Alyson Schafer - Aint Misbehavin: Tactics for Tantrums, Meltdowns, Bedtime Blues and Other Perfectly Normal Kid Behaviors

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Aint Misbehavin

Tactics for Tantrums, Meltdowns, Bedtime Blues, and Other Perfectly Normal Kid Behaviors

Alyson Schafer

Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Its always a team effort to write a book. The author is the front person, but I want readers to know I represent a terrific group of people, all of whom were a vital part in the chain of events that took my initial idea and walked it through the gazillion little steps to your hot little hands.

Big thanks to my two editors: Leah Fairbank, who kicked this book into action, and Liza Finlay, who took it over the finish line with me. A gal couldnt ask for better collaboration partners. Thanks to Pam Vokey, Alison Maclean, Judy Phillips, Erin Kelly, Katie Wolsley, and Meghan Brousseau, all with Wiley, for managing the process and making it all go smoothly and look beautiful.

Then there is the cast of characters who have been my encouragers and teachers. Some even admit to being my dear friends: Frank, Kathy and Cindy Walton, Wes Wingett, Louise Gireaux, Tim Hartshorne, Erik Mansager and Jane Pfefferle, Drs. Joyce and Gary McKay, Daniel Eckstein, Steve Maybell, John Petersen, Dan and Marilyn Dalton, Richard Kopp, Tim Evans and Gerri Carter, Jody McVittie, Linda Jessop, Patti Cancellier, Dina Emser, Betty Lou Bettner, Dr. Eva Dreikurs Ferguson, Bryna Gamson, Edna Nash and my closest advisors, the late Larry Nisan and his teamChris Nisan, Michael Vesselago, Peter Morse and Kathy Vance, all of the Psychotherapy Institute of Toronto.

To my sisterhood of momma bloggers, writers and business supporters that help make my soapbox a little higher so I can get my parenting message out farther: Kathy Buckworth, Ann Douglas, Erica Ehm, Jennifer Kolari, Emma Waverman, Theresa Albert, Sharon Vinderine, and Kathryn Howell. Too numerous to mention individually but way too important to leave out: my Twitter followers. Yes, its all you folks, too. I @loveyou for all your RTs and enthusiasm.

To my late parents, Dick and Sylvia Knight, who were hell-bent on family meetings, and stuck with them even when they were going poorly, who offered up our family for counseling demonstrations to the public and who inspired me to share Adlerian ideas with other families as an adult. To my grandmother, Edith Dewey, who brought Dr. Rudolf Dreikurs to Ontario.

I want to give thanks to my daughters, Zoe and Lucy. I never meant for them to be the poster children of my parenting career, and I tried my best to respect their privacy and let them have their share of misbehaviors and mistakes like any other kids going through childhood (without me saying, Dont act like thatyoull ruin my reputation!). But it seems theyve thrived under this way of parenting and have never felt the need to give me a run for my money. Instead, they cheer me on every day and tell me I am doing important work.

And to my circle of friends who jump in as extended family when I need them. And when youre writing a book, you need them! Dirk Bouwman, Julie Weiss, Colette Annetts and Mark Kitchen and, yes, even their children, Reilly and Liam Kitchen.

Hooray, everyone! We did it. I share this success and celebration with you all.

Alyson

PREFACE

HOW TO MAKE LEMON BARS AND RAISE A CHILD

For the most part, parenting is still lumped into the category of soft topics, falling somewhere between recipes and fashion in our papers and news broadcasts. How to make lemon bars and Is your teen depressed? are buried on page 221, just before the real estate ads.

Were raising the next generation of humanity, for Petes sake, and there is no doubt in anyones mind that, as a society, were struggling with how to go about it. Yet, there seems to be more Sudoku puzzles than parenting columns being printed.

As a parenting expert and psychotherapist, I speak with parents who have the warmest hearts, the greatest ambitions, and yet they have the biggest frustration about how best to deal with their children.

I have been in their shoes. My children are 15 and 16 now, but when I was a young, newbie mom, I experienced first-hand my toddlers ability to morph into a boneless, limp, rag doll. She would lie defiantly in the foyer while I politely requested, and then pathetically begged and eventually yelled to get those snow pants on RIGHT THIS MINUTE because now youve made me late for my meeting! Look at how mad youve made mommy. Happy now?

I felt terrible for yelling. Well, thats a lie. It felt good actuallythats why I did it. It was cathartic to yell. In the moment, it had a nice, Ill show you whos boss feel to it. Yelling helped me feel like my 23 month old didnt have me in a choke hold. But the guilt feelings would come as time passed and I calmed down. Not a proud parenting moment, as we say, but honestly, I was stuck; I didnt know what else to do.

Why didnt I know what to do?

Yes, loving our kids is intuitive, but parenting them is a learned skill, and despite being the child of not one but two parent educators, I still hadnt learned the techniques I needed. How weird is that?

Its true. When I was a child, my parents taught parenting classes in our living room. (I used to make money babysitting the children of the parents in their classes.) They didnt use threats or bribes. No sticker charts on my childhood fridge. I wasnt even grounded. What did they do, then? Sadly, I didnt have a clue. I could not recollect a single parenting technique from my own childhood to replicate with my kids.

I decided to pick up the parenting book my parents had taught from. It was still on their living room bookshelf. That book was Children: The Challenge by Dr. Rudolf Dreikurs. Today, over a million copies have been sold, and the Library of Congress cited it as one of the most seminal books of the century.

Wow! I was awestruck. As a new mom wanting to do right by her children and having enjoyed an awesome family life myself, I was blown away by what I learned. It wasnt the light and fluffy stuff of lemon bars and Sudoku at all. It was psychology and anthropology and sociology and the humanities all rolled up into a single philosophy. But more importantly, it provided actual techniques for raising mentally healthy, happy, cooperative children.

And I wanted to learn more, More, MORE! So I signed up for Adlerian parenting classes, began teaching at an Adlerian nursery school and, while there is no such thing as getting a postsecondary degree in parenting, I did get my masters degree in counseling at the Adler School of Professional Psychology in Chicago.

The entire time I was learning, I was teaching. I couldnt discover something new that was helpful and not tell my mom friends at the drop-in. (I must have been annoying, huh?) The point is, how can you know something so important and then keep it to yourself? That felt selfish to me, like hoarding. I felt I just had to share. How far could I spread the good news? How many parents and children could I help?

So I gave classes, and I launched a call-in parenting program for cable TV, and I wrote two parenting books.

In the first book, Breaking the Good Mom Myth (BTGMM), I tackle, on the most meta level, the parental baggage and mythconceptions about parentingthe ones that end up doing more harm than good. Then, in my second book,

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