It is an easy read, and fascinating. I have been telling every parent I meet with to read at least the first chapter, titled: The Inverse Power of Praise. It looks at the impact of praising process (ie good effort) versus outcome (yay you got straight A’s). The short of it is that when children are praised on the outcome, they put out less effort and take less risks – they tend to not try something if there is a chance they could fail.

A common issue I hear from parents in my counseling practice in Seattle, is that their child will give up if something doesn’t come very easily to them. If an activity/lesson/task is hard, or perceived as hard, the child might resist even trying it, or at the first sign of trouble give up completely. Unfortunately this sets up a situation where the child “feels” like they are going to be unsuccessful, and then they are unsuccessful (because they didn’t persist long enough to experience any success), which confirms their first “feeling” that they weren’t going to be successful…and makes them less likely to try the next time they “feel” like their not going to be successful – and if we are praising them on their success, then here we have little opportunity to praise them.  When we can shift our attention to the effort – to their concentration, their planning, – we help take the focus off whether they can “do it” or not, and create success around the effort. I’m not saying it is a magic bullet that over night will turn your kiddo from reserved to a risk taker, but it is an excellent place to start.

Whether you are aware of it or not, your child is watching you and learning from you – your behaviors, words, emotions – so what are you teaching them? What are they learning from you? What do YOU need to change?

We are all one – on You Tube

This article is a great introduction for how yoga can benefit kids. I see it as a way for kids to connect to their body, learn to control their movement and breath, and be grounded. When some kids have a hard time talking about painful issues, yoga could be a great tool to get the emotional energy moving and release energy.

Nourish the Children is a foundation which sends Vitameal, a specific meal formulation to Africa, Asia, and China. Vitameal was specifically designed to be suitable for starving children as a highly nutritious, easily absorbed food – that also must be cooked (to kill bacteria that might be in the water). The school would have people purchase and donate bags of Vitameal which is automatically sent to the areas in needs. When you donate a product (rather than money), you know exactly how your contribution is being used.

If you want to know how this can be used as a fundraiser for your child’s school, call me 206-851-8276 or email me at robyn@thriving-child.com. check out www.howisey.millionsofmeals.com for more information on the Nourish the Children Foundation and Vitameal.

Have you ever wondered how to improve your child’s attention span without prescription medicine?

Researchers at the University of Cincinnati may have found a solution for you. The researchers recruited 33 boys aged eight to 10 for a study involving supplementation with DHA, an omega-3 fatty acid and the principle fatty acid in the gray matter of the brain. The boys were divided into three groups that received either a placebo, a low-dose (400mg) DHA supplement, or a high-dose (1,200 mg) DHA supplement. Using MRI brain imaging to test the boys’ attention level, the scientists found that both the low-dose and high-dose DHA groups experienced greater increases in attention. The imaging tests also revealed increased activity in the prefrontal cortex. This finding comes as no surprise since low activity in the prefrontal cortex is associated with attention deficit disorder. I recommend omega-3 supplements, such as our Omega-3 Power formula, which contains 580mg of DHA per serving to all of my patients with ADD.

To Your Brain Health,

Daniel G. Amen, MD CEO, Amen Clinics, Inc.
Distinguished Fellow, American Psychiatric Association

Susan McLeod

The key is to focus your energy, reaction and relationship on what your child is doing right, and like a fire starved of oxygen, unwanted behaviors will simply extinguish themselves.

By Susan McLeod

Sometimes the best intentions can lead to the worst outcomes. That’s the case with the most common course of action parents and other caring adults usually take to help challenging children overcome unwanted behaviors.

The common course of action is attempting to “solve” the problem with focused attention, time, energy and resources. With easier-to-raise children, this might work to some degree. But with challenging children, the typical result is that the unwanted behavior grows into a bigger problem – it happens more often, or more intensely or both. The right intention backfired and produced the exact opposite what was expected and desired.

This unintended result is no mystery. There is an underlying universal law is at work wherein whatever we focus on grows. That might be a child who forgets her homework, or doesn’t wear his glasses, hits first, bites when excited, swears when mad… Problem behaviors are myriad, and our children seem to figure out the ones that irritate us the most. If lying is the No. 1 no-no in your family for generations, the challenging child in that lineage is sure to float some whoppers.

Focusing on the problem fails us and the child

So let’s take an unwanted behavior and follow how the scenario plays out under conventional parenting.

Let’s say a child wets the bed. The first course of action might include buying plastic liners for the bed and limiting liquids before bedtime. This causes tension – the child is thirsty, but he can’t have something to drink because he “might wet the bed.” There is no trust or expectation that the child will grow out of this. The child may feel resentment or like he is a target. The chore of changing the wet bedding might become another adversarial point.

Parents are often advised to wake the child multiple times during the night and get him to the bathroom to urinate in efforts to avoid an accident. Now the whole family’s sleep is disrupted.

Parents are also advised to track the patterns of wetting – when, what happened prior, and to adjust the waking times to precede them. They are advised to purchase a bedwetting alarm that is attached to the child’s underwear to detect moisture. When the alarm sounds, the parents are to wake the child to visit the bathroom. Then reattach the alarm. The parents are also advised to put the child in pull-up diapers.

In a short time, bedwetting has become a huge focus in the life of this family. And even if unintended, it has also become the focal point of who the child is: “I am a bedwetter.” The child may not be aware that he is anything other than his unwanted behavior.

Eventually the vast majority of children will outgrow the physical problem of bedwetting, but perhaps not so easily the effects on his self image or the relationship with his parents and peers.

Focusing on the child’s strengths changes everything to positivity & success

There is a shorter, more effective route to extinguish unwanted behaviors and boost the child’s self image at the same time. It is the Nurtured Heart Approach^(TM) created by Howard Glasser, and it’s a 180-degree turn about from the conventional model.

Glasser’s approach isn’t designed for problem behaviors, but for highly challenging children. If the Tucson-based therapist was still in private practice and you called for an appointment to cure bedwetting, you would likely hear him say, “You can’t engage me to fix that problem, but I guarantee you, if you engage me to teach you how to nurture a strong relationship with your child, the bedwetting will stop as a natural outflow of getting the energy of the relationship going in the right direction.”

Glasser’s approach requires that parents not talk about the unwanted behavior. Instead, the approach applies a whole-child intervention that includes recognizing, appreciating and supporting who the child is, which is much more than any unwanted behavior, be it bedwetting, tantrum-throwing, swearing, lying, substance abuse and so on.

Based on Glasser’s book, “Transforming the Difficult Child: The Nurtured Heart Approach,” here is a 3-Step Formula to extinguish unwanted behaviors.

Step 1: Energize the whole child, and everything that’s going right.

No one is a one-dimensional person as defined by an unwanted behavior. So be clear on who your child is as a whole person. ’Energize’ means to apply intention, attention, and lots of emotion and reaction to seeing and saying everything that the child is doing right, everything that supports who your child is at his or her best and the qualities that you want to grow through your focused intention and energizing.

Glasser’s approach includes four distinct types of recognitions to energize success and create a strong relationship between parent and child and rewrite a child’s self image to one that is positive and based on his or her strengths, character and unique giftings. Parents focus on seeing their child anew from a perspective of, “I’m going to become aware of everything my child is doing right and what that says about him or her as a person with great character and values.”

The parent recognizes and appreciates every ounce of effort the child puts forth in keeping the rules, because there is always some level of effort involved; and when a challenging or intense personality is involved, it is usually a huge amount of effort being expended at any given moment to follow the rules, and this effort is rarely ever recognized or appreciated by parents or teachers.

Step 2: Recognize and appreciate every moment the unwanted behavior is not happening or that it is happening less.

Parents who have been engaged in conventional modes of problem-solving with a challenging child are usually exhausted and baffled that their efforts are backfiring and making matters worse, and because they are such caring, concerned parents, they try even harder to rectify the situation and to help their children find success. In this crisis mode, and with that level of heightened awareness, parents often feel that a child is “always“ and “only” doing the problem behavior or “never” keeping the rules or doing anything positive.

This is the same universal principle of focused attention at work. When we think (believe, set our intention) that our child is always doing this or never doing that, that is all we can see. Our thoughts, intentions and judgments about the child are programming our brains to be on high alert and look out for only the problem behaviors; and we really do not see anything that our child is doing right.

But the reality is that no child is breaking ALL the rules ALL of the time. That means there is a lot going on for a parent to recognize and appreciate about the child’s efforts.

The child who loses his temper and break things stops at some point. “I appreciate that you’re not breaking anything right now. I know you’re still mad, and that shows me that you are using a lot of self control right now to stop yourself.”

The child who screams and bites eventually has to take a breath. “Look at you, you’re not screaming right now or biting. I know that you are really upset, but look at you being so powerful. You are learning how to handle your strong feelings and not break the rules.” Typically, a challenging child who hears such language while she is on the in-take portion of breathing, perhaps seconds before intending to continue her screaming and biting, will instead have a jaw-dropping experience of feeling seen and appreciated and exhale an incredulous, “I am? Yes, I am!”

To continue the first example of the child who wets the bed. Perhaps one night he wakes while urinating and finishes up in the bathroom. That’s a milestone to be celebrated! “Wow! It’s happening already. You’re starting to feel when you need to go and you’re waking up. Way to grow!” Eventually, a nap or a night will come when the child does not wet the bed. You guessed it, it’s party time.

Step 3: De-energize the unwanted behavior.

‘De-energizing’ means that you pull the power plug on the unwanted behaviors by giving them little or no energy; it means that the parent gives no relationship to the child at the time the unwanted behavior appears. It’s like starving a fire of oxygen, it simply cannot grow and extinguishes itself.

Relationship takes the form of attention, interaction and reaction, so the parent does none of that when the unwanted behavior appears. If the behavior is a broken rule, for example, swearing, the parent says a simple, “Reset,” and moves immediately to back to Step No. 1 by saying as soon as the child stops swearing, “I appreciate that you’re not swearing right now.”

The parent of the child who wets the bed simply does not discuss it, but moves quickly to Step No. 1. Perhaps with a transition of, “I know you’re disappointed, and what I see is that you’re handling that strong feeling really well without breaking any rules. Change the bed and I’ll see you at the breakfast table in 15 minutes.”

Important aspects of de-energizing negativity are that parents do not lecture or provide pep talks at a child’s point of failure. Doing so is the equivalent of telling the child on one hand that it’s not OK to do the unwanted behavior, but with the other hand, you are handing the child $100 bills worth of relationship. In other words, the child is getting your undivided attention, strong emotions and intense eyeball-to-eyeball interaction with you over having a problem. With Glasser’s approach, parenting no longer give a child the prize of their relationship for having problems or breaking rules.

Consider a child who is sad that a parent is often out of town for work. Suddenly the child realizes that all she has to do is act out in school, and bingo, the father’s travel is cut short and he is picking her up from school and talking for hours about how she must straighten up in school because getting a good education is so important to a good life. He might rearrange his whole life to more closely oversee her so that she succeeds in school, only to disappear again when she does get back on track. Smarter is the parent who provides an intense level of connection, emotion and relationship in a proactive and preventive manner when the child is behaving well.

De-energizing negativity is not about withholding relationship as a punishment. In fact, the point is that punishment itself backfires and is not necessary to guide a child to live out his or her greatness. That’s why the disengagement to de-energize negativity lasts only as long as the misbehavior – perhaps only seconds – just long enough for the parent to find a new moment of success to re-engage the child.

Master the principles and techniques in these three steps and you will be able to extinguish unwanted behaviors in your child, and conversely, ignite desired behaviors and good character.

More than that, you will have a strong relationship with your child based on something far more exciting and long-term than a challenging behavior. You will be connecting heart-to-heart with who your amazing son or daughter is at their core being.

© 2010 EnergyParenting.com REPRINT THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR OWN NEWSLETTER OR WEBSITE with permission: Publish the article in its entirety with the following attribution: Susan McLeod is the publisher of www.EnergyParenting.com, the online learning center for the Nurtured Heart Approach, where you can sign up their enewsletter and receive a free eBook, “The Top 2 Biggest Parenting Mistakes,” that explains why normal parenting, teaching and therapy techniques backfire with challenging children.

I will also be expanding my practice into anti-aging health and skin care. I’m very excited to offer some of the best multi-vitamins available, for both kids and adults, as well as skin care to stop the process of aging in the skin, address acne, and wrinkles. This is a very exciting time and I’m excited to share this with you. www.howisey.ageloc.com

Read it a couple of times and think about it – are you expressing or emoting?

Thoughts are the language of mind.
Feelings are the song of consciousness.
Stillness is the space between both.

Feelings often result in expressions.
Thoughts always result in emotions.

When you emote instead of express,
the space in between (YOU) is in chaos.

How and what you express, depends on you.
You are the space in which mind and consciousness exist.

Expression in chaos, is emotion, and is mind.
Expression in stillness will always invoke consciousness.

Your experience is the result of your expression.

When love, joy, freedom and truth
have become the song of your experience,
you will know that life has become your expression.

– YIN, 2010

Kevin introduced the word Genshai today.

It means to never act/speak/behave in a way that will make someone feel small;

never let anyone treat you small, and;

never treat yourself small.

I love this. I won’t elaborate much because I think each can let it sink in what Genshai means to them and perhaps where they are not honoring Genshai.