Continuing on with parenting skills, spousal skills and what makes a good parent, let’s speak a little on the concept of feeling grateful. An old story I heard about a younger man, who was having marital problems, asking an older man how he had such a good marriage for so many years, has a lot of meaning. The older man replied “In my day we didn’t expect so much, so we got a lot more”. This is so true. Being grateful, right here, right now is essential in parenting skills and what makes a good parent. Having this mentality helps us to decrease our material needs, which are actually material wants and are endless, and expand our spiritual needs. To be grateful right now requires looking within and using our brain. It is the starting point for coming to terms with who we are and what we have accomplished and how far we have to go. In this self exploration and coming to gratefulness as a conclusion is the greatest gift you can give to yourself, your spouse and your children. Continue reading What Makes a Good Parent, Working and Family and Parenting Skills Part 2

Are you busy these days? Are you working a lot to pay the bills? Are you not working enough to pay the bills? Is your family having challenges because of it? These are the overwhelming issues of the modern American family. I want to give a few pointers today in to how to maybe help a little with these serious issues in regards to how your family holds up. Some of what goes into what makes a good parent is scheduling in your family time.

Let’s start with why you became a family in the first place. Parenting skills and what makes a good parent is all about keeping an eye on the prize. What is the prize? It is recognizing, through all the craziness that is going on all around you, that you are truly lucky, fortunate and blessed to have a family. For this conversation, let’s visualize the last statement to only include your nuclear family. If your bigger family isn’t a huge challenge for you, you can also include your parents and in-laws and cousins. Continue reading What Makes a Good Parent, Working and Family and Parenting Skills

I want to talk about something I have been noticing more and more lately. This is the story of weak parents. When I was a kid, before my parents and my two older sisters and I would go out, my mother would look at us and say, “If you act inappropriately at the restaurant, or store, it will be the last time you come out with us”. Literally, every time we went out as a family she would say pretty much the same thing. She made it clear to us what was acceptable and what wasn’t when we go out in public. What happened? Did that become an inappropriate conversation for parents to have with their kid? One important aspect of what makes a good parent is teaching your kids expectations of what behavior is acceptable.

The reason I bring this up is yesterday I was in the supermarket and two young children, I think a girl and boy, were running down the aisle and knocked down a display. I was looking for the parent to come up and take a hold of her or his kids and have a serious talk with them. What took place was the parent came up to her children, kneeled down, and said, you two need to be more careful, in a warm and fuzzy tone. She then hugged them and they ran off. The mother took a deep breath and looked around and shrugged to the onlookers like myself. I was thinking to myself, “that can’t be it”. It’s not that the mother didn’t love her children, but what makes a good parent is teaching the kids lessons that will empower them to succeed and to be responsible. Continue reading What Makes a Good Parent, The Weak Parents

What makes a good parent is creating a true and honest picture for our children. As a parent you must do what you can as long as it teaches them the right lessons. What is important to learn is that you can do a great job as a parent and still one of your children may make decisions that you can’t do much about. It is the proverbial, “you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink”. What makes a good parent is recognizing when you are leading them to water and when you are trying to make them drink.

My oldest son in college had a full scholarship. All he needed was to keep a B average. We prepped him about Continue reading What Makes a Good Parent and Accepting What You Can Do

It’s been a long time since I wrote about my kids and their computer addiction. The first time I wrote about the problem was three plus years ago. My two oldest teens were staying up to 4 in the morning after they supposedly went to sleep. They were getting unsocial, grades were slipping and they weren’t going out anymore.

I took the computers away except for school and never allowed computers in their room. The computer addiction was quite apparent at this time. Continue reading Computer Addiction and Your Kids

How has your blended family blended? Is there tension between the kids, between you and your spouse, you and your step kids?

The way to success in the blended family is dependant on family in your world view. It’s easy to talk family is the most important thing to you, but do you live it?

During these stressful financial times it’s critical to have family dinners, not as an after thought but as a priority. Because our younger kids spend time between their birth mother and our family I make sure that Continue reading How is Your Blended Family?

We are now going to talk about the third part of “what makes a good parent rules”. Even when you are doing a good job with your teens, they will find ways to test you. One of them is not returning your phone call when they go out. If you don’t want to go insane, tie their privileges to them responding to your phone call in a timely manner. Furthermore, set up times when they go out when they should check in so you have some sort of control when they are out. If you don’t do this yet and are thinking this is micromanaging, let me give you something to think about.

Remember what these “what makes a good parent” articles are about. They are about being able to let go with your teen and not be miserable. Trust me, the less you are stressing out about your teen going out, the better the experience is going to be for you and for them. If you know they have good common sense and represent you well out in the world, you will be less stressed. If they are doing well in school, you will feel better about letting them go out. Furthermore, on this front, when they are doing well in school they tend to hang out with a better, brighter group. Lastly, when they are staying out late or for a long time, knowing that you can get a hold of them greatly diminishes stress.

On a closing note, with this “what makes a good parent” topic, allowing your teen to have more freedom and seeing that for the most part they handle it well, is another opportunity for you to be proud of the job you are doing as a parent. Remember, raising great responsible kids, is a critical part of helping create a great society. When you look around at all the problems in society and all the bad news on TV you will be able to feel good that you are playing a huge part in not adding to the mess.

Sincerely,

Dr. Bocknek

The Problem Solving Expert for Parents and Families

*******

Dr. Robert Bocknek is the problem solving expert for marriage, parents and families at www.takebackthehome.com and www.keyboard-culture-parenting.com.  He can be reached at bocknek@takebackthehome.com. He is author of the “Take Back the Home course” and the “Learning how to Learn course” which can be seen at www.takebackthehome.com.

We have already discussed in part 1 that independence is a natural occurrence, so let’s move into setting up ground rules so we as parents can survive this time without going insane and they as teens can go out without ruining their lives before they even start.

What makes a good parent is preparing for this inevitable time by setting up ground rules. The first thing for you to think about, as a parent, is having rules about what kind of things have to take place for the teen to earn the right to have more independence. Yes, I just said that going out is a privilege and not a right. It is critical, as a parent, that this rule is not negotiable. I can to tell you from experience that if you don’t want to spend long hours worrying about them or not worrying and getting that phone call that you don’t want to get, take control.

Now, let’s talk about what some of those rules ought to be in order to get those privileges.

The “What makes a good parent” rules:

• The teen needs to exhibit a responsible demeanor that justifies new privileges

• The teen needs to being doing well in school

• The teen needs to respond to a parent in a way that the parent can be comfortable when the teen is away

Responsible demeanor means your teen recognizes that you are the boss and not them. It means that they have a responsibility to act with dignity out in the world and not like a thug. Teens are a work in progress. They learn by watching their friends or by other teens they want to be friends with. Without teaching your teens about their responsibilities, they will be quite susceptible to those other teens. What makes a good parent is teaching them constantly what a good demeanor is and rewarding them for displaying good judgment with more privileges and taking away privileges for bad judgment.

Now, we are going to discuss good grades. You can’t get around it, parents. A huge part of what makes a good parent is helping your teen achieve in life. Socializing is an important part of growth in teenagers. No one is arguing that. But be a leader with your teen. If they aren’t doing well in school, they aren’t going to do better with more socializing. It is critical that your teen associates privileges with doing well in school. If you have bought into the idea that grades don’t really matter, I have 3 words for you… “get over it”. If your teen is not doing well in school, they shouldn’t be going out, period, until they improve.

Please read part 3.

Sincerely,

Dr. Bocknek

The Problem Solving Expert for Parents and Families

*******

Dr. Robert Bocknek is the problem solving expert for marriage, parents and families at www.takebackthehome.com and www.keyboard-culture-parenting.com.  He can be reached at bocknek@takebackthehome.com. He is author of the “Take Back the Home course” and the “Learning how to Learn course” which can be seen at www.takebackthehome.com.

When your kids are hitting the mid to late teens, the art of knowing when to let them spread their wings, plays a major role in what makes a good parent. With each year from 15 years on, your teens will want more and more independence. This can be a miserable time or a great time depending on how you handle it.

I would like to talk about a few points that will help bring it to an empowering time rather than a miserable one. Before we make these points, we need some ground rules. First you must accept  independence as a natural occurrence. The second thing is the parent needs to evaluate, within themselves, why they would or wouldn’t allow a teen to have more privileges. The third part is that for a parent to allow more independence, the teen needs to exhibit a few important characteristics.

Let’s first talk about independence as a natural occurrence. Continue reading What Makes a Good Parent and Knowing When to Let Go

Finally, what makes a good parent in regards to your children’s health is keep your children’s schedule as regular as possible. Children’s bodies are developing. They need rhythms. Getting them to bed at a regular hour is essential to this rhythm.

Feed your child good food as often as possible. Junk food is ok but it should be the treat not the staple of what they eat whenever they are hungry. Nutrition is the building block that our immune response is based on.

Give your children the love and consistency they need. Their mental health adds to their physical health.

I hope these articles give you the strength to fight the knee jerk reaction to go for drugs at the first moment there is something wrong with your child. Remember the goal is a healthy child and because we often associate giving a drug as doing something very healthy, it is often the cause of many health problems.

Sincerely,

Dr. Bocknek

The Problem Solving Expert for Parents and Families

*******

Dr. Robert Bocknek is the problem solving expert for marriage, parents and families at www.takebackthehome.com and www.keyboard-culture-parenting.com.  He can be reached at bocknek@takebackthehome.com. He is author of the “Take Back the Home course” and the “Learning how to Learn course” which can be seen at www.takebackthehome.com.