.

Additionally, this website is intended to encourage and affirm those parents who have made the choice to avoid day care and care for their own children - a choice that too often has been criticized and devalued by many in our society.”

Did you see Toy Story 3, about a group of toys escaping from the hellish “Sunnyside Day Care?”  One of the toys says “Day care is a sad place.”

This website is wonderful, and filled with important information you need to know for your own well-being as well as your child’s.  We’ve heard enough of media complaining about a “day care crisis” instead of a “home care crisis,” and enough of politicians pushing for more government day care subsidies versus tax breaks for at-home parenting.  We’ve had enough of people extolling the benefits of institutionalized child care while disdaining at-home parental involvement.  Enough!

Do check out www.daycaresdontcare.org, and help yourself and the next mom out there who could benefit from your pro-family activities by feeling supported in doing what should come naturally:  loving your child versus watching them on a nannycam.

Do Appearances Really Matter?

 Email This Post

Despite all the evidence to the contrary, there are still some people who think that dressing down and neglecting their grooming won’t affect their appeal to the opposite sex.  Today’s correspondent is angry at her mother for offering parental wisdom:

Or watch other videos at youtube.com/DrLaura.

Read transcript here.