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As a child therapist, I hear a common theme from parents is that they tend to talk down to themselves for their parenting, especially when their child has a diagnosis of some kind or is the victim of a trauma. Many times parents can tend to blame themselves for anything bad happening to their child, or how their child is behaving. While this may seem to be an appropriate response to difficulties in your family, it actually has the opposite affect. In fact, I would venture to say that blaming yourself and talking down about your parenting does more damage then it actually helps with changing the situation. Allow me to explain what I mean here. Blaming yourself or others for what it is happening, actually creates a cycle of self abuse and control rather then a system of personal responsibility and respect. You, as a parent, can only take responsibility for your actions, your words, your feelings, and your teaching as a parent. You can’t take responsibility for what happens outside your home, or for your child’s diagnosis, or what your child does or decides. Now many of you may say, “But they’re my kid. What they do reflects on me!” And I agree with you. However, I would argue that our child’s behavior or what happens to them does not have to define what we do or who we are as parents. What do I mean? I mean that we as parents need to learn how to show ourselves love and kindness when it comes to our parenting. How do we do that?

First we need to recognize that we are not perfect people or parents! When we find out that we are going to be parents for the first time, we tend to form high expectations of ourselves to not mess up our children and do everything that our parents didn’t do for us. But then life happens and we find ourselves mimicking what we swore we would never do to our kids. Let me encourage you by saying mistakes and mishaps are inevitable. Beating yourself up for making these mistakes only wastes time and only makes the situation worse. If you make a mistake as a parent, admit it to yourself, your spouse, and to your children. Additionally, take responsibility for this mistake and say what are willing to do to correct it. Don’t be afraid to involve your kids in this process! Does this mean that you allow your kids to disrespect you? No! Allow your kids to vocalize their feelings about what they might need from you if you’ve made a mistake.

Second, we need to separate our actions from the actions of other people, including our kids. This is extremely important when it comes to teaching our kids responsibility for their actions. This goes beyond just offering an apology when we’ve done something wrong. It also includes us focusing on what we are capable of providing or doing on a daily basis. As parents, it’s our job to protect, provide, love, teach, guide, discipline, and prepare. It is NOT our job to convince, change, or control our children or other people in our lives. Many of you may be thinking, “My kids’ actions reflect on my abilities as a parent, especially when they are misbehaving.” I would argue that your kid’s behavior is their own. They are responsible for their actions and their choices. You as mom and dad, are responsible for your response. Please understand, I’m not saying that you allow Jimmy or Jane to act up in the grocery store aisle without giving them a consequence or disciplining them. I’m saying that you focus on your response to what your child does and not allow their behavior to define whether or not you are a good parent. It’s tempting to always blame ourselves for our kids acting up or making poor choices, but we have to remember our kids aren’t an extension of our own person-hood.

Third, we need to recognize that our children are not us! Many people tend to see their children as an extension of themselves as people, when that couldn’t be further from the truth. I think we can all agree on the idea that our children have a mind of their own! And it can be very hard to get them to change it! This can be hard for us as parents to deal with, especially when we want our children to think the same way as we do or do as we do. How do we deal with it you ask? I think we can sum it up with these statements right here. My job is to tell my kids the truth and model it for them. It is their job to respond to it and apply it to their behaviors and mindset. When we focus on our role and responsibility as a parent, it takes the pressure off of us to do everything, and we can focus on loving and accepting our children.

Fourth, we need to give ourselves encouragement and kindness as our parenting journey continues as well as seek it out. Parenting requires a lot out of us as people. It also requires a lot of emotional energy. Without support of any kind, we will burn ourselves out and not be emotionally available for our children when they need it. That’s why it is important to seek out fellow parents as friends and maybe even reach out to grandparents or relatives for extra support when needed. Sometimes we may even need breaks in order to avoid getting overwhelmed with parenting duties. It is not a crime to take care of or encourage ourselves whenever we are feeling down.

As I stated earlier, parenting is not an easy task. It can be, however, a rewarding one. Let me impart some encouragement to each of you. All the hard work that you’re putting into love, caring, and raising this child will all pay off in the end. If you don’t see it now, don’t lose hope. Keep trying and working to be the best parent that you can be. Your children, if they are smart, will see it and appreciate what you are trying to do as they grow older.

Over the past few years, we’ve seen an increase in mental health problems among our children and adolescents. In the last two years, we’ve experienced a global pandemic, an increase in political and social unrest in our country, economic problems, and now worldwide conflicts. With this increase in problems that are hitting very close to home, many people are developing mental health problems. Our children are no exception to this. Many polls have shown an increase in self harming behaviors, depression, and anxiety in children and adolescents. With this increase in problems and unhealthy behaviors, many parents are seeking out mental health services for their children. But many parents tend to not know when they need to actually take their children to a therapist. Here are some indicators that your child may need to see a mental health professional.

1. Your child is exhibiting self harming behaviors such as cutting, burning, biting, or even hitting themselves. Self harming behaviors are often used to distract the person from deeper emotional pain or to help the person feel something at all due to feeling numb. The danger of self harming behaviors is the risk of the person going too far and injuring themselves in a life threatening way. Therapy is necessary in order to address the emotional pain as well as the behaviors.

2. Your child shows extremely low self esteem. A lack of self esteem may seem to be innocuous on the surface, but it can lead to severe problems. Many children who have low self esteem are more likely to exhibit self harming behaviors, suicidal ideation, isolating themselves from friends, and lack of performance in school. Seeking out therapy can help your child with building up confidence to make friends and have faith in their abilities as individuals

3. Your child tends to isolate themselves from others and not interact with others. Many teenagers tend to isolate themselves from time to time to get away from the stress of every day life, but there are times when they isolate themselves to the point when they are not coming out of their room or being around people at all. If your child has this habit of staying in their room and refusing to come out to do regular activities such as going to school, it is time to seek out professional help. Isolation can be a sign of deeper depression or severe anxiety. Therapy is necessary in order to help your child with understanding how to handle the stress of relationships and every day life in addition to building up confidence to step outside and interact with every day life.

4. Your child has rapid changes in mood and has explosive outbursts. Rapid changes in mood and explosive changes in mood can be a sign of a mood disorder and that may require medication to treat effectively. Mood changes and outbursts can also put other family members at risk especially if your child acts aggressively. Therapy can assist your child with impulse control as well as identifying triggers for the mood swings.

5. Your child has become aggressive towards others either verbally or physically. When children act aggressively towards others, it is a sign that something deeper is going on and it they could have problems with feeling sympathy or empathy towards others. If it is reported to you that your child is making serious threats towards others, it’s time to seek out mental health services to help them with impulse control, positive conflict resolution, and anger management.

6. Your child has expressed that they have had thoughts of no longer wanting to be alive. If your child expresses this to you, then it is best to first seek out the help of a mental health hospital to have them evaluated for any serious danger to themselves. After they have been stabilized weekly therapy is necessary to provide extra emotional support, coping strategies, and working out negative thought patterns.

Seeing your child in any serious emotional pain can be difficult for any parent, especially if you are not familiar with any way of helping them through it. Therapy can provide your child with not only emotional and mental support, but it can also provide you as a parent with guidance and tools to help them. While therapy is a powerful tool it cannot replace the most important factor in a child recovering from difficult emotional problems. That tool is a loving and supportive parent that is present and active in that child’s life.

I think we can all agree that our world is full of negativity. All we have to do is turn on the television, tap on our social media apps on our phones, or even look on the internet, and the negativity glares up at us with a poisonous gaze. With the world going through crisis after crisis, it makes it difficult to be positive or even hopeful. But I would like to pose a question to each and every one of us. What if a hopeful spirit begins within each and every one of us and in our homes? I will admit that a hopeful mindset does not make the problems in our world go away. But what it can do is help us rise above the conflict and gives us something to look forward to. How to we cultivate this hopeful spirit within each of us?

First we have to make a decision to look for the good in a situation. Allow me to make a full confession. This is not an easy thing to do at all! Our first instinct is to focus on the negative in each and every situation. However, focusing on the negative only serves to drive us to the point of despair. It also puts us in a perpetual cycle of helplessness. Focusing on the good and ways to move forward helps us focus on what we are responsible for in the situation rather then on trying to fix a problem that is not our responsibility to fix.

Second, we have to surround ourselves with people that support and care about us. We can’t cultivate a hopeful spirit if we have several people around us that are negative or toxic. This may mean that we have to set some firm boundaries with these individuals or even cut off some our relationships with them. Setting boundaries is difficult when we first do it, but it gets easier with practice. Having safe and healthy relationships can help us cultivate a strong sense of hope especially when we can’t see it ourselves.

Third, we have to be willing to focus on what we can control versus what we can’t. I know this is a statement that many of us has heard, and it probably drives some of us crazy. But there is a lot of truth to this statement. We often tend to focus on the things in our lives that we can’t do anything about and that tends make us feel afraid or even cause us to panic. When we choose to focus on the things that we can do something about and have a choice over, it gives us a sense of freedom.

Fourth, we limit how much we focus on the news, social media, or anything negative. I think that many of us can concur that being on social and the news for long periods of time can bring down our overall mood. The internet or even social media is not meant to be focused on for long periods of time, especially with our tendency to hyper focus on the negative. When we decide to limit negative stimuli in our lives, we safe guard our minds and generate a mindset of hope.

Finally, we focus on moving forward no matter how hard the situation is. I see this happen in my line of work a lot. People come to me feeling stuck in some rut emotionally or mentally and they don’t know of a way to get back out. In situations like this, we have to decide what it is that we need in order to move forward. This could involve ending a toxic relationship, starting a healthier diet, etc. This may mean that we have to make some pretty hard decisions, but it is worth it if we get out of the rut.

Building up hope is always a hard thing for us to do and it’s hard to hold onto it once we have it. However, it is necessary for each and every one to create and hold onto when things are uncertain, hard, or in trouble. Think of it this way. Hope is the fuel that keeps us going no matter what terrain we are navigating through and gets us to a better destination overall even if we don’t always see it.

Women’s History Month is a celebration of women’s contributions to history, culture, and society and has been observed annually in the month of March in the United States since1987. 

International Women’sDay was named in 1909 when women did not have the right to vote. A group of activists, the suffragists, fought for women’s right to vote. Bringing to light the contributions of women throughout the world allows us to understand how far we’ve come in the fight for women’s equality. 

One of the many women I greatly admire is Sojourner Truth, who fought for enslaved Black women and for the right to vote. And, there is the late Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who helped women gain the freedom to even have an independent bank account. 

Another woman I will never forget meeting is Rebecca Lolosoli. I’d researched her and written about her when I went to Kenya several times.  And in 2013, I was able to interview this extraordinary woman in London’s Heathrow airport. 

Rebecca Lolosoli is the matriarch of Umoja Village. She founded the village in 1991 to support women and girls, orphans and widows – those who were facing social and economic difficulties and had been abandoned by their families, or were fleeing domestic violence, forced marriage or female genital mutilation (FGM). They had no land, no guarantee of human rights, and no protection under the law. Often, they were victimized over and over as they lived on the streets, vulnerable to continued violence and maltreatment. Rebecca saw the need to gather these women together and work collectively to find strategies for survival. 

With the help of other women, Rebecca has been able to provide a safe haven for the women in her community who have been tortured, beaten, and raped. What started in 1991 as a group of 16 raped women, denounced and outcast by their families, on a patch of sun-dried, neglected land granted to them by the Kenyan government at the behest of Rebecca, is today a unique group of 50 flourishing, happy women and girls, orphans and widows, and even a few beloved goats. Despite repeated threats and attacks from men of neighboring villages, Rebecca continues to work for women’s rights. Her goal is to curb violence against women and the negative cultural practices that are harmful to women’s health, safety and well-being.

The International Women’s Day project (internationalwomensday.com) reminds us to celebrate women’s achievement, to raise awareness against bias, and to take action for equality.

Responsibility. That word is now known for sending chills up and down everyone’s spines instead of inspiring independence and confidence. How come? Because responsibility means being willing to own up to our mistakes as well as focus on taking charge of the things that we need to take charge of. If we are being honest, how many of us tend to actually want to take responsibility for our actions or even our own things? Very few of us if we are being completely open. Our culture nowadays does not encourage much responsibility in any of us. All we have to do is turn on the news and we end up seeing how much our culture resents responsibility. In fact, most television shows, podcasts, or even video games don’t inspire much responsibility in us or our children. In light of this overwhelming tidal wave of media influence, how do we as parents teach our children responsibility?

First, we need to practice responsibility ourselves. We show our children that we are willing to own up to our mistakes, and we take charge of things that we need to take charge of. This isn’t easy but we provide our children with a prime example of what responsibility is and how it can be truly empowering when we take care of things. Modeling and being an example to our kids also gives them less of an excuse to not follow through.

Second, we must give our children safe opportunities to be responsible. Every child at every age and stage can learn a new life skill and have a privilege that they can learn to maintain. Now that doesn’t mean that we should give our kids a cart-Blanche to do what they want. Instead we give them simple tasks that they can maintain and have a chance to do well in. This may mean that we adjust what life skill we are teaching to our child’s age and ability in order for them to be successful. We also don’t give our children a privilege that they are very clearly not ready for. If our children have a habit of throwing tantrums whenever they don’t get technology, then we don’t give our children access to their own technology. If they don’t show respect for other people’s personal property and break it, then we make it a point to have our child either pay for the damage themselves or do work to pay for the damage. It is important to keep in mind that privileges are exactly that, privileges. If our children don’t show themselves ready for the privileges then they do not need it.

Third, we require our children and ourselves as parents to admit our mistakes. This is a really hard concept to grasp, I know. And if we are being completely honest, we don’t like saying that we’ve gotten something wrong. After all, we’re independent individuals. Who can tell us when we’re wrong? What I’m suggesting is something that doesn’t come naturally, but it is completely necessary. We don’t always get things right, and that is completely okay! If we are willing to admit our mistakes, we often open ourselves up to learning new things and allowing ourselves to grow. The same can be said of our kids. If we encourage them to be willing to say that they were wrong and be willing to do what they can to fix the problem, then we teach them some essential life skills that they will need for the future. Namely, we teach them how to solve a problem and not to become completely unhinged when they make a mistake.

Fourth, we expect nothing less then the best from our children and from ourselves when it comes to tasks or life skills. Many times we tend to look for shortcuts when it comes to every day tasks or even job responsibilities, but looking for these loopholes tends to cost us in the long run and tend to produce slip shod work. When it comes to teaching our children responsibility, we must require them to do their best and do things with a quality work ethic. And we must do the same thing out of ourselves. For example, you require your child to do a chore such as sweeping the floor. You don’t accept their work unless they sweep all of the dust and dirt off of the floor. The same concept applies to each of us when we do our work.

Finally, we must be willing to accept the consequences for our actions whether good or bad. This is going to be the most controversial statement I will make in this entire blog. Everything we do, right or wrong, has a consequence. And we can’t run from them. We can temporarily delay the consequences but we can’t take them away. Often times when we delay or run from facing the consequences, it only compounds the aftermath whenever we face it. This is a concept that is a hard one to learn and an even harder one to teach. It is an essential one that we can teach our children in order to help them with being able to face difficult situations in life as well as being willing to take action when necessary. Accepting the consequences for our actions can not only teach us responsibility but also resiliency when times get difficult.

Responsibility is a difficult concept to teach our children, but it is a necessary one. We must be willing to learn what we need to own and what we don’t need to own as well as taking care of what is really ours. When we teach our kids the concept of responsibility, we empower them in ways that we never thought possible. Our job as parents is not only to teach our children right from wrong, but how to eventually take care of all themselves when they are adults. This process may be difficult, but the end result is always worth it.