Maximum Strength Parenting: To Raise Maximum Strength Children

By Andrew Vaughan and Lauren Resnick

Welcome to the town of Maximum Strength Parenting, a happy little place where youll have a lot to do, a lot to think about, and a lot of fun!

Maximum Strength Parenting is the art of using all of your gifts and knowledge in the most important and influential job you will ever have, parenting.

A Maximum Strength Parent helps foster the growth of a Maximum Strength Child, which is a child who enjoys the process of striving to his or her potential and acts with courage, consistency, responsibility, power, authority, flexibility, sound judgment, and humanity in his or her emotional, intellectual, spiritual, moral, and physical interactions with the world.

Maximum Strength Parenting is the greatest gift you can give your child.

In Maximum Strength Parenting we express our Freedom of Speech and our Freedom to Teach, but we stop well-short of the Freedom to Preach that is evident in so many parent-advice books of the day. Throughout Maximum Strength Parenting you will find rich information, balanced commentary, and consideration of nuanced points that will cause you to think more deeply about your positions (or perhaps re-think your positions) on countless topics of philosophical and practical importance in parenting. We also provide broad ranges of effective parenting strategies for you to choose from.

Throughout these pages we have provided hundreds of little bits of insight, encouragement, strategy, inspiration, and solution options. From our hearts to yours, we hope you will find the ideas and strategies in Maximum Strength Parenting to be worthy companions on your lifelong journey of raising a Maximum Strength Child.

Andrew Vaughan, Ph.D.
Lauren Resnick, M.S., CCC, SLP, &
Anne Long, M.S., Ed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 7, 2007
• ISBN: 9781465316974

Book preview

Copyright © 2007 by Andrew Vaughan, Ph.D., Lauren Resnick, MS, CCC, SLP, & Anne Long, MS, SpEd.

All Text, Lyrics, and Illustrations © 2008

Library of Congress Control Number:        2007907121

ISBN:     Hardcover     978-1-4257-8061-6

Softcover     978-1-4257-7994-8

ISBN:     ebk     978-1-4653-1697-4

All Rights Reserved. No portion of

MAXIMUM STRENGTH PARENTING: To Raise Maximum Strength Children may be reproduced-mechanically, electronically, or by any means including photocopying-without written permission of the authors.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

40142

Contents

PART ONE

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

PART TWO

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER 12

PART THREE

CHAPTER 13

PART FOUR

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

PART FIVE

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

END NOTE

APPENDIX A

APPENDIX B

REFERENCE FOR CLIP ART

DEDICATION PAGE

I dedicate this little book to God, who has given me everything, to my parents, who have given me my foundation, to my strong and beautiful wife, Lisa, who has given me eternal love and support, and to our wonderful children: King Jack the Majestic, a courageous leader, Queen Brittany the Noble, a sweet nurturer, Princess Emily the Artistic, a delicate flower with a powerful punch, and Prince Sam the Joyful, an inquisitive explorer. I thank my children for giving me a love like no other.

I love you all so much, forever, no matter what!

I’m the richest man that you’ll ever see …

. . ‘cause I have my family and eternity.

Andrew Vaughan, Ph.D.

This book is dedicated to my parents, who have always given me guidance, to my wonderful husband, whose love and support enabled me to make a difference in the lives of others, and to my two beautiful children, Justin and Marissa, who continue to make each day more meaningful than the last.

Lauren S. Resnick, MS, CCC, SLP

This book is gratefully dedicated to

My loving husband Chris, who is there for me every day, cheering me on, and to our beautiful children Olivia, Dillon, Hunter and Melanie who put a smile on my face every day. You all are what give meaning to my life and make each day special and memorable. Thank you for your love and support and I love you all so much!

Anne Long, MS, Sp. Ed.

PART ONE

MAXIMUM STRENGTH PH.D.: Peace, Happiness, and Discipline

CHAPTER 1

WELCOME to Maximum Strength Parenting

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Welcome to the town of Maximum Strength Parenting, a happy little place where you’ll have a lot to do, a lot to think about, and a lot of fun! In Maximum Strength Parenting you’ll find developmental charts, teaching tips to promote skills across developmental domains, facts, philosophy, fun, stories, and behavioral skill builders.

What is Maximum Strength Parenting?

Maximum Strength Parenting is the art of using all of your gifts and knowledge in the most important and influential job you will ever have, parenting.

Maximum refers to your personal best. This is not an interpersonal competition, but rather, it is an intrapersonal challenge. Therefore, everybody can be a Maximum Strength Parent or a Maximum Strength Child.

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Strength refers to your courage, consistency, responsibility, power, authority, flexibility, sound judgment, and humanity in your emotional, intellectual, spiritual, moral, and physical interactions with your child.

A Maximum Strength Parent helps foster the growth of a Maximum Strength Child, which is a child who enjoys the process of striving to his or her potential and acts with courage, consistency, responsibility, power, authority, flexibility, sound judgment, and humanity in his or her emotional, intellectual, spiritual, moral, and physical interactions with the world.

Maximum Strength Parenting is the greatest gift you can give your child.

Your moment, make it a good one

Fast forward many years: The master plan was kind to you. Your moment has come. You had a nice run, and you’re ready to check-out. Hopefully, you won’t be in too much pain. (If as you read you’re getting uncomfortable or intrigued, keep reading, because here is where the story gets interesting). A lot of what you have done in your life was wanted or needed but not so important (e.g., running errands, doing laundry, amassing your fortune), and a lot of what you have done will matter more than you can ever know.

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Your children (now adults) are at your bedside. When you look at their beautiful faces, you see big versions of the little creatures that you coddled and corrected, nourished and nurtured, and above all, loved. They are complex individuals, adults with free-will, who live in a world with great influence. Of course, you are not directly responsible for their trials or triumphs, yet so much of who they are came from what you did.

In this moment you reflect on the most important and influential job you ever had: parenting. Will you know in your heart that you gave your children all that you could to help them become happy, healthy and productive citizens of planet earth? Were you a Maximum Strength Parent? This is your moment. Make it a good one.

The Sacred Parent-Child Relationship

As we wrote this book we always remained mindful that the parent-child relationship is sacred. We have great respect for this sanctity, and we will not desecrate your parent-child relationship by being self-serving experts who tell you how to parent. You can easily find a plethora of those kinds of condescending parent-advice books elsewhere, because, without a doubt, those are the books that become best-sellers. The fears of nervous and obsessive parents are preyed upon as those expert authors boost their book sales by firmly asserting that they possess the answer about the best way to parent, which is, of course, better than the other expert’s opinion. Interestingly, the arguments of both experts may have some merit. Of course, there are also the occasional experts whose advice can be harmful if swallowed.

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Instead, in Maximum Strength Parenting we express our Freedom of Speech and our Freedom to Teach, but we stop well-short of the Freedom to Preach that is evident in so many parent-advice books of the day. Throughout Maximum Strength Parenting you will find rich information, balanced commentary, and consideration of nuanced points that will cause you to think about your positions (or perhaps rethink your positions) on countless topics of philosophical and practical importance in parenting. We also provide broad ranges of effective parenting strategies for you to choose from. There are many different types of strategies for specific behaviors and developmental problems (e.g., we offer four different Sleep Solutions), but when properly used they all have a strong likelihood of being effective. If you prefer to be given the answer on behavioral or developmental problems, you may find this book frustrating, but if you prefer to be well-informed and allowed to make your own choices, then Maximum Strength Parenting is the book for you. That is our ultimate expression of how truly sacred we know the parent-child relationship to be.

What were the names of your great-grandparents? Are you just two generations away from being forgotten?

These can be biting questions, but, nevertheless, they are questions that beg answers. What were the names of your great-grandparents? Are you just two generations away from being forgotten? The fact is, even if we don’t know the names of our great- missing image file

grandparents, their influence is with us in ways that we will never know. Parents pass down styles of thinking, feeling, and behaving that can strongly resonate (or at least ripple) for generations. There is striking evidence with many different good (and bad) behaviors that are observed in families over generations. The human animal is quite resilient, though. We can pick and choose those things about ourselves that we want to enhance or change. Being a Maximum Strength Parent today can start a series of positive thoughts, behaviors, and emotions that can create powerful waves (and ripples) for generations. And then even if your great-grandchildren don’t know your name, they will know you.

How Much Do Parents Really Matter?

The classic question of Nature versus Nurture has long ago given way to the question of the Nurture of Nature. There have been outstanding, thought-provoking books on the topic, most notably, The Nurture Assumption by Judith Rich Harris and Nurture the Nature by Michael Gurian.

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Interestingly, some of the most compelling evidence on this topic has come not from a psychologist, but from two economists, who specifically deny the title of parenting expert. In Freakonomics, authors Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner reviewed data from the U.S. Department of Education ‘s Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS) of over 20,000 children from kindergarten to fifth grade. They found six factors that were correlated with (i.e., related to) high school test scores: highly educated parents, high socioeconomic status, the mother was 30 or older at time of birth of her first child, the parents spoke English in the home, the parents were involved in the PTA, and the child has many books in the home. They also found factors that were NOT correlated with (i.e., not related to) test scores: the child’s family being intact, the parents recently moved to a better neighborhood, the mother did not work between birth and kindergarten, the child attended Head Start, the child’s parents regularly take him to the museum, the parent uses spanking, the child frequently watches television, the child’s parents read to him nearly every day. They concluded that a child’s test scores appear to be less influenced by what a parent does, and more influenced by who the parents are as people. More specifically, a child’s test scores were less influenced by what the parent does with the child (i.e., raising the child in an intact family, moving to a better neighborhood, mom staying home for the first five years, the child goes to Head Start, the child regularly visits museums, the parents use spanking, the child frequently watches television, and the child’s parents read to him nearly every day), and more influenced by who the parents are (i.e., highly educated, high socioeconomic status, advanced maternal age at child-bearing, use of English in the home, involved in the PTA). Levitt and Dubner’s findings caused reactions that ranged from simple curiosity to sheer outrage, but they contended that they had no agenda and were simply applying reliable research tools from the field of economics. They maintained that we should be more persuaded by what the data have to say, than by opinion and emotion. Does this mean that we should conclude what parents do doesn’t matter? Absolutely not. The outcome variable in Levitt and Dubner’s ECLS study was simply test scores. They went on to cite several studies of twins separated at birth, and they made a broad-based but reasonable conclusion that while genes (obviously) dominate physical characteristics, genes seem to account for about half of a child’s personality and abilities. In The Nature and Nurture of Economic Outcomes, three long-term, quantitative adoption studies were examined. When the adopted children were young, their IQ and test scores were more closely correlated with their biological parents than their adoptive parents. But the authors went on to report, By the time the adopted children became adults, they had veered sharply from the destiny that IQ alone might have predicted. Compared to similar children who were not put up for adoption, the adoptees were far more likely to attend college, to have a well-paid job, and to wait until they were out of their teens before getting married. It was the influence of the adoptive parents that made all the difference.

Who parents are and what parents do are each of profound importance. In fact, these matter more than we will ever know. What you can indeed know in your head and in your heart, is that as a Maximum Strength Parent you will fulfill your responsibility in helping to develop a Maximum Strength Child.

How ‘useful’ is your opinion?

Psychologist Carl Jung said, Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves. Try to keep that in mind on our journey together through the next five hundred pages. There are many ways to get to a goal, and you will certainly not buy into all of the ideas and techniques that follow. Rather than getting aggravated about a point of disagreement, use the disagreement to think about and perhaps strengthen your position on the topic. There was a hippie battle-cry from the sixties, "I may disagree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. In fact, I once saw Phil Donohue (an extremely liberal, progressive thinker) say those very words on his show to Howard Stern (as Stern engaged in misogynistic humor" that Donohue, no doubt, reviled). Still the two got along, and they not only kept the dialogue civil, but it even became productive.

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There is an undercurrent of politics on the parenting landscape. Are you liberal or conservative in your parenting attitudes and behavior? There are the Liberal Lunatic parents, who applaud artistic talent after their child smears the contents of his diaper in the crib. There are the Cold Conservative parents, who use harsh control and place excessive demands on their children. Then there are the parents who are Loving Liberals and the parents who are Compassionate Conservatives. These two groups of parents are more alike than different. Although their techniques may vary along the dimensions of communication, control, nurturance, and maturity-demands, these groups of parents share similar philosophies and goals for their children. In this book we have not been governed by Political Correctness or ideology, but rather by Psychological Commonsense. We hope the tone of Maximum Strength Parenting conveys the moderate, rational, and loving natures of the authors. As you read, use your opinions to challenge and learn about yourself. What do you think? We’d like to know.

A-Ha!

I was greatly inspired by the book Single Session Therapy: Maximizing the Effect of the First (and Often Only) Therapeutic Encounter, by Moshe

Talmon. Psychologists often have only a single session with a patient, and then the patient does not return. Was the psychologist incompetent or offensive? Was the patient too defensive or absent of insight? Happily, Talmon proves a much more optimistic explanation. He cites research on hundreds of single-session cases which resulted in prompt, substantial, and lasting change in the patient’s life. He reported that the patient often simply needed a little something (perhaps a little solution, a little insight, a little encouragement, a little support, or a little inspiration) to build upon their existing strengths and to heal themselves.

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Throughout these pages we have provided hundreds of little bits of insight, encouragement, strategy, inspiration, and solution options. From our hearts to yours, we hope you enjoy Maximum Strength Parenting!

Caution, this book may make you dizzy

Buckle up. The flavor of Maximum Strength Parenting varies greatly chapter to chapter (and sometimes moment to moment). At various points throughout this book you will find Maximum Strength Parenting to be light-hearted and deep, humorous and intense, parent-friendly and academic, esoteric and practical, entertaining and educational, abstract and concrete.

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But above all, we hope you will find the ideas and strategies in Maximum Strength Parenting to be worthy companions on your lifelong journey of raising a Maximum Strength Child.

CHAPTER 2

MAXIMUM STRENGTH Philosophy

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Welcome to the Maximum Strength Parenting bookstore, where we consider a broad range of topics that will allow you to tinker with your thinker. Have fun!

Are you some sort of wise apple?

Nature thrives through giving and receiving. In order to inhale, we must exhale. To receive a handshake, we must give one. If the flow of blood and of rivers is stagnated, the result is suffocation of life. A single seed can create an entire forest, as long as the seed is not hoarded. Instead, the seed must "give itself’ to the fertile soil. Every relationship is one of giving and receiving. Some relationships are transient and superficial, yet important (e.g., you and the toll collector). Other relationships are longer lasting and deeper (e.g., friends, co-workers, family).

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In healthy relationships, the more we give the more we receive (e.g., love, knowledge, laughter, attention, appreciation, peace, joy, etc.). To be a Maximum Strength Parent, give freely and wisely for the purpose of creating happiness for yourself and for others.

•   There is no delight in owning anything unshared.—Seneca

•   The best things in life aren’t things.—Hawaiian Proverb

•   They who give have all things; They who withhold have nothing.—Hindu Proverb

•   For every little action, there’s a reaction.—Bob Marley

•   Give and it will be given to you. It is more blessed to give than to receive.—Jesus of Nazareth

•   Not what we give, but what we share, For the gift without the giver is bare.—James Russell Lowell

•   Anyone can count the number of seeds in an apple; But no one can count the number of trees in a seed.—Anonymous

AWE you? Or AWE you not?

To take stuff for granted is to be stagnant. To be stagnant is to survive rather than thrive. If you have allowed yourself to become bored with something as common as a blade of grass, then I suggest that you have forgotten much. The blade grows tall, and it absorbs CO2 and expels 02 (which sustains our very existence), and in concert with all of its grass blade friends it provides a habitat for countless bugs, and it appears soothing and beautiful to the human eye. The blade remains outdoors all winter and then wakes up in the spring (can you stand naked on the front lawn all winter?). Indeed, a blade of grass is a miracle. How about some gratitude for schools, stores, roadways, cars, music, books, television, movies, etc.?!

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Now put on your Maximum Strength Parent hat, close your eyes, and consider the miracle that is a child breathing, digesting, seeing, smelling, hearing, tasting, touching, walking, exploring, swinging, jumping, climbing, running, skipping, attending, solving, questioning, pondering, laughing, crying, wanting, waiting, helping, fearing, anticipating, having pride, accomplishing, and being happy.

•   There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.—Albert Einstein

•   In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind, there are few. Beginner’s Mind is the open mind, the ability to see things always as fresh and new, it is the wisdom that is seeking for wisdom. It is needed in all aspects of life.—Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Master

•   I would rather be able to appreciate things I cannot have, than to have things I am not able to appreciate.—Elbert Hubbard

•   All Is a miracle.—Voltaire

•   To fully live, you can’t afford, to take for granted and be bored.—Andrew Vaughan

Don’t Berate, Educate!

The son refused to clean up the mess. The Daddy yelled, How many times have I told you?! You know better! The Daddy drove off for work and was pulled over by a police officer who said, "Don’t speed! How many times have I told you?! You know better!" The Daddy sheepishly replied, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it. The Daddy arrived at work and the Boss said, "The job should have been done differently! How many times have I told you?! You know better!" The Daddy shamefully said, I’m sorry, my way was easier. The Mommy phoned the Daddy and said, "You must throw out the garbage! How many times have I told you?! You know better!" The Daddy regretfully responded, I’m sorry, I was too tired and I forgot. The Daddy went home and said, My Son, I’ve thought about you all day. Let me help you clean up this mess.

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FUN

I was recently reading The Dangerous Book for Boys by Gonn and Hal Iggulden. The contents included (but were not limited to): the greatest paper airplane in the world, how to play stickball building a tree-house, dinosaurs, fishing, making a go-cart, spiders, missing image file

juggling, making a paper hatlwater-bomb, skipping stones, coin tricks, marbles, tree climbing, and pirates.

As I read I was waiting for the pay-off, some deeply meaningful philosophical ah-ha! moment where everything would be tied together for me in a neat little package that I could take with me. I eventually had to accept the fact that the lecture I was waiting for was not going to be delivered by the authors of The Dangerous Book for Boys: The perfect book for every boy from 8 to 80. Nope, the authors were too smart for that. Instead, they let children who read the book (like my 7 year old son) discover the wonder of new concepts, while they let adults who read the book (like me) discover the wonder of vaguely familiar old concepts. I had become too engrossed in day to day responsibilities and lost some of my ability to have fun (and thereby more fully connect with my kids). In short order, I gathered up my kids, made a sword from some scraps in the shed and then went on a kayak ride, where we stormed the high seas, just like every good pirate should.

Here is a (very incomplete) checklist of some great things for Maximum Strength Parents to do with their children:

__Laugh

__Catch Lightening Bugs

__Climb Trees

__Color

__Connect the Dots

__Cut-and-Paste

__Have Fun with Numbers

__Hide-and-Seek

__Tell Jokes (e.g., Knock-Knock … ; Why Did the Chicken … ?)

__ Sing

__ Spin until you fall down

__Play Rock, Scissor, Paper

__Have a Staring Contest—The first to blink loses

__Go Camping overnight on your living room floor

Jump in a puddle and splash each other

__Yell in a Megaphone

__Play Basketball (with Socks and a Hamper)

__Make a Paper Airplane

__Give Horse Back Rides (on your back)

__Tumble

__Do Mazes

__Play Ring-Around-the-Rosie

__Ride a Bike

__Build a Go-Cart

__Build a Tree-House, a cardboard-house, or a house from couch pillows

__Do Puzzles

__Have a Tea Party

__Play Tic-Tac-Toe

__Try some Tongue Twisters

__Do Word Search Puzzles

__Wrestle

__And 1,000 other activities

Mommy Cheerist: Do parents have a moral obligation to their children to be happy?

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Do parents have a moral obligation to their children to be happy? First, let’s consider a few things about happiness. Dictionary definitions of happy include concepts such as pleasure, contentment, and joy. But these definitions are superficial emotional descriptions that fail to address the source of happiness. Is the source of happiness located inside or outside of your skin? Is happiness based on situations, things, and others, or is happiness based on your perception of those situations, things, and others? Being unhappy can be considered difficult if you view it as an unpleasant state that happens to you, but, alternatively, being unhappy can be considered the easy way out if you view happiness as something that you achieve through hard work and courage. Happiness is an ongoing battle to be waged, rather than an emotion to be awaited. It is common for us to say, I feel happy, but perhaps it would be more accurate and empowering to say, I think happy and therefore I feel happy. The struggle that is life relentlessly brings minor misery and sometimes great tragedy. Knowing that, we ought to fight the temptation to easily give up our happiness to the external influence of negative situations.

And we ought to fight like our lives depend on it, because in some very real way, they do.

All animals (including human animals) are hard wired for survival. Of course our survival instinct is expressed physically (e.g., needs for safety, food, shelter, sleep), but it is also expressed emotionally. The first words of most babies often relate to the survival-based drives for security and access (e.g., mama, dada, more). There are two types of dissatisfaction that pervade the human existence throughout the life cycle. There is Useless Dissatisfaction about unimportant and/or uncontrollable events, and there is Useful Dissatisfaction about important, controllable events. Useless Dissatisfaction should be reviled, while Useful Dissatisfaction should be revered. Useful Dissatisfaction is that which propels us to do good deeds, accomplish great feats, and right the wrongs of the world. So dissatisfaction in and of itself is not directly related to happiness, and, in fact, those who experience high levels of Useful Dissatisfaction can indeed be very happy people. Useful Dissatisfaction is a source of motivation and truly a great blessing.

How do Useful and Useless dissatisfactions relate to parenting? Specifically, so much of what children do is unpleasant (e.g., whine, have tantrums, destroy property, defy, lollygag, fight with each other, etc.) and these things are essentially out of our direct control as parents. Therefore, beware! Parenting is ripe with opportunities to experience "Useless Dissatisfaction." But knowing the value of "Useful Dissatisfaction," parents should focus on controllable aspects of behavior management, and recognize the importance of their role and limitations. It is the parent’s job to set behavioral boundaries, but it is the child’s choice whether to comply or break the rules. It is a parent’s job to provide healthy food, but it is the child’s choice whether to eat or not. It is the parent’s job to give educational opportunities and guidance, but it is the child’s job to explore, fail, succeed, and find his own strengths.

The parent who gives in to the futility of "Useless Dissatisfaction" will feel frustrated and then be unable to provide Junior with the foundation needed for successful adaptation to life’s relentless onslaught of minor misery and occasional tragedy. By contrast, the parent who cherishes "Useful Dissatisfaction and turns the nuisances of life into the lessons of life" will give their child the ultimate gifts of resilience and happiness.

Do Maximum Strength Parents have a moral obligation to their children to be happy? We believe that the answer is yes.

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Unhappiness

In the previous section we considered "Useless Dissatisfaction" and "Useful Dissatisfaction in the terms of the moral obligation parents have to their children to be happy. But what are some specific impediments to happiness? As indicated above, it is dangerous to look outside of our skin for happiness, and we should not give away our happiness to external circumstances and situations. If we do, then we would be happy when situations are good, but there will always be an underlying tension due to our lack of control and a tendency to wait for the other shoe to drop." Happiness is both an experience and an achievement, and to experience that achievement a Maximum Strength Parent must know, avoid, and overcome obstacles to happiness. These obstacles include (1) Unrealistic Comparisons, (2) the Missing Tile Syndrome, (3) Equating External Success with Happiness, and (4) Allowing Expectations to Undermine Gratitude. A discussion of each now follows.

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Carefully Compare

Keeping up with the Joneses drives the economy. Making comparisons of oneself to others is one way to participate in society (e.g., how we dress, think, act, eat, work, and play are all influenced by comparisons of ourselves with others), but it is also a way to possibly draw invalid conclusions and cause yourself undue misery.

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For example, you and your spouse are going to a barbeque at the home of your friends, Sally and Mike. On the way there you argue in the car. When you get to the barbeque, Sally and Mike greet you, and you happily socialize. They seem happy, so you make a comparison and conclude that your marriage is not as good as theirs. But guess what, Sally and Mike also argued before the barbeque, and they look at you and your spouse only to conclude that their marriage is bad. When, in fact, the truth may be that both marriages are typical. To make an assumption about the apparent Stepford Lives that others lead is na’ive and dangerous. The first danger of making comparisons is that you don’t know what goes on behind closed doors in the lives, minds, and hearts of others, and you, therefore, may inaccurately rate yourself poorly based on this invalid comparison. The second problem with making comparisons is that even if you are truly "worse off’ than someone else, this should have no bearing on your perception of yourself. For Maximum Strength Parents and for "Maximum Strength Children, self-esteem comes from the self’, not from others.

The Missing Tile Syndrome

The Missing Tile Syndrome refers to a preoccupation with imperfections and anomalies. Picture a large beautiful tile mosaic where out of the 1,000 tiles, 10 are missing. Most people would enjoy the beauty of the mosaic, but then comment or inquire about the 10 missing tiles (e.g., It’s a shame those tiles are missing, or Uh oh, what happened to those missing tiles?).

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The source of the Missing Tile Syndrome is said to have been hard-wired into the brains of all living creatures for survival throughout the course of evolution. If while a zebra is enjoying bountiful grazing on a beautiful day in the African savannah the zebra hears some rustling in the nearby bush, that zebra ought to assume the worst case scenario and run, because that rustling may be a lion. Over time, the pessimistic zebra who runs will be more likely to survive than the optimistic zebra who assumes that the rustling in the bush is just a breeze. Indeed, the pressure for survival of the fittest exerted by evolution selects for the survival of pessimism. Focusing on the missing tile can be considered a psychological offshoot of this survival mechanism. To be a Maximum Strength Parent and to overcome the Missing Tile Syndrome, first identify your missing tiles, then make some choices and either work to get what’s missing (if that’s possible), forget what’s missing (if what you want is unrealistic), or replace what’s missing (with an acceptable substitute).

Does success lead to happiness, or does happiness lead to success?

Do you believe that you will be happy when you are successful, or that you will be successful when you are happy? For those who define success in financial terms: does money lead to happiness, or does happiness lead to money? Simply stated, if happiness is defined externally, then happiness will remain illusive to achieve and tenuous once achieved.

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Therefore, it is important to understand why success is important to you. If your quest for success is for things outside of your control (e.g., the esteem of others) or unattainable (e.g., complete security in health, safety, and finance), be careful, because you will no doubt experience great frustration. If, on the other hand, your quest for success is for things that are attainable (e.g., education, healthy fun) and within your control (e.g., happiness), then congratulations! You are already well on your way to being successful and all you need to do now is stay focused on your goals, remain adaptable, and enjoy your journey.

How ALL (met and unmet) Expectations Undermine Happiness

It is obvious that expectations decrease happiness when those expectations are not met, but expectations also decrease happiness when they are met! How? Expectations undermine gratitude, and gratitude is a key element of happiness. When the husband fully expects his wife to prepare a hot meal every night, the husband feels less grateful, less thankful, and less appreciative when he gets the meal, because, after all, he expected it! If, on the other hand, the husband avoids expecting the hot meal, he will have profound gratitude for his wife’s efforts in preparing hot meals each and every night of their 60 year marriage.

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When we give Little Johnny too many privileges without requiring that he somehow earns those privileges, then we create expectations in Little Johnny, and inadvertently deprive him of the ability to be happy by robbing him of his gratitude.

Warning: If your MOOD is backward, that spells DOOM!

If nothing else, you’ve got to show up at the race wearing sneakers, and you’ve got to show up at the parenting game with your mood on straight. Indeed, if your mood is on backward, that spells DOOM.

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Nobody has a great day everyday, but if you are going to be responsible for another person (namely, your child), you really need to have good self-awareness. If things are not going as well as you’d like at work or with your marriage, try (as much as possible) to compartmentalize and put on a happy face when you interact with and care for your children. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t seek help or that you should completely suppress your emotions. Of course not, but there’s a time and a place for everything. There’s an old expression, Bring the body, and the mind will follow. This means that what you do can cause how you feel. If you act miserable, they you’ll feel miserable, but if you act happy, you very well may soon start to feel a bit happier. Ironically, the best thing about this is that your children will probably react positively to your good cheer, and maybe, just maybe that will be the beginning of an upward spiral.

Reality Show

One of the Buddhist noble truths is that Desire is the root of all suffering. In thinking about disappointments, you will no doubt find this to be true. The source of suffering comes from a desire for a different outcome, or a failure to accept reality.

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Consider this disturbing, yet enlightening example from famous psychologist Albert Ellis. In an interview on National Public Radio, Ellis is heard in a group therapy session that he was conducting with a woman who was distraught about the unsolved murder of her sister from eight years earlier. The woman stated that she believed her sister should not have been killed. Murder was not the expectation she had for her sister, and the pain of the murder was compounded by the fact that the assailant was never captured. Dr. Ellis tells the woman that she would be well-advised to believe that her sister indeed should have been murdered. And then there were gasps of shock from the woman and the other group participants. Was Dr. Ellis being cruel? Had he lost his mind? No. While Dr. Ellis would certainly not deny the woman her right to grieve, he also recognized, with compassion, that the murder victim would not want her surviving sister to suffer like this. He went on to explain that believing the sister should have been murdered is not cruel, but rather it is simply an acknowledgement and acceptance of reality. After the initial period of shock and the process of grieving, failure to accept reality (based on her faulty expectations) had greatly robbed the surviving sister of any peace that she could have achieved over the past 8 years. Those well-meaning friends who commiserated over the years and reinforced the thought that the terrible event should not have happened, inadvertently kept the surviving sister stuck in a state of emotional limbo without closure. After her session with Dr. Ellis, the reality, of course, remained unchanged and sadness persisted, but the hope is that the surviving sister experienced a cathartic insight of acceptance that liberated her and allowed her to reclaim control of her emotions (and her life).

Indeed, failure to accept reality has a great emotional cost. Even when reality is particularly grim, there is a great value to striving for Zen-like acceptance in the name of your own emotional survival and peace of mind. A Maximum Strength Parent can’t change what happened, but can change what happens next.

Would you trade your bag-of-troubles for a stranger’s?

Let’s make a new National Holiday, called Put-Your-Troubles-in-a-Bag-Day. It will be the day when we all gather every one of our troubles (physical, emotional, familial, financial, etc.), put them in a bag, and then carry the bag around all day while we go about our normal business. And, oh yeah, you would be able to offer to trade your bag with any stranger you choose.

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Please note, though, that the bags of trouble can be misleading, because the bags would be influenced by our perception. For example, very few troubles may be in a really big bag if the holder of that bag is an emotional wreck, while a lot of major, catastrophic troubles may be in a very small bag if the holder of that bag is calm and cool as a cucumber. So, would you trade your bag-of-troubles for a stranger’s? If you would not trade, does that mean you are paralyzed with fear, does it mean that you are happy and content? What does it say about you if you would trade? Would that mean that you are miserable or adventurous? Even though we can’t trade our bag with a stranger, a Maximum Strength Parent can inflate or deflate their "bags