Tuning Children In
One of the main issues I hear from parents as I work with them is that their children won’t listen to them. The children ignore their requests as if the parents weren’t even there. There is a valid reason why this happens.
Years ago the CB radio was extremely popular. Even today the modern radios used by police and fire departments are offspring’s of that original technology.
These radios communicate over channels. Each “channel” is directly linked to a quartz crystal that vibrates at a specific frequency.
Imagine that you were listening to and using a radio such as this each day and your next-door neighbor suddenly began to communicate over one of the frequency channels. No matter the time of day this person would be there jabbering into the channel making it literally impossible for anyone else to get a word in edgewise.
What would you do? Well, you could simply avoid that channel and use other channels to communicate or you could remove that crystal altogether.
That’s exactly what children do to parents.
The parents communicate with children on a specific channel. After a while children learn that the “parent channel” generally is something they don’t want to hear. Do this, do that, don’t do this and don’t do that echo on that channel all day, every day.
So the children simply “tune out” or remove that channel.
That is why a third party stranger can communicate with your children better than you can. The stranger has a different channel and frequency that the children actually listen to and hear.
The solution?
1. Keep communication positive.
Try to avoid cluttering your parental channel with only strong directives and requests that children find objectionable. Make sure that at least 50% of your communication with a child is supportive and praise related. Children love and crave praise and won’t tune out a parent that makes it a point to regularly stroke their egos and feelings.
2. Keep communication simple.
Once you past the early twenties in age your communication shifts from childlike to almost entirely adult in nature. Almost every parent talks to children in an adult voice and makes adult requests. Children are just that, children. They simply cannot come up to mature adult standards of communication. Learn to get down on their level and speak to them in terms they can understand.
3. Communicate over “other” channels.
Use “other people” as a way of teaching your children. Teachers, relatives and friends may be very instrumental in directing your children as you are in redirecting their children.
4. Make communication fun.
Children haven’t developed an “instruction channel”. Instead they have an “imagination channel” in that place until they reach the late teens to early twenties. The requests and information you as a parent are sending down are most likely instructional in nature and that information is in direct conflict with what the child is using the channel for. Parents try to instruct a child as the child uses the channel to watch television or play and the parent gets ignored.
5. Separate parental channels.
When both parents stand side-by-side and direct children group the communication onto one channel. Parents that work individually with children maintain separate channels of communication that allow for more effective interaction. Parents should support each other, but communicate separately with children.
Try these suggestions and you’ll find that new avenues of communication will open up within your family.
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Will Your Teen Kill Next
Don’t think it’s possible that your teenager would kill others? Think again because what may be brewing just under the surface may not be readily visible until it’s too late.
A Pennsylvania teen age 15 was just charged with planning to carry three handguns stolen from his father into his school and then go on a shooting rampage with himself as the final victim.
The interesting thing about this case is that no signs were exhibited by the youth and he had no history of disciplinary issues. He appeared to be a well mannered and stable student.
There is a reason we often don’t see it coming until the event has already become a reality. Violent thoughts are often suppressed under a candy coating of acceptable behavior patterns, but generally require some time to be formed.
One answer is close communication between parents and teens. Changes in personality, communication desire and response patterns may be warning signs that more is going on than hormonal changes.
Allowing your teen to develop while assuming that all is well may be a fatal decision.
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When Kids Kill
The headlines are far too frequent and shocking. An 8 year old shoots his father in Arizona, a 12 year old in Omaha is a killing suspect and now a 15 year old Florida girl shoots a schoolmate to death right in the crowded hallway. What’s going on?
Violent crimes by children used to be few and far between, but now they seem to be happening every few days. Remember Columbine High School and Virginia Tech?
Don’t feed me bull about this being a crime of impulse and that a good girl went suddenly and momentarily insane during an argument. She had the gun at school with her. Having the gun implied that she was mentally prepared to use it if necessary and had accepted violence as an answer to confrontation.
How many gun toting 15 year old schoolgirls do you know?
Often parents ask me what is causing this and what they can do to be certain their children do not commit such an act or fall victim to another. The victim part is random chance when you happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, but the cause is something parents need to be aware of.
Children are exposed to more violence and death at a much younger age now than ever before on television, in the movies and especially on video games. Remember if your child plays violent video games he or she is essentially programming themselves with those thought patterns.
In fact, children that play video games often play them for hours on end and most of the popular games have some form of graphic violence designed into their format.
Before my telephone lines and email accounts start to flame out with video game designers and supporters please be aware that I am not saying video games should be banned or anything of the sort. I’m simply making an observation of human learning patterns.
Kids are becoming desensitized to violence and violent behavior. The weakening social and moral structure escalated by more permissive music, videos and fads have forced our children to grow up far too soon.
When I was young we had the occasional Charles Whitman, but kids of 15 were somewhat naive to the grown-up world of violent behavior. Now gangs of 10 to 20 year olds roam the streets as armed thugs and set the fashion for trends that new generations consider cool to follow.
Children learn three primary ways.
- They learn from their parents and the other adults in their life.
- They learn from their peers and the others that influence them.
- They learn from living experience or trial and error efforts.
The solution starts at home. Parents have complete control over the education and development process unless they CHOOSE to relinquish that responsibility to peers, friends, gangs and poor living decisions made by their children.
Your child is a by-product of what they see, hear, experience and desire. Saying NO when they are young is far better than talking to them through a pane of glass in prison later on.
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