Paul: One of our YouTube viewers recently asked, "What age should a teenage girl start dating?" There's a lot of considerations. Let's go over 4 of those today. You know, Vicki, it's interesting how this comes up in the questions and comments that we get here on the YouTube channel. "What age should I let my daughter start dating?" Vicki: Yeah. Paul: That word let is interesting, isn't it? Vicki: It implies control, and really we can't control at that age what they do. What we do control are the rules, the limitations. Paul: Right. And you as a parent get to set those up. Vicki: Get to "I need to," Paul: And it's your kids that get to decide whether they are going to cooperate with those rules and limits that you have set up as a parent. I think that's an important acknowledgement right up front. Let them?…
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Vicki: What a challenge, dealing with a rude disrespectful child That is so hard. It sets things off inside you really fast. Paul: That's something that triggers parents more than anything. Vicki: Yeah, yep. So, the very first thing maintaining respect yourself. This is a challenge when someone is being disrespectful to you, especially someone younger, it is really challenging. We have got to find ways that we can maintain respect ourselves. We have talked about that quite a few times. Become very aware of the way you show up in your own body. So, with your face, is it calm? Are you reflecting back anger? Are your eyebrows calm? Is your voice calm? Paul: You know Vicki, as you introduced this idea of maintaining a respectful demeanor yourself, because that is how you are going to model behavior for your kids, obviously. I remember this group that I was…
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Why are we even having this conversation? Because it's challenging, it's difficult. If you're in a relationship with someone and then a separation occurs, usually that separation is a result of a number of different factors. And you know what they are, right? Oftentimes, it's because there were some difficulties, there were some challenges. Some things came up where at least one party said, "We've got to get some space or some distance here." The nature of a separation itself is problematic because it starts out with usually a problem or a concern. What if this is someone that you want to still have a relationship with despite the problems? I work with a lot of couples for example where they have children together. They run into some marital problems and so they separate to try to work on these problems. They have a reason to get back together because…
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It's one of the most gut-wrenching things I've had to deal with in recent years. How to deal with the loss of a pet. I'm going to approach this topic from two perspectives because you might be considering how you or someone you love is going to deal with the loss of a pet. From a parenting perspective, there are lots of great reasons to have a pet in the first place. Some of those would include that they tend to give us examples of unconditional love and forgiveness. I heard a joke recently about how to tell who truly loves you? You put your spouse and your dog in the trunk of your car, drive around for about an hour, open up the trunk and see who's happy to see you. You know how you can leave for five minutes and come back and your dog is like,…
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Some of our viewers have asked for some self-calming techniques for their preschoolers. I think we can help you with that. Vicki: Young children really don't have emotional self-regulation. It is pretty common for them to be out of control, and so, learning self-soothing techniques is going to take some time. Just expect that and it won't be so frustrating to you when they just start throwing a big fit or having a meltdown. Paul: Vicki, we have been doing positive parenting groups for some time now. And as you have joined our groups and shared with us what's going on in your own parenting world, I've seen this very frequently where parents of very young children, especially if they are first-time parents just aren't aware of what some of the developmental expectations are. I would encourage you to not freak out too much. When you have a preschool child…
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I've now written three books with a few more coming, and I think I know a few things that could save you some time. These three books have taught me a lot about what you need to know in order to write a book or before you write it. The first thing to ask is, “Who is this for? Who is my audience?” That's important because the tone of this book will be dictated by who you think is going to be reading it. The obvious example: If you are writing a children's book, you are going to approach that very differently than if you are going to write a textbook for medical students. Those are pretty diverse audiences. Get clear on who is your audience and that will help you to shape not only your message but the way you deliver the content. I asked who's your audience who's…
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A viewer of Live On Purpose TV asked, “How do I help a child with reactive attachment disorder?” I've got at least seven ideas to share with you about that. Reactive attachment disorder is something that you may or may not know about already. Most parents who are familiar with reactive attachment disorder have adopted children. This is because reactive attachment disorder is most common in children who are adopted, who have an early history of neglect or failure to attach to a primary caregiver. There has been some kind of other childhood trauma, abuse, or neglect. This causes some very problematic things to happen in that child's development. It is so important for children to form a healthy attachment, especially to their primary caregiver. But, also to others who are important in their life. When that is missing in the earliest stages of development, children sometimes don't learn to…
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Let's take on the understanding of low self-esteem first. One of my college professors was a leading researcher in this field. Dr. Richard Bednar and his colleagues did a landmark study back in the 80’s that was published by the American Psychological Association that shook up what we knew about self-esteem. We used to think that it was based on achievement or having people treat us in a way that built us up. That's not what they found. These researchers found that self-esteem is based primarily on one factor, seeing yourself taking on hard things. Think about that for a minute. It's not even whether you succeed in taking on those hard things. It's simply seeing yourself take on hard things. Conversely, low self-esteem was correlated with seeing yourself running away from hard things, or an avoidant pattern. That takes a toll on self-esteem. There are a lot of paradoxes…
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Bullying in general is something that we've got to address a little bit better in our communities. It's becoming more of a problem all over the planet. The specific topic of today's video has to do with adolescents which bullying tends to increase as we get into those adolescent years, and girls particularly in middle school. When we were shooting the video for this topic at Live On Purpose TV, both Allie and Alisha who were filming said, "Oh, yeah, girls can be awful. Mean Girls." There is even a movie with that name. Girls can be even worse than boys when it comes to bullying. It can be a big problem. There are different forms of bullying. Think of a spectrum or a continuum, maybe on the less severe end of that spectrum we've got teasing, banter. Especially friendly or playful banter. As you move toward the other end…
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Vicki: Paul and I are going to take on the topic How to Handle An Aggressive Child Toward a Parent with an acronym. The word is CHILL. Calm your own emotional response, model what that calmness looks like for them. Paul: That's such a powerful learning tool. What you show them is huge. Vicki: You know, it's so funny but a lot of times you have to just kind of think about your face. "Is my face calm? Okay, I'm going to calm." Let down your shoulders, that sort of thing. So, get good at calming your own self. Maybe even taking a big breath letting it out. Paul: You know I had Nicholeen Peck come and do a couple of episodes of Live On Purpose TV on YouTube. You can look those up in the playlist on our channel. I love the way Nicholeen puts this. Calm voice, calm…
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