6 Ways to Parent Wisely (Especially with Challenging Kids)

As backed by numerous research studies, your ability to effectively model the following skills for your child will help you strengthen your relationship with him or her:

  1. Manage your difficult emotions. Your ability to identify and reflect on your feelings without acting on them immediately is critical to healthy relationships. When you react impulsively to your negative emotions, you increase the likelihood of saying something to your child that you might later regret. You are also more likely to be punitive, which also ruptures your connection to your child. I’m not suggesting that you absolve your child of responsibility, but I am suggesting that you hold him or her accountable in a thoughtful way.
  2. Appropriately express your emotions. Your capacity to experience, reflect, accurately label and effectively communicate emotions helps your child develop the same capacity. In fact, I think it is accurate to say that one’s ability to process and communicate feelings is fundamental to any healthy relationship.
  3. Listen carefully to your child. Take the time to listen to your child’s feelings and understand his experiences. It is important that you not impose your interpretation of his experience. Try to understand experiences from his perspective. The more time you take to listen to his feelings and help him label these feelings, the better he will become at managing difficult emotions over time.
  4. Problem-solve with your child. When challenging situations arise, it is helpful if you can problem solve with your child about how to address whatever the situation might be. This is how your child develops better problem solving skills. It is particularly helpful when you can anticipate difficult situations and trouble shoot with your child in advance.
  5. Maintain perspective on your child’s development. Brain development and emotional maturity is a process that takes time. While we cannot force the brain to develop any faster than nature will allow, we can remove impediments to brain development and emotional maturation. For example, if your child has poor impulse control, you will not find a punishment that makes him less impulsive. You can, however, identify situations where he is more vulnerable to more impulsive behavior and together come up with strategies for maintaining self control in those situations. In addition, if he does behave impulsively, you can discuss his behavior with him and have him take responsibility for his actions. Keep in mind that the brain’s breaking system responsible for filtering what is said and done will not fully develop until he is between 25 and 30 years of age.
  6. Adjust your expectations of your child and yourself. It is important that you understand your child’s strengths and challenges when setting appropriate expectations. Avoid using, age, grade or comparisons with sibling or peers when deciding on what your child should be able to do. Every child is unique with his own rate of development. There is no formula for setting and maintaining expectations other than listening to your child and trial and error.

 

 

How Genes Unfold

“Genes are rarely about inevitability, especially when it comes to humans, the brain, or behavior. They’re about vulnerability, propensities, tendencies.”

-Robert M. Sapolsky, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers

 

Divorce Support Groups

We’ve added Divorce Support Groups to our menu of services. Led by Tara Boerner, LMFT and Julia Murphy, LMFT.

1. Begin Again: A Healing Group for Women

This group will meet Wednesdays 1-2:30 pm in our Tarzana offices. An initial assessment is required for admission.

2. Helping Teens Cope with Divorce

These groups will meet 1x/week for 1 1/2 hours in the afternoon or early evening. Members will be grouped separately according to age: 13-14, 15-17, 18+.

Contact: Julia Murphy, LMFT 818-388-1526 or Email: Info@MurphyPsychologyGroup.com

tara_058           Julia

Tara Boerner, LMFT             Julia Murphy, LMFT

 

Parent Conversations: Understanding Your Child’s Changing Developmental Needs

Event Date: Wednesday, December 10th, 2014

Dr. Murphy gave a parent presentation at the Country School about the developmental needs of pre-school children, with a particular emphasis on the critical role parents play in fostering their child’s emotional, cognitive and social development. Topics included:

  • Principles of effective discipline
  • Coping with transitions
  • Managing tantrums
  • Facilitating social skills development
  • Managing adult expectations

Other talks in this series will focus on Elementary and Middle School children.

Please email info@murphypsychologygroup.com if you are interested in having Dr. Murphy speak to parents or teachers at your school.

Manage Negative Emotions About Parenting an LD Child

Parents cope with a wide range of difficult feelings about their child’s learning challenges. Will my son or daughter be accepted to a good middle school, high school or college? Will he be able to create a life for himself? Will she ever be able to make and keep friends? All these questions weigh heavily on your mind and increase stress. While you may love your child and want the bet for him or her, your feelings of disappointment, confusion, helplessness, shame and anger may not seem very loving. You might find yourself trying to deny that you have these feelings, or you may take them as a sign that you are failing as a parent. The difficulty with this guilty mindset is that it only intensifies already painful feelings. Here’s my message to you: When parenting any child, a range of feelings, both positive and negative, is natural and human. It may be counterintuitive, but this self acceptance is crucial to processing your emotions and maintaining the composure to be present for your child. From this place, you’ll be better able to implement effective parenting strategies. Being comfortable with a wide range of feelings also helps you develop a greater capacity to understand and accept the range of emotions and experiences your child will have.

Of course, if you are feeling overwhelmed, depressed or your anger is out of control, seek the help and support of a professional.

10-Week Workshop for Parents of Challenging Children

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Mothers or Couples Groups

  • Learn easily grasped strategies and techniques
  • Improve your relationship with your child
  • Understand the role of healthy relationships in brain development
  • Learn how your child’s slow-to-emerge abilities affect academics and behavior
  • Develop a calm, problem-solving approach
  • Establish and maintain reasonable expectations

 Call or email to sign up.

Julia Murphy, LMFT (818) 388-1526

Info@MurphyPsychologyGroup.com

 

 

 

 

                          

MurphyPsychologyGroup.com

18321 Ventura Blvd., Suite 955, Tarzana, CA 91356

Contact: Julia Murphy, MA (818) 388-1526

Info@MurphyPsychologyGroup.com

 

You Influence Your Baby’s Brain Development

As a parent, your relationship with your child is key to his or her health and happiness and will form the template for all future relationships.  Your infant is born with a powerful instinct to elicit as much care and attention from you as possible.  As a species we are hardwired on a cellular level to be emotionally connected to others.  Your child seeks closeness to you when he or she needs comfort or is scared.

“Attunement” is the term used to describe a parent’s responsiveness to her baby’s needs and emotions.  Parents who are attuned are able to sense what a baby feels most of the time and show empathy for those feelings through eye contact, facial expressions, touch, talk and other behaviors.  None of us are perfect and life’s stresses naturally interfere at times, but if you are attuned and responsive to your baby’s needs as consistently as possible, this will create an experience of emotional safety for your child, while simultaneously facilitating brain development.

During the first year of life, hormones stimulated by interactions with you directly affect the way genes unfold in your baby’s brain.  The most important part of the brain to grow in that first year is the portion of the limbic system responsible for social and emotional functioning.  Not only does attuned responsiveness give your child the ability to regulate his emotions, but it also enables him to develop a conscience and experience empathy.  If attuned responsiveness is not provided, too many stress hormones are produced in the infant that can hinder brain development and create a sense of helplessness, hopelessness and fear.

The message to you: follow your instincts as a parent to connect to your child with calmness, love and care as often as you can.

8 Important Parenting Practices

With the busy schedules parents juggle, few of us can find the time to read an entire parenting book. Sometimes biting off just a little bit of wisdom is enough to start navigating your family’s day with more mindful ease.

1. LISTEN. Be an attentive audience. Take the time to listen to your child’s concerns, ideas and stories.

2. ENCOURAGE. Be sure to praise your child in response to her good efforts. Try to have praise outweigh corrections or discipline.

3. OPEN UP. Share information about yourself to help normalize your child’s experiences.

4. PLAY. Find time to bond over activities you both enjoy. Finding something you like, too, increases the likelihood that you will make time for your child.

5. APOLOGIZE. Admit mistakes and say you’re sorry now and then. Children are quick to forgive and will respect you for it.

6. AVOID COMPARISONS. Resist the temptation to compare your child to siblings or peers. Instead of motivating your child, comparisons tend to be shaming and undermine your child’s growth and happiness.

7. REFLECT. Learn to monitor your responses to problem behavior, rather than reacting quickly and punitively. Resisting an anxious response gives you the emotional space to gauge how serious a problem is and to solve it in cooperation with your child.

8. CONSIDER YOUR LIMITS. When prioritizing expectations and deciding with your child how to get them met, carefully consider what you can handle. Do you have the time or emotional resources to help your child follow through or to enforce consequences if he doesn’t?