Nothing Works for All Kids, Except the Stuff that Does

It's not going to suit everyone's taste, but Despair.com does spoofs on motivational posters that are seen in offices and cube farms the world over. One of their posters I enjoy is one that quips "You're unique...just like everyone else in the world." I enjoy it just for the sarcasm, but I also appreciate a truth that it gets at.

Sometimes when parents are considering learning some strategies for making parenting easier, they are concerned that there really aren't any approaches that are effective, because "Nothing works for all kids." Well they're right. Every child is unique. And there is no strategy or technique that is going to play out precisely the same way with all kids. And some will play out very differently with different kids. This, in fact, is one of the reasons why I think counseling and parent coaching can be so helpful. "Off the rack" parenting approaches found in books though often helpful, can frequently frustrate parents as their kids respond very differently than the book predicts. And that's not to mention that you can find books that recommend just about anything you can imagine, so there's little consistency from book to book. I work with lots of parents who have often read a at least a half dozen parenting books, and are well informed yet confused because none of the advice seems to mesh together.

So, yes, kids are all unique. And no particular strategy or technique is going to be helpful with all kids. But in my experience, there are principles that have proven to be helpful from classrooms to home and with kids of widely varying temperaments. It is in the particulars of the application that the principles need to vary from child to child.

Examples of Principles You Count On:

When limit setting and consequences become the focus of the relationship, and opportunities for connection aren't there or are too few, things tend to go down hill. 

Control is a basic human need. When it is shared with children in appropriate ways, kids are much more apt to be cooperative. 

Attention to approximations of behaviors you're wanting from your child tends to bring about more of those wanted behaviors.

Attention on what is going poorly will lead to more poor behavior, and will also lead to the desired behaviors decreasing as well. 

Kids who are given both verbal and "action messages" that they are capable, responsible people tend to behave more capably and responsibly.

So you can feel good that there are some proven principles that are helpful with kids across the board. And it is true that kids do vary in the particulars. For some parents, especially those with kids who have easier temperaments, figuring out their kids and how principles  like these might apply is pretty straight forward. For those parents who have kids with more difficult temperaments, or who find it more challenging to figure out how the principles might best be applied with their kids, then coaching and/or counseling can be helpful.

Making Fun

I came across this parody site, Done Getting Things, the other day and enjoyed it thoroughly. It lampoons a range of productivity sites, mostly GTD themed ones, from the Zen varieties to de-cluttering oriented ones. One of the ones I enjoyed most was Annihilate Mr. Procrastination with your Zen Tank. Also worthy of mention is Declutterization 101A—5 Ways to Declutter Your Life. Just the unnecessarily convoluted redundant title was enough to make me smile.

I hope they keep posting more content here. Enjoy. 

Demotivation Posters

Despair.com has a whole series of these "Demotivational" posters. If you've ever had the feeling that your boss hung one of the "legit" versions of this sort of motivational poster in your office to squeeze extra work out of you, you'll likely enjoy these. If you find this one funny, check out their site. They have a whole series. Check out their Pessimist's Coffee Mug while you're there. You can probably already guess what it says. Once you've seen a couple of these posters you'll probably never be able to see a "legit" one of these again without laughing inside.

Forgotten Car Roof Items & the Cycle of Luck

When I was 14 years old I had my first boom box, earned with what was then the boyhood rite of mowing lawns in the neighborhood. They weren't cheap when the first came out. My friend placed it on top of his grandfather's Plymouth Barracuda, with an on-dash push button shifter, as we were packing up for home from a fishing trip. After seeing and hearing several other motorists pointing and waving at us and yelling things we couldn't make out, we finally stopped and got out. We were amazed to see my treasured Toshiba boom box still sitting up there several blocks later. If you recall the design on the early boom boxes was much more upright and flat than the more recent lower profile design, so it was remarkably impressive that it stayed upright on the ride. It probably helped that my friend's grandfather was no speed demon, despite the hi-tech push button shifting. My luck with forgotten items on the roof has grown increasingly worse over the years. Maybe 15 years ago, I left a Nissan stainless thermos cup on the roof, which functioned amazingly like one of those twirling lawn sprinklers as it tumbled off my Toyota pickup. Despite the impressive random coffee streaks on my truck and the parking lot my thermos cup thankfully only suffered cosmetic dents.

Last night my wife and I were taking our 7-year-old daughter and her friend out to dinner. While my wife was getting the booster seats situated, she placed her keys on top of the car. When we were just about to be seated at Red Robin, my wife noticed her keys weren't with her. We went out to the car and looked for them. She recalled that she had put them on the roof of the car. We called a neighbor who was nice enough to look around on the street by our house to see if they were there. We didn't want to wait until after dinner for someone to pick them up that would have no way of knowing whose they were. No luck. We did a small exercise in the physical sciences as we tried to figure out where they would have been most likely to have gained enough momentum to slide free of the car's roof. After much deliberation and calculation of possible trajectories we concluded it must be somewhere between our house and Red Robin. Lots of driving around. No keys.

After talking with a local homeless man, who was kind enough to offer to keep his eye out for us, and posting an ad on Craigslist, the implications began to dawn on us. With the electronic entry key fobs, if the keys had fallen off closer to the house, all it would take is a drive down the street at night for any less-than-scrupulous person to locate the car in front of the house with no problem, and voila, noiseless entry into to two cars and to the house. So to cover the possibility of the keys having been lost nearby, we are now out a couple of car clubs, four re-keyed house locks and the two lost key fobs. Don't those those fobs seem a bit overpriced? So the question is, have I used up all my forgotten roof item luck...or am I now finally due to restart another cycle where I'll be as lucky as I was with the boom box Barracuda experience? I'd better not push it.