It’s incredibly frustrating when we ask our kids to do something they don’t want to do… or we tell them something they don’t want to hear… and they whine, complain, melt down, or become disrespectful. Not only is it exhausting to deal with the response, but their reactions make us worry about their ability to handle the fact that life is hard sometimes. Worse, the strategies we use to try to help them handle disappointment and frustration don’t usually help. In this episode, we’ll discuss what you can do to help your kids handle the fact that things aren’t always going to go the way they want them to.

We’d like to be able to make parenting decisions confidently...and then feel good about the decisions we've made. And we’d like to know how to handle the situations we face with our kids every day. But the truth is that many of us question ourselves as parents, wondering how to decide what’s best for our children… or how to respond most effectively in the moment when they do things that we don’t want or expect them to do. We can increase our confidence in our decisions -- and feel more in control in our daily lives -- when we create a Parenting Avatar that acts as a North Star to guide us and remind us how to be the parents we want to be.

You may recognize how important it is to understand what’s causing your children’s behavior if you want that behavior to change. However, for many of us it’s difficult to understand why kids do what they do. When we try, we only can see the situation from our perspective… which, unfortunately, only leads to negative assumptions  (“they just don’t feel like doing what I ask”) that not only impact our relationship, but also impact how kids feel and act in the long run. In this episode, we’ll discuss how you can get into your child’s world so you can see that when they’re misbehaving, they’re not just doing it because “they feel like it.” 

It’s incredibly frustrating to have to address the same issues over and over with our kids. We don’t want to have to ask them again and again to get their shoes on, or brush their teeth, or put their dishes away. We don’t want to deal with the drama or disrespect every single time our kids don’t get their way. We want them to learn how to act more responsible and be more resilient… but it’s hard to make those changes in the first place, let alone make them last. In this episode, we’ll discuss two factors that I’ve found over the years are most likely to predict the long-term positive change that we all want to experience.

It can be incredibly fulfilling to watch our kids open their gifts, to see their eyes light up, and to know that they really enjoyed what they received. But sometimes, instead of appreciating what they have, kids might mumble a quick “thanks” and then look for more… or they might compare their stuff to others’ stuff and start complaining about what they didn’t get. And while we encourage them to be more grateful, we usually don’t see long-term results until we address what’s causing their lack of gratitude to begin with.

When we think about the holidays, some of us imagine spending time with family and friends and making fun memories. Others think about the fact that our kids are going to be out of school, and they’ll spend that time whining, fighting, and complaining about each other... while we spend our time acting like a referee! It seems that the more we try to help our kids work through their issues, the more they whine about the unfairness of things. But when we address what’s causing the fighting to begin with, conflict simply doesn’t happen as often... and we can experience more of those memories we hope for.