Starting a Parenting with Dignity Class

(Another in Series of Letters from Concerned Parents (If you would like to submit a question for Mac to answer, please feel free to post your question at the bottom of the page!)

Why Would We Want to Start a PWD Class?

Dear Mac,

My wife and I recently purchased a set of the Parenting with Dignity, DVD curriculum and we love it. (We really loved the fact that we received a book for free with the order! the book really helps to refer to after watching he video.) The techniques are working with amazing success. We cannot believe the change in the climate in our family, and both of us feel so much calmer since we are actually approaching our three kids with a real plan. We are about halfway through the Assignment sheets and have just finished with Segment 5.

Our question for you is regarding the starting of a class. We love the curriculum but on your website you are continually trying to get parents to get together and watch the sessions as a group or class with other parents and we are not sure that we see that added value in going through the curriculum with other parents. Why should we put forth the effort to meet with others since the curriculum is working so well for us?

Sincerely,
Father and Mother from West Virginia

A Simple Answer to A Common Question

Dear Father and Mother,

Your question is very perceptive and it is one that I receive almost weekly, so I will answer your question (and the questions of others) regarding the value of holding Parenting with Dignity classes!

It is really quite simple when you think about it; from the day your kids enter school at the common age of five they will spend more waking hours with the kids of other families than they spend with you! Those kids from other families are going to exert a very real and powerful force in the lives of your kids (this is commonly called "peer pressure"). You don’t say how old your kids are but if you have three it is probably pretty safe to assume that at least one of your kids is already of school age and maybe all of them are already in school.

Just like it says in our curriculum, “The ideas in the heads of you kids will rule their world! And it does not matter where those ideas come from”. In the American culture many of the ideas in kids heads come from the kids that they spend time with at school! If you are NOT willing to engage in discussions with the families of those kids and insist on doing “your own thing in your own home” with little or no interaction with the families of the kids that your kids go to school with and play with, then you are committing a fatal error. Those other kids and families will exert lots of pressure on you kids with some pretty dysfunctional ideas; and if you are unwilling to interact you must accept what you get! But peer pressure need not be a negative force!

This Will Sound Familiar!

It works like this: It is so much easier for you to teach something as simple as saying “please” and “thank-you” at your dinner table if, when your kids visit another family home and your kid says, “Hey gimme a biscuit,” and then someone at that table asks them to use “Please!” All of a sudden you are not so weird for demanding the same in your home.

Roll the camera ahead a few years and your daughter or son is on a date to the Prom. It is so much easier for your kid to practice appropriate dating behavior if the kid he or she is dating is practicing the same behavior!
It is so much more reasonable to expect your kid to say “no” to drugs if he or she has friends who are cool, and who are also saying “no” surrounding them! It is much easier to place productive and healthy ideas in your kids’ heads if the kids that they go to school with and hang out with have similar ideas in their heads!

“How do we get there?” you ask. Well it is really pretty simple; you have to get together with the parents of the kids that your kids play with, and go to school with. You need to sit down with the other parents and look each other in the eye and agree on some similar techniques and ideas.

At this point so many parents say, “But we will never agree with other parents on everything!” Granted, but, you know, I have now been in communities in every one of the fifty states, and let me tell you it is not nearly as hard as it may appear at first glance!

Not So Difficult to Find Agreement

If you put twenty adults in a room and ask them to form a list of the twenty biggest problems that they anticipate that their kids will face before they are twenty-one, almost every group will come up with the same list!

The key is to anticipate what your kids will face and to give them the guidance BEFORE they are in the situation. If a whole group of parents have agreed that they want their kids to know what to do in the event that drugs are offered, then they must develop those positive expectations in the heads of their kids! This works so much better if those same actions are in the heads of many of your kids friends and classmates!

A Stimulant for Discussion

Our classes are a great medium for stimulating those discussions in a very non-threatening way! If you will hold the classes with twelve other families then you will have twelve allies in placing productive and positive ideas in your kids heads!

I cannot encourage you strongly enough to set up a class with Parenting with Dignity solely for the purpose of engaging with other parents in building strategies for collectively creating the community to raise your kids. Believe me it works! (And the review of the curriculum will not hurt you either!)

In closing let me offer just one more side benefit to holding classes… you will learn more from the other people in the class than you learn from the curriculum! It is true. You will learn more from the ideas and experiences that the other parents bring to class than you will learn from the curriculum itself. The other families will bring in examples and situations typical to your community and your local culture!

Good luck and if you need help setting up your class just go to http://www.parentingwithdignity.com/PWD/video_series/tape10f.htm and print that page. It is a compilation of things we have learned about setting up successful classes.

Go for it and let me know if I can be of help in setting up your class.

Sincerely,

Mac Bledsoe

Creating “Positive Peer Pressure”

Questions and Answers Are Only part of the Picture

I wish to thank those of you who submit questions to this column. Not only do you personally receive an answer to your own questions, but by asking your question, you also allow others to benefit because you may have just asked a question that helps many others as well. Many families can benefit from the question asked by one parent! However, I would like to point out that these questions and answers in this column represent only a small part of the value that the Parenting with Dignity Program has to offer to you and your family! Just think how wonderful it would be to be involved in the same process with weekly discussions about similar issues with other parents in your community !

Build a Strong Community to Raise Your Children

I cannot recommend strongly enough that you order a copy of the Parenting with Dignity Video Curriculum and/or a copy of either of my books, Parenting with Dignity or Parenting with Dignity the Early Years! By writing questions, many readers of this column can, and do, receive specific help with individual problems , however, this process may be of fleeting value because that small bit of advice may not help out the next time that another different problem arises! This process of question and answer keeps throwing parents back into the same loop... ask, answer; ask, answer; ask answer; and so on.

Develop a Complete Plan for raising Your Children

What the Parenting with Dignity Course does is to outline a complete plan for raising children in a highly effective and dignified manner. The program teaches you to be your own source of answers! My books do the same thing. In my books, I outline a complete plan for raising self-directed and fulfilled, happy children who are fully capable of making great decisions for themselves based upon a strong and complete foundation of values, morals, and ethics that you have taught to them! The video curriculum and the books teach you to create your own strategies tailored to your own family and your own problems.

Obviously, I will continue to offer specific advice via this column because it fills a need for so many parents and so many families. Even parents who have completed the course find this type of forum to be helpful. However, the point that I am attempting to make here is that in spite of receiving valuable help from these regular articles, the most broad and lasting value that you can receive from Parenting with Dignity lies in allowing yourself to go through the entire course with other parents. Going through each lesson and doing all of the assignments in conjunction with other families will bring the most value to your family!

Get the Maximum Value from Parenting with Dignity

The maximum value that families can receive from Parenting with Dignity comes from not just going through the class; the greatest value comes from forming a class and going through the curriculum with other parents in the neighborhood or community! When families go through the complete course together, they all benefit much more than they would by just going through the curriculum on their own.

Benefit from the Experiences of Others!

Just like in this column, many others may benefit from the question submitted by one parent. Most people tell us that they benefit as much from the discussions with other parents in their classes as they do from the curriculum itself!

A Very Simple Concept

But even more than benefiting from the questions of others, there is an even greater benefit that families receive from going through the curriculum together! This is not a difficult concept to understand. Please understand this: It is so much easier to teach your own children something if every other home that they visit is teaching a similar thing! It is so much easier to teach something as simple as saying “please” and “thank-you” at your own dinner table, if every home your child visits is teaching the same thing!

Likewise, it is so much easier to teach your children the advantages of drug-free living if your children are in constant contact with other children who have been taught a similar approach to life! Peer pressure is only negative if it pushes in a negative direction! Positive peer pressure can be a parent's biggest ally! Parenting with Dignity helps you to create this powerful positive force for your children.

Positive Peer Pressure

It is so much more natural to expect your children to behave in a desired manner if their friends are doing so too! Can it be more simple? It is just so much more reasonable to expect your child to behave in an appropriate manner while on a date to the Prom if he/she is dating a young person who has been taught similar dating behavior! Then just imagine that they are on a "double-date" with a couple more young people who have also been taught similar dating behavior; the peer pressure is now pushing them all toward doing the right thing!

Create a Positive Community for Raising Your Children

Put very simply, Parenting with Dignity will help you to build the positive community to raise your children! Parenting with Dignity will create positive peer pressure to "push" your children towards positive decisions and behavior! Please join the many other families who have started a Parenting with Dignity Course in their neighborhood. Order a copy of our DVD Curriculum and start a class today!

Dysfunction, Abuse, and Neglect

(Another in Series of Letters from Concerned Parents (If you would like to submit a question for Mac to answer, please feel free to post your question at the bottom of the page!)

(As an introduction to this letter, let me just tell you that I have since been in contact with this mother and she assured me that she was never considering any kind of stoppage in her efforts to be a great parent... she was just asking a theoretical question.)

A Question

Hi Mac,

I have a question. I was just noticing how most of the leaders of the world come from very hard/dysfunctional/abusive... childhoods. It kind of makes you think doesn't it? What I want to know is, with all the good parenting we give to our kids, are we really serving them well for their future? (Obviously, I'm not going to parent my children any less than my best because of this, I'm just curious).

I'm eager to hear your opinion.

Kind regards,
Wondering Mom

An Answer

Dear Mom,

I seldom receive questions of a general nature like this but I will try to answer your question as honestly as I can.

First, let me tell you that in my line of work, I find far more people who have been irreparably damaged by "hard/dysfunctional/abusive... childhoods" than I have found people who become leaders of the world from "hard/dysfunctional/abusive... childhoods"!

I would not disagree with you that there are many people who have difficult times in life, but who still go on to achieve very high levels of performance and leadership... However, I would contend that those who made it to the top did it in spite of their circumstance rather that because of them! In addition, I would contend that people who live successful lives after living through dysfunction and abuse, are definitely, the minority! Most people from that type of background live lives filled with anguish, failed dreams, misery, and self-doubt. Few have much in the way of positive self-esteem and even fewer live fulfilled lives.

"Are we doing our children a disservice by being a good parent?" I cannot believe that someone would consider that as a rational thought. I'm sure you don't. The thought of intentionally raising a child in dysfunction or abuse in order to help them is so ludicrous that I am surprised that I am even answering this question! I know that you are just asking in theory, but it still is a shocking question to me. However, the question does bring up some good ideas!

Well, in answer to your question, "I want to know, with all the good parenting we give to our kids, are we really serving them well for their future? " I must reply that it seems to me, that your picture of good parenting must be quite different from mine. I do NOT believe that good parenting just protects kids from life. I believe that truly effective parenting teaches kids to live life, all of it, good and bad alike. And good parenting teaches children to deal with tough times in a positive way. You seem to be equating good parenting with some kind of a soft life... but not me. Ask our kids if they lived in a soft home. I'm sure that the answer would be a resounding, "NO! We worked harder than most kids our age!"

Our curriculum is being used in over 52 prisons nationwide and I have visited most of those institutions. Those institutions a filled with people who were raised in homes of dysfunction and abuse! I did not meet many world leaders in those places! I have met thousands of inmates and the most universal characteristic of those, mostly miserable, incarcerated men is that almost every one came from a dysfunctional home!

An Easy Life?

I will say this in answering your question... anyone who reads my material and gets from what I am teaching that I believe that we ought to make life easy for kids has misinterpreted what I am trying to teach. In no way would I ever propose that parents ought to orchestrate an easy and unchallenging life for their children. On the contrary, I believe with all of my heart that children ought to be challenged by difficult decisions and tough and demanding work, whether it is at home, school, athletics, music, or where ever. Most of life’s great lessons are taught by overcoming obstacles.

Life’s Great Lessons

Doing your best for your children rarely implies that you are going to orchestrate success for them. Some of the most challenging and difficult situations teach the most to your children. Attempting to reach for something great and coming up short teaches some of the best lessons in life!

Dealing with Unfair People

When one of our sons would come home and tell me that a teacher was not fair, I didn’t go to the school and try to change the teacher. My advice to our children was to ask them to try to figure out what the teacher wanted them to do. Once they figured that out, I would ask them, "Is what the teacher is asking you to do a violation of any of your values, morals, or ethics? If not, then I would strongly advise you to do what the teacher wants you to do, to the best of your ability, or just accept what you get... but it is your choice! In life you will run into unfair people and you need to learn how to deal with them. Most of the time it works best to give your best effort no matter what. I'm here if you want to run your ideas by me. I will be watching with interest to see how you deal with this situation."

Help Children to Learn from Difficult Situations

The key for the effective parent is to be there for their children to help them learn from disappointments and tough times. Do NOT ever interpret what Parenting with Dignity is teaching to mean that parents ought to protect their children from tough situations! We do NOT teach that.

All we say is that we parents have the obligation to protect our children if an action or situation is illegal, immoral, or life threatening! I those situations, we as parents, ought to step in to prevent them from irreparably damaging themselves but the rest of the time we ought to let them learn from their actions and give the guidance in making good decisions for themselves. We ought to be teaching them the values, morals, ethics, and other rules that will help them to make good decisions. then we ought to be guiding them in how to use those ideas as the ones that they choose to rule their world. (See Lessons 7 & 8 in our Parenting with Dignity Curriculum or Chapters 10 and 11 in my book Parenting with Dignity.

Save Children from “Speeding Trucks”…
Let Them Take On Most of the Rest of Life’s Challenges!

Like I have said many times, the way I kept my actions straight in my head was to ask myself, "If my son was running for the street and there was a big truck coming that would kill him, would I act to stop him from running into the path of certain death? Well, of course I would prevent that from happening. But going outside in cool weather without a coat is not in any way like a speeding truck. Let him go outside and feel what it feels like without a coat and then let him learn to make adjustments in his own behavior.

I hope that what you are speaking of in your question is the way that so many parents, in the name of what they perceive to be "good parenting" deny their children the right to experience some of the results of their own bad decisions. Life can be a good instructor, but the tragedy is when kids make bad decisions and their parents are nowhere in the picture to help them learn HOW to make a better decision the next time.

We Must Act as Parents at Critical Times

Like I said, there are times when I believe that parents ought to be there to prevent children from even trying to learn from their mistakes. Some things that come to mind immediately would be drugs, sex, violence, breaking the law, or unsupervised use of the Internet. Some of the consequences of those behaviors are so dire and so long lasting and life changing that our children cannot be allowed to just experiment with those things in order to learn that there might be dire consequences! Our prisons are full of people who had that kind of parenting.

That being said, I believe that children should be challenged by difficult circumstances and situations. While they are being challenged, I believe that they need someone to act as their teacher and guide.

Most Great Leaders Overcome Difficult Situations...
Because of Great Teachers!

The one thing that separates the world's great leaders who arrived at their positions having come from hard/dysfunctional/abusive childhoods, and the criminals I have met who came from similar situations, is that every person I have met who became successful, in spite of their situation, can point to one or more good teachers in their lives!

I would suggest that you too do some research and find out about those great leaders form humble backgrounds! I believe that you will find, just as I have, that all of them had at least one or more great teachers who helped them to overcome their situation or circumstance.

Now I do not use "teacher" in this sense, as to mean just a schoolteachers. Many of those people count one or both parents as their great teachers. Others point to a pastor or a big brother or big sister. Maybe it was an aunt or an uncle. For me, I can point to some fantastic teachers that I have had in my life. The key elements in the lives of all successful people, were the great teachers in their lives who helped them to learn the important lessons in life! Are you choosing to be one of your children's great teachers? Or will your kids have to find their teacher someplace else?

Don’t Just Protect Your Children…
Teach Them!

With your children, I would never advise you to just protect them from life. What I am trying to advise you to do is to be their teacher; to help them learn life's important lessons, whether they be tough or easy!

When our son and his wife bought a little farm in Western New York, there was a 3-acre lake on their 34-acre property. One of their friends came to me to try to make me promise that I would see to it that our son built a locked fence around the lake to protect our four grandchildren. "Oh that water just scares me to death!" she said, through pleading tears.

You need to hear my answer to that lady... I said, "No, ma'm, you have it all wrong. Our son and daughter-in-law need to teach their kids to swim! Building a fence only protects them from that lake! What about all of the other water in the world? If they teach them to swim, then... no water, anywhere, poses much of a danger to them! They still might fall in, but they would know how to get themselves safely to shore and out of the water!" (Just to let you know, all of our grandchildren could swim, unaided, in the deep end of the pool for five minutes, by the age of two.)

That story is a great metaphor for raising children. We cannot protect them from all of the world... but we can teach them how to live in it safely and with fulfillment! That to me ought to be the goal of all effective parenting.

I hope that helps for you to understand how I feel about your question.

Sincerely,

Mac Bledsoe