May 14, 2009
by Rod Smith
“I usually end up almost doing my son’s homework for him. This makes my husband very angry. it causes conflict within our family. My son (11) is bright but I do admit he is often lazy. What should I do?”
Divided attention!
The child has no incentive to do his homework while you run interference on his behalf. Unless your son has some diagnosable learning challenge (and even then doing his homework for him is unlikely to be the prescribed treatment) I’d suggest you leave everything about your son’s progress at school up to your son.
Without desiring to insult or offend you, or any parent, I’d suggest that your behavior possibly suggests you are overly involved with your son to the point of neglecting your own well being. Healthier parenting, in my opinion, would offer a child divided attention (I did not really mean “undivided”) given that the sooner children take full responsibility for their own lives, the better life is for everyone in the families.
(Papers edited me, thinking I must surely mean UN-divided attention).
Posted in Boundaries, Children, Communication, Difficult Relationships, Family, Listening, Love, Parenting/Children |
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March 24, 2009
by Rod Smith
“My wife insists on doing our son’s homework with him almost to the point that she is more involved in it that he is. This annoys me and I have to even leave the house when she over does it. ‘He is only ten,’ she says, ‘and he needs all the encouragement that he can get.’ I say he needs to learn to work on his own. Please help.”
Your reaction will become “glue” for your wife and son, and it will fuel your wife’s zeal. Air your views, offer your son your own form of help and support, and then back off. If you “get between” the mother and her son, both will use the alliance in a manner that is counter-productive to overall family health. Here’s the axiom: resist getting in the middle of relationships that you are not part of. Now before I am deluged with mail, let me explain: your wife and son’s relationship is separate from the relationships you enjoy with each of them. Stay out of it – but, at the same time, invest totally in what you enjoy with each.
Posted in Boundaries, Children, Communication, Difficult Relationships, Education, Family |
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March 11, 2009
by Rod Smith
1. To work hard in groups and to work hard alone.
2. To identify the correlation between work and achievement.
3. To freely and regularly express gratitude.
4. To connect behavior and choices with consequences.
5. To save.
6. To find his or her voice and to use it appropriately.
7. To use his or her imagination.
8. To respect elders, teachers, and persons in authority.
9. To be able to apologize and to forgive.
10. To take full responsibility for his or her own future.
11. To value the past as a springboard to the future.
12. To know that fulfillment is an “inside job.”
Posted in Adolescence, Children, Communication, Differentiation, Family, Leadership, Listening, Parenting/Children |
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February 25, 2009
by Rod Smith
A well-respected child psychologist and his school want our son to be medicated for some problems he is having at school. He can’t seem to focus and he gets behind with his work. My husband and I are dead against it. We never had such things when we were growing up and we have heard some horror stories. What do you think?
Your resistance is understandable. By your own admission you have no experience in these matters, and there is much talk of the “over-medication” and the “unnecessary” medication of children.
Air your concerns to the psychologist and listen to his or her answers with open minds.
Your child’s health and success is of primary importance – and – you would be unlikely to resist treatment and medication if, say, he’d broken a bone or had a sinus infection.
Try to get over your understandable prejudices and get your son the help he needs.
Posted in Children, Difficult Relationships, Education, Family |
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December 23, 2008
by Rod Smith
My father, E. W. G. Smith, loved Christmas. We could get him into a Father Christmas suit anytime of the year. He and Jimmy Ross, the jazz pianist and our neighbor, would use the same old and tattered suit and visit each others children with old pillowcases thrown over their backs – even in August.
Come Christmas Eve and dad would sing about the “little boy that Santa Clause forgot.” Real tears would stream down his face. I knew he was crying for his own lost boyhood. I knew he was the boy that Santa Clause forgot, and I knew he was the boy who went home to “last year’s broken toys.”
He did something about his own deprivation by providing for others: I vividly recall my father packing large boxes of groceries from the shelves of his general dealer shop in Blackburn Road and placing them anonymously on the doorstep of a family he knew to have hit hard times.
And now, all these years later, I challenge you to seize the day. Go ahead, get out there, and make someone’s Christmas through exercising your own deep desire for generosity – I know it is in there, it comes with the human package.
Posted in Blended families, Children, Communication, Difficult Relationships, Family |
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December 22, 2008
by Rod Smith
“As I write my girlfriend is on holiday with her two daughters and her ex-husband. She planned the trip to be with just the girls and when they went to pick up something from his house he was already packed and asked to leave with them. Not wanting to cause a fight in front of the girls, she said it was fine, and they left together. They are away now. She tells me she has no feelings for him and she wishes I were there instead. She wants to have a good relationship with the ex for the sake of the girls. I will pray to God and let Him guide me as He always has. If she is truthful, then everything is fine. In my gut, I know that boundaries take time to establish themselves. I have been trying to take my mom’s advice, “Get to know her, focus on yourself.” I feel at peace. We are neither married, nor engaged. We can change our minds at anytime. If I find that she has lied, or is untrustworthy in anyway, I will move on, having conducted myself in a kind, and unselfish way.”
I love your mother’s advice. Such thinking will save you a lot of pain and avert a lot of damaging anger.
Posted in Affairs, Anger, Attraction, Blended families, Boundaries, Children, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Faith, Family, High maintenance relationships |
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September 16, 2008
by Rod Smith
When one writes an advice column it would be easy for readers to be under the illusion that I am on top of things. Of course this is not true. It would be no surprise to you (if you have lived a year or two!) to know that my life is often as much in disarray as yours probably is.
Today I feel scattered. Anxious. My one son (6) is not well. On top of that, I feel terrible for forgetting that he was the scheduled “star student” in his class at school yesterday. My son arrived at school without a poster reflecting his life and interests, or snacks for his class when all the other children, on their “star student of the day,” come to school with designer posters and personal caterers in tow! (I exaggerate, of course.)
Nathanael arrived at school with nothing because I didn’t read something he brought home. This gets to me. It really does. He wandered through to me in the middle of last night, and before I sent him back to bed, I hugged him again and I apologized for the tenth time about forgetting his big day. As sleepy as he was he voiced again his forgiveness. Thank God children are so resilient.
Posted in Children, Living together, Parenting/Children |
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August 5, 2008
by Rod Smith
“I am in a three-year relationship and my daughter (14) lives with us. My friend tells me he is tired of commuting from my house to work. He wants me to move to his lake home and put my daughter in school there, which would lessen his commute by 20 minutes. My daughter grew up where we live now and her dad lives close by. She does not know anyone there and moving would also cause a problem in seeing her dad. My friend finds fault with all my solutions. The move would mean my giving up my house and (before that) I want a commitment, like a ring. My friend does not want to get married. He tells me he loves me but marriage is out of the question. I am heartsick. I don’t understand how he says he cares and wants to spend the rest of his life with me but bails when marriage is mentioned. Things are falling apart. What do I do?” (Letter shortened)
Stand firm! Do what is in the best interests of your family. I’d suggest your friend move to his lake house and share weekends at your house. It seems he wants the benefits of being a spouse and co-parent without a legal contract or the responsibility entailed.
Posted in Children, Communication, Voice |
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June 25, 2008
by Rod Smith
There is much debate about the disciplining of children. Here are two readers expressing contrary views. What do you think? How does it work (or not work) in your family? I welcome your responses:
“I have four kids and if one of them gets out of line I will spank their bottoms. Kids nowadays get away with too much stuff. If you tell your child to stop doing something and there are no consequences then he will just turn around and do it again. Putting your child in time-out only works at that time. When they get out of time-out they will do it again but if they get a spanking it’s going to hurt and they won’t do it again. We got spanking when we were children, and I learned right from wrong. In my opinion if you don’t spank your children and let them know who is the boss then they will run all over you.”
“I think spanking is barbaric. The last thing I want to do is hurt my children by hitting them. Parents who hit their children don’t deserve children and just teach children that the solution to all problems lies in violence.”
Posted in Children, Difficult Relationships, Victims |
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April 22, 2008
by Rod Smith
“My boyfriend and I are about to get married. I have a problem. He’s insecure that my daughter’s father is in her life. What do I do to assure him that nothing is going on between my ex and me other than taking care of our child? What do I do?” (Edited)
It is not you who has the problem. He is the one who is insecure and he is the one who has the issue.
If the man is troubled that his soon-to-be stepdaughter is co-parented by her biological father, the man is not ready for marriage, let alone is he ready to assume duties as a stepparent.
Do not try to reason with insecurity (or jealousy, or possessiveness) or to pacify it. Don’t modify your acceptable and normal responses to your daughter and to her father in an attempt to appease the spirit of insecurity living within him.
Your attempts to please and pacify him will not succeed in anything but in making you into far less the woman you have every potential to be.
Such living will grind you down until you feel like nothing.
I’d suggest you run very fast in the other direction. Once you have gotten over the breakup, find a man who does not behave like a spoiled, hurt child. Such men do exist.
Posted in Boundaries, Children, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Divorce |
1 Comment »
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