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CYNTHIA ARMSTRONG

Four Group of Parents that Raise Great Kids

By Cynthia Armstrong

Today, I want to talk about children who are messed up. Hi, I am Cynthia Armstrong. I am a parent of two children. I am an elementary school teacher and I've worked in general and special education. I am a lifelong learner. What I want to share are those things that I have learned in my journey to help myself, my children, and my students and their families. If you would like to contact me, please visit my webpage, www.raisinggreatkids.net. Please leave comments below, I am always happy to respond to them.

Children are messed up. We live in a world where nothing is perfect, and that includes our children. I recall one time when my daughter was a teenager (and I don't remember what she had done or said) but my response was, “Why do you have to pick up on my bad habits? Because I have a lot of good things in me.” She always tends to find the habits that I didn't like in myself. I think we all kind of do that because what we often see in our children is ourselves. We see our children emulating the habits and patterns that we struggle with overcoming. I get into this confined state and my vision is very narrow, so I wonder why my daughter picked up on that one bad habit that I messed up on. I think that part of that is because our brain tends to focus on the things that we don't like or that are a danger to us, because our brain is very negatively biased. It seeks these things out. When our children pick up on those, it's partly because they're seeking for that. We notice it in them because we are seeking for that. As a result, we think that our kids are messed up. Whether they’re our own children, adopting, or fostering children, they're messed up! But guess what? It's okay because the parents are messed up, too.

We all have things we're working on. The good news is that even though our brain is negatively biased, it's a safety thing. It keeps us alive. We're always looking for danger. For example, we might think, “My mom never lets me be free,” or “She is never there for me.” Because we think these things about this person, then we are protecting ourselves. We withdraw and end up doing all the things we accuse them of. We're not even aware that we're doing that because we're focused on them and what they're doing. If you look at somebody and notice their negative patterns, then look at yourself and notice those same negative patterns, and you weren't even aware of it. We tend to notice the ones that we want to work on in ourselves. Subconsciously, we might not even be aware that that's one for us.

Again, our brain is negatively biased. It will look for those negative things that our children are or aren't doing. The things in ourselves that we don't like. When that is our focus, then that's the program we play more often. That's the program that we drive deeper, or signal faster, so that it's our “natural” response instead of a chosen, more positive, response.

However, we can retrain our brain to look for the positive. Even though my daughter did pick up on some of the negative programs I had, I also provided her with a lot of beneficial ones. We have given our children the beneficial programs, and so we want to help ourselves focus on those beneficial programs. When we do that, then our children also focus on their beneficial programs. When that is our focus, we engage those programs more often. It gets our attention and then we'll play it again because we get rewarded. Our brain recognizes that we get rewarded for that again. When we focus on those beneficial programs, we have that positivity in our life, and it builds those programs stronger.

Be aware of the positive habits and programs in your child and see if you can see them in yourself. If you see them in yourself, then you might see them more prominently in your child. Our brain automatically goes to the negative, so it's up to us to specifically look for those programs that are running, that benefit us and the programs our children are running that benefit them. When we point out those beneficial programs to ourselves and to our children, it boosts us, it gives us that higher energy level, and that will become the dominant program that we run. Children are great by their very nature, even if we're all messed up. We have that privilege and that responsibility for raising them.