Relationships PART I - Helping or not?

I haven’t posted anything here in a while. I feel like I’ve been neglectful of something I was so excited about. Isn’t that always the way of it? Well, I decided, to help me over the hump, I would just post the talk I gave at a local gathering. There are MANY things/ thoughts imbedded here, and I will likely come back to this as a jumping off point for future posts… I'm splitting it into two... why? I don't even know! ("I dont even known" is becoming my favorite saying, as my teen girls all mimic each other and the culture of adolescence spans time and space.)

 

Thank you to Jackie Dozier over at AIDS Care for inviting me out to such a great event focused on women and girls of color and their health.

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A social gathering talk PART I

 

So, as I was thinking about what I would talk about today, and 15 minutes isn’t a long time to talk about something you spend all day, 6 days a week talking about, I tried to think of the most common things I see working with girls and their families

1.       either the relationships are directly related to the problem (like a mom who is unpredictable or a dad who is abusive)

 

2.     the relationships are not supporting them in a healthy way so that they can get through an unrelated problem quickly, (like a teen who is really struggling to deal with a school problem and the parents don’t really know what’s going on)

 

3.     the relationship is maintaining a problem (a parent who lets their anxious child avoid safe situations, making the anxiety worse. [I see more for suburb kids]

 

4.     the relationship doesn’t change as the child changes (the child is getting older, the level of collaboration, support stay the same)

 

5.       The relationship doesn’t fit the kid - The child as a disability (mental health, physical, learning problems) or the personality and temperaments don’t match.

 

6.       And last, the most common thing I see, there is a disruptive child and the parents want me to make the child more compliant. And you talk to the child and they have already decided that the relationship with their parent isn’t worth it. Maybe because there are other things that are more important (like being cool in front of their friends) or maybe because they started off in one of those other situations I mentioned before… many times kids get to the point of “I can’t do anything right anyway.”

 

 

Conversations from a Classroom

One of the ways I pass my time is to serve as a Behavioral Health Consultant in two local Head Start Centers. Last week was their last week for the year. I went in to say goodbye to the children that were leaving and also just to hang out with the teachers and wish them a Happy Summer. Teachers are amazing creatures to me... but that's another topic for another day.

A group of us were having one of those "back in our day" and "I just can't understand kids today" sort of conversations. But because we all work with parents the focus was a little different. It revolved around the difficulty there often is in getting parents to participate in school activities with their children. One of the teachers suggested that Head Start mandate parent involvement and participation in parenting workshops. I think that would be great, although I doubt it would work in any simple form. There would need to be real incentives to address real barriers that parents face. And there would need to be real consequences for families that just flat out refused to comply. Neither is something that poorly funded programs like Head Start can really address well without careful planning... (here's another great topic for another day's blog).

Another theme, one of my favorite themes, is this idea of parents who restrict there children from playing outside. Well, maybe restrict is too strong a concept. More like, they don't encourage their children to play outside. These kids sit inside and play video games or engage in other non - physical activities most of the time while at home. One of the teachers said that there were children in her class this year who really struggled with being involved in the classroom because they were so weak. And others who have no idea how to entertain themselves during free-choice time. These are two groups of children who often complain about being on the play ground or taking walks. Who seek out the teachers often rather than knowing how to engage with other children appropriately. The group of us recalled how, when we were young, we hit the door as soon as we woke up. We ate lunch on the porch so as not to miss anything. We came home when the "street lights came on." Having to stay inside was like a punishment. Nobody worried that no one had cell phones back then, or that we would get hurt or that we wouldn't be able to solve some child- sized problem. Because we could solve the problem. At least, we knew how to try first, before we asked for help from a parent we knew was in the house (or a phone call away for those of us with working parents) if we needed them.

Finally, and this is another of my favorite topics to talk about with parents, we talked about parents who don't know how to play. How does that happen? Are they the adults that were once the children who never played outside? Do they think that you outgrow play? Do they feel silly?

When you talk about parents who need to "learn something" it implies that they are lacking in some skill. That if you just teach it to them, they will do it and do it well. And this may be true for some parents. But the truth is, there are other reasons parents don't participate at their kids' school, encourage outdoor play, or engage in playful activities with their children. One is fear. I'll let you think on that one until another day. Another reason is that they don't know that they should do these things. They don't know the value of these things and/ or they don't see them as falling within the scope of their parenting role. Parents have come to rely on schools and teachers to teach many of the values and skills that were once the sole responsibility of families. And indeed, schools should shoulder some of the burden. But let's not forget that the first and most powerful teachers your children have are you.

What did your children learn from you today?