Parenting, Part 2.
Video Transcript:
Welcome back! Now we're gonna talk about the feedback I've gotten from the adolescents and the feedback I've gotten from the parents. We're going to see how sometimes we feel like we think we're from different planets, but a lot of times we want the same thing and just go about it differently. Let's see if we can get in sync and be able to read each other well enough to get what we want done.
Okay, the first thing. I hear a lot from the adolescents, "My parents don't listen to me. They always tell me what to do, but they don't tell me how to do it and they just don't listen to me." Parents, that's really hard for an adolescent because again, they're growing up and as they grow up they get different personalities; they form their own personality. So you have to interact with them a little differently and you have to figure out what that is. You can't look at it as, "I'm making a mistake or they're complaining about me or they feel like I'm not a good parent," because that's a lot of what we feel growing up and becoming a parent. We feel like we're not doing enough and sometimes that fear causes us to react in a negative way and they hold onto that.
Another thing that adolescents say is that, "I don't feel like I'm good enough. I feel like my sister is better than me or my brother is better than me and I'm the problem child." They're not the problem child. They're not your problem child. They just happen to have some issues, but that issue doesn't have to be a permanent state of being. Those issues can get rectified if we make changes in our behavior.
The changes in the behavior not only needs to come from the adolescent, but our behavior needs to change, cause one thing about being a parent--you're gonna always constantly grow. You're gonna always constantly be challenged and you're always constantly gonna be finding new ways to deal with new stuff. No rule book, no video is going to tell you that if you do all these things, this way, you're gonna have a happy, well adjusted child. No, it doesn't work that way. There are gonna be challenges throughout life. You remember how it was when you were a child? Were you consistent? Did you have your parent's ear? Were your parents always there to listen to you? Or did your parents say things to you like, "Do as I say, not as I do?" I hated when my momma told me that. I also hated, "Because I told you so." It's hard to unlearn these behaviors because regardless of how you feel about your parents, a lot of things you do with your child is from your parents and even though I know for myself, I used to say, "I'm not going to do this because my mom did it and I didn't like it when she did it." And then one day my daughter said to me, "You sound just like grandmother." I said, "Oh, I gotta rethink what I'm doing and back up." But I didn't take it as a negative and you shouldn't take it as a negative.
The common ground here is love. The common ground is the connection. Kids want discipline. They want it because when you discipline them, they know you care. There's a difference between discipline and putting down. Discipline and shutting down. You have to learn to reconnect. During these times of COVID virus, this is the perfect opportunity to reconnect with your child, to learn from your child--What they like, what they dislike, how they love school, what they didn't like about school, how they deal with their friends. We all know that bullying is a thing that happens all the time now, but it was around even when I was a kid, but it isn't as prevalent as it is right now. So there's different issues and sometimes as parents we feel like we don't know how to help our kids, but it's okay for your kids to know that you're not perfect. It's okay for your kids to know that you don't have the answer to everything. It's okay for them to know that you hurt too. That's all part of the bonding, that's all part of building a relationship.
And parents you always say that your kids don't talk to you, but have you set the tone, have you set the environment for them to come to you when they want to share things cause you're not always gonna hear good things. Sometimes you're gonna hear things and they're gonna really affect you, but you can't let them see that it's affecting you that way because then what's the purpose, what's the motivation for talking to you again if you're gonna react in a certain way. They're not gonna want to talk to you. You have to listen to them. A lot of times parents, I know you go through things in life and you've gone through things as a child. We also have adults here in our program that are still trying to deal with things that happened to them as a child. So it's okay for you to tell your child hey I'm sorry I didn't mean it that way because that's the way you start to make the change. Then you start to go back and rebuild the relationship. It's never too late. You can always rebuild. Let's take this up next time. You're not alone!