Clean Your Room and Other Parenting Myths
Getting kids to buy into spring cleaning takes flexibility and compromise, says parenting expert and author Dr. Nancy Buck.
Charlestown, RI (PRWEB) April 5, 2008 -- It's Spring and that means spring cleaning time for the majority of U.S. households. In fact, according to a 2008 study from the Soap and Detergent Association, 77 percent of Americans participate in the spring cleaning ritual. So why can't parents get their teenagers to clean their rooms?
"That's why we have bedroom doors," responds Dr. Nancy Buck, whose Peaceful Parenting® (www.peacefulparenting.com) technique derives from the "Choice Theory" developed by the psychiatrist Dr. William Glasser. "As parents, we have an agenda, whether it is asking our children to clean their room or get to school on time. Your child has an agenda as well. It is just different, not contrary to yours."
Buck says it is a myth that parents can control their children. Just because something is a priority to them, parents believe the child will automatically assume that priority also.
"When we tell them to do something, it is like that telemarketer that calls you at dinner time. Their timing isn't so great, just like yours," says Buck.
So what can parents do? Buck says they can start by being flexible:
| | - Be more adaptable. Adults are the ones that are supposed to be the grown-ups. Practice this trait in your work and personal relationships. Give your kids a break.
- Be more creative. If you have a teenager, take a photo of the way you would want his or her room to look and put it on the bedroom door. Then shut the door.
- Compromise and work things out. Ultimately, this is the basis of all healthy relationships. Your teen's room is their individual space and you need to respect it the way it is - even if it does smell like stinky basketball shoes and day-old pizza!
|
Peaceful Parenting (www.peacefulparenting.com) posits that children are internally motivated by the genetic instructions for safety, love, power, fun and freedom. Buck teaches parents how to decode their child's internal motivations so they can lovingly guide them from birth into young adulthood when they are mature enough to make it on their own.
Nancy Buck is the author of Peaceful Parenting and her second book, Why Do Kids Act That Way, will be released in the Fall of 2008. She completed her Ph.D. in developmental psychology with a specialization in parenting at The Union Institute in Cincinnati, Ohio and has a master of arts in counselor education from the University of Rhode Island in Kingston, R.I. She has been a featured speaker at the American Montessori Society, National Foster Parent Association, New Jersey PTA Annual Conference Connecticut Counseling Association, Australia William Glasser Annual Conference, Annual Family Matters Conference, and the Colorado Association for the Education of Young Children. For more information, visit www.peacefulparenting.com or call 401-662-5788.
###
|
