How many times have you thought, "Why didn’t these kids come with instruction manuals?"
Now they do.
Welcome to those of you who have arrived at this website after using the Drawing Analysis System with your child.
For those of you not aware, there is a very helpful diagnostic tool available, at a very reasonable cost, which should give you a much better understanding and insight into your child - both their strengths and weaknesses and if there are problems, what could be causing them.
As a parent with a child who is struggling, you need two things.
1) It is nice to know more about what is going on inside your child, so that you might better understand what could be causing the difficulty.
2) You need to know what to do about it.
In these parenting guidelines you will discover a no nonsense style, emphasizing love and discipline. These instructional booklets, which average about 20 pages each, target specific techniques and strategies to effectively change specific problems. They are a step by step presentation, breaking down the complex into the simple.
Below is a Review of the Available Guidelines
Guidelines to Motivating your Child with Positive Rewards and Helping them Learn Difficult Skills. (The Art of Successive Approximations)
As parents we often first think about negatively disciplining unwanted behavior (screaming, hitting, using Time Out) rather than rewarding the desired behavior. It sounds silly but no one ever coaches us on how to best reward someone to get the results we would like to see. The scientifically developed ideas to rewarding will be revealed in this guideline. If you don’t really think there is scientific understanding behind this, then can you explain why slot machines pay off as they do and how they create the most addictive reward system we know about.
And when your child is struggling to learn new skills, it is easy to feel like we, as parents, are “in over our heads” trying to help them learn these challenging skills. The solution to overcoming the avoidance of difficult tasks is to break the task down into small behaviors that can be seen and rewarded. When part of the task is accomplished then another piece is added before the reward can be earned again. You will help your struggling child by learning to help him build success, one small behavioral piece at a time.
Guidelines to Helping Your Child Deal with Feelings. (The Art of Mirroring)
One of the simplest and most important gifts you can give your child is one of emotional understanding. It is easy for us humans to “get our feelings hurt”. As parents we hurt our children’s feelings all too often. As most parents know, simply saying, “No” to their child’s desires, hurts their feelings. What is important is how you handle the situation after your child’s feelings are hurt. Learn how to help your child feel understood and loved even when you have to disappoint them. Learn how to help your child move past negative feelings without them remaining unresolved, and becoming a potential emotional problem in the future. Help your child grow up as emotionally unscarred as possible.
Guidelines to Improving Self Esteem (The Art of Praise)
Anyone who suffers from low self esteem or a lack of self acceptance knows how painful it can be and how it can easily lead to feeling depressed. Because of our cultural habits and language it is common to criticize our children in ways that give them the message that they are bad people. Children obviously need to learn safe and socially appropriate behaviors, but not at the expense of feeling like they are a bad person. Learn ways to teach your child what they need to learn while feeling good about themselves.
Guidelines to Communicating Love to Your Child and Reducing Fear (The Art of Developing Trust)
So much of life is filled with fearful information. We have a brain that is wired for survival and so it is acute to noticing situations that are dangerous. Seeing and handling danger is important but all too often we end up with unneeded and destructive fears. The counterbalance to fear is love. The two cannot exist in the body at the same time. Help your child treat danger realistically while minimizing fears and maximizing loving feelings.
Guidelines to Taking A Break -- Formally known as Time Out (The Art of Non Violent Discipline)
Time Out works if you follow a simple formula. Many parents do not believe it works because they make fatal errors in following the formula. Teaching a child to Take a Break, when they have done something unacceptable is the most powerful, non violent, method for modifying a child’s unwanted behaviors. And most importantly, if you learn to help your child Take a Break correctly, it takes your anger out of the situation. It is important that your child learn that they did something wrong and they must change. It is destructive for the child to feel like you are angry and don’t love them anymore.
Guidelines to Raising a Secure Independent Child (The Art of Promoting Self Actualization)
The greatest journey we take in this life is that from being a helpless infant to being a fully functional, independent adult. The most fully functional adult is one who has minimal self doubts while showing courage and compassion. The happiest and most satisfied adults are those who operate from the strength of their independence within the balance of being connected to family and romance.
Guidelines to Raising a Sexually Secure Adult (The Art of Creating a Romantic Adult)
For many people, life’s most emotionally intense, life connecting, simple pleasure is not available. Their sex life is full of inhibition. They are robbed of their given drive for closeness and procreation by discomfort and fear. These discomforts typically come from negative messages about sex, or no messages at all. Find out how and when children should know about specific sexual information to maximize their maturity and growth.
Guidelines to Choosing a Mental Health Professional
Many people are confused about the differences between psychiatrists, psychologists, marriage and family therapists and clinical social workers. Additionally, people wonder, should I take medications or just do therapy? Why are there so many types of therapy? How do I approach a genetically determined psychological problem differently than a purely psychological issue. Find the answers to these questions and more.
Advancing Awareness
