Right at the same time we are giving greater emphasis to the importance of good teaching in our schools, more students are coming into the classroom less well prepared to participate. They often are not motivated to work hard, listen and pay attention, and frequently do not demonstrate social skills that permit them to be successful with other students. Schools could and should get parents involved and help them learn how to better prepare children, but most school personnel think this is a thankless, often ineffective, and difficult task. Many parents are not interested. Instead of that, many schools look around to see what might be available to help them with all students including those who are disruptive or unmotivated. They often settle on character programs hoping these will enable them to introduce positive behavior that will help students participate more successfully.

We have organized and introduced a character development program in over one hundred schools. We have learned that character education programs are very different and the difference can determine success or failure. For instance, many programs which schools use teach positive vocabulary in an attempt to understand honesty, responsibility, integrity, and other important concepts. While this is a positive step in the right direction, the term character actually means that an individual knows more than the meaning of concepts or has an academic understanding of the difference between right and wrong. We want our children to internalize these concepts and actually do what helps and does not harm themselves or other people. This may be easy to say but it is actually difficult to ensure unless a person who is learning is actually and kindly confronted with the consequences of positive or negative acts and has a chance to discuss (internalize) it. Learning about this, we proposed to teachers that they conduct short class meetings with students where all discuss a behavior (e.g. gossip. lying, cheating, exclusion, and etc.) that a student actually demonstrates. Plus, it helps them understand how it might help or harm someone. Further, after examining that idea, we suggested to the teacher that he/she always identify “what is better,” to help students learn positive actions that eliminated the need for some actions that are not so good. We discovered that this approach carried over to the playground, to the bus, and even to homes where children began to tell their parents what could be done instead of something that was not good which was taking place in their families. At first school personnel were a bit embarrassed when parents told them about the children’s comments but then realized this was exactly what they wanted. This is because students were applying the ideas in their lives outside the classroom. Students changed and improved their abilities to work with each other, felt cared for, and achieved more. We are excited about it. You can find this character education program on AchievementSynchrony.com Let me know what you think.

We have had three teen self induced deaths over the last few months. Besides the true and compelling sadness of all this, it makes me wonder what is happening to our kids and what can be done about it. I have explored the idea that a lot of high achievement oriented youth feel stress, feel like there is no end to the pressure, and no matter how much they do it is still not enough. I have also explored the possibility that the fragmentation of families leads to emotional separation and when kids experience distress they do not feel close enough to seek help nor do they realize the pain their decision will inflict on their parents and other loved ones. I have considered the possibility that we do not have enough hard things for children to do when they are young so that they learn early how to face challenges and find ways to solve problems. I have even wondered whether we are teaching enough about morality, love, or social success.

It is often true that drug use is involved in some of these cases but for many others suicide is related to a loss of a relationship, a failure of some kind, or intense conflict and problems. One mother reported that her tall, handsome, successful son came home one day from school, went into his room, and shot himself for no apparent reason.

I would like to know what you think. I am working on a plan that schools and families could use and I would be interested in your ideas. Maybe together we could identify social, emotional, and educational solutions that will prevent these problems. Thanks in advance.

www.myfamilytrack.com

www.achievementsynchrony.com

www.sportsmentalskills.com

www.6innovations.com

I haven’t written on this blog for several months partly because I have been busy developing a program for married couples and parents. In a previous article I mentioned that as I have traveled around the country and in several other countries as well, I have had the privilege of talking with many good people who wanted answers to questions and others who were in need of more concrete help because either their marriage or their family was at risk.

I have been in this profession for a long time and thought that maybe I could come up with something that would help out (which I very much wish to do). I believe many of us need to join ourselves in a common effort to bring skills, hope, and encouragement to parents. So, in the last few months we have created Myfamilytrack.com which provides on line tools for married couples and parents plus provides opportunities to communicate with experts for a very small fee. In the next week we will be launching Achievementsynchronry.com which is an approach for school teachers (and whole schools) to form partnerships with parents so that both family and schools promote achievement. We have tested this and found that something amazing happens when parents and teachers care enough to work together.

We are also launching www.Sportsmentalskills.com for parents who enroll their kids in sports and who would like to use sports to teach self motivation, character, build confidence, and other mental skills. It will have a program for new coaches of little kids which we hope will help both coaches and kids have a great experience. Lastly, we are also launching www.sevenInnovations.com which provides, what we think will be, a remarkable tool for businesses and any other organization who wishes to create and complete innovations they believe will strengthen them. It has a feature that allows the families of the employees to use the information on MyFamilytrack.com. Our tests with several companies indicate so far there are many benefits to business and to employees and their families.

We are already having many people enroll and we are hopeful and encouraged. But, we believe that to really help people for the long term there needs to be someone who is connected as a resource to them over the long term. This person, we call a consultant, can work at this from his/her home, teach classes if you wish, and communicate with and build a network of people to consult with. We will provide training for you and communicate with and help you. If interested you can make a good part time income and we believe your work will be interesting and very rewarding. If interested would you please let us know right away.

I believe what we have done and are doing has the potential of making real time differences that help people. Come and join us if you wish.

Put your skills and interests to use by becoming a consultant or trainer through MyFamilyTrack.com

For the past three months I have been spending a lot of time writing for a website Myfamilytrack.com. It is going to be launched in April 2010. At the same time I am preparing a membership program called “LeadingFamilies,” which is the same name as this website. I want to explain why I am doing this.

I have had the great privilege of working with thousands of students and thousands of families during my professional career. I have been in many places in the United States and around the world. I am very grateful for the opportunities I have had. One time after I had given a speech in Germany the people there lined up to ask questions and there were so many people the line they formed went down an isle and wound partly around the room. This was not about my excellence as a speaker or popularity. The questions they asked were heart felt and about fairly serious things. I have wanted to find a way to provide something for parents and married couples who can’t afford therapy when they have problems, who occasionally need a suggestion or two, and/or who just want more help in carrying out the plans they have for their children.

As the years have passed it seems to me that some of the challenges parents face are more challenging than a couple of decades ago. It also seems to me that some parents are not recognizing how threatening the challenges are until their children have very serious problems. I have, for instance, seen many parents and children when these same children have been using controlled substances or have been heavily involved in pornography without the parents knowing anything about it. They were good parents but they were busy. I have also seen parents do what they think was useful in their families but have found that doing some of those things with their children is not leading to success. I have also seen many great, successful, and committed parents.

All the time this is going on family psychology and family sciences have advanced to the point where there are fairly clear research findings about children and therapies which could be used to help people. Plus there are many sound principles that emerge from working with families. So, I am thinking it might be time to do something more. If you read this would you let me know what you think about paying a small amount of money annually that would give you consultations with child psychologists when you wanted to ask questions. For this same plan you would also receive success oriented information related to your children each year at the time of their birthdays. This is designed to help you prepare them for success the next or coming year. This will help you prepare your children for developmental changes they will soon experience.

Secondly would you also let me know if you have a desire to participate in a fairly intensive online training program to help you change your family, yourself, and control or better influence the outcomes you want for your children. On Myfamilytrack.com you will find specific resources such as marriage enrichment and parent skill building programs. Our plan is to make these easily available and at a very low cost. I would appreciate your opinions and suggestions if you would care to offer them.

We are currently underway, assuming the two programs I have described will be useful to people. So, what do you think? Please let me know.

It is fairly well known that spouses are often like intimate enemies who know each other well, sometimes love and care for each other, but because of their familiarity are in the best position to hurt each other. Feeling vulnerable to a spouse is not new, of course, but instead of simply recognizing this or protecting ourselves from potential hurt it would be a good thing to understand more about what this means.

For example, feelings of attachment which attract us to one another and then seal the deal often make us feel vulnerable because our feelings are exposed and this means that we don’t love another person without feeling open to them. It is natural for us to wonder how well they are going to treat us. If there is conflict where meanness is displayed, we might forgive each other and make things better for a time, but the hurt often remains and its memory influences us. Thereafter, we might avoid what we argued about. We might also become more observant, listening for rising voice tones, inflections, body movements, and etc. This can happen without being conscious we are doing so but in many cases we still become more wary than we would otherwise be. In more extreme cases we might try more than one form of dishonesty so we are not criticized for a mistake we make. We might change the way we communicate. Instead of “personalizing” some idea by saying,” I think…” or, “This is my opinion…,” we might say that “things happen,”or “some people think that….” These types of indirect statements move us away from the glare of responsibility (and vulnerability) and give us a momentary feeling of security. But all this has consequences.

The more we engage in avoiding potential hurt, the less confident we are about the extent we love each other. Here it is again. Love is usually open, tender, caring, and considerate of each other. We make ourselves more vulnerable to the other person as a sign of love and tenderness hoping that the other person will be stable enough and exercise enough self-control to never hurt us. Meanness tends to eliminate some of that.

As we go along in marriage it is easy for us to accumulate protective mechanisms like barnacles to a ship’s hull. Or, it is easy for us to find ways of reassuring each other that we can be trusted and we will love and understand. If you need to shed a few barnacles, the benefit will be that you can create a more trusting form of love. Instead of your spouse being an intimate enemy, he or she can become an intimate friend and lover.

We work so hard to learn unselfishness and make every attempt to be concerned for others that it may seem strange to consider the idea that loving someone might be more for us than for them. The self centered life is familiar to most of us since most of us start out in life that way and examples of selfishness are all around us. There are many forms of it including over talking someone, cheating, lying, demanding that someone do something for us, affairs, excessive gambling, inappropriate drug use, an unwillingness to sacrifice, and criticizing the other person for failing to pay enough attention to us.

So what is this idea about loving someone and doing it for our own satisfaction? Before explaining, I think I should state that this is an often overlooked key to marital happiness and more of us would be happier if we learned how to use this idea.

The idea is derived from the notion that in marriage the outcomes we want most are to feel a great deal of love and happiness. Then there is more of both and each person is a better partner if each believes he and she are responsible for creating some portion of those feelings for themselves rather than depending wholly on the spouse to make them happy or feel loved. This is followed by the question of: “How does one person create those feelings?” Any sincere person who wishes to try out this idea will shortly come to the conclusion that creating feelings for himself will include saying and doing things which look like gestures of love for a partner, but which also have a reflected self oriented benefit.

Suppose a husband, for instance, sent his wife flowers as an indication of his love for her. She thanks him for them, but he says, “The flowers are for you but the sending of them is for me.” What does that mean?

He has found delight or fulfillment in the act of showing his love for her. This internalized reward for his actions will motivate other forms of similar behavior. She won’t care because she gets the flowers, but there is more. If she thinks about it, she will discover a new dimension of being loved. She is the person whom he finds the most delight in loving, she motivates him, inspires him, and he lifts himself to higher forms of behavior because of his love for her. That is much better than the flowers.

Some people are born more reactive to the environment than others. And some individuals grow up around excessive criticism and other forms of mistreatment which creates hurt and frustration. If both of these happen to the same individual then the result often is a very defensive person. More specifically it is a defensive, self protective brain which minimizes incoming information in order to protect oneself from potential hurt.

Most of us have heard the word “defensive,” but to ensure I am communicating I will describe the characteristics of defensiveness. (1) Difficulty accepting they are loved and often reject other people’s attempts to love them. (2) Fear of being controlled so they control others often by giving ultimatums or using absolutes such as “never,” or “always.” (3) Emotional aloofness and distance sometimes being close to their partners but withdrawing from them for even small offenses. (4) Wordy explanations for and descriptions of their own behavior, which is usually described as a reaction to or a victim of what someone else does, rather than an acceptance of responsibility for how they act (5) Contradictory behavior where what is said often is not matched by how they act, (6) A defensive person often forms a perception of another person, concludes this is what the other person thinks or feels, and then condemns them for it. (7) A defensive person seeks to get his way by swearing or demanding or arguing until the other person gives in.

As you might imagine dealing with such a person is difficult but it is possible to help them. These people often have tender feelings, care a great deal, and frequently do not know the consequences for their actions. So, the first step is to be willing to help rather than react negatively to this behavior by expressing anger and frustration. Getting angry at a defensive person obviously will justify to him or her that they are not cared for and their defenses are necessary.

The nature of the help typically requires that we be calm, warm, and persistent. But usually to be effective this will need to be accompanied by helping this person become acquainted with his or her feelings, his or her thoughts, and questions which help them make self descriptions (non judgmental) of themselves. During this process this person may falsely accuse, lash out, get angry and withdraw, and blame. These have to be overlooked while the focus is kept on “Let’s keep talking,” “empathy,” and “I can see your point of view.” Then it is often possible to invite this person to “understand, without agreeing,” with what you are saying. Inviting a defensive person to understand is an important step because it helps them avoid getting aroused. Once this happens they can usually be helped to listen better and discern between simple information and what might actually hurt them. When this happens it is then possible for a defensive person to understand that he or she is defensive and this sense of responsibility often leads to more balanced and humane communication. It takes time, but is usually worth it if a defensive person is able to make progress.

The Pew Research Institute recently reported a national survey where they compared views held by different age groups. They discovered a fairly wide gap between younger and older people in regard to lifestyle, relationships, moral behavior, and religion. The difference, or gap, is as wide as it was in the 1960’s when there was a lot of generational conflict over the Viet Nam war.

The idea of a difference between age groups is likely related to social change and we know this because historically political or social transformations are often indicated by generational differences. Not all of these social changes are positive, however, and usually have far reaching effects which may not be seen at the time they take place. In the cases where there are negative outcomes for us we often treat them like a historian reviewing the causes of the civil war and suggesting that if only certain things took place the war could have been avoided. By that time, however, people had been killed and the country devastated.

So now, what if we are in the middle of one of those social changes and we either like or do not like the direction it is going. And, what do we do if we do not like the suggested trends because we fear the consequences for our children will not be positive. We do not have to accept what appears to be going on around us, but we need to understand what else we might do. I have a couple of suggestions.

We can realize that children develop and grow over time and this gives us as parents a great deal of leverage and influence if we choose to use it. We can help our children identify directions they are going and then persuade them we can help them be successful. In the process we can teach them values and methods which are designed to help them acquire the lessons of life we hope they will learn. Families are made up of older more experienced pathfinders and younger less experienced individuals just for that purpose.

The second thing we could do is realize that the relationship between adults and children provide the social and emotional context where the forms of thought as well as what children come to believe are first learned from these adults, adopted by the child, and then the child adapts them to fit his own desires. When adults teach children the structure of language they also teach children the structure of thought. What this means is that the amount of time, the quality of relationship experience, and the degree of effort given to the process make a big difference. It is no minor thing when families spend little time together if the lack of time means their relationships are of poor quality. Let’s look around and find a little more time, find ways to make the time we spend powerful, and then teach what we want our children to know with great consistency. They are going to need the best we’ve got.