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> Maybe they are written by non-parents or their children are much easier To be frank, the article tips are pretty sound and well-accepted, including from spec
by marklgr 10y ago
> Maybe they are written by non-parents or their children are much easier
To be frank, the article tips are pretty sound and well-accepted, including from specialists who deal with much more difficult children then you and me on a daily basis.
First point, there's a tendency to see one's kids as special, be it especially gifted, or difficult, or an astonishing critical thinker for their age. It's quite understandable, since we have an infinitely deeper relationship with them than with any other kid. Secondly, it's much more difficult to deal with relationship issues when you are involved in them; that explains why you can often clearly see what's wrong in others' relationships (parent/kids or S.O.), but yours always seem more complicated by several order of magnitude. And thirdly, we can also find it quite irritating to be given some basic tips when we are experiencing hell and we feel like we are so past that kind of "pop psych". It's like, "Do you think we've not tried that already?".
Of course, a few tips are no magic bullet (sorry for the cliché), and sometimes the problems are just too serious, but on the whole they just deliver, to the surprise of many parents when they see it used successfully by specialists. I'm not one of them but I know a few, and I personnally use the "give them a choice" tip and if done correctly, I have found it to work very, very well--for parenting and in life in general.
- three14 10y agoSound and well-accepted are very different things - in the area of parenting, appealing to the authority of experts is really asking to be wrong. That said, I do have a bunch of kids, and in my personal limited experience, the particular advice in the article is sound, as far as it goes. If you have enough energy, there's almost always a way to defuse the situation. Real parents with a few kids and too little sleep do not always have enough energy or time to defuse the situation. Given what I see nursery school teachers do every day, I'd be pretty surprised if the experts can't get good results in a clinic, but that doesn't necessarily carry over to home.
- kabouseng 10y agoPlease humor me, and an honest question. And please be honest. Do you have kids? How many?
- lintiness 10y agomy dad has lots of advice for me and my wife about the correct parenting of our kids (his grandkids). he usually gives it to us over the hour dinner we eat with him once a week.
- marklgr 10y agoOne kid, seven. Got three brothers (the eldest got four kids). Most of my friends got kids too, some of them "difficult". For what it's worth, I was a pretty difficult child too.
- coryfklein 10y agoI have three boys, ages 10m, 2.5y, and 4.5y. I can confirm that in my case (at least for the two older boys), pretty much all the advice in the article is correct. As I read, I realized that I have been occasioning upon the recommended parenting strategies almost by happenstance. It's neat to see those specific strategies called out though - I can immediately think back to times when I tried that and realize, "ohhh, so that's why it worked so well." Should help me focus more on those strategies.
- virgilp 10y agoI have three girls. I swear to God, the first two were fairly difficult with getting them to eat healthy, each in their own way - but hey, we are smart & informed, we handled them! The third one broke us. We got to the point where both me & my wife were begging her, "come on, eat this, it has lots of chocolate!" All these kind of advice works... until it doesn't. Yes, many parents don't know how to handle their kids. It's also often genuinely hard - I learned to not judge people for "not doing the right thing", without knowing the full story.