Mothering our daughters into adolescence

My oldest daughter turns ten this month! I am faced with many new moods, likes and dislikes and a new tone that has crept into her voice.

Luckily a good friend recommended a great book to me. I would like to share this with you no matter where you are in your mothering journey.

The book is entitled: The Mother-Daughter Project: How mothers and daughters can band together, beat the odds, and thrive through adolescence. The authors are SuEllen Hamkins and Renee Schultz. Here is what they say:

“Welcome to the Mother-Daughter Project

Today’s world offers unprecedented opportunities and dangers for adolescent girls, but limited support for the tough work of mothering teens and few models of close, loving mother-daughter relationships. In the Mother-Daughter Project, our intention is to help create communities that simultaneously nurture girls, mothers, and mother-daughter relationships.

‘We want to join with other women in exploring how we can continue to nurture our daughters through pre-adolescence, adolescence and into adulthood. We want to find ways to support each other as mothers and support our daughters as they are challenged by the restrictions placed on them by our culture. We want to explore ways that we can welcome our daughters into the powerful community of women.  (from our original mission statement)’

The core principles of the Mother-Daughter Project

1. Mothers can continue close and loving relationships with their daughters right through their teen years.

Girls need – and want – a close connection with their mothers – as long as they are respected for their growing maturity and can be cool in front of their peers.

Girls best discover who they are in the context of loving relationships. Maturity means getting better at both autonomy and connection – including with mom.

When girls say they want “space,” they don’t mean distance. What they want is for us to make space for them in our hearts and in our lives to develop in their own ways. When they go in a new direction, especially one new to us – whether giving up classical violin to play bass for a garage band or dropping basketball to join the math team – our daughters want us right there, supporting and cheering them. Girls want to confide in their mothers, and with their mother’s interest and support, it’s easier for them to make it through minefield of adolescence.

2. Girls thrive when mothers thrive.

To be able to raise daughters who can flourish, mothers need ongoing support and tangible resources. Our project is not about doing more as mothers – it’s about mothers getting what we need to do one of the hardest jobs in the world.

Mothering in today’s world is incredibly stressful – even more so for mothering adolescents. When young girls are bombarded daily with internet images of skeletal celebrities partying without underwear, it’s an uphill battle to teach our daughters to love their bodies, respect their minds, and have healthy relationships. Individual mothers need the help of other adults who care about girls to be able to raise daughters who can thrive.

Our daughters are watching us to learn what it means to be a woman. Impossible expectations of being a ‘perfect mother’ are damaging to girls and mothers alike. Girls’ self-image is enhanced when they see their mothers thriving. Our project promotes the win-win approach women have been waiting for, in which the needs and hopes and dreams of mothers are as important as the needs and hopes and dreams of their daughters.

3. Mothers and daughters need the support of other mothers and daughters.

Fostering communities that nurture mothers and daughters is the heart of the Mother-Daughter Project.

As teens grow up through adolescence, they look beyond their immediate families to discover who they are and how the world works. That’s why it’s much easier for mothers to forge close relationships with teen daughters in conjunction with other mothers and girls who value the same thing. Your thirteen-year-old might not go to the movies with just you, but she’ll go with a friend, her friend’s mother and you.

Teen girls need other adults who can give them a positive vision of themselves and their future and who can open doors for our daughters that we can’t.

It’s excruciating to parent in isolation. Other mothers are one of our most important sources of wisdom and support. Now as the Internet changes every day and dangerous trends spring up overnight, other parents of teens are a lifeline.

Some of us already have the support we need from loving, helpful extended families or caring communities of parents, adults and children. For those of us who don’t, joining together with small groups of other mothers and daughters is a simple yet revolutionary model that works. Any mother can create a fun, supportive mother-daughter group that meets her needs and fits her life. Go to Start your own mother-daughter group for practical information.

4. Each mother and daughter has a unique vision of what thriving means to her.

As mothers, we share common hopes and dreams for our daughters and ourselves, and we have hopes and dreams that are unique. Our different cultures, family traditions and experiences inform our different priorities as parents. We don’t need to accept one-size-fits-all mothering – we each get to decide our own parenting values. We can support one another in clarifying our values and preferences and in creating our own vision of what it means for our daughters, for us, and for our relationships to thrive.

5. It’s gotta be fun – or we won’t come.

Fun for girls and for moms. We promote a mother-daughter movement full of laughter, joy and play. We want us all to do more of what we love – and what we love changes as we change, no matter what our age.”

For more info visit their website at: http://www.themother-daughterproject.com

Why does my child do this? Using motivation to understand our children’s actions

When working with parents of young children, I often find myself puzzling along with the mother – trying to work out why her child behaves the way he does. My clients often find it helpful to use the following ideas to help them figure out the confusing or offensive behavior and why the child is doing it.

Take 5-year-old Jack for example. Jack is into everything, his mom tells me. Especially his father’s electronic gadgets. Jack simply cannot keep his hands off them and inevitably ends up “breaking them”. Dad gets angry with Jack and labels Jack as naughty, disobedient and destructive. Mom has tried time outs and removal of privileges and even yelling. Nothing seems to stop Jack from touching his father’s camera, cell phone etc.  It’s as if he cannot help himself.

During our talks I explained the following to Jack’s mom:

Let’s assume (based on psychoanalytic research) that everything we do represents an action we take in response to some basic need we have. Let’s assume also that we can classify our basic needs into 5 very separate areas. In addition let’s accept that we cannot just turn off our needs, because they are always present in the background or the foreground. They are always motivating us to meet them through some kind of action.

Psychoanalyst Joseph D. Lichtenberg believes we can divide our needs into groups of five systems. They are:

(1) The need to fulfill physiological requirements (e.g. eating, sleeping, exercising);

(2) The need for attachment and affiliation (e.g. calling a friend, falling in love, spending time with another);

(3) The need for assertion and exploration (e.g. stating your opinion, building something, discovering and being curious about the world around you);

(4) The need to react aversively through antagonism and/or withdrawal (e.g. fighting, arguing, hitting, stone-walling, ignoring, retreating into aloneness);

(5) The need for sensual and sexual pleasure (e.g. affection, massage, sexual activities).

In each of us, at any moment during our day, one (or more) of these motivational systems assumes dominance or is in the foreground.  They are there to alert us to what we need both for our physical survival and also for our psychological and emotional well-being. When these needs are met we feel a sense of vitality and aliveness.  When they are not met we feel frustrated and eventually, over time we can feel misunderstood, helpless, empty and depressed.

When your child’s behavior is puzzling or simply not what you would like, it can be helpful to figure out what their need is at the time. For example, if you have a child who is clinging to you when take her to a birthday party, you might tell yourself that your child’s clinging behavior is motivated by her need for attachment. You are the person she feels attached to. Thus, in order for her to move into her exploratory motivational system, she will first need to have her need for attachment satisfied. Thus staying with her longer than you expected, until she feels able to attach or affiliate with someone else at the birthday will help her to move this need into the background. Once secure, she will go out and explore the situation as you want her to. And you may well be able to leave her there until you pick her up.

Going back to our first example – it is easy now to see that Jack has an overwhelming need to explore. He is not necessarily touching the electronics because he is naughty and disobedient, but rather because he is curious about how they work and how they are put together. Instead of focusing on frustrating his need to explore, his parents could provide him with other, older electronics that he could take apart at will. He will therefore be more inclined to leave dad’s stuff alone!

Taking Action – Making a Goal a REAL Part of your Life!

Last week I shared the concept of S.M.A.R.T. goals and how you can apply them in your mothering life (or any area of your life).

If you did not have a chance to read the newsletter or you are a new subscriber, you can still read it on the mommy blues blog by clicking here.
This week I want to help you turn your SMART goal into action.
First, let’s do some PREPARATORY work:
We do this because we want this to be different to all the other times you have wanted to do something differently and then been unable to follow through. All the times you may have tried and given up after a while, or found yourself distracted.
Here are some questions that will help you decide if you are ready and serious about making this change. Even something as seemingly small as spending 30 minutes of quality time with your child per day requires preparation. Because the consequences of doing it, or not doing it are equally significant.
Here are your questions:
1. Is your goal in true alignment with your values? Does it support one of your deeply held values? If not, it will be hard for you to keep the momentum going.
2. Are you willing to learn from experts, and do what has been proven to work? I.E finding, accepting, and applying the help and guidance that is available, rather than reinventing the wheel or trying something that has not worked for you before!
3. Are you ready and willing to do whatever it takes, even if those things are outside your comfort zone, to move to where you want to be?
4. Are you willing to accept full responsibility for your actions? This means no blaming your partner, your schedule, your parents or the economy or anything else. Of course, it means taking credit for your success and acknowledging yourself for that!
5. Do you understand that no-one is coming to rescue you, or do it for you? You are the one that has to do the work.
Okay, so NOW that you are ready, let’s take action by making an ACTION PLAN:
An action plan is like a to-do list but it focuses on the achievement of a single goal. You will list all the steps in order, and as such it allows you to track your progress.
An alternative way of devising and action plan is the Backward Planning Process. In this process you write down your ultimate goal and by what date you wish to achieve it.
You then work backwards, asking yourself what milestone you need to Asks accomplish just before that. You continue to work back, in the same way, until you get to the very first step you need to take to get your plan into action. This is where you begin.
Finally, you can think about structures you can put in place that will support your action. In our example from last week, Jennifer wanted to spend 30 minutes per day with her daughter. A structure she might use would be to set a daily reminder or alarm her cell phone alerting her 20 minutes before the time she will spend with her daughter.
Secondly she decided that she will make herself accountable to someone.
Both these structures give Jennifer a good chance at being consistent with her goal and her plan.
Best of luck!Kim
PS. Don’t forget that one of the best ways of making yourself accountable is by hiring a coach.

Turn your vision into SMART GOALS

Last week I posted an exercise called the Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow exercise.
I hope you took the time out for yourself to sit down and write about those three areas of your life (relationships, occupation and health).

If not, you can find it here:

Once you have completed this exercise, it’s time to pick one goal and create a workable plan for achieving it. Before getting to the plan, however, let us look at identifying the GOAL itself.

Let’s begin! Look at your answers for TODAY and TOMORROW and choose one thing that will make the biggest difference to your life right now.

For example, if your goal is in the area of relationships – and it is to spend more quality time with your child or children, you will now want to turn that into a S.M.A.R.T. goal. In other words, a goal that you can easily describe and quantify.

So think about your goal and WRITE IT DOWN in the following way:

Make it Specific (describe it clearly), Measurable (write how you will know when it is achieved), Attainable (it must be something that can be achieved), Realistic (it must be possible for YOU to achieve it), and Time-sensitive (write down the date you wish to start it and, if applicable, the date it will be completed. If ongoing, write down the time of day or week it will be done).

Thus, Jennifer’s SMART goal (which came out of her VISION) might be written down as follows:

VISION: To be a great mom to Kerry.

GOAL: To spend more consistent quality time with my daughter, Kerry – age 10.

S.M.A.R.T. GOAL:

Specific: To spend 30 minutes of time each day with Kerry – this means doing what SHE wants to do FOR A FULL 30 MINUTES without distraction from my cell phone, computer, telephone or other family members and without doing household tasks or organizing her things at the same time.

Measurable: I will know when it is done when 30 minutes have passed and I have done the above. It also has to be done every day.

Attainable: yes

Realistic: yes, I have looked at my schedule and her schedule and I can devote 30 minutes of time to her each day

Time-Sensitive: It needs to be done every day without exception. Each Sunday I will put block off the 30 minutes for each day of the coming week in my diary.

Now that you have identified your goal, and described it clearly, we can begin to look at an ACTION PLAN next week.
For some of you, simply describing the goal will be enough to get you going.

Good luck for this week and let me know how it goes by emailing me at: KimARichardson@aol.com

Chores for kids? Yes, but how?

In my work with parents, the question of chores often comes up. I find so many parents (myself included) struggle with consistency and follow through when it comes to chores. It’s easier and quicker to do it ourselves and sometimes we just don’t feel like the battle that precedes chores.

I have also been enjoying the writings and ideas of Kerry Kelly Novick  a child, adolescent and adult psychoanalyst and founder of Allen Creek Preschool in Ann Arbor, MI. In this week’s newsletter I am going to share her response to the question of chores. I hope you find it useful.

Too tired to clean? Prioritize tasks, then try ‘chore time’ for the little ones

Posted: Aug 21, 2010 at 5:30 AM [Aug 21, 2010]

Dear Kerry,
I have two very young children (3 ½ and 18 months). My husband and I spend a whole lot of time in the evening after their bedtime, when we’re really tired, or on the weekends, doing household cleaning and chores. It’s impossible to get anything done when they are awake, but I’m beginning to feel pretty overwhelmed. Any ideas?
AH
Canton

Dear AH,
I’m not surprised you are tired at the end of the day and don’t feel much like putting up curtains, waxing floors, sorting papers and so forth. Two young children are 24/7 in themselves, on top of all the other responsibilities of modern parents.

The first thing may be to consider which household tasks really matter to you. Maybe the floors only have to be waxed once every month or two, not every week, for instance. Your children won’t be this little forever, and you can return to different standards when they are older, if those still feel important. A sparkly-clean house is lovely, but may not be worth extra fatigue and resentment at this point.

Sharing the load with your partner is the next priority. Make your list of necessary tasks together – you may find that you care about different things and it will help to clarify with each other which things are super-important and which things you can live with according to the other’s standard. I’m sure you will want to try to meet both your priority needs. But that also means both people pitching in.

Next is to make a plan or timetable for how often tasks need to be accomplished and think through when is the best time to do them. This is where the kids come in. Of course it’s easier to do work when they are asleep, but, as you pointed out, that’s when you’re most tired. Here you can think creatively about how to meet your needs and simultaneously build skills and character for your children. It’s not too early to start. A young mother wrote to me about what she came up with and I think her ideas really fit the bill for your situation.

She developed the idea of “chore time” every weekend. She and her husband decided what tasks they wanted to accomplish and figured out which ones they could safely do with the kids around. Then they included their children in the family’s activity by devising chores for them. Each child is expected to do as many chores as they are years old.

For instance, her 3-year-old had 3 chores one Saturday. They were: Sort through her accumulated art work from school from the past month with her mom, tape up the ones she chose to save and display on the wall in her room, and help her daddy replace the car registration tab on the license plate. The 1-year-old’s chore was to empty the laundry hampers and hand the clothes to his daddy to put into the washing machine.

While doing these chores with the children, mom and dad were also getting the laundry done, sweeping the kitchen floor, and wiping down the baseboards in the 3-year-old’s room. Another week, the 3-year-old dusted her shelves, while her mom changed the light bulb in her ceiling fixture and installed a new rod in her closet. The possibilities to mix and match tasks are endless.

This plan won’t keep you from having to do some chores later, but it creates the possibility of fun family time that might otherwise be filled with drudgery for you. Your kids will acquire the habit of enjoying contributing to the work of maintaining a family household. You will be laying the groundwork for a lifelong set of skills in your kids.

Working collaboratively, persisting to finish tasks, planning and executing – these are all crucial skills for school and work. Research has demonstrated that these emotional muscles are needed for kids and grownups to be successful in later life. They are more important than particular academic content or achievement levels. They represent positive character traits, interpersonal skills of teamwork, and dependability as a person.

Try “chore time” and watch your kids grow in pride and competence, while you enjoy their new capacities and defuse your own tiredness and resentment. Please let us know how it goes!

Kerry Kelly Novick is a local child, adolescent and adult psychoanalyst, affiliated with the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute and the Michigan Psychoanalytic Council, and is a founder of Allen Creek Preschool. You can reach her through AllenCreek.org, or you can email her your comments and questions for future columns. The ideas and opinions in this column are Kerry Kelly Novick’s and do not necessarily represent the views of Allen Creek Preschool, MPI or MPC.

Mothers are containers, like cookie jars!

Holding a child until painful feelings subside is critical mothering work.

Here is a wild idea. But it will start to make sense as you read -

Mothers are like Cookie Jars! Mothers are Containers!

Yes! When it comes to our children’s feelings and helping them manage them, we mother’s are like washing machines or tumble dryers or mixing bowls or cookie jars.

We are required to open ourselves up to our children and help them manage all sorts of feelings. When we allow ourselves to do this for them, we teach them a lifelong skill for dealing with their feelings. We prepare them for a life of managing their feelings rather than trying to avoid their feelings or become overwhelmed by them.

There are many ways that people avoid feelings. Feelings can be numbed with substances like alcohol, food, TV, video games, sugar, street drugs, prescription drugs, promiscuous sex. Feelings can become overwhelming to the point of depression (numbing sadness) and anxiety (intense worry and dread) that is incapacitating.

The ability to help our children with their feelings cannot be undervalued. It is a critical skill for emotional intelligence.

So how do act as containers for our children.
1. We show our children that their feelings are okay. That we accept all feelings including from joy and excitement and pride to sadness, anger, confusion and helplessness. We tell them it’s okay and normal to feel hurt, disappointed, angry, in love, excited, silly etc.

2. We also help them understand that feeling and acting are two very separate things. It’s okay to FEEL angry but it’s not okay to ACT OUT that anger by being mean or hitting or hurting oneself. It’s okay to FEEL good about yourself and proud of what you have done, but it’s not okay to make another child feel inferior or bad about himself.

3. We acknowledge our children’s feelings without trying to make them go away (because the best way to make difficult feelings go away is to just let them be). We ca say things like:

“I am sorry you feel so angry today. It must be so frustrating”.
Or “Sorry that you are so disappointed”.
Or “I can only imagine how hurtful it is when your best friend turns on you like that”.
Or, “I can understand how it feels like your heart is breaking today.”

We stop ourselves from saying things like:
“Oh! Never mind. You’ll be fine.”
“There is always someone worse off than you!”
“Pull yourself together and put a smile on your face.”
“I don’t have time for this!”
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself.”

REFLECTION: What are some of the things you say to yourself or your children about feelings that are unpleasant?

4. We offer to help them “contain” their feelings. There is that container word again! Think about your arms as being strong walls around your child who is full of feelings that he or she cannot manage. Sometimes the act of containing your child’s feelings looks like:
a. Sitting on the couch quietly and holding a young child while she cries or fusses.
b. It can be simply listening to an older child.
c. It can be respecting the space of an adolescent.

All in all, the message is: “I am not afraid or freaked out by your feelings. I am here to help you manage them, not to make you feel bad or ashamed about them.”

REFLECTION:
1. Think about the way your parent responded when you had feelings that were difficult to manage.

2. Did it help? Or not help you?

3. How do you handle your feelings now? Do you let them be, or do you make them go away?

4. How can you help your child learn good ways of handling painful or overwhelming feelings?

5 Steps to SMARTER New Year’s Resolutions

5 Steps to SMARTER New Year's Resolutions

New Year’s Eve is upon us – a magical time for setting new goals and making changes.  Would you like to harness some of that magic for yourself?

Following these five steps will increase your chances of reaching your goals next year, and being successful at what you desire.

Traditionally, the end of the year is a time for making resolutions. Very often these are things we have struggled with all year, and not been able to achieve. And so, we think that by re-invoking them on New Year’s Eve they will be imbued with some kind of magic – and they will happen!

Now, I do think there is a bit of truth to that belief. There IS some mystery and magic in ritual and symbol that we don’t always fully understand. So choosing a special day when millions of other people are also deciding to make some kind of change is a good idea! But it’s not enough.

Here are 5 tips for more successful resolutions –  resolutions that have a very good chance of being followed through.

1.  Choose your New Year’s Resolutions Consciously and Seriously

Setting goals is part of all of our lives, but often it is done unconsciously and with very little purpose and direction. Many of us make choices by default. Today, right now, choose a goal consciously and purposefully. Give it due consideration.

Think about your understanding of goals. A goal is well-defined. Like a target, it gives you clarity, motivation and focus. Having goals gives you a better chance of being successful.

Do you want your goal to be about making a change, forming a new habit, developing a skill, learning something new, stopping something old? What is your goal? For mothers, does your goal have to do with better parenting, better self-care?

2. Align your Goal with your Values

When you goal is aligned with your values, it has a better chance of being realized.  Your values are what you esteem and give worth to. They determine where you spend your money, time and energy. So before, settling on a goal, spend a few moments deciding whether it is, in fact, part of YOUR value set. If it isn’t, it’s going to be very difficult to be consistent with it.

What are your top 5 values? Write them down..

3.  Be SMART about your Resolution or Goal.

You need to write it down. Clearly. Use the SMART method. In other words, make sure that it is specific (S), measurable (M), attainable (A), realistic (R) and has a time-frame (T). The more defined and specific, the better.  Then you will know for certain whether you are achieving it or not. Most goal experts advise you to read it morning and night, so write it down and keep it where you can see it daily.

4.  Make a PLAN of Action.

If you don’t plan, you plan to fail. It’s really as simple as that. Not creating an action plan is defaulting to not following through. So step 4 is to create the action plan. All you need to do is write down the steps required to achieve the goal. You can start from the end (the final product) and work backwards or you can start from the present, and write down the very next step. Keep going and keep asking yourself, “What is my next step?” Write down each tiny step – that will be your action plan.

5. Create a BACKUP Plan

In the final step, you are going to think through all the obstacles that could get in the way of following through on your resolution. Think of what you have tried in the past and what has stopped you. List them all, and then write down in advance what you will do to overcome them this time. How youwill not let them become excuses for abandoning your goal. Be proactive and prepared. We’re all human, after all, and prone to distraction and fatigue and inconsistency!

So what structure could you create to help you stay on track? Be creative and serious about it. This is your life you are planning – not just a goal!

My very best wishes to you for a wonderful New Year full of realized goals and dreams!

Kim Richardson