1) I admit that I am dependent on my children for love and acceptance and the consequences are unhealthy for the family.

2) I accept that in order to cure myself I need to refrain from dependent and self-defeating behavior by seeking new ways to get my needs met.

3) I admit that I may require help in identifying the seemingly innocent, addictive behaviors because I have been unsuccessful in resisting my desire to engage in self-defeating patterns with my children.

4)While I may have personal problems that feed my addiction, I do have the capacity to change my behavior and establish an effective parenting relationship.

5) I reject the idea that I must accumulate endless amounts of information and seek out multiple experts to tell me what to do, recognizing that this can become another addictive process and create more dependency.

6) I reject the idea that I must be perfect but accept the reality that I must be more effective in how I raise my children.

7) I place a high value on being creative and daring in learning how to start new patterns of communication.

8) I accept that I am responsible for my thoughts, emotions and actions and will not blame others for my situation.

9) I recognize that stopping negative dependency is better than attempting to control it.  Too much is at stake to risk further addiction.

10) While there are no perfect solutions, I will take strategic risks to achieve my goal of ending all self-defeating patterns with my children.

11) I choose to give up ideas of guilt, blame and worthlessness as a matter of principle and as a personal demonstration that I am committed to a new way.

12) I accept the fact that mentally and emotionally healthy adults are not inclined to be dependent on their children.  I will complete my recovery and be free of the addiction to my children and as a result my family will be healthier.

Seems simple enough.  And entertaining.  Young women dancing provocatively.  Their booties ogled by a rapper type (Burger King’s stereotype).  Perfect way to sell the Kids Meal and Spongebob toy.  It is pure genius.  What the hell?

Hey, guess what parents?  Most of what your kids know, how they interact with the world, the veracity of what they say and do is largely based upon what they learn from you.  Whether it is genetics, imitation, observation or whatever, you are the beacon for how to live.  It is, I suppose, a practice what you preach thing but that sounds like a dumb cliche.

When asked how her son is doing, mom starts to say, “He’s doing fine” but then catches herself and says, “What am I saying.  He isn’t doing fine.  It has been a horrible week.  Two trips to the principal’s office and a lot of angry behavior at home.”  Now she is not saying this to the behavior police.  She is saying it to someone she is paying to help the family get better.  And her son is standing by her side.

What’s wrong with us?  Part of the human condition seems to be this limbo-land of half-truth.  Count the times during a given day when you water stuff down, use “diplomacy” as a reason to be less than honest, maneuver around the delicate egos of others, purposely decide you cannot tell the whole truth, actually practice deception.  I’ll bet it is a significant number.

For sure, we cannot just tell each other the unadulterated truth.  It would be too much to handle and we are not really cut out for it.  It does though put us in an interesting predicament when we are raising the children.  Should they believe what we tell them about how we expect them to live or should they believe what they see us do?  Talk about confusing.  When we are born, probably right after the umbilical cord cutting, we should be given a decoder ring.

Kids watch a lot of TV.  Way too much of the boob tube.  But allowing them to do whatever they want is seemingly the path of least resistance.  And of course we do not want resistance or conflict because that would require the hard work of change.  And we can’t have that because everything is going so well.

This blog is not about that… It’s about how adults are portrayed in TV commercials and how much kids get the message that we are idiots.  And parents are in the category of all adults so they are idiots also.  Parents kneeling under the roller coaster to catch spare change to pay for the family calling plan and anally-retentive rollover mom who saves all her minutes.  Then we have overweight dad riding his super-charged lawn mower to tackle a single lot yard.  And the ex-athletes who are so undisciplined that they have to have special meals delivered to their house in order to lose the extra 50 lbs.  Or the poor souls who are kidnapped and helped to get a good deal on a hotel room because they are too stupid to do it on their own.

It all seems simple and humorous and harmless.  It’s not.  It breeds disrespect.  The kids see it over and over again and it is reinforced in their minds that we are incapable, bungling, fat, lazy weirdos - even if we’re not.

Making the covert overt is a major parenting responsibility.  If I have an angry kid at home who deals with every disappointment, every occasion of not getting his way, every failed challenge, with anger and rage then how am I going to teach him to change?

The standard approach would be to talk with him after the blowup about how he could have handled things better.  He says he’ll try.  And this will be totally ineffective.

I could enroll him in an “anger management” group where he can be around other angry kids and learn to mask what is going on.  Talking a good game, mastering psychobabble and doing role plays will surely solve the problem.  Until, he encounters a real life situation that doesn’t go his way and out comes the rage again.

Or I could wait for the rage to happen because my boy runs into the unpredictability of life without entitlement  and recognize that I must fearlessly teach him the skills he needs to convert rage to something else that is more useful - right then, right there.  I must teach him the skills he will need while he is raging so the next time he is raging and I am not there, he will know what to do.

parentwarriors teach in the midst of chaos, confusion, rage and bedlam.  They are smart enough to know that the best time for their children to learn the lessons is when the volcano is erupting.

1) When your emotions are driving the car and your brains are in the backseat, you are halfway there.  Kids love family situations where parents are easily swayed by emotional impulses and the gray matter is missing in action.  It is fertile ground for manipulation, seduction, diversion and distraction.  The problem is that when the kids are out in the world, needing to make critical decisions, they end up on the short end or worse because mommy and daddy have not taught them how to think.  Then when something bad happens, M & D are upset.

2) When someone outside the family offers an honest appraisal about the nonsense going on at home that passes for family norms, and the family defense system clicks in and shoots the messenger from the sky.  Burning up your allies is the other half of a dsyfunctional existence.  It ends up with mutual assured destruction where family members get no feedback and suffocate on their own recycled patterns of behavior.  Clinging to the piece of wood in the middle of the ocean seems like a good idea (maybe the only idea) at the time.  But at some point, when you’re not paying attention, the waterlogged salvation becomes the anchor that carries you to the bottom.