No kid should be getting three or four hours of homework a night. There's no breathing time, there's no family time, there are just extracurriculars and homework and then go to bed.
Challenging behavior is just a signal, the fever, the means by which the kid is communicating that he or she is having difficulty meeting an expectation.
It's a whole lot more productive to be in problem-solving mode than it is to be in behavior modification mode.
Everybody is talking about the behavior. Behaviors float downstream to us. We need to paddle upstream. The problems that are causing the behaviors, that's what's waiting for us. It's a crucial paradigm shift.
When there's a good fit between skills and expectations, there's what we call compatibility, and we would expect a good outcome. When there's a poor fit between expectations and the capacity of the kid, there is incompatibility, and that's when we see people exhibit challenging behavior.
We have forgotten that those skills on the more positive side of human nature have to be taught, have to be modeled, have to be practiced.
Solutions can't be imposed. That just fosters resentment.
Being completely in control is a fantasy.
My advice to educators is collaborate with parents; they know a lot about their kids.
You want to teach all kids the skills that are on the better side of human nature: empathy, appreciating how one's behavior is affecting other people, resolving disagreements in ways that do not involve conflict, taking another's perspective, honesty.
If a solution isn't mutually satisfactory, it's not going to stick.
You're your kid's partner, not the person who's pulling all the strings.
If we're being unilateral, then communication does not happen, the relationship does not happen.
When people are rushed, they're stressed and you greatly increase the likelihood of being punitive and unilateral just because you're trying to grasp control.
People don't scream or swear or pout or sulk when there's compatibility. But most growth occurs when there's incompatibility. When it comes to resilience, when it comes to pulling yourself up when you've fallen down, you don't learn those things when things are going well. You learn those things when you're struggling.
For a very long time, people have been saying to me, "What if you want to do this approach with every kid?" For a behaviorally challenging kid, you're parenting this way just to help bring the kid's behavior under control and to greatly reduce conflict. But you want to teach all kids the skills that are on the better side of human nature: empathy, appreciating how one's behavior is affecting other people, resolving disagreements in ways that do not involve conflict, taking another's perspective, honesty.
There is still quite the vibe out there that as a parent you have to be completely in control and in charge.
It's so crucial to really get a good handle on what's getting in the way of the kid completing a homework assignment. It can be so many things.
The idea that we can take this lump of clay and mold it into a form of our choosing is absolutely ludicrous.
Parents are much more likely to be attuned to what they don't like than they are to the expectations that the kid is having difficulty meeting.
The vast majority of things parents and kids get in conflict over are highly predictable. We're disagreeing about the same expectations the kid is having difficulty meeting every hour, every day, every week. Because it's predictable, we can have these conversations proactively. That is very hard for people.
Be your kid's collaborative partner, but also be a collaborative partner with the folks at school. Schools can be pretty unilateral too. Show them you know how to collaborate. Show them this is not about power. Let them know detentions and suspensions and paddling don't solve the problems that are affecting kids' lives. Those problems can be identified and solved but not by being punitive.
Kids are overprogrammed these days.
Over 18 years of us solving problems together, my daughter has shown me that she's got a good head on her shoulders, that she is pretty good at solving the problems that affect her life. If she wants my input, she gets it.
We never get to see that our kid is capable of solving problems on her own. We never start to build up the faith that they can actually do it.
