Comments on: How to be the perfect parent – rewrite 975 http://villageblog.wordpress.com/2006/05/05/how-to-be-the-perfect-parent-rewrite-975/ Fri, 30 Oct 2009 23:12:21 +0000 http://wordpress.com/ hourly 1 By: villageblog http://villageblog.wordpress.com/2006/05/05/how-to-be-the-perfect-parent-rewrite-975/#comment-42 villageblog Sat, 08 Sep 2007 11:11:24 +0000 http://villageblog.wordpress.com/2006/05/05/how-to-be-the-perfect-parent-rewrite-975/#comment-42 I appreciated your post - I too read the Continuum Concepts with the idea that I would raise my children to be outside of the cultural oppression that we live in (and I was rasied in). I am lucky that my wife is a behavioral therapist working with the families of developmentally disabled children - so I have been learning the very things you listed above. She tells me that disabled children don't have the "social filters" that we normally develop at a young age, so they are more likely to do the kicking and screaming thing at the supermarket. I would suggest you look at books on Positive Behavioral Support, which is what she teaches her parents. PBS teaches that to have emotionally healthy children, we have to empathize with their difficulties, yet give them encouragement to want to act in "appropriate ways". The biggest lesson is that behavior is communication, and most children are very communicative when something is bothering them. This should communication should be encouraged, but they just need to learn how to do that. Finally, she always tells me that the hardest thing for kids are transitions. Our culture moves so fast, and we move from location to location and from activity to activity that children can get overwhelmed and frustrated. She teaches her parents to do social scripting, picture schedules and notification before transitions to make the changes easier to process for those young minds. Posted by: Purplesage | 05/08/2006 I appreciated your post – I too read the Continuum Concepts with the idea that I would raise my children to be outside of the cultural oppression that we live in (and I was rasied in).

I am lucky that my wife is a behavioral therapist working with the families of developmentally disabled children – so I have been learning the very things you listed above. She tells me that disabled children don’t have the “social filters” that we normally develop at a young age, so they are more likely to do the kicking and screaming thing at the supermarket.

I would suggest you look at books on Positive Behavioral Support, which is what she teaches her parents. PBS teaches that to have emotionally healthy children, we have to empathize with their difficulties, yet give them encouragement to want to act in “appropriate ways”. The biggest lesson is that behavior is communication, and most children are very communicative when something is bothering them. This should communication should be encouraged, but they just need to learn how to do that. Finally, she always tells me that the hardest thing for kids are transitions. Our culture moves so fast, and we move from location to location and from activity to activity that children can get overwhelmed and frustrated. She teaches her parents to do social scripting, picture schedules and notification before transitions to make the changes easier to process for those young minds.

Posted by: Purplesage | 05/08/2006

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