COVENANT CHURCH HOME        SANTA BARBARA, CALIFORNIA     OFFICE:805-965-WAVE MAP  CONTACT Home > Need Help? > Relationships Ocean Hills is deeply committed to helping you build strong relationships. Whether it is relationships with your family, your spouse, your significant other or with God - we want to come alongside you on your journey. Below is an article on Parenting written by Dr. Janet Minehan who is a part of our Ocean Hills family. We hope this article is helpful to those in our congregation who have children. If this information doesn't apply to you right now, check back on this page in the future - we'll change this information at regular intervals to highlight insights on different types of relationships. Do You Want to Raise Great Kids? Start By Being Great Parents by Dr. Janet Minehan As a doctor of counseling psychology (and a mother of 9), I am frequently asked, "How can I get my children to share?" or "How can I get my children to stop fighting with each other?" Better yet, "How can I get my children to follow through with their chores or do their homework?" These questions are older than I am, and remember, I have 32 year-old. When I was growing up, children were to be seen and not heard. Discipline was a swift swat on the behind, a gruff "go to your room" or a long lecture ending with "You are grounded!" These "disciplinary" techniques were neither very effective, nor were they used consistently. Parental responses were arbitrary and inconsistent. Further, families didn't have the current and plentiful "How to Parent" resources available to them at that time. Besides, if a child was a problem, there were relatives in the wings, willing, hopefully, to pitch-in. Today we have available parent magazines, parenting classes, college courses in child development, academic degrees in child and family development, high level child development research, and web sites devoted to parenting concerns and effective parenting strategies. Childhood and parenting issues are on our academic and media forefronts, and parents are being taught how to listen and talk to their children so their children will talk and listen to them. Tips from how to handle small children in the grocery store and how to survive the adolescent years and maintain one's dignity are readily available. Parents can read about how to develop sibling harmony, handle bedtime concerns, and how to get a child to brush teeth. So, who needs relatives? And why, with every resource out there, am I still being asked fundamental questions about parenting, by parents at their wits end? It seems we don't think of how we're going to parent before we have children. And, as you have figured out by now, our bundles of joy come without instructions for us, but with a full agenda of their own. They have original ideas about how things are going to be run around your house. It's only after they have taken charge that we buy and read books and, possibly, go to parenting seminars. We try everything we have learned but find nothing works for long. We even hear our own parent's words coming out of our mouths. Not possible, right? And why isn't anything working? As parents, we first have to ask ourselves what we are doing now to solve the problems. Most of us use threats (If you hit your sister again we are not going to the park!); pleadings (Please don't hit your sister again.); repetition of requests (How many times do I have to tell you…) and of course, the old and reliable wailing and gnashing of teeth. Parents may first try a method they read about or learned at the last seminar. Then, when that doesn't work, their response is often to yell -- and this may be loud enough to overwhelm the sound of the fighting and volume of the TV. They also punish by spanking and send the children to their rooms. We know none of these responses work and in reality all serve to prolong the problems. The parent may believe the punishment worked because the child is now compliant, at least for the moment. But this is a deception and typically parents feel badly for having lost their wits and self-control; their self-esteem (as well as the child's) is in the trashcan and the child will harbor resentment towards the parent for being treated in a harsh, disrespectful, and unreasonable manner. Barbara Coloroso (Giving Your Child The Gift of Inner Discipline, 1997) states that just because something works it doesn't necessarily make it a good parenting tool. The child's self-esteem as well as the parent's self-esteem must remain in tact. So what is the answer? There is not one answer for a variety of problems, but there are two ideas that are worth discussing. They are: (1) what is your parenting philosophy? And (2) how consistent is your approach to parenting? I believe if we, as parents, can hold on to these two ideas and their answers throughout our parenting (and grandparenting) years we will be better able to develop a solid foundation for our relationships with our children while maintaining and teaching self-control and keeping everyone's self-esteem in tact. Developing and honing a parenting philosophy is not something we think about during pregnancy or during an early morning feeding or as we say to our spouse with an elbow to the ribs: "You're turn." Before we know it, out come our parent's words and behaviors. Without thinking, we have reflexively adopted our parent's philosophy that they adopted from their parents…. Barbara Coloroso has found 3 tenets to be useful in evaluating hers and other people's parenting techniques. They are: Kids are worth it. You must believe this too because you are not in it for the money (Unless someone forgot to tell you something). And, they are worth it not for what they can do but simply for who they are. I will not treat a child in a way I myself would not want to be treated. If I wouldn't want it done to me, I have no business doing it to my child or any other child. If it works and leaves a child's and my own dignity intact, do it. Just because it works doesn't make it good. It must work and leave the child's and my own dignity intact. Self-esteem is then protected. The second idea worth asking yourself is: How consistent is your approach to parenting? When it is time for dinner, do you give your child one warning to turn off the TV and come to the table? Do you give two warnings to turn off the TV and come to the table? Three? Or does it depend on your mood and it seems the child might hold out long enough to see the exploding mother? Or do you just throw your arms up in the air, walk away and complain, "The kids never listen to me and do what I ask them." Whatever parenting approach you decide to use after weighing it against your own personal philosophy, inconsistency will guarantee its failure. Why is this? Because the child knows you don't mean it until you have said it three times, until you have exploded and particularly if you don't enforce your request to turn off the TV and come to the table. Think of it this way: Billions of dollars have been spent erecting hotels and huge rooms specifically for people to sit in to strengthen their behavior of mindlessly putting money in machines and pulling a lever to see if money will come out. These people can't put money in and pull the lever fast enough to see if they will get rewarded. Sometimes they do. Most times they don't. Once in a while they get lucky and get the big pay off. Parental inconsistency inadvertently strengthens children's behavior. They hold out with the hope they'll get lucky. It is not the strength of a consequence that teaches a child to mind, it is its surety. And, every once in awhile, the little ones know they will get lucky and get their way. As their parent, you need to let them know that "luck" doesn't work in your family because you are just too darn consistent. To quickly (and rather simply) answer the dilemma of getting your children to turn off the TV and come to the dinner table I would become a broken record. I would repeatedly and calmly say, "You may watch TV after you have eaten your dinner." As the parent, you have the power to turn off the TV. I have been so consistent in my approach that my children know they may: go outside and play; watch TV; play a video game, etc. after they have made their bed; emptied the dishwasher; dumped the trash…Trust me, consistency works in conjunction with the philosophy that my children are worth it and I would not do anything to my child I would not want done to me.