Active Parenting

Here's what we learned about this week:

To all you parents out there you should check out books by Michael Popkin on Active Parenting or activeparenting.com. We talked about it today and during Wednesday's class and it is quite interesting. I almost wish that I had children to practice it on. The idea is that rather than focusing on the undesirable behavior you should try to figure out the child's needs that perhaps are not being met. A memorable quote shared by Brother Williams goes something like this. You can never get enough of what you don't need because what you don't need can never satisfy you. I don't recall the original author of this quote. Anyway back to Active Parenting... One example would be:

Behavior
Undue attention seeking

Need
Contact & belonging

How to Help
Show interest in them before they act out, catch them when they're behaving, offer attention freely, they may just need a hug. Also teach them to contribute to the family or whatever group they may be involved with, it's not enough for them to just show up, and give them positive reinforcement and encouragement. Gotta go to class, ciao.