Parents often ask, “How long will it take to change?”  My response: “Add up the number of weeks it took to get like this.  Divide by ten and that is the shortest time.  Multiply by ten and that is the longest time.”

Behind the question is the desire for a quick and speedy recovery.  A natural byproduct of our current society, I suppose, that expects immediate relief and has no patience for process and incremental progress.  Never mind that the family situation is sometimes a reflection of generations of unsolved problems.  We just want it to be different - now.

Often the current life of the family is presented as if family members just woke up one day and there it was.  Patterns of dysfunction, anger, depression, scattered thoughts, impulsivity, disengagement, upside down hierarchy, addiction, distress and all manner of unhealthy interactions.

When family members are asked how they arranged all this, they look confused, even insulted.  “What do you mean?”, they say, with a huffiness that is almost aggressive.  What I mean is, “How did you all arrange for it to be like this?”

It is not an accusation.  It is a question that asks family members to consider the possibility that the current mess is something they are responsible for and capable of fixing.  It didn’t just happen.  And it is not going to just get better.

I was a business guy before a counseling/coaching guy so I find the current state of affairs in the financial industry disgusting.  I don’t believe in the talk about this being as bad as the Great Depression.  It could be worse.  We have no idea what we have wrought from our overspending, deregulating, no accountability, looking the other way, now somebody else has to fix it spree of the last couple of decades.  While we came to believe we were entitled to live beyond our means, we might now be screwed.  The bankers created the scheme but did so with eager participants sporting an insatiable appetite, living large while not even considering there might be a day of reckoning.

I liken this to what we adults (the bankers) have done to a whole generation of kids (the consumers).  Over time, the pendulum swung way too far to the laissez-faire, put them on a pedestal, kids are our most important resource, let them have anything they want insanity that has led to our present day hyper-desire, nanosecond gratification where every childish whim is met with another line of credit.  When the cash flow stops, there is the accusation of deprivation and “you just don’t understand, I need this.”  We have injured an entire generation by giving them the false reality that this could continue.

The price: a nation in yet another crisis whining that somebody better fix this.  And parents, like the testifying bankers, lying through our teeth about how we had no idea that it could ever get this bad.  Bullshit.  In families, as in economics, there is no free lunch.  Somebody has to pay.

“They are not going to give back what they have been wrongly given.  The power and control that is in the hands of your children will be misused, abused and will lead them in a direction you do not want them to go.  Know it or not, you are in a war of behavior; changing your own and stopping theirs.  The health of your family is at stake.  And it all begins in your home.  That is the battleground.” parentwarrior Starter Kit

At wits end, you buy the latest book on handling angry and defiant children and follow it to the letter.  It works - for a couple of weeks.  Then your child’s behavior actually gets worse.  Your child is now on medication number four because the doctor has told you this one will work and the school has said something must be done to address the impulsive behavior that is causing so many problems and resulting in numerous trips to the principal’s office.

You have endless discussions with the kid about how this kind of behavior cannot continue.  They appear contrite and you are thinking that there has been some connecting of the dots for them.  Soon after, they put a big can of mental and emotional whup-ass on you and tell you that they are acting like this because you have failed as a parent.  You, for god knows what reason, entertain the possibility that this might be true.  Following this moment of self-doubt, which the kid immediately picks up, your face gets rubbed in the next guilt trip, manipulation and self-centered power tactic.

You fail to recognize that your child is operating in guerrilla warfare mode where there are no rules, boundaries or civilized niceties.  You still want to be the role model for conflict free parenting where all manner of disagreements will be solved with calm discussions and reasonableness.  While they are beating your brains out with war-like precision, you are pleading for rational goodwill and humanitarian values.  And then, they really get worse.

You must completely change your thinking about what your role is and how it will get lived out.  If you are unwilling to go to war (and win) with the childrens’ behavior, they are going to wreck family life and then use their strategies out in the world where they unwittingly will become the victims of their own boundaryless existence.  If you keep doing it by the book, you are going to lose the war and your children (and you) will suffer.

“We wish our kids would make better decisions”, say a couple of concerned parents.  They say it as if they are not the best ones to teach their kids how to do it.  I remind them that it is their job to prepare the children for the real world where decisions can create wonderful opportunities and have serious consequences.

The skills kids need to make good decisions need to be learned in the state of mind they will be in when they need to use them.  The “how” is just as important as the “what”.

Let’s take the anxiety scale.  At zero on the anxiety scale, I’m catatonic.  At ten on the anxiety scale, I’m jumping out of my skin.  When kids are in pressurized situations where they have to make decisions quickly, their anxiety level is probably around 6 or 7.  If the skills they need to make good decisions haven’t been learned when they were under pressure and at a 6 or 7 then they will not be able to use those skills.

If you don’t understand this, you need to figure it out!