Calm Parents and Children: A Guidebook

By Gayle Kimball, Ph.D.

Discover effective communication
Understand youths' points of view, including Gen Z
Learn to discipline based on consequences
Maintain energy with wellness practices to reduce stress
Use the power of thought and visualizations for resilience

Table of Contents:
Youth Suggestions for Parents in their own words
How is Generation Z Different?
Stages of Parenting: Questions from Parents and Kids
How to Reduce Stress and Develop Resilience
Visualization Tools for Kids

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 14, 2020
• ISBN: 9780938795698

Book preview

You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.

—Christopher Robin to Winnie the Pooh

Parents should be calm when their kids are upset.

—Soren, age 9, when asked his advice for parents.

Mommy, I need you to listen to me with your whole face.

—A preschooler quoted in Generation Z Unfiltered

©Gayle Kimball, 2020

Equality=Press [e-mail]

https://greenlocalsolutions.wordpress.com/

ISBN ebook 978-0-938795-69-8

ISBN print 978-0-938795-70-4

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in articles and book reviews.

Printed in the United States of America First Printing, 2020

Other Books by Gayle Kimball

Calm: How to Thrive in Challenging Times

Mysteries of Reality: Dialogues with Visionary Scientists

Mysteries of Healing: Dialogues with Doctors and Scientists

Mysteries of Knowledge Beyond the Sense: Dialogues with Courageous Scientists

Trilogy/trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/user/TheGlobalyouth/featured

https://visionaryscientists.home.blog

Essential Energy Tools: How to Develop Your Clairvoyant and Healing Abilities illustrated with 3 videos and 2 CDs

50/50 Marriage

50/50 Parenting

Women's Culture

Women's Culture Revisited

The Teen Trip: The Complete Resource Guide

Everything You Need to Know to Succeed After College

How to Survive Your Parents' Divorce

Answers to Kids’ Deep Questions in Photos

Your Mindful Guide to Academic Success: Beat Burnout

Ageism in Youth Studies: Generation Maligned

How Global Youth Values Will Transform Our Future

Brave: Young Women’s Global Revolution (Volumes 1 and 2)

Resist! Goals and Tactics for Changemakers

Quick Healthy Recipes: Literacy Fundraiser

Climate Girls Saving Our World (in process)

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 What’s On Young People’s Minds? Kids’ Suggestions for Parents

Chapter 2 Understanding Generation Z

Chapter 3 Understanding Stages of Parenting: Questions from Parents and Children

Chapter 4 Stress Reduction and Resilience

Chapter 5 Visualization Tools for Kids

Media Resources

Appendix 1 Global Youth Viewpoints

Endnotes

Cover design by Miles Huffman. The front cover photo of observant giraffes was taken in Tanzania: Photos by the author.

Introduction

Calm Parents and Children provides tools to make parenting less challenging and more harmonious, especially in difficult times. The most impactful tools for parents are to practice effective communication and listening, provide discipline and limits based on consequences rather than lectures or yelling, understand children’s points of view, maintain energy with wellness practices, and use the power of positive thinking and visualizations to change our plastic brains that respond to habitual thought patterns. The fifth chapter includes visualization for children, illustrated in a CD called Kids’ Mind Power, with music and sound effects by Tony Mamone at Studio G in Brooklyn.

Stress and anxiety skyrocketed in 2020 due to the pandemic and the job losses it spawned--parents have higher stress levels than other adults.¹ The Covid-19 pandemic demonstrated how challenging it is to homeschool children while adults try to do their own work. After writing Calm: How to Thrive in Challenging Times, I reflected that parenting is the most challenging role because you can’t quit it like you can quit a difficult job and babies are naturally demanding and self-centered as part of their survival instinct. If they wake up every three hours you can’t put them outside like a pet or divorce them like an uncooperative spouse. As a father I interviewed for 50/50 Marriage said, Having a baby is like being hit in the head by a golf ball. Some children are compliant and helpful but some are oppositional and test our patience.

I had a devoted and near-perfect mother but as a teen I yelled at her, I hate you. I would sit by the dishes she wanted me to wash, but not do it, but was always in leadership class throughout secondary school and was head of Girls’ Court in high school. My younger brother teased me about being in the teenage stage. He wouldn’t do the dishes either but wouldn’t sit on the kitchen floor in protest. Even good girls can be challenging teens, but we mature and my mother and I were always close friends.

Despite the challenges, being a parent is the most important and meaningful thing I’ve done. The most thrilling and miraculous moment in my life was seeing my son being born, thanks to a thoughtful nurse who held a mirror for me. Being a mother motivated me to interview parents in various family types for 50/50 Parenting. Teaching young people all my adult life, I felt compelled to help make the voices of ignored groups heard by interviewing global young people for various books for or about them.

Surprisingly, the actual voices of young people are often ignored by researchers who write about them, as proved in my Ageism in Youth Studies, but we can communicate better if we really hear our children despite our busy lives. We can be encouraged that Generation Z is a caring generation that values equality and helping others. Even elementary school-aged kids I’ve talked with know a lot and sometimes think they’re smarter than adults.

Parenting is difficult in a country without good childcare, flexible work hours, and other social supports modeled by Nordic countries where parents seem happier. Finnish writer Anu Partanen married an American and moved to New York, where she was surprised by the prevailing anxiety and stress about juggling daily life, work and family. She met many people taking mood-elevating pharmaceuticals like Xanax and cited a National Institute of Mental Health report that stated almost one in five adults suffer from an anxiety disorder.² By 2020, this increased to one-third of Americans who report significant systems of anxiety or clinical depression, according to Census Bureau data of May 2020.

Partanen observed something she hadn’t seen in Finland, that children were taking over their parents’ lives,³ including young adults dependent on their parents and living with them. She pointed out this full nest is happening in other struggling economies such as Italy, Spain and Japan, but would be considered very odd in Nordic countries where students receive stipends until they graduate and can also get rent subsidies. In the US sandwich generation, she saw middle-aged adults consumed by caring for their frail elderly parents as well as their kids.

Finland isn’t perfect; alcoholism is problematic—perhaps partly due to the long dark winter--and Partanen reports melancholy and pessimism are common. Youth anxiety and depression is a problem there as well as the US.⁴ Yet, the Nordic people she knows are much more relaxed and free of stress and more free in general. In the World Happiness Report ranking of countries, Nordic countries have consistently ranked in the top ten countries for happiness since 2013 because they have both autonomy and security.⁵ They have affordable health care--the maximum an individual spends on health care each year is 683 euros. Finns get 164 days of paid parental leave for each parent (Swedes have 240 days for each parent).

Nordic countries provide excellent child care on a sliding-scale, free schools and universities, affordable elder care, and four or five weeks of paid vacation. When I visited Stockholm, many people were away in their country homes for the summer. They believe it’s easier to have healthy relationships between various ages if society insures equality and lack of dependency. Their policies aim for gender equality and enable mothers to work outside the home about as much as fathers.

Partanen doesn’t blame the micromanager adults in the US, but rather the structural lack of family support systems, expensive child care (over $10,000 a year for half of families surveyed by Care.com⁶), poor quality schools, rising college costs and student debt loads, and dependency on employers for medical care, pensions, and savings accounts. Partanen knows many women in the US who look for a husband who is successful financially, while in Finland the individual is the unit, not the couple, as in taxing each person independently.

Save the Children reported that Nordic countries are the best places to be a mother. Norway and Finland are at the top of the list, with the US at #33.⁷ The 2020 Best Countries for Raising Kids report ranked Denmark as the best, followed by Sweden, Norway, Canada, the Netherlands, and Finland. The US ranked #18. (See The Danish Way of Parenting by Jessica Joelle Alexander.)

At the same time the image of the Effortless mother, promulgated by media stars like Gwyneth Paltrow, conveys the unrealistic belief that, "The Effortless White Woman does not raise children—she enjoys them, is fulfilled by them."⁸ But Sady Doyle (author of Trainwreck) concludes that, Women will be happy when we live in a world that supports women. It’s not individual effort, but collective protest, that will bring that world into being.

The Nordic countries score high on overall well-being because of their commitment to creating independence and equality for each individual, including youth, as epitomized in the Swedish children’s stories about Pippi Longstocking. She lives alone, in contrast to the nuclear family that lives next door to her house. In fact, Scandinavians are the most individualized societies.⁹ In contrast, Partanen views the US government as micromanaging society with case-by-case policies. We need to lobby for social supports such as paid parental leave, quality affordable childcare and pre-kindergarten, to make raising children less stressful in the United States.

This book provides useful tools to make family life less stressful and more enjoyable. First, we’ll explore what’s on the minds of global Gens Y and Z and their advice for parents, then learn about the characteristics of Generation Z. Next, parent’s actual questions are answered, stress reduction techniques are explored, and visualizations of Mind Power for children are described.

Chapter 1: What’s On Young People’s Minds?

Youth from Tanzania, Pakistan, China, New Zealand, Brazil

Youth Questions from Around the World

If for a moment parents think of children as their customers, it’s useful to understand their interests, goals, perceptions, fears and values. This leads to more harmonious communication. I asked 12 questions of young people from 88 countries for 10 books I wrote about or for them. I refer to them as SpeakOut students.

Wanting to see what’s on