Children need clear limits and guidance. From the end of the first year of life on, setting parameters about what is, and what is not appropriate behavior is the bulk of your job. Setting limits and clear expectations is not a punitive action – it is teaching. The goal is to raise a person who uses good judgment.

Proactive discipline-telling your child what is expected of them up front, increases the likelihood of their following the rules. We often go into situations “hoping” our kids will behave instead of telling them what goals, expectations and consequences exist right off the bat.

For example, before you go into the playground with your four-year old, have a quick conversation:

“Ok, so remember the rules: No hitting, no pushing, no throwing sand. If you do that you will have to sit on the bench with me for a little while. If you do it again then we will have to leave the playground. So what are the rules?”

“No hitting, no throwing sand and no hurting!”

“Right! So let’s go in and have fun.”

Your child has a clear road map of what is to come. The rules, the expectations, and without anger, the consequences. Chances are, your child will not be able to follow those rules on many occasions–that’s part of childhood, they are learning. Your job as a parent is to teach them the rules and follow through on the consequences.

After the upset has died down and everyone is calm, talk about the experience. Hear their perspective and feelings. Let them know that even though they make mistakes, break the rules, have trouble controlling themselves, that there is an open forum to talk about their grievances. Clear rules coupled with deep conversation later helps to stay connected and allows children to understand and control their behavior.

So, worst case scenario you had to take your child from the park kicking and screaming. Next time you go say, “Remember what happened last time when you threw sand? We had to leave.” They will vividly remember. “Follow our rules and we won’t have to go home early!” You’ve got a better chance of follow through on their part this time. This example of limit setting can be applied to almost every situation and activity in your young child’s life. After repetition, you will begin to see their automatic recognition of what is acceptable behavior. Keep in mind – your children are counting on you to guide them.

The story of the adopted eight year-old boy who was sent back to Russia evokes a lot of  judgment towards his adoptive mother. The New York Times Style Section, oddly enough, covers this story in the article In Some Adoptions Love Does Not Conquer All. The piece explores the perspective of other adoptive parents whose children have severe psychiatric problems due to trauma early in life.  Many parents had torturous experiences trying to love, heal and raise their children.  Ellen McDaniels’ struggle is one such experience:

Finally, two months ago, after what Ms. McDaniels described as nine years of frightening, exhausting and heartbreaking efforts to cope with her daughter’s behavioral problems — including, she said, her sexually abusing and threatening other children, threatening to burn down the house, hiding knives in her trundle bed, refusing to take medication and running away — she terminated her parental rights.

Just so painful. But what of the parents whose biological children have serious illnesses like the children in the story?  They have the added guilt and worry that they caused the disorder through bad parenting or genetics.  They can’t send them back. Imagine terminating rights to your biological child. The reality is that any parent, adoptive or biological, whose child is suffering so greatly and is out of control, is in desperate need of help. These families need comprehensive medical, psychological and educational support in raising their children and keeping everyone in their family safe. Only the richest in our society can afford the therapeutic schooling and wilderness programs that address these children’s issues.  Even then it is hit or miss in terms of the quality of care.

Maybe if enough of us pay attention to this serious crisis it will be “in style” to have comprehensive psychiatric care for troubled children.

http://www.nami.org/

http://www.who.int/en/

http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/child-and-adolescent-mental-health/index.shtml

It is safe to say that parents are most prideful when they see their child reach out to someone in distress. An act like that is the physical manifestation of empathy, the ability to feel what someone else is feeling.

Even very young children show the ability to act on their empathic feelings. For instance, the giving up of a favorite toy when their friend is sad about not having it.  School age kids show empathy by going to sit at lunch with the new person in school, knowing how hard it must be to feel so self-conscious and alone. Teenagers welcome friends to their house knowing the scene at the friend’s home is less than comfortable.

So we are really talking about a feeling plus an action.  Humans are hard wired for empathy and it’s watering, like a seedling, helping it to grow and strengthen. Although this innate compassion exists, we must teach children to act upon their empathic feelings.

For starters, being able to relate to someone is crucial. Putting your emotions to action and actually helping others out takes it to another level.  Jane E. Brody has a very nice piece about empathy in the Science section of The New York Times. The article gives great guidelines about fostering empathy in children. She points out the importance of modeling for children. Humans are incredible in their abilities because they are able to learn vast and complex social behaviors from imitation. So as parents, we can’t just talk about empathy and practice empathic interactions within our families, we need to do empathy.

Doing empathy is writ large and small. It is doing volunteer work for people who have much less or are affected by a natural disaster such as Haiti or Katrina. It is practicing non-judgmental talk in your home and the strict avoidance of skewering other people as dinner time sport. Doing empathy is cooking for someone who has a new baby, or going to someone’s funeral. There are countless opportunities to do empathy and model the wonderful sense of purpose and happiness it brings to help out, even in very small ways, in other people’s lives.

Mornings are hard for families.  There is always so much to get done. The clock is ticking as mom, dad, kids – all need to get up and get going. The ‘Morning Rush’ can feel very hectic especially if you expect children to move at the rate of adults. By honoring the pace of children in the morning, you are more likely to walk out the door without feeling like a week has passed between 6:30 and 8:30 am.

While adults have big goals in mind, kids are living in the moment with their own smaller goals. Mushing the oatmeal, zooming the trains on the floor of their room, the water flowing from the faucet. Wherever they are in their morning, they are in the moment and unaware of the next thing to get done. Parents can experience this as dawdling, not listening, and of course sometimes it is. Regardless, keeping the child’s experience in mind while you keep your eye on the prize – getting out the door – helps the morning feel less like a battle.

Here are a few tips parents have found very helpful for pain-free mornings:

• Set your alarm at least 15 minutes before you need to wake your children or they would normally wake you.
• Get yourself up first and take care of at least one big task: make breakfast, hop in the shower, get the lunches made.
• Don’t let your kids drag you out of bed. You will end up rushed and impatient.
• Make getting dressed the first task for kids so that they are motivated to get it done and go have breakfast. Most fights happen over getting dressed.
• Don’t expect your young children to move the morning along on their own. They need you to shepard them through the morning.
• Make a list with pictures of everything that needs to get accomplished so you can ask your kids to check and see what they need to do. It encourages independence and ownership of their own self-care.
• Unless you have more than one and a half hours don’t use TV on a weekday morning – it creates more problems than it solves.

Remember to allow enough time, be ready yourself and don’t take it personally if your kids sometimes lose themselves in their teeth brushing or in selecting a book or toy to bring to school. Kids hate the rushing around that we get caught up in.

Phoebe Prince, the high school girl who hung herself last week, was purportedly “bullied” to death. Tortured is more like it. Hounded, cursed, humiliated in school and on-line. Defining bullying clearly is critical. Many adults think of bullying as a rite of passage in childhood. Clearly there is a difference between being picked last in gym class and being targeted by an individual or group of kids whose aim is to intimidate and shame.  Today’s landscape for children is also markedly different in that Facebook and email amplifies and exacerbates the intensity of peer relationships.We need to take a fresh look at bullying.

“Peer Abuse” is a phrase that more clearly defines the difference between teasing and belittling. “Peer Abuse” includes not only the physical aggression most associate with bullying, but also the verbal and emotional abuse that are a part of situations like Phoebe’s.

“Peer Abuse” are repeated acts over time of physical assault, psychological manipulation, name calling and using social power to ostracize an individual or group. This goes against our commonly held belief that bullies are loners, having been rejected socially. New research shows that it is often popular kids that use subtly abusive tactics to put down others to maintain their social status. Becoming the victim of malicious bullying can happen for a variety of reasons.

The message here for parents is that any of our children can, and most likely will be aggressive or cruel to other children at some point. Make this an open discussion in your family: Model respectful behavior, take seriously claims that your child is being bullied, talk about the pressure and responsibilities that come with popularity. Teach your child to speak up and stand up if someone is being abused. Adults need to do the same. The stakes are too high to be complacent.

Attachment is a parenting “buzz” word.  Detachment is a Buddhist one. The combination of both is the dynamic duo of raising children. The western definition of attachment is a connection, a deep desire to care for, protect and be a part of someone’s life. It is the foundation of healthy emotional development.  Yet, attachment in the Buddhist lexicon has more negative connotations.

Attachment is like a craving. We hold on tight to ideas or things with the false belief that they are unchanging. We attach to moods, emotions, and phases as if they are constant and everlasting. This explains why we are blindsided by change, hopeless when things feel hard and get overly invested when things are going swimmingly.

Here’s an example:

Your child has been sailing into the classroom so far this year and says goodbye with a confident wave. You become “attached” to this phase and behavior.  The inner dialogue is self congratulatory, and you are flying high on the pride and gratification that comes from having an independent kid.

After your vacation, you walk into the classroom that first day back and your son is whiny and clingy. He doesn’t want you to leave. Your heart is pounding, your face is flushed, you worry “What’s wrong with him?” and “Why is this happening?”  Simultaneously you feel angry, truth be told, because your clingy, whiny kid is embarrassing. You finally peel him off and spend the rest of the day feeling sick with worry.

Detachment, in the Buddhist sense, means you have a separate observing ego talking you down off the ledge. The observer reminds you that all things must change, that being resistant to going to school is as common a phenomenon as loving to go–maybe even more common. The detached observer is not detached from your child, actually you are more tuned in because you are staying calm. Using detachment, you are caring for him by not escalating anxiety to the point where he believes that feeling hesitant to go to school one morning will become a major problem for his mother and therefore, him. Detachment approach helps you calm the choppy waters of your internal world so that your response is not reactive but helpful.

Don’t think for one second that this comes easily. Cultivating an attitude of detachment takes practice, practice, practice.  I wish I had this perspective twenty years ago when my kids were small. Since there is no lack of opportunities to practice detachment when you are raising children–by now, I might be at monk status!

Thank goodness it is never too late to start. The muscle of attachment/detachment in it’s wonderful east/west combination becomes stronger the more it is used. You are more grounded, less reactive and a much sturdier rock for your kids to rely on. So maybe there’s a movement here, “Detachment Parenting”?

President Obama is focused on supporting reforms in our educational system, but what if these reforms are based on faulty assumptions?  Susan Engel, head of the teaching program at Williams College, writes a simple, straightforward recipe for elementary education in her Op-Ed Play to Learn.

She argues that, based on developmental research, children should not be forced to accomplish the “laundry list” of tasks now present in many classrooms.  Instead, they should be immersed in language and literacy, collaboration and experimentation and steeped in play. Our current focus on early academics, testing, testing, and more testing is not what sets children up to be great learners in middle and high school. On the contrary, present day curriculum “is strangling children and teachers alike.”

“In this classroom, children would spend two hours each day hearing stories read aloud, reading aloud themselves, telling stories to one another and reading on their own. After all, the first step to literacy is simply being immersed, through conversation and storytelling, in a reading environment; the second is to read a lot and often. A school day where every child is given ample opportunities to read and discuss books would give teachers more time to help those students who need more instruction in order to become good readers.

Children would also spend an hour a day writing things that have actual meaning to them — stories, newspaper articles, captions for cartoons, letters to one another. People write best when they use writing to think and to communicate, rather than to get a good grade.

In our theoretical classroom, children would also spend a short period of time each day practicing computation — adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. Once children are proficient in those basics they would be free to turn to other activities that are equally essential for math and science: devising original experiments, observing the natural world and counting things, whether they be words, events or people. These are all activities children naturally love, if given a chance to do them in a genuine way.”

Parents need to push their schools, Boards of Education and their representatives in government to change the direction of our educational system. Let’s put our focus and our money, not on propping up a broken system, but toward creating a new one that supports how children learn best.

Judith Warner, author and columnist on parenting issues, has just published We’ve Got Issues: Children and Parents In The Age of Medication. She began her project with the commonly held mindset that children are over-medicated through a collusion between parents, who want their childrens’ behavior to change, and psychiatrists, who are more than happy to whip out the prescription pad.  What Warner discovered, and what our experience at Soho Parenting has been over the last two decades, is actually the opposite. Parents go through excruciating conflict, ambivalence and worry about using medication with their children who are suffering from a psychiatric or neuro- biological illness.

Contrary to the “over-medication” hype, parents often have a hard time accepting that their child’s symptoms are an indication of a serious departure from typical development. When a children have depression, bipolar disorder, ADHD, or autistic spectrum disorder it is unbearably painful to accept. Decisions to use medicine to treat, or ameliorate symptoms is a huge choice.  The known risk of leaving these problems untreated sometimes feels less risky than taking medicine. This is often the wrong call.

In our clinical practice, we have seen a rise of developmental delays as well as a rise in mood disorders, behavioral and emotional struggles in children. The causes are most likely multi-determined. The impact of toxins in our food supply and environment, the unhealthy pressured culture our children must conform to, and the marriage of genetics in parents who also may struggle with significant levels of anxiety and depression all lead to more vulnerable systems in our children.

Having this awareness allows parents to make healthier choices about their lifestyles and practice preventative care.  Acknowledgment that your child struggles with mood or reactivity issues is necessary to fight stigma, advocate for kids and to counter the feelings of failure that parents and children alike experience if these issues arise. Treating such childhood problems with effective therapies, and yes, many times, with medicine, can be the difference between utter suffering and a calmer, more productive and functional experience for affected children, their siblings and parents.

In almost 25 years we have met only one family that seemed blithe about using medicine to maintain a child’s enrollment in a high pressured and “prestigious” school.  All other parents have approached the diagnosis, starting therapy, and possibly medicating their children as a truly serious decision–usually leaning toward under-treating. The stories of children being helped by a combination of therapy and medicine abound. The relief and hopefulness is always tempered by worry over the long-term effects, but children who need medicine and receive the correct medicine are freed from a dark place. Kudos to Warner for her open-minded research, her hard work on the book, and her contribution to parents –to help them make the best choices for their children and their families.

The New York Times article, For Some Parents Shouting is the New Spanking, by Hillary Stout,  bravely shines the light on a slightly taboo topic. In many parenting circles, spanking is a discipline tool of the past.Whether or not parents actually resort to spanking is another story.

When it comes to screaming, however, it often seems accepted as a matter of course. Everyone  has a reflexive, knee jerk stance based on family of origin. If you came from a family of screamers, yelling might feel completely normal. Many people feel it is an ethnic rite or genetically encoded behavior. Others remember their parents yelling and screaming and the fear that it engendered. These parents do a yeoman’s job of controlling their tempers, but nevertheless find themselves overtaken by fury and frustration at times. Some grew up with simmering issues but no communication, so “letting it all out” can feel like a healthier way.

The problem is that yelling and screaming can feel so damn good while you are doing it. You feel powerful, like you are someone to be reckoned with, self-righteous and entitled.  After all, what human being can cope with the amount of badgering, whining, and defiance that kids dish out. In actuality, the desire to yell actually comes from the opposite place: a place of helplessness, feeling overburdened and incompetent. Screaming and yelling bring false empowerment. True power is when parents control themselves, for example, putting their child in their room without yelling or ranting or being able to take away privileges in a three word sentence like “No TV tomorrow!!”

Unfortunately, the nature of children and the culture we live in has the deck stacked against parents. Kids need repeated reminders, often years of reminders to do things like saying please and thank you, coming to the dinner table and not smashing their siblings. Our culture is all about getting what you want by taking no prisoners.  Given those forces, staying respectful calls for a kind of determination, focus and self control that seems only a zen master could muster. The good news is that self control can be learned. Start with this rule. Screaming, name calling, ranting and shaming is NOT ALLOWED. It is a boundary violation and something to avoid. Remember, it is not our right as a parent.

Since most people are not zen masters, realistically you probabaly will yell or scream when you are in your most helpless and overwhelmed state. Treat it as if you had hit your child. After you calm down, apologize. Remind them that it wasn’t OK, and that you are really focused on learning to control that behavior, just like they are.

A recent article on the effects of switching the order of recess and lunch by Tara Parker Pope makes great sense. Moving recess earlier and lunch afterwards affected both kids well being at school and also resulted in the waste of food. At a time when some schools decrease recess time to fit in more academics, it is another reminder of how important play time is for children. Pediatrics reports that a new study confirms the idea that having recess versus not isn’t in the best interest of a child’s academic performance. Parents must protect the needs of children by remembering that old fashioned running around and climbing the monkey bars is an important part of a school day.