Hands On Parenting: The Right Toys: Fridge Notes

Hands-On Parenting host, Barb Hazelton, visits with Lisa, a divorced mother who has children ages 16, 13, 8 and 3.

Lisa comes from a belief system that says that loving people is taking care of them, and Lisa overdoes caring for her children. She wants her children's childhood to be carefree because her own childhood had too much responsibility.

Lisa has recently become aware that she may be hurting, rather than helping, her children by doing so much for them.

Dr Tim: There are some long-term costs in doing things for your children rather than teaching them. When you do too many things for them you rob them of chances to be valuable.

One of the best ways to make successful, confident kids with high self esteem, whether they are 4 or 16, is to give them chances to try things and get frustrated and fail and be upset and be sad and then try again and get frustrated and try again and then succeed. This is the most important building block for self confidence.

To change her overdoing behavior Lisa needs to first keep aware of her subconscious feelings. Part of her challenge is to learn how to love differently.

Dr. Tim suggests once-a-week family meetings to discuss various issues.
The kids will be happy to have a say so and a voice.
Before the family meeting ends it's important that everyone buys into the agreed-upon solution. Then everyone tries it for a couple of weeks. There must be kind, but firm, follow-through on whatever agreements are made, and the consequences of not following through must be very clear. There should be no nagging or repeated reminders.

Example: Everyone agrees that his own room will be clean by noon Saturday. Give only one reminder, maybe about 11am Saturday.

At noon, if a person's room is not clean, he/she understands that there will be no lunch, no soccer practice, and no TV. Life stops for that family member until the room is clean.