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Some hope their children will be like sponges soaking up the truth and wisdom imparted by their parents. However appealing this philosophy might be, it seldom seems to catch on with their children.

The challenge of adolescence is to balance the right of the parents to feel they are in charge with the need of the adolescent to gain independence.

"To be a man, a boy must see a man."  (J.R. Moehringer)

"The thing that impresses me most about North America is the way parents obey their children"    (King Edward VII , 1841-1910)

Children today are under enormous pressures rarely experienced by their parents or grandparents. Many of today's children are being enticed to grow up too quickly and are encountering challenges for which they are totally unprepared.

We should not medicate the boys so they fit the school; we should change the school to fit the boy. (Leonard Sax, M.D. Ph.D)

Criticism is not a motivator.

Children do not develop on their own - they only develop within relationships.

It is what we say and do when we're angry that creates the very model our children will follow when dealing with their own frustrations.

Parenting style matters - a lot!

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Lying

 

 

LYING
Little children keep no secrets –
but that changes overtime.
 
At some point children realize that parents are not all knowing. It becomes possible to influence what their parents know about their actions and thoughts. They learn that information is power and concealing information makes them feel powerful. Lying and truth telling have powerful consequences and the drive to gain control of those consequences by hiding truth is something that manifests itself early in life.
 
Early psychologists took the position that children did not have the intellectual capacity to lie (eg. Jean Piaget). New evidence suggests that even young children sometimes do lie.
 
Motivations for lying:
                  a) to avoid punishment
                  b) to keep a “game” going
                  c) to keep a promise (eg. this will be our secret)
                  d) to gain something personally
                  e) to avoid being embarrassed
                  f)  to build themselves up
 
Children will lie about events when they have sufficient reason to gain something by lying.
 
Often parents have a difficult time accepting this fact. “My child would not lie to me. I know him. I would know if she lied to me.” We want so much to extend the days of childhood innocence for as long as possible, until all proof to the contrary has been established.
 
At first children may be clumsy about using this newfound ability to pretend and misrepresent themselves, however these early attempts set the stage for a long process of learning to differentiate truth from fiction, the motivation to tell the truth and the savvy to know all the social conventions about when not telling the truth is acceptable (white lies).
 
Children lie – but in adolescence the stakes increase dramatically !

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This full day or 2 evening workshop will introduce you […]

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+ A Parent’s Guide to the Teenage Brain

  A teenager’s brain is not just an adult brain […]

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A program for children with reading problems

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+ A Guided Tour of ADHD (now available online)

This workshop will present the facts, myths, misconceptions, controversy and […]

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2720 Rath Street, Putnam, Ontario
NOL 2BO

Phone: (519) 485-4678
Fax: (519) 485-0281

Email: info@rickharper.ca

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