Help! I'm a Parent - Softcover

S. Bruce Narramore holds an M.A. from Pepperdine University and a Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky. He has also taken theological study at Fuller Theological Seminary and Talbot Theological Seminary. He was the founding Dean of the Rosemead Graduate School for Professional Psychology and Theology. He has lectured extensively on the relationship of psychology and theology, including giving the Staley Distinguished Christian Scholar Lecture Series at Covenant Theological Seminary in 1978. He is a member of the American Psychological Society.

CHAPTER 1 Help! I'm a Parent After a tough day with two rambunctious preschoolers, a weary mother declared, 'From the minute I got up this morning my kids were fussing and fighting and finding creative ways to drive me nuts. I tried everything to get them to settle down, but nothing worked. Sometimes on a day like this I just want to give them away cheap!' After a similar day with two teenagers, another frazzled mother confided, 'I love them to death, but some days I'd like to knock them into the middle of next week!' If you have children you know how these mothers feel. Parenting can be a wonderful, enriching experience, but it isn't always a piece of cake. Humorist Dave Barry clipped an article from the American Medical Association newsletter about a man who went to his doctor complaining of a hearing loss. When the doctor checked it out, he found that the man's ear canal was blocked by a plug of hardened superglue! Barry comments: Now some of you are scratching your heads and wondering, 'how does a person with an IQ higher than pastry get superglue in his ear and not know it?' but you parents out there are no doubt nodding your heads and saying: 'It would not surprise me to learn that this man has a three-year-old son.' And, of course you're right. According to the AMA newsletter, the son 'squirted the glue into the father's left ear when the man was sleeping.' Fortunately surgeons were able to unclog the man's ear, but as medical consumers we can prevent this kind of ear-tragedy by remembering to take these safety precautions: 1.Never keep three-year-old children around the house. 2.If you do, never sleep.1 Your children may not be quite so creative as to put superglue in your ear, but I'm sure they create their share of problems. If you have a toddler, you are probably facing meal or bedtime hassles, problems with toilet training, temper tantrums, and whining. If you have preschoolers, they have probably added fighting, talking back, and sibling rivalry to your life. Elementary school children are good at creating messy rooms and homework hassles, and squabbling with their friends. They also forget their chores, crouch outside their sister's room like a cat outside a mouse hole, and are melodramatically bored on rainy days! Eleven- and twelve-year-olds are approaching adolescence at the speed of light and will soon acquire some dubious friends, clothes, music, grades, or attitudes. And if you have a fifteen- or sixteen-year-old, you are no doubt encountering occasional negativism, hypersensitivity, moodiness, and worries about their friends and the opposite sex. If these problems only popped up say, once or twice a month, most of us could cope just fine. But when they pile on top of each other for sixteen hours a day, or when you are trying to hold down a job and rear children at the same time, they quickly press us to the borders of our parental patience--if not our sanity! As another mother of preschoolers told me, 'It's amazing how two small children with half my intelligence can make me feel so helpless and infuriated.' This book shows you how to manage your children so that you avoid or solve most of these hassles. I'm convinced that you don't need to spend your whole day solving problems, refereeing fights, picking up after your children, and reminding them to put on their coats or to study for tomorrow's math quiz. You can even teach your children to get along with each other-most of the time! Unfortunately, newborn babies don't come equipped with an owner's manual telling us how to solve these problems. So we do what comes naturally: We coax, plead, bribe, nag, threaten, and punish. Or we reach into our memory banks for the techniques our parents used on us. But while those old methods provide temporary relief, it doesn't last long, and they miss the more important emotional and relational issues behind your children's exasperating behaviors. This book gives you something like an owner's manual for children from the toddler stage through the middle teens. By the time you finish you will know: *What causes your children to misbehave and how to head off many of their misbehaviors before they get out of control *How you may be unconsciously training your children to do the very things you hate *How to increase your children's positive, cooperative, and likeable behaviors *Six easy, practical techniques of discipline that will show positive results in your family within a week *How to get your children to clean their rooms and do their chores without constantly nagging and reminding them *How to handle your children's two biggest excuses--'I couldn't hear you' and 'I forgot' *How to help your children feel better about themselves and about you so they won't misbehave out of frustration No Ph.D.'s For Parents Our society requires seventeen years of education before certifying a person to teach in public school. Medical doctors and psychologists must have twenty years of schooling before they practice on your children. And many states require teenagers to take a course in driver's education before they can be licensed to drive a car. But to rear children from the cradle to their twenties, our society doesn't require one hour of formal training! Perhaps because conception, pregnancy, and childbirth are natural biological functions, we assume (if we think about it at all) that rearing children 'just comes naturally.' But it doesn't take long after the first baby arrives to realize that idea is incorrect. Most of us don't have the foggiest notion of how to see to it that our children eat their vegetables, let alone how to get them to clean their rooms, complete their chores, and live in relative peace around the home. My wife and I were both college graduates and I had a Ph.D. before our children were born. We naively assumed we were ready for parenthood. But when Richard and Debbie arrived, we were rudely awakened. Even my four years of professional experience in child-guidance clinics and in public schools had not prepared me to cope with the daily routine of parenting. I had been trained to work with clinical problems like learning disorders, antisocial behavior, depression, and social withdrawal. But I hadn't learned how to get children to the dinner table, how to get them to behave in public, how to get them into bed, how to get them to do their homework, or how to keep them from killing each other!