Needs

Active Parenting is a very important thing that every parent needs to learn and know. Instead of waiting for the child to misbehave to react we need to focus on meeting their needs before. A parents' purpose is to protect and prepare a child to survive and thrive in the world we live in.

All parents and children have needs. Some of these needs can be needed more than sleep or food. The first need is a need for contact and belonging. When children are not touched, cuddled, or held then it can prevent them from growing up and developing properly. This has changed many philosophies on child development over the years. A study was done in a hospital where one side of the hospital lacked physical contact and the other had physical contact. The side of the hospital that lacked had kids that stayed sick. Once they changed how they treated the one side of the hospital compared to the other, there was a huge change in the other side getting better. One of the mistaken approaches that we have is undue attention or seeking. There are so many other ways to create contact. Contact can be offered in many ways if it’s through physical contact or even eye contact. A parent's response to contact is to constantly offer contact freely. Making contact with people in a setting that has no threat can make someone feel comfortable. 

The second need that we have is the need for belonging. A parent's response to making someone think that they belong is teaching their children how to contribute. If they learn how to contribute at home then the more likely they are to contribute in outside groups and eventually their own marriage. 

The third need is power. Some mistakes that can come from power are feeling like you need to have control over people and the feelings of being rebellious. As parents we need to realize that children need choices ( situation, appropriate, and age). With those choices there are consequences whether those consequences are negative or positive. Learning these will result in responsibility. It is important that as parents that we don’t interfere with making choices for our children. It could have positive as well as negative. Kids have choices at every age as long as it is age appropriate choices. Some parents give their children too many choices that they never really get to experience any consequences. Don’t let it get to the point where your child has so many choices that they are controlling the household. If kids know there are people that know better and are powerful then it gives a sense of security. Responsibility comes from age appropriate and situation appropriate choices that have consequences. You need to have natural consequences to the decisions that you make. Things where we don’t let the natural consequences take control: 1-Too Dangerous 2-If the lesson is too far in the future that it’s not useful 3-When it causes harm to someone else. 

The fourth need is to have protection. We all need protection from physical harm and psychological harm. Revenge is the big mistaken approach that is taught to children. You get in revenge cycles to where you feel like you need to get even with the person. We need to teach our kids about assertiveness. You tell them the truth of how you are feeling and experiencing. Very often we are afraid to be assertive because we don’t want to be mean or in the wrong. It is a very vulnerable topic to teach but needs to be taught. We also need to teach forgiveness.

Parenting Interview

    Parenting is something that is very hard and exhausting. There are always things that you want to improve on, but parenting isn’t always perfect. You are constantly learning new ways to parent while parenting. “I wish I could have relaxed more in certain situations. Some things seem SO big when you’re in it, when they actually aren’t. I also had a lot of little kids needing my attention. I wish I could have spent more quality one-on-one time with my children when they were dealing with certain things. Honestly I was just exhausted, especially when they were little people. Now I can see how some of the things that I stressed about also cause my children stress, like being on time for things. My advice would be to just love your kids and have fun! It is such a short period of life. We have done a lot of fun things with our kids but I will always wish we could do more. Those are the times that we make the most memories. I hope my children look back and have fond memories of those things. Obviously structure and discipline are important and need to be present in a home, but try not to sweat the small stuff. It will all work out! I do think its important to re-evaluate your parenting. I know I definitely would have handled some situations differently. It’s important to grow and learn with our kids, there are a lot of ways to parent and we don’t always know the best ways. Parenting is challenging and I know I don’t always have the right answers. Being willing to change your parenting style shows your children that you can be accountable for your mistakes as well and that you are willing to adapt and change because you love them and want what’s best for them. I’m not sure how well I did…there is always room for improvement, and your view may be different than mine, but I do feel like I do some things better now than I did when I was a newer parent.’’ I agree with what my parents said a ton. Going over these interview questions have helped me a ton in knowing how I want to parent and how to parent. 

After going over some questions with my parents, I think the way they explained how their parents match up pretty well with how I remember them parenting. They learned how to parent along the way of actually parenting. I think together as kids and parents we learned what type of parenting worked for us and what didn’t. There were some things that didn’t match up just because it was a part of their parenting that I never realized or paid much attention to. 

My parents have always done the bad cop good cop parenting method. I enjoy this method a lot. My dad has always been the more strict parent, while my mom is more soft spoken and reasonable with us. My Dad can sometimes over react in some situations to where my mom has to calm him down when punishing us. The punishments they give us are typically very reasonable. I like that my parents have expectations rather than being super strict. They like to have things structured but still fun at the same time. My parents said, “Our parenting style when you were younger was probably structured but fun. We had rules, schedules etc. but I wouldn’t consider us to be strict parents. We had expectations of how you should act in certain situations, like not hitting your friends, sharing etc. but I don’t feel like we had any expectations that were too impossible or ridiculous.”

    There aren’t really things that I would change about how my parents parented me except maybe them not changing their parenting style for my other siblings. I am the oldest so I understand that I am the guinea pig of the family, so they were learning with every kid. They’ve gotten a lot less strict with every kid. Even now I see my siblings being able to do things that I never was able to do when I was growing up. 

    I can learn from the past without being in my own box by having a heart at peace. I can see the ways that my parents parented me from their point of view. I think it can help a ton by trying to see their perspective on things and trying to be better at understanding where they were coming from. I know my parents were both parented in very strict ways growing up. Growing up they always said they didn’t want to be the kind of parents that their parents were to them. Knowing that I’ve had a lot of respect for them on finding a way to parent me and my siblings. If I find myself having a heart of war towards them, I try really hard to have compassion and tell myself that it could be a lot worse. “I feel like we did ok at parenting in a way that we wanted to . I definitely wish I could say I never yelled or lost my temper, but I did. That part did not line up with how I thought I would parent my kids. Dad and I both came from homes that were very fear based/driven. We did not want to parent our kids that way, and I feel like overall we have succeeded in that, of course there are some exceptions. But overall I don’t think my kids would say that we parented them using scare tactics or overly threatening consequences.” Learning that my parents were in a fear based family is something I would never want in my family.

The Problems of Communication

        The main problem in marriages is communication. We all think that once we get married that we automatically will become experts with communication. Communication is a lot harder than people think, because not many people put much effort into communication. We have a hard time putting in effort to communicate to where we don’t practice it, because we think it just comes naturally. More communication is seen through body language rather than actual verbal communication. If you are wanting to communicate a thought or feeling you first need to encode it in a way that the person receiving the message can decode it. 

Communication can be seen through 3 types of media. You can use communication through words, tone, and body language. A lot of people communicate but miss using the media they are using. There can be differences in tone with words or words with body language. We use more non verbal communication than we use verbal communication. We tend to trust body language more than verbal communication when dealing with individual meetings. 14% of our communication is words, 35% of our communication is tone, and 51% of our communication is body language. When communicating through electronics, you only get 14% of the communication. You miss out on the other 86% of communication. You aren’t able to see the person’s body language and hear the tone of their voice while communicating with them. The more face to face communication you have the more you are understood and the more the other person is understood. Facetime is something people think will help have the 3 media communications, but there are times where there can be miss communications. The message may be encoded but not decoded on the other end, or the other way around. 

   Today, most of our communication is through calling on the phone and through texting. We hardly really go and talk to people face to face. Once phones became available calling became popular, then texting came along. We’ve found out that more people communicate through the media but communicate with fewer words. Due to the lack of communication, a lot of people find themselves isolating themselves away from people that they would normally communicate with. Culturally we have pushed communication away with the fear of the unknown. We try so much to avoid any kind of risks that we don’t put ourselves in situations where we have to communicate with other people. Because of social media you know a lot of what is going on with someone so that you don’t feel like you have to call them and see how they’re doing. You make the assumption of how they are doing by the things they post on social media. Using social media is used as something that can push people away. Posting all these positive things happening in your life can push people off reaching out to you. 

 Communication can also be hard with different cultures. A lot of the time they have a hard time encoding and decoding in ways that it can be understood. Some are more passionate while the others can be more laid back and chill. There can be a lot of misreading going on with the communication. There are a lot of understating and overstating that can happen. Once you learn to encode and decode each other's different communication, then it makes communication a lot easier. 

        Sarcasm has some challenges that are associated with it. It is very easy to misunderstand and hard to tell if it is sarcasm. A lot of people take it more personally and think it’s rude. You are sending messages in competing directions. Words in one direction while your tone and body language may be going another. Sarcasm is always problematic and can create wedges. Sarcasm is a form of dishonesty. 

    

        The Five Secrets of Communication are the things we see people do but not on a daily basis. Secret number one is the disarming technique. We find the kernel of truth in what the person is saying. Secret number two is thought and feeling empathy. Trying to understand what the person is saying as well as feeling empathy. Secret number three is Inquiry. Asking questions so that you make sure you really understand. Secret number four is the “I feel” statement. This is where you get to express your thoughts and feelings. Secret number five is stroking. Conveying to the person that their thoughts, feelings, and opinions are just as valid as our own.