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Sometimes it’s all you can do to keep up with life. To keep up with your teen can seem daunting.

Your relationship with your teen can make or break your teen’s experience and relationships with peers, friends, school, and family. Research shows that connection with family is the #1 preventive factor in substance abuse, addiction, pregnancy, and school failure throughout the teen years.

Connection means that when faced with a dilemma or decision, your teen will first think what would my parents say? instead of what would my friends say? Connection does not guarantee smart decision-making—your teen is in the developmental risk taking years—but it puts you first and foremost in your teen’s mind. If your teen fears punishment, thinks you will not understand, knows she can’t talk to you, she will turn to her friends for the support and understanding she needs.

Here are 10 ways to keep up and keep connected:

  1. Understand development — Your teen reverts to the egocentricity you haven’t seen since toddlerhood. Everything is about him. He is evolutionarily programmed to take risks in order to discover what you cannot teach. His prefrontal cortex is not fully developed until 25, which means he is less able to control impulses, allow thinking before acting, and foresee the consequences of his actions. Expect this!
  2. Be playful — Your teen is likely to think you are “clueless”. If you can play along you will gain points in her estimation. Counter with humor, “Back in the 1800s, we didn’t even have electricity. Can you help this old lady with her iPhone?” Light-heartedness may lead to laughter. Learn to tease her in a way that she likes, and she will tease you back. Humor cures most ills.
  3. Don’t take it personally — Your teen is going to throw barbs that can hurt if you let them penetrate. When you hurt, you are likely to retaliate. He can leave the house anytime he feels like it. Don’t kick him out the door with nagging, threats and blame and into the precarious security of his peers. Wait for your emotions to calm, but don’t let it go. Come back with, “I didn’t appreciate your comment. Can you say what you wanted in a more respectful way, please?” Be willing to take a certain amount of attitude before you draw your line.
  4. Set limits but allow independence — Your limits need to grow with your teens need for independence. Work out agreed upon limits and rules together. Let go of “No, you can’t.” She will show you she can. Get in the habit of “I don’t want… that doesn’t work for me… let’s figure this out so we’re both okay with it.”
  5. Trust — Beneath this egocentric, inconsiderate, risk taker, your teen has all the capability and kindness he has ever had. That child did not vanish although you wonder sometimes. If you send messages that you do not trust him, he will learn to be untrustworthy. When you show your trust in that wonderful person you know is still in there, he will not want to betray your trust. Trust involves allowing him to discover the mistakes he needs to make for himself.
  6. Accept — Unconditionally accept your teen no matter what. That does not mean accepting her behavior or agreeing with her. It means accepting that at this stage of development, given her circumstance, she will make mistakes, she will think she knows everything, and she will likely dismiss you. When you accept this, your reactions can calm to responses and fair limits.
  7. Be honest — Your teen wants to know what’s going on. He can see through attempts to skirt issues that feel uncomfortable or when you are being dishonest. Get in the habit of talking about the world, what’s going on in your life and your community. Don’t wait for his questions. Teens don’t want to let on they don’t know, so they don’t ask.
  8. Find windows of opportunity — Just because your teen chooses to spend time alone or with her friends and barely acknowledges your presence, she still wants you there. Keep a look out for those windows when she will connect. She wants to—just not most of the time.
  9. Make your house the hub — Encourage your teen to bring his friends to your house. Make it inviting with food and a welcoming atmosphere. Disappear when appropriate but also be a friend to his friends and have fun.
  10. Do your homework — find out what your teen is interested in and get interested too. Together watch favorite TV shows, look at fashion magazines and catalogues, attempt to play video games, go on bike rides, concerts, etc. Teens still like to have fun with their parents.

When your teen thinks you are cool even 5% of the time, your investment of trust pays off. As that prefrontal cortex completes its development in the twenties, your egocentric teen will morph into a more considerate, interested, helpful and less snarky human being. Your goal is a loving friendship that will support you both for the rest of your lives. It is well worth your patience through the teen years.

 

Many of today’s parents fear that if they don’t give their children the right push out of the crib, they will not make it in this world of high-powered over-achievers. The fear is that anything less than a Harvard post-graduate degree will leave our children on the corner asking for spare change. The days of sending kids out to play to fend for themselves for hours on end are long gone. Instead we register our kids for music, French, math and gymnastics classes before they can walk trying to give them the edge.

Multiple research studies have shown that parents who hold firm but nurturing standards and let go enough to give their children autonomy raise children who do better academically, psychologically, and socially than either over-involved parents who push their children toward achievement or under-involved and permissive parents who set too few limits.

Even so, parents have a hard time letting go of what they think will give their kids a head start. Media and marketing doesn’t help to convince parents to buy less and allow their children to discover without all the bells and whistles. We give, we praise, we register in program after program hoping…for what? That our child will be rich and famous?

Dr. Carol Dweck of Stanford University studied children’s motivation by giving them simple puzzles they had no problem putting together. Some were told how smart and capable they were, others were not told anything. The ones who were left alone were more motivated to try more difficult puzzles and showed more confidence in their progress and ability.

Our goal is to instill self-motivation and confidence in our children to get through the hard stuff. They don’t need the way paved for them. They need our support and encouragement to deal with feelings of discouragement and disappointment, even failure so they can push themselves through the messiness to accomplishment. This is the sweet spot of self-esteem. It cannot be given to a child; it must come from within.

We give that confidence with trust—trust in our child’s developmental process, timing, and ability. That means knowing your child and being willing to stand back and watch. If it is too hard for you to let go of controlling what your children do, say, think and feel—of trying to make your children happy—then you might be a toxic parent.

Here are a few tips to check yourself:

Let your child grow. Development needs to happen from the inside out. Remember that the whole oak tree is present in the tiny acorn. What it needs to grow is the proper soil, water, sunshine and temperature. It doesn’t need any internal adjustment.

If you find yourself short on trust, the work to do is within yourself. It will not come with pushing your child to achieve. That is your cue that you are trying to make yourself feel better.

Ask, “Am I trying to meet my needs or my child’s needs? Am I the one who wants the gold star and best parent of the year award?”

Imagine a huge hole in the ground with Man A stuck at the bottom unable to escape. Man B walks nearby and hears Man A calling for help. Man B sees Man A at the bottom of the hole. He is so upset that he jumps in the hole with Man A. Now both are upset and both are stuck at the bottom of the hole. Man C walks by and hears both A and B calling for help. Man C tells them he will be back soon. Later, Man C arrives with a ladder.

There is a fine line between sympathy and empathy but learning the difference can make huge changes in your relationship with your child.

My favorite definition: Empathy is understanding the shoes someone else is walking in; sympathy is putting them on as if they belong to you.

Sympathy has its place but is more about the feelings of the sympathizer than the one being sympathized with. Empathy allows a certain detachment from the feelings so the empathizer is better able to help. Man B’s emotions got him stuck in the hole. Man C’s compassion left him able to see what was needed.

My mother was a professional sympathizer. Whenever I expressed having a problem, she responded, “Oh my poor dear. That’s so awful. You don’t really have to do that, do you?” Her sympathy was not helpful. As a matter of fact, I stopped sharing my problems with her, because I never got that she understood and then I had her feelings to deal with as well as my own problem.

When we sympathize with our children, we often cross a boundary and become enmeshed with our child’s problem. We may become overly protective and involved and try hard to fix or take away our child’s problem.

Let’s say my child is having a problem with a classmate calling him names. When I sympathize, I get upset, resentful, or angry toward the name-caller and can lose sight of what my child needs. I then might make it my problem and call the teacher or offending child’s parent, getting angry and demanding restitution.

If I empathize with my child’s problem, I understand why he is upset, yet I am somewhat disengaged from the problem. I may be upset about the situation but more important is letting my child know that I understand his upset, so his feelings are normalized (empathy). “It’s got to be so hard when you hear that name. It must feel as if he’s putting you down.” Then it’s about my child-he can agree with my assumption or correct it. Conversation typically follows empathy, not so much with sympathy.

When I get equally upset about the problem (sympathy), I take responsibility and am more likely to tell him what to do about it-it’s more about me and my “rightness”, my idea of what he should do. “You need to tell him that you don’t like to be talked to like that. Ask him how he would feel if he got called that. Tell him you won’t invite him to your party if he’s going to treat you like that.” It’s me projecting myself into the situation and telling my child to fix it like I would.

When I empathize, I understand it is my child’s problem, and when I don’t try to fix it, I am much better able to help him figure out what he wants to do about it. Once he trusts that I know how he feels (empathy), I can then ask questions and offer suggestions that help him take charge of his problem the way he thinks best.

“What would you like to do about it?”

“Is there something you wish you could say to him?”

“What is it you want him to know?”

“How might you do that?”

Having good boundaries with your children means helping them take responsibility for their problems and find good solutions that work for them, not you. When I jump in the hole with my child because I feel his pain, I am not in the best position to help. I now expect my child to appreciate the sacrifice I have made to jump in the hole with him. When I leave my child with his pain to get the ladder, I bring him a tool to help him solve his own problem–with my support.

With the long structured school days coming to an end, children have their sought after freedom from constant direction and the pressure of adult time schedules. After the initial newness of vacation wears off, cries of boredom may become a parent’s latest undoing.

What happens to you when you hear, “I’m bored. What do I do?” after days and months of getting-out-the-door struggles and frustrated cries of, “I don’t want to go to school.” Is it tempting to say, “Aren’t you ever happy? All year you complain that you never have any free time and now you do and you’re bored.” Do you feel resentful and come out with things like, “I’m not your social director. Figure it out for yourself.”

What does it mean to feel bored? There is nothing that has to be done, nothing that is compelling you to act. You lack motivation and interest in the present moment, you may feel restless and agitated. Let’s face it, for most of us, boredom brings us face-to-face with ourselves, which can allow space for any number of unpleasant feelings and realizations. We spend most our time making sure that doesn’t happen. We add activity to activity, we become workaholics, we stay plugged into computers, ipads or cell phones, or we dull our senses with drugs, food, or video games. We make sure we never have to be alone with ourselves.

Boredom has a bad rep. Most of us think being bored means we’re lazy, lethargic, inactive, selfish, dull, not taking responsibility for all that needs to be done. So when our children complain about being bored, we feel angry, irritated, and resentful because we see them in this same light, and may even feel at fault for not raising better worker bees. We slip right into thinking they are lazy, can’t think for themselves, won’t do anything on their own, can’t come up with any number of things we can think of that they could or should be doing. When we define boredom this way, we logically feel frustrated or annoyed and thus react in any number of ways that put our children down, send messages of inadequacy, or simply express our impatience and irritation—a logical outcome when believing there is something wrong, misguided, and undirected about a child who feels bored.

But what if that’s not the case? What if you thought how wonderful it was that your child has the opportunity to be bored? Think of the possibility in boredom. Isn’t boredom a necessary precursor to creativity and invention? Think of what there is to be discovered in the depths of boredom. Inspiration needs emptiness to breed. It rarely comes out of constant doing. When a child feels inspired, accomplishment follows organically.

Meditation is the act of stilling the mind so the present moment can be experienced. Most of us don’t stop long enough to be in the present moment, notice what is in front of our eyes or appreciate the sounds and smells and feelings of right now. In allowing boredom, you are granting the experience of the present moment—even if it’s filled with frustration.

When you think you have to come up with activities or create some kind of stimulation for your child to keep her busy, you enable her dependence and are in fact sending a message that she is incapable of taking care of herself. By taking responsibility for filling her time, you interfere with her own creative process and ingenuity.

Imagine if your response to “I’m bored” is, “Oh, you are so lucky. What a great thing to feel bored. Amazing things are about to happen. You’ll come up with something, I know. When you do, let me know. I’ll be interested to hear what that mind of yours invents.” Think what you are setting in motion! Think what message that sends to a frustrated child. The frustration will morph into something quite different. Maybe not immediately, but soon enough.

Unfortunately, many children will still have little time to be bored if they continue in structured care throughout the summer. And with technology ever present, children don’t get the opportunity to be bored. All the more reason to set parameters around screen time from an early age so that video games and texting are not the only fillers when there is nothing else to do.

Try spending time doing nothing with your child. Try, “I really want to do absolutely nothing right now. Will you do nothing with me?” Then go sit on the porch or cuddle on the couch and just be. Focus on what you can observe right then. There might be a bird neither of you would have otherwise noticed or bugs in the grass that inspire wondering. Let your child know how wonderful it can be to be bored—oh, the possibilities. Boredom is a luxury of childhood. Make sure it is allowed on a regular basis.

Children need parental authority to know who is in charge. And parents need authority to maintain order and provide children with the scaffolding they need to climb high. However, the meaning of authority is often misunderstood as the right to give orders and enforce obedience. This is not appropriate authority for a healthy parent-child relationship.

Another definition is “the power to influence others because of one’s recognized knowledge about something”. The power of influence is the huge responsibility inherent in parenting—a responsibility too often relinquished when parents feel insecure, overwhelmed or angry. Without consciousness and care, that influence can have an extremely negative effect. When children’s behavior triggers emotional reactions and automatic, knee-jerk attempts at control, parents have a negative effect and their unrealistic expectations of their children provoke resistance and defiance.

Parental authority that helps children feel safe and secure requires a good knowledge of what each child is capable of developmentally, temperamentally, emotionally, and cognitively so the child can feel successful meeting expectations. Understanding that normal development means that a child’s job is to get what he wants when he wants it, does not mean he has to get it but does help in understanding what appropriate expectations are.

My answer to parents who complain, “He never listens to me”, is that he doesn’t like hearing what you are saying, and more likely the tone in which you are saying it. No one likes to have orders barked at them.

It is essential for parents to set appropriate limits on their children, make decisions that children are incapable of making, and maintain a balance of rights and needs within the family. All this can be done without blame, threats, or punishments—ever. The secret is in letting the child know that she isn’t expected to think like an adult.

Here are some ways of implementing what I call Your Parent Authority Card (PAC):

 Using your PAC does not mean that your child will gladly do what you say. But without the blame and threats used to get compliance (If you don’t get to bed now, there will be no TV for the rest of the week.), and without the implied unrealistic expectations (You should know that TV is not good for you), children will more likely respond to your benevolent authority, feel less put upon to understand what they shouldn’t be expected to understand, and thus be more willing to cooperate.

When you have confidence in your authority, there is no need to rage in despair. Use your PAC, and then simply guide your child with a calmer and therefore more effective approach.

When you threaten with If you don’t…then I will…, you wield power over your child and your child won’t like it. He might do what you say right then, but the long term fallout can be great. With a threat or a punishment you send the expectation to your child that he should know that it’s time for bed, that he can’t go to that party, that you need it quiet in the car. This is unfair and confusing to a child who simply doesn’t know, nor should he—he’s a kid.

When you hold appropriate expectations that your child can meet, she feels accepted, understood and respected. Cooperation is likely to follow. Too much time is generally spent on criticism and judgments of what children are doing wrong. No one responds well to that.

Your parental authority is your right when you become a parent. Use it responsibly.

And have a P eaceful, A ccepting and C alm approach with your children.

  1. Be more, teach less. Don’t try to teach your children lessons all the time. That only leads to franticness and worry. Children learn best from modeling and in those precious moments when they feel connected to parents during “just being” time.
  2. Accept the child you have. “If only…”, “Why me?”, and “He never…” can fill your days and keep you disconnected from your children—and your lives. Pay attention to who your child is and what she is attempting to say instead of wishing she were different.
  3. Practice mindfulness. You don’t have to sit and meditate to be in the moment. Simply focus on the dish you are washing, the floor you are vacuuming, each article of clothing you are folding, the words and emotions your child is expressing—right now—without jumping to conclusions.
  4. Pay attention even when what you hear is unpleasant. Your child is always attempting to tell you something but doesn’t have the maturity to say it in a way you can easily understand. His words and actions often need interpreting. Don’t take them literally.
  5. Practice “the pause”. Don’t react to teach your child a lesson. Stop, breathe, wait, and think. Your automatic reaction will be ineffective at best, damaging at worst. Breathe to give yourself a chance to drop back into your body. Then come back to it when you’re both calm.
  6. Establish unplugged zones and times of the day. Make sure the rules are established together and are agreed on by all. For instance, cellphone-free zones in the car, mealtime, family playtime, and at bedtime.
  7. Once you have tech devices in your home, don’t spend time fighting to get your children off them. Set time structures together and allow self-regulation. Encourage family time. Proficiency in the tech world is your children’s future.
  8. Under-schedule your children. Put value on hanging out and being bored. Creativity doesn’t arise when a child is scheduled and adult-directed.
  9. Less toys, more creativity. Stay away from talking toys and get ones that allow invention. When your child wants to buy something, ask what it is she wants to do and how she can make that happen.
  10. Accept yourself. Negative beliefs about yourself, “I’m not good enough,” “I can’t do this”, etc. come from messages you learned from your parents when their buttons got pushed. They are not true. You only thought they were.
  11. Accept your emotions as well as your child’s. Despite what you may have learned, emotions are ALWAYS okay. Don’t be tempted with feel-good-now solutions. Even when depressed and despondent, stay with it. Emotions teach and can be a call to action. Never blame them on your child.
  12. Positive self-talk. Get in the habit of staying present with something like, “I can deal with this”, “This too shall pass”, “It’s not the end of the world” or “I’m having a hard time right now.” The one constant of parenting is that everything changes.
  13. Stop yourself from catastrophizing. It’s easy to soar into the future in a nano-second when your children provoke fear and anger. Check yourself when you have thoughts like, “He’s going to be in jail by the time he’s fifteen.” “She’ll never have any friends.” “He’s never going to finish anything.” We convince ourselves of the worst.
  14. Learn to say no. Many mothers were brought up to believe that doing for others equals being a good person. Parenting is the toughest job there is. Especially for working parents, prioritize the needs of your family and yourself to stay focused and present.
  15. Care for yourself. You cannot be present when you wish you were elsewhere. You can’t fuel your child until you fuel yourself first. Find ways and times to do for you so you feel better when you are being a parent. Don’t buy into the old “selfish” bit.

Ever fear your child turning violent? Consistent sibling slugs, pushing on the playground, provoking a pet, throwing things, threatening to “kill” someone, easily provokes us to catastrophize and project our child into juvenile delinquency.

We do it in a nano-second. We try to stop the hitting, yelling, and angry outbursts and it sometimes comes out with threats, punishment, and our own angry outbursts in an attempt to raise kind, peaceful children. We set the stage for just the opposite.

Anger is a natural human feeling. Instead of fearing it and trying to repress it in our children, we need to give anger and aggression an outlet. Many of us learned as children that we shouldn’t feel a certain way, we believed we were bad when those natural feelings arose. Few of us learned how to express our anger appropriately, so we fear it in our children.

Strict censorship of negative emotions may suppress feelings in some children yet cause problems in the long term. Many become depressed, can’t stand up for themselves, freeze at challenges, cannot make decisions, etc. Medications and addictions often result.

Other children are less able to suppress angry energy due to more emotional, aggressive inborn temperaments. Continual negative feedback with punishment and disapproval, can turn children into bullies outside the home. Some children may even progress to violent behavior. When natural energies are thwarted by threats, punishment, withdrawal of love, or isolation, those energies fester and retaliation becomes the logical option.

To raise peaceful, non-violent children, we need to empower them, parenting in a way that may feel counterintuitive. Aggressive energy does not turn violent when given proper outlets and support. Parents usually fear that indulging negative feelings gives permission for negative behavior. Just the opposite is true.

Tips To Diffuse Anger:

If your child is mad at you:

You are the facilitator of the energy outlet. You are in control. Your child can safely release her feelings and gain empowerment in the release so the feelings needn’t do harm.

Only after feelings are purged, discuss what the child would like to do or say for real. Don’t direct; give her the authority to decide for herself. In this safe space after feelings have been expressed and accepted, she knows what is right and wrong. Trust the process. In some cases, this process needs to be repeated several times. When you stay calm, she can yell what she wants. Then she will calm, be better able to say what she meant, or spontaneously apologize and make amends.

Bear witness to your child’s feelings, be a sounding board, and your child will feel accepted and okay about himself. From this place there is no need for negative or violent behavior. Only when feelings are not allowed does the child feel wrong and unacceptable. Uncooperative, resistant behavior is an attempt to gain power. Allow the feelings and you empower your child.

Many power struggles are fought over attempts to get our children to do what we expect in the name of learning to be helpful and take responsibility. Too often our best intentions get derailed. Instead of teaching helpfulness and responsibility, we teach them they are disappointments to us.

“When will you ever learn to pick up after yourself?”

“How many times have I told you to hang your coat up?”

“Pick up those dirty clothes right now.”

“Do you ever think about anybody but yourself?”

We get an idea in our heads about what teaching responsibility means—usually stemming from what we got yelled at for— and we plow ahead quite unconsciously. We fear that any exception to the rule will lead to anarchy. But what is the real lesson learned when we hold rigid to a vague principle?

Instead of threatening a time-out unless your two-year-old picks up her toys or your four-year-old cleans his room, consider the agendas. Yours is to have a clean house: no toys to step on, dust bunnies to collect, mice to gather. Your child’s is to play and have fun as much as possible. If your child doesn’t do what you ask, you might assume disrespect, disobedience, or ingratitude when all she is doing is trying to get what she wants. That is her job after all.

Ultimately you want your child to become self-sufficient, take care of her own responsibilities, and respect others. Is this best enforced with power struggles that actually teach her that she is making you mad, that you disapprove of her, and don’t accept her the way she is? Of course that is not your intention, but that is the message of power struggles.

Instead, try modeling what you want to see in your child. If you want a clean room and you are getting resistance, pick up the toys yourself (your agenda after all) and say lightly without sarcasm, “Thank you mommy for picking up my toys.” “Mommy I appreciate you doing my laundry.” In the manner we teach please and thank you when we hear the demand, “Get me some milk”, responding with “…Please mommy may I have some milk?” and, “Thank you” when we give it. We can do the same with behaviors we wish to see from our children. In this way, we are teaching without holding the unrealistic expectation that a young child should be cleaning up messes as we make the orders. Once there is calm modeling going on, then children can be brought into the process to help and eventually take over the task.

Some mornings your perfectly capable child may need help getting dressed or getting out the door. There’s nothing wrong with giving the help to your child that you want to see her give to you.

When children are forced to do what we insist on and feel blamed or threatened when they resist, they get defensive to try to protect themselves from getting in trouble. Defensive behaviors such as yelling back, ignoring, hitting, even laughing are viewed as disrespectful and disobedient when in fact they are protective mechanisms. When we ease them into the process of helping, they are freer to watch, listen and learn with no need to build a wall of defense.

Taking a calmer, less forceful approach is not meant to be an excuse for letting children off the hook from jobs and responsibilities. Nothing is more important for the developing self-esteem and competence than being relied on to help the family run smoothly.

Children naturally want to help—until we blame them for not helping. We have all had toddlers who want to push the vacuum cleaner and scream if you take it from them. You ease them more gracefully from that stage into helping when you don’t insist on them doing as you say every time.

Here are some tips on developing a helpful attitude in your children:

– See more at: http://bonnieharris.com/developing-roots-helpfulness-children/#sthash.krShd9IB.dpuf

Peer pressure. It’s a term that provokes fear in every parent—fear that children will succumb to the negative influence of classmates and friends to behave in dangerous ways. Parents worry that being liked and a part of the popular group will be more important to their children than working hard, getting good grades, and getting their values at home. Turning into who they think their friends want or expect them to be is the stuff of a parent’s nightmare.

There are two additional and often forgotten aspects to consider about peer pressure: The positive side of peer influence and the affects of adult peer pressure on parents and thus on their children.

  1. Parents tend to focus only on the negative aspects of peer pressure and forget to acknowledge that children must learn the norms, styles and social skills of living in today’s world from their peers. Good friends influence each other tremendously as they talk about and decide so many behaviors they both approve and disapprove of in others. Bullies and snobs influence children in positive ways, too. That’s what I don’t want to be like.

A parent’s job is to accept and support the child to foster self-confidence so that they can navigate the ins and outs of their peers and gain the knowledge and influence that works for their success and further confidence. When parents spend too much time fearing which friends their children will choose, they lose valuable time in learning and accepting who their child really is.

The parent’s influence is best felt through guidance of the child’s navigation through the peer world by helping to problem solve tough situations, listening to the child’s wonderings and worries about friends and peers, providing a sounding board for both joys and sorrows, and offering suggestions and advice when needed—not by projecting one’s own fears and experiences onto their child and attempting to control the child by saying, Here is what you should do.

Positive parental influence requires an open, honest and understanding relationship with the child so communication about peers feels safe. Children will not share their concerns about peer relationships with a parent who they suspect will criticize, worry, lecture or interfere. This parent can ironically push the child in exactly the direction they fear most.

  1. Then there is the world of adult peer pressure. What children witness their parents saying and doing is far more influential to their future behavior than any advice ever given. What parents say about others, behave toward others, and do with their time models powerful lessons whether good or bad.

It’s important for parents to look at the role of peer pressure in their own day-to-day life. So many parents are obsessed by how they perceive other parents and children are doing. “All my friends kids behave so well. Why can’t mine?” Comparisons—either causing the parent or child to fall short or look down on—create negative and inappropriate expectations. Often children with opposing temperaments are compared to one another by worried parents creating impossible expectations.

“Keeping up with the Joneses” is a perfect example of adult peer pressure. If the Joneses are scheduling their kids with all those lessons and sports activities, then I should too. S.A.T. prep classes have become an accepted norm. The pressure is on to get a leg up regardless of ability to pay. From fashion to grades, parents would do better to spend their energy on maintaining their own values at home.

How many of us are more concerned by what we think others think of us than by what our children really need? A child is often at the short end of the stick when behavior erupts in public. What the parent imagines a total stranger expects of her holds more influence over her treatment of her child than what her child actually needs.

Then there is the pressure that comes with technology. If you are a parent of young children, you may feel peer pressure to be present on social media. After all everyone is. From taking pictures of your children, to checking your texts and email, to posting on facebook or instagram, most children today witness their parents in the company of their constant companions—cell phones, iPads, and other hand-held devices.

Is technology use peer driven or boredom driven? Parents must pay attention to what their behavior is modeling and how it applies when demanding that their children get off their devices to go and play outside.

Much of what parents expect of their children set up double standards that children see immediately but that parents remain oblivious to. Do what I say, not what I do ignores the power of modeling. It is important to pay attention to what we do and why we do it and to acknowledge the power of peer pressure in our lives as well as our children’s—both for the good and the bad.