One of the things I hear most often from parents when they come for help with their children is: “I feel like a failure as a parent.” I have to confess that even with a great deal of training even I once felt like this.
The thing I know now that I didn’t realize then, is that even when a person has a great deal of knowledge on handling babies/children/teens, when it comes to your own children, sometimes a parent is just too close to the situation to know best how to handle it. Sometimes we just need an outside person who is exterior to the situation to see the thing we are missing.
I hate to say this, but the truth is that most of the problems that crop up with the children are the things the parents are missing, or the things they themselves are or are not doing or not confronting. Usually this is happening due to lack of knowledge of a better way to handle things. They either do what they have always seen their and other parents do, they have false information or they are miss-applying some correct information they have learned. Our own irrational behaviors, completely justified, get handed down generation to generation. Laughingly, it is often the subject of situation comedies and such. How often do we see a story-line where a parent is trying to handle something their child is doing, which they themselves are doing while we all laugh along at the obviousness of it, the story resolving with the parent figuring it out in the end?
But all is not hopeless and lost. The other truth is that the only way a parent can really fail is to give up! And to find someone to help you or another person that will help your child is not a failure. Remember that saying, “It takes a village to raise a child?.” There is some truth to that. Working at Mace-Kingsley Family Center I was able to talk to other trained people who spotted an obvious error. My daughter and I both were not eating enough protein and therefore getting cranky with each other. Also we needed to spend more time together doing fun things. Most of the time, the answer is so simple that it is easy to miss. Sometimes it is something we are not doing for ourselves that is totally justified and so we miss it in our children.
To get more data on irrational behaviors and the source of them, Mace-Kingsley has an inexpensive DVD that could literally change your life. And if you need help with your children, that does not make you a failure. It makes you smart if you ask someone for help, especially someone with an excellent track record and a reliable, workable technology. Feel free to contact a parent consultant at Mace-Kingsley Family Center at 727-442-3922.