May 22, 2006
by Rod Smith
Parents: don’t lie to your children. Don’t lie for them. Don’t lie through them. The world is confusing enough without you helping to muddy the waters. Young people have enough pressure to be deceitful without mom and dad adding to their confusion.
Parents: avoid bad language. There’s nothing cute or endearing about your toddler swearing like the proverbial trooper. To come out of his mouth, the words must first have entered his ears.
Parents: if you make your child get you a beer, or your cigarettes, you are training your child in habits most adults wished they did not have. If he can get your beer and cigarettes, he’ll be getting his own before you can say, “Where did you learn that?”
Parents: be financially, sexually, spiritually faithful to your spouse and you will teach your child better lessons about life than can be learned at the finest of schools. Let “I’m sorry” and “please forgive me” be words your child frequently hears and he too might learn to say them.
Parents: repeatedly remind your child that despite your many errors and failures, it is your child and your child alone who is ultimately responsible for making his life effective, creative and fulfilling.
Posted in Adolescence, Children, Education, Parenting/Children, Step parenting, Stepfather, Stepmother |
1 Comment »
May 18, 2006
by Rod Smith
(Published in The Mercury – 05/19/06)
Several years ago you wrote about “high maintenance” people and described my then-girlfriend to a T. Please publish it again. It was hard to believe a person who had never met my girlfriend at the time was able to describe her with such accuracy.
Comments come to me as Emails. I will make time if you want to talk.
constant attention and approval. They crave to be the center of almost every conversation and will often become symptomatic (moody, resentful, loud, threatening) when they are not. They analyze every move, thought, word and action of others, and then read more meaning into things (statements, looks, sighs, attitudes) than was ever intended. They are easily hurt, quickly offended, quick to rebuke when they do not get the kind of attention they think they deserve. Threats of withdrawal or desertion become a way of life.
High maintenance people are difficult, sometimes impossible, even in the most relaxed of circumstances. They pick fights, find fault, and personalize almost everything. They argue with people who are closest to them for no apparent reason. They often pick on strangers (waiters, helpers). They often live in a world of cut-off relationships where others are idiots and no one understands.
What can you do if you are in a relationship with a high maintenance person? You can do very little that will not hurt, offend, or get a reaction – but you must make a stand. High maintenance people seldom benefit from pity or patience or empathy. They will only benefit from being constantly challenged to grow up.
Posted in Anger, High maintenance relationships, Love, Manipulation, Voice |
11 Comments »
May 18, 2006
by Rod Smith
(Published in THE MERCURY, 05/18/06)
Partner abuse is not restricted to physical abuse. This is misleading. Emotional and psychological abuse, while not requiring visits to the hospital, can be as equally devastating as domestic violence. It (emotional abuse) IS also Domestic Violence.
If your relationship drains your self-esteem, isolates you, feels more like a prison sentence than a loving relationship, it is likely you are in a controlling, abusive relationship.
If any one of the following is true I’d suggest you get immediate outside help:
1. When you talk about your feelings your partner railroads the discussion and gives you no time to think or express yourself.
2. You can’t discuss what is bothering you for fear of things getting out of hand.
3. Your partner criticizes, humiliates and undermines you.
4. He or she ridicules you when you express yourself and ridicules your family and friends.
5. He or she keeps you “in line” by withholding money, the car, the phone.
6. He or she has stolen from you and run up debts for you to handle.
7. He or she has thrown away or destroyed things that belonged to you, opens and reads your mail, checks your phone bill and reads your emails.
8. You are often afraid of the person you are supposed to be closest to.
Posted in Anger, Domination, High maintenance relationships, Sexual abuse, Space, Spousal abuse, Victims, Violence |
18 Comments »
May 17, 2006
by Rod Smith
“Sometimes you tell people to grow up,” she wrote, “I‘m afraid to come to you for help for fear that you’d turf me out the door and tell me to grow up. Are you really so tough? Is it just to attract readers?”
Take up your life....
Good counsel challenges people to extend their repertoire of healthy behavior. As tough as you perceive me to be, I will never deny you the experience of telling me about your life, its hardships, and your aspirations for the future, as long as doing so will prove to be helpful to you, and helpful to the process of therapy.
The therapist who encourages a client to vent his or her pain without challenging the client to action, in my opinion, does little for anyone. Insight must be coupled with action to ignite growth and stimulate change. If you want safety, risk-free living, and someone to soothe away the pain of your life without also at some point also challenging you, then you might feel afraid to visit me and you might want to go elsewhere. But I will first listen to you. Then I will challenge you to healthier relationships and a “leap before you look” lifestyle.
Maturity demands action. If I am tough about anything (and I am also tough on myself) I am tough with people who want their lives to improve without the slightest effort on their part. To them I say, “Grow Up!”
Posted in Therapeutic Process |
2 Comments »
May 17, 2006
by Rod Smith
My heart goes out to children who have everything. I know the son of a friend whose name I will say is Christopher. He is twelve and he has everything. At least his parents think he does. The slightest suggestion of Christopher being bored, lonely or short-tempered, they take him shopping. His very loving parents want him to have all the things they did not have when they were growing up. His environment suggests they have kept their word.
Christopher goes without nothing that opens, shuts, sails, sings, flies, slides, glows, flashes, rides or thrills – his room is an altar to the god of kid consumption, of clothing labels, sports clothing and sports equipment, sound equipment, musical instruments, the latest DVD technology (a VCR lies abandoned like it were a primitive tool), iPods, cellular phones and computers. He has two computers: one for games and the other for his “online life” and music.
Yet Christopher is usually bored, angry or both. He doesn’t know where to start having fun. This makes Christopher rather upset but his anxiety is placated by his ability to kill (and I am not kidding) virtual kids he creates, then sends catapulting into brick walls in skateboard, car or bike accident on his TV monitor. This seems to make Christopher quite happy – but only for a very short time.
Posted in Adolescence, Children, Family |
5 Comments »
May 16, 2006
by Rod Smith
Loving my children will be a, and not the, central priority of my life. Parenting, and loving my children will not consume me. I will not allow it to.
If loving my children has an all-consuming effect upon me, the parent, it will certainly also consume my children!
Undiluted, laser-like love, and focused attention, directed at any child will bother him, will unsettle him, more than empower him. Rather than helping him feel loved and secure he will feel unduly responsible for my emotional well-being, and that will feel like a mountain too high to climb.
Children deserve freedom from the intense, even loving gaze, of a parent.
Oh, of course, children want their parent’s undistracted focus, and of course they want the parent’s loving interest, but when a parent has too much love, and too much interest in their children (to the exclusion of other interests) then this becomes a burden for the children.
Children want our love, not the sacrifice of our lives on their behalf. Children do not need parents to be martyrs. Children want parents to be parents.
Posted in Children, Parenting/Children, Single parenting, Victims |
Leave a Comment »
May 16, 2006
by Rod Smith
REQUEST FOR ADVICE: I am divorced. My son (15) and I live with my partner who is a wonderful man. Every second weekend our home is miserable because his son (9) comes to stay. I find my partner’s son very manipulative. My partner cannot see anything wrong and I am told I continuously pick on his son. I have rules in my home with which my son must abide and when his son comes to visit the same rules apply. Because I am blamed constantly and told that I don’t like his son, it is becoming a reality. I would greatly appreciate some advice. (Letter edited)
ROD’S REPLY: If your partner is so wonderful marry him. This will give you a legal platform for a relationship with his child and then you can legitimately refer to his house – your letter suggests you are living with him – as your home.
In the meantime I’d suggest you (and your son) find alternative accommodation every second weekend while you research what it is about you that a nine-year-old child can wield has so much power over you.
Adult behavior is very important in setting the framework for a child’s behavior. Neither adult is presently offering this boy a stable, trustworthy context and of course he is going to learn to manipulate!
Posted in Children, Family, Manipulation, Re-marriage, Step parenting |
Leave a Comment »
May 15, 2006
by Rod Smith
- He/she has excessive unaccounted for mileage on the car and chunks of time and money for which he/she will not account.
- He/she hides bills for credit cards, cell phones and bank statements.
- He/she uses lower or different tones on his/her phone when you are around.
- He/she is present in body alone because his/her head seems to prefer living or being elsewhere.
- You are checking the mileage on the car, clockwatching to know where your he/she is, and counting his/her money to know where every cent goes.
- You are rummaging through bills for credit cards, cell phones and bank statements in an effort to retrace his/her steps.
- You are trying to listen to every conversation he/she has with anyone.
- You are present in body alone because you spend your waking moments trying to get into his/her head to see what he/she is thinking, feeling, planning, and wishing.
- Details for business trips (who, when, why) are obscure or hard to pin down.
- Compliments feel like efforts to manipulate; apologies feel like warnings; looking in each other’s eyes feels very unsettling.
Posted in Affairs, Anxiety, Betrayal, Communication, Family, High maintenance relationships, Marriage, Sex education, Sex matters, Sexual abuse, Voice |
1 Comment »
May 14, 2006
by Rod Smith
Reader’s Letter: “I am divorced but live with a wonderful man and have a very stable and loving home environment for my son (13). My ex-husband and his new wife have boys aged 17 and 13. All three boys get on very well. My son arrived home from the weekend with his dad and showed me a black bruise on his arm. When I asked him how he got the bruise I was told that his dad had made a new rule: if the boys don’t brush their teeth by 9.30am, don’t pick up clothes, or use bad language, the boys are allowed to punch each other as punishment. So my son was punched in the arm by the seventeen-year-old for not brushing his teeth. I contacted my ex-husband about this and he told me to keep my nose out of his affairs how he runs his home. Your advice would be greatly appreciated.”
Everything pertaining to your son is always your business – keep your nose in it. Meet with your son’s stepmother, who will surely share your concern, and request this barbaric approach to cleaner teeth, rooms and mouths, stops! Such behavior among three boys can do none any possible good. But be wise; the children do get along. Be unrelenting in seeking your son’s absolute safety. “Running his home” is about who vacuums the house, who takes out the trash – abusing your son does not quite fit into that category!
Posted in Adolescence, Anger, Children, Divorce, Family, Parenting/Children, Step parenting, Stepfather, Stepmother |
2 Comments »
May 11, 2006
by Rod Smith
“Hello,” a smile, and “thank you” would make my shopping (banking, dining) experience very rewarding. I know I’ll find myself recommending you to others because good, friendly service gets etched into my brain (which, by the way, is hotwired to the hand that holds my wallet) and I do tend to want to share good news.
Positive experiences get my loyalty juices flowing and I’ll find myself returning because you’re polite and you try hard on my behalf. I know I’ll return if you seem to understand that I want your full, focused attention.
It is when you are surly, abrupt, and I feel unwelcome, that I find myself looking elsewhere for the services and products you provide. Little things like ignoring me, avoiding eye contact, talking to co-workers, answering a phone while you are tending to me, are powerful enough to drive me away – forever.
Oh, I know I am not perfect! I can be rude, demanding, even unkind – but I am the customer. I’m lured before you by very expensive advertising campaigns, but friendliness, honesty, efficiency and a friendly “hello” are all it might take to turn me into a very loyal customer. Try it. I know we’ll both like it.
Posted in Uncategorized |
Leave a Comment »
