February 6, 2008
by Rod Smith
“I am a single mother with a teenage daughter. This is very tough: earning a living, trying to be available for school activities, trying to have a life of my own, and trying to make up for the absent father who could get in his car and visit occasionally but chooses not to do so – claiming it upsets his new wife. Now my daughter is at an age where her friends are much more important than her family and yet, while I want her to be free, I also do not want to lose the sense of family we do have. Please help.” (Letter shortened)
Your load is not an easy one. I’d suggest you allow the natural process of separation to occur while also keeping some semblance of a schedule that allows your family to remain in tact. Get your focus off what dad is not doing. Celebrate your daughter’s growth, her desire for friendships. Make it easier for her to find her feet apart from what you have known together. Create some flexible arrangement where you share a meal or a movie on a somewhat regular basis. Enjoy your own freedom in the midst of domestic demands. This will offer your daughter something attractive to call home.
Posted in Single parenting, Teenagers, Voice, Womanhood |
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January 21, 2008
by Rod Smith
1. Be aware of the unique, honored position I have in your life, and regard it with the respect it deserves.
2. Hear you, even if you are telling me things I’d rather you not say.
3. Be willing to disagree with you, when, in my estimation, you are wrong, off target, or unfair in your actions or thinking.
4. Forgive you when you hurt me, even though I will sometimes make it very clear to you how the hurt occurred.
5. Expect the very best of you and applaud your use of all of your skills and talents.
6. Tell you the truth as I see it, as kindly, efficiently, and succinctly as possible.
7. Live my life as purposefully as possible in my daily journey toward fulfilling the deepest, most powerful yearnings of my head and heart.
8. Be generous to you (without giving you money) and be kind to you (without trying to solve your problems).
9. Not inflict my anxiety upon you.
10. Stand on my own two feet without pushing you over.
11. Engage you in necessary conflict that I may love you more powerfully.
12. Speak well of you in every circumstance.
Posted in Boundaries, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Family, Friendship, High maintenance relationships, Listening, Reactivity, Recovery, Responsive people, Teenagers, Victims, Voice, Womanhood, Young Love |
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January 4, 2008
by Rod Smith
The advocates for understanding and listening to young people are many. This is usually a good thing – but alas – it appears to have become somewhat of a preoccupation of areas of mental health. Far less is promoted regarding the reverse: the importance of young people listening to, and understanding adults, parents in particular.
In my opinion there’s a lot more to be gained when young people work at understanding and listening to adults, than is to be gained from the seemingly excessive focus on the reverse.
Of course, it is really helpful when both constituencies work at understanding each other.
Listening to, and understanding adults, will usually have a lot more to offer young people than young people have to offer through being understood or heard.
While you, a young teenager, may not have spent enormous amounts of time trying to understand your parents, some effort expended in this direction will pay you rich dividends. Your parents? lives did not begin with your birth. Yours did. Take time to discover what and who they were before you were born. This will do wonders for all.
Posted in Children, Listening, Teenagers |
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January 1, 2008
by Rod Smith
1. Your courage, determination and your willingness to fully live; your ability and willingness to employ all of your skills and expedite your wildest ambitions – will go a long way toward compensating for the absence of the other parent.
2. Being debilitated by the absence of a partner and living as if a successful life is impossible to lead without a partner will stand to hinder your child and your relationship with your child almost as significantly the absence of the other parent.
3. Having your own life, pursuing interests and dreams that do not involve your child, is good for you and for your child. The laser focus that often comes with solo parenting is hardly helpful to the parent or child.
4. Try to get the focus off your child and how your child is doing in the wake of finding yourself single. Single parents have reared many very successful persons and, believing your child will be successful, despite the absence of the other parent, will set a healthy tone for your family. Besides, as stated by family expert, Rabbi Edwin Friedman, when studied under a microscope even an ant (a small issue) can look like a monster (a significant problem).
Posted in Blended families, Boundaries, Children, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Love, Parenting/Children, Single parenting, Stepfather, Stepmother, Teenagers, Voice |
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November 3, 2007
by Rod Smith
I am listening....
1. Neither client nor therapist exaggerates therapist’s abilities or the client’s condition.
2. Therapist sees role as helping client steer toward a more productive, healthy future.
3. Client sees the “big picture” over the “long haul” rather than immediate relief in the “here and now.” (Patience, patience, patience).
4. Client and therapist maintain a sense of humor (a sure indication of health) while facing life’s inevitable challenges. Not everything can or will be better no matter how much therapy you throw at it!
5. Client and therapist call forth the client’s strengths and the innate human desire for adventure, rather than engage in the seemingly endless pursuit to understand a client’s pathological history, weaknesses, parents’ weaknesses, and debilitating reasonable, and unreasonable fears.
6. Therapist and client understand the limited benefits of empathy in exchange for the overwhelming benefits of challenge and adventure.
7. Client realizes that psychological insight without action (acting upon the insight) is a waste of money, time and useful therapeutic process. Sometimes a person has to actually DO something rather than be filled with insight about what needs to be done.
8. Client is willing to increase the ability to tolerate necessary pain (both within self and within others) and resist the understandable pressure to alleviate the very pain essential for growth to occur.
9. Therapist challenges the client repeatedly toward self-definition (to grow up!) in the face of life’s natural obstacles.
Conditions under which counseling or therapy will be of little or no value…
Time and again I hear “If I could just get him/her to see a counselor” as if a counselor can work magic to heal and solve all personal and relationship problems. Few trained counselors would see themselves as possessing such unrealistic powers. Here are some conditions (there are others) under which even counseling will be of little or no value:
1. When a person is forced, or cornered, or manipulated into seeing a counselor.
2. When a person has no motivation for change.
3. When a person agrees to see a counselor because he/she believes counseling will “fix” someone else in the family.
4. When the person’s mind is already made up over and issue (a pending divorce, continued involvement in an affair) and goes to counseling so he/she can say he/she tried it and it was no help.
5. When a person is resistant to getting help (doesn’t see the need for help) and offers counselors little or no respect in the first place.
6. When the person is combative from the outset and sees the therapeutic hour as time to show how clever (or funny, or morose, or argumentative, or stubborn, or intellectual) he/she can be.
7. When the person has already made up his/her mind that there’s no hope (”we’ve tried it all before”) or that counseling is a waste of time and money.
Posted in Anger, Attraction, Blended families, Boundaries, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Divorce, Domination, Education, Family, Forgiveness, Friendship, High maintenance relationships, Love, Manipulation, Marriage, Re-marriage, Recovery, Responsive people, Sexual compatibility, Step parenting, Teenagers, Therapeutic Process, Victims, Voice, Young Love |
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October 4, 2007
by Rod Smith
“I am married and have three teenage sons. We are compatible, except in one area that threatens everything. I don’t drink at all and don’t like social situations where there is too much drinking or being around drunk people. He enjoys a ‘party’ or having a few beers a couple of times a week. Very often a ‘few beers’ ends up being a ‘few beers’ too many. When he has had too much to drink he often becomes argumentative and critical of me, and sometimes verbally abusive. I have tried to reason with him but nothing much changes. People say I should just accept it because there is so much else going for the marriage. He is a good provider and father and he is caring except for those occasions when drink is involved. But I am thinking perhaps I should leave the marriage, as the situation is never going to be amicably resolved. I am also concerned how the breakup of the marriage would affect my sons, but increasingly I feel I am in a trap that I don’t know how to get out of.” (Edited)
Your staying (in the marriage) or going (getting divorced) will impact your teenagers. Finding your voice, whether you stay or go, will have the greatest, lasting impact upon your sons. A voice-less mother, someone who resists challenging what causes herself and her family discomfort, might be more damaging than a father who has too many beers.
Posted in Difficult Relationships, Divorce, Love, Teenagers, Victims, Violence, Voice |
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October 2, 2007
by Rod Smith
“Three years ago our pre-marriage counselor used a few of your columns to get us talking. I was annoyed because they made our engagement seem so business-like and so un-romantic. It seemed very cold to discuss money when you feel so in love. Now I can see how important it was to talk about money and children and faith as if I was entering a business relationship. Thanks. You have helped us a lot.” (Edited)
Perceiving a marriage as having many elements of a business contract will enhance, and not detract, from a marriage relationship. The absence of money (fights over money, the misuse of money) in a marriage can quickly kill any feelings of romance and goodwill. “Cold” talks during an engagement can help warm a home for many years to come. He or she, who, during marriage preparation refuses to engage in such talk, is declaring loudly and clearly that he or she is not quite ready for marriage. I am most honored your counselor used some of my work to assist you in you marriage.
Posted in Attraction, Boundaries, Communication, Differentiation, High maintenance relationships, Listening, Living together, Love, Marriage, Responsive people, Spousal abuse, Teenagers, Violence, Voice |
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August 7, 2007
by Rod Smith
“I am 14 and live with my dad and stepmother. There is a guy (18) who is interested in me and my dad is against this. He wants me to have nothing to do with him and even told him not to phone the house or to phone my cell. Can he (my dad) do this?”
Yes. And I’d suggest you obey your father and allow him to exercise his wisdom with all your potentially romantic encounters. The four years that separate you from the person expressing interest in you, is huge – when you are 14. He is an adult – you are a child.
If the young man were 14, fifteen, or sixteen, and your parents had already known him for some years, and socialized with his family, I’d suggest that your dad leave you to enjoy the friendship as much as possible – but this is not the case.
Most parents want the absolute best for their children and it seems your father’s desire to protect you is born of love. I think you’d be wise to allow his (your dad’s) counsel to prevail. Nothing worth having will be gained from setting yourself against your father in this matter.
Posted in Teenagers |
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July 19, 2007
by Rod Smith
My daughter (16) wants to spend the night on some weekends at her boyfriend’s (16) house. My husband is dead set against it and this causes a mini cold war in our house. Her boyfriend’s parents are very kind people who are very capable of supervising our daughter and their son – but it still makes my husband very uncomfortable. My husband is not the kind of man to express his views but expects me to be the go-between. What should we do? (Edited)
Your letter offers no indication of your opinion regarding your daughter’s relationship with her boyfriend and his family. It is clear that you have become the appointed spokesperson. I’d suggest you remove yourself from the middle of this triangle and let your husband and daughter speak to each other about his concerns. Personally, I’d rather err on the side of trusting too much than err on the side of trusting too little.
Of paramount importance is that you keep lines of communication open between your daughter and you – and that will be next to impossible while you are an agent of your husband’s anxiety.
Posted in Adolescence, Anxiety, Attraction, Boundaries, Children, Communication, Difficult Relationships, Parenting/Children, Teenagers, Voice, Young Love |
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May 23, 2007
by Rod Smith
READER: My talkative, pleasant, and loving child has become a surely teenager (15) who hardly says anything to anyone at home. We have made the home friendly and open so friends would feel welcome, but she chooses to not have friends over at all. I feel shut out of her life. I miss her. I do not want to control my daughter or monitor everything she does or pry into her private life. I just want to know her. She spends hours on the phone talking with her friends and yet can find nothing to say to her parents. What can I do?
ROD: Write her a letter about everything you feel and think regarding her relationship with you. Without judging or blaming her, tell her, simply, as you have told me, that you miss her, and want to be an active parent in her life. Your truth, lovingly and simply expressed, will be the most powerful and effective way of reaching her. There are no tricks or ploys that will have enduring results. Tell your daughter of your love and your desire to know her, then give her a lot of room to respond to you in her own time and manner. My talkative, pleasant, and loving child has become a surly teenager (15) who hardly says anything to anyone at home. We have made the home friendly and open so friends would feel welcome, but she chooses to not have friends over at all. I feel shut out of her life. I miss her. I do not want to control my daughter or monitor everything she does or pry into her private life. I just want to know her. She spends hours on the phone talking with her friends and yet can find nothing to say to her parents. What can I do?
Write her a letter about everything you feel and think regarding her relationship with you. Without judging or blaming her, tell her, simply, as you have told me, that you miss her, and want to be an active parent in her life. Your truth, lovingly and simply expressed, will be the most powerful and effective way of reaching her. There are no tricks or ploys that will have enduring results. Tell your daughter of your love and your desire to know her, then give her a lot of room to respond to you in her own time and manner.
Posted in Teenagers |
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