Straight Talk on Parenting

A No-Nonsense Approach on How to Grow a Grown-Up

Vicki Hoefle

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Topic: Psychology
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351860666
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Parents these days are under a great deal of pressure to be "perfect." From psychologists to social scientists, journalists to weekend bloggers, everyone has an opinion about the do's and don'ts for raising healthy, well-adjusted--and let's not forget, polite--children in today's fast-paced world. Where does this leave parents? Too often, lacking in confidence, ill equipped, and overwhelmed.  Parenting expert Vicki Hoefle makes the bold claim that it's time for parents to get off the perfection path and get back to the real job of parenting: to grow a grown-up. In this no-nonsense parenting guide, Hoefle draws upon twenty-five years of experience with helping parents see the big picture and sidestep what she calls the "detail drama" that too often trumps everyday life with our kids. Parents learn more than just strategies; they learn a methodology that allows them to help their toddlers build a strong foundation for success in adulthood.  In her trademark, tell-it-like-it-is style, Hoefle tells parents to trust their intuition and develop an intentional strategy for meeting each child's unique needs. Above all, The Straight Talk on Parenting offers the confidence-boosting reminder that parenting is about practice (and a healthy dose of humor), not perfection.

PART ONE

The Method

It is not unusual for parents to describe my knack for getting to the heart of a family problem as a “gift” or a mysterious talent. Whether the difficulty is sleeping issues, nonstop sibling battles, or power struggles that escalate into tantrums, I offer a course of action that is simple, manageable, and relevant to the family I am working with. Parents are shocked when they realize that the immediate relief they feel also produces a long-term positive change in the overall family dynamic. The truth is, it’s not a gift, it’s a cultivated talent, an intentional training, and a method I have been using for more than twenty years. It’s a plan any parent can follow (including you!).

Parents find it hard to believe that as a “parent educator” I could find myself distracted or depleted, stressed out, tapped out, spent, confused, perplexed, or bewildered in my own parenting journey, but I did and I still do from time to time. I am no different from any other parent. The difference is, however, that I had a long-term plan, a strategy to follow that kept me from steering too far off my intended track.

The method I have been using with my own children and in my work with families for the past twenty-five years can be taught and mastered by parents who are looking to create a more peaceful, enjoyable, stable, and sustainable home life for themselves and their kids. All you need are the basic elements of the method, time to practice, a commitment to the process, and a willingness to go through the trial-and-error phase and make small adjustments so that the method feels authentic and natural to you and your family.

As each season ushers in a new lineup of classes and workshops, more moms and dads are filling the rooms or working with me privately. Why, with so many parenting books on the shelves and so many online resources offering child-rearing advice, are more parents making the time to work with a parenting expert? When I ask them, they tell me that they want more confidence and clarity when it comes to making their parenting decisions. They are tired of flip-flopping through strategies that don’t deliver on the promise of bringing more peace and happiness into their lives with kids. And many parents are now talking to friends who have older children and are reporting that they would have done things very differently if they’d realized early on that the goal was not to produce a polite seven-year-old but to raise a high-functioning, emotionally healthy adult. Parents work with me because they are frustrated by not having a plan for dealing with the daily challenges that arise when raising kids in a fast-paced, ever-changing, pressure-cooker culture and because they are afraid that their adult children won’t make it on their own.

That’s why I needed a simple method that both addressed the daily challenges of living with children and ensured I would raise healthy adults. Having such a plan brought a sense of calm, confident resolve into my life as a parent. And it can do the same for you.

Fundamentals

It would be impossible for me to talk about the method I use to identify family challenges and possible solutions without first taking a moment to talk about the fundamental themes that run through all of my work.

I truly believe that almost every challenge we face with a child can be traced back to:

• A fracture in the relationship we have with our child, which manifests itself in the form of increased power struggles, a sense of disconnection between parents and their children, and an overall atmosphere of frustration and stress in our day-to-day lives

• A child whose efforts to become independent have been thwarted, and thus she is too dependent on a parent and is improperly trained to take on the tasks of life

• Or both

These central themes influence every decision I make when I am in the presence of children, whether they are my own or someone else’s. The question I ask myself every time I am interacting with a child is this: “Is what I am about to do going to enhance a healthy relationship with this child and boost his ability to become independent and self-reliant?” Only when I can answer yes to this question, am I willing to speak or act. Those who practice the concepts that make up my work will testify that these are hallmarks of my philosophy.

In this book, I dive deeper into the importance of relationships and offer parents a chance to help their children develop a relationship blueprint that will guide them toward healthy relationships and away from unhealthy ones. Along with the relationship blueprint, I include a number of strategies parents can utilize to foster independence in their children no matter what their age. Beyond that, I use the method to:

• Identify the challenge quickly so parents can put their energy into finding solutions instead of getting weighed down by details of the drama

• Identify strategies to get through a “red zone” moment that will move the action forward without making things worse

• Identify adult character traits that will help ensure that parents raise children who are ready to take on the challenges and wonders of adult life

• Design routines, structures, boundaries, and limits in combination with a child’s unique nature to achieve the perfect blend of freedom and order

Once parents understand the method and are given a chance to practice it, they are able to enjoy a more relaxed and confident attitude about their parenting and focus their efforts on the journey as well as the destination.

The Elements

There are four elements that make up the method I use to identify family challenges and brainstorm solutions to bring about long-term, sustainable change. Each of the four elements can be used separately, but when they are used in combination with each other, families transform in remarkable ways.

Relationship blueprint: In Duct Tape Parenting, I shared with readers the two decisions that I made as a young mother. First, that I was not willing to fight with my kids for eighteen years; this meant that, second, I would have to spend time cultivating a respectful, honest, and loving relationship with them in order to minimize potential power struggles and a long-term fracture in our relationship. As the result of those two decisions, I developed an entire parenting approach that focused more on maintaining, growing, and cultivating healthy relationships than on having kids who were neat, tidy, polite, and compliant. It made life with my own five kids fun, satisfying, and, believe it or not, mostly peaceful and harmonious.

I knew firsthand that investing in the relationship with my kids would significantly decrease the power struggles, help us all get out of the house on time (after all it takes real cooperation to move a family of seven out the door each morning without tears or tantrums), and reduce the daily stress of living in a fast-paced world. Beyond that I began to understand that everything my children learned about relationships would come from the one they were establishing with me, their mother. With that realization came a commitment to helping my kids design a relationship blueprint that would ensure they knew the difference between a healthy and an unhealthy relationship and would be drawn to individuals who modeled healthy relationship qualities.

I accepted that my job was to model for my kids what a healthy relationship looked like, sounded like, and felt like, as a way to ensure that they had a better chance of entering into a healthy relationship with someone outside of their family. This is why the first element of my method focuses first on the relationship we have with our children—because whether we want to accept it or not, in every moment we are either interfering with or enhancing the relationship we have with our kids. This is a theme in parenting that cannot go overlooked. A healthy relationship with our kids increases our chances that those other problem areas either aren’t problems or they are so small that we can deal with them easily, swiftly, and effectively.

Fostering independence: The second element is the idea that we are responsible for helping our kids develop the independence and self-reliance they need to manage life on their own. It’s part of our job to help them feel confident in their ability to handle anything life throws their way. On a small scale, this means allowing our children to master self, home, social, and life skills.

Beyond that, fostering our children’s independence makes it more likely that they will have the skills necessary to navigate a world that is overly connected in some ways and disconnected in others. As children’s exposure to a larger world beyond their neighborhoods and communities expands and their access to technology increases, parents’ concern about their children’s safety rises. The natural tendency is to overprotect, and that leads to an attitude of “keeping the kids young and innocent for as long as possible.” Unfortunately, this puts our children at greater risk. The more empowered our children feel, the more capable they believe they are; the more experience they have in making inconsequential choices when they are young, the more confident we will be in their ability to make thoughtful, wise, and safe choices when they are exposed to the larger and sometimes more dangerous world.

Living with a toddler, raising an adult: The third element is reconciling the idea that we can implement a strategy to deal with a f...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Part One The Method
• Part Two Stories from the Heart
• Afterword
• Index
• About the Author