Dr. Tim Thayne

Normally, my contributions to Notes from Home are based on personal experience with the topic of choice, so when Roxanne selected “Body Image” for this month’s e-zine, I knew it could be hard. I couldn’t imagine what to write. After all, I was finally okay with my shiny bald head. Now in my forties, it has been years since I last ordered a case of Kevis, Extra Strength hair and scalp lotion for more youthful, thicker, and fuller looking hair.

As proof that I was beyond the reach and influence of media, fashion, and what GQ portrays as handsome, last week I was asked by my kids what I would give up to have my hair back. My honest reply was, “nothing.” They didn’t believe me, but a feeling of satisfaction washed over me. I had arrived!

Socrates said, “An unexamined life is not worth living.” While that sounds harsh, I believe there is a lot of truth to his statement and decided to ask myself some tough questions related to my own beliefs and ways of thinking about body image. What I found was that the “arrival” I thought I had achieved, unfortunately turned out to be a shaky truce. I have a long way to go, darn it. Let me give an example.

Last month, one of my sons needed a physical to be on the track team. He has always been short of stature and I’ve worried about that over the years, but when the doctor’s report noted he was not even on the percentile charts for height and weight in his age group, I panicked for him. Old insecurities from my own adolescence resurfaced. Anxiety about him feeling “less than” someone else because of his height, gripped me. I worried that there would be a girl (or a dozen) in the future that he was interested in, who wouldn’t give him the time of day because he wasn’t at least 3 inches taller than she was.

When I looked deeper I realized that I’m not worried about his height exactly. I’m concerned about his self-worth. I only want his happiness and somehow, deep down, I have this belief that if he was taller, he would feel better about himself and would have greater confidence to tackle lives challenges with. Am I crazy?

If I am, I’m okay sharing this because I think most, if not all of you reading this, will relate with me in some way. Whether you are a man or woman most, if not all, of you will be able to find something you are trying to fix in yourself or someone else because you think you’ll be happier, or they will be more successful if you do. If you can identify the subtle (or not so subtle) ways your judgments of yourself and others are colored by stereo types, you can now deliberately change that. Your life can brighten significantly over night with a new perspective. With this new awareness, you can stop transferring your own insecurities onto your children.

To close I want to invite you to click on this link and view a short video. You will see a powerful experiment where women describe themselves to a forensic artist who draws them and a stranger who has just gotten to know the woman takes a turn describing them to the artist. Who do you think is more critical in their assessments? See for yourself

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpaOjMXyJGk

I invite all of us to be an alternative voice that rings loud and clear above the media and those wanting to whip up insecurities to sell fashion, diet products, or promises of a more glamorous life. Let us lead out and teach our children that we love ourselves and we love them just the way we are, in whatever shapes and sizes these wonderful bodies happen to be in.

From the time I was quite young, I believed and felt deep down that the family was the most essential and fundamentally influential unit in life. I saw successful families in my community putting their best energies into their homes. When it came time to choose a major in college, nothing seemed to call me like the field of Marriage and Family Therapy. I had considered medicine, law, forestry, agriculture, politics, construction and even dance. I mentally envisioned myself in just about every field of study (except mathematics and art history) and each occupation had its own appeal. Some interested me because of the prestige or potential income; others just sounded fun, like being a National Geographic photographer. But when it came to the question of where I could have the most impact for good in the world, no occupation ranked higher, in my mind, than a field where I could work every day in strengthening families.

On New Year’s Eve, our next door neighbor Belinda passed away suddenly after a routine knee surgery. Three of her six children are still at home. To say our neighborhood was shocked is a gross understatement. Every time we look out our window expecting to see her feeding the dog, pulling up with groceries, or calling to her children, we are struck with sadness all over again. Eventually, we come around to remembering that for her family, there were no big regrets. She is an incredible example of one who consistently and through example taught her family who they were and what they stood for.

Walk into Belinda and Stan’s home and you will find beautiful family portraits everywhere. You will see quotes, scriptures, or positive sayings on plaques and in frames. Their long driveway is always full of cars for wedding receptions, extended family reunions, church functions, baby showers, or play dates. She would have her grown children and grandchildren over monthly for dinners or to plan service projects they wanted to participate in. She spent hours in community drama productions, performing alongside her children. As a couple, you could find them sneaking away at 9:00 at night to the hotel three miles away for a 12 hour getaway to plan out the new school year and make sure they were putting the most important things first. She and her family bring a targeted energy and purpose to everything they do.

Though the youngest child is only 7, there is no way he could miss what the culture of his family was set to be. The married children and father will continue to teach and carry out their family vision. Even their garage door code, WiFi password, and email addresses symbolize their closeness and purpose as family. This clear vision is compelling to them, to the extent that they lived it on a daily basis. Their priorities showed that their mission was their family. Family closeness, support, love, spirituality, fun, and service are their values.

My own family has taken the original two page mission statement we started with and condensed it down to a rousing cheer we do around the dinner table. Though it’s not done every night, we retell the story of where it came from and why it’s our cheer. It is based on a scripture that was given to us during our wedding ceremony, and is basically the only advice we remember from that day. It was that we build our marriage and home on the rock of our Redeemer. So as a family we shout “Thaynes…Built on a Rock!” Then making our hands into fists (rocks), I bump the fist of the person next to me, and they bump the one next to them until we go all the way around the circular table, then simultaneously throw our hands up in the air with a “Whew!” The goal is to see how fast we can do it. Of course, the kids want to try it over and over again to connect faster and better. It’s not necessarily sophisticated, but it is fun and weighty with meaning for us.

All-too-often in my work with highly motivated and successful people, there is a feeling of despair because there was no way to reclaim their families or turn back time. Even my constant optimism provides little consolation. They realize that all the success they had outside the home really didn’t matter, if their families had been pushed low on their priority list. This month’s Notes From Home is meant to inspire you to start the process of making your vision more formalized if it needs to be. We all want to go, like Belinda, with “no big regrets,” leaving a clear vision and legacy for our families to follow.

To Family Happiness!

Tim

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When I was a doctoral student at Virginia Tech, I was doing my dissertation project on the use of marriage and family therapy models in business organization’s leadership and management training. I worked with leaders from industries ranging from hospitals to circus’s. We worked intensively together to educate, train, and coach them on real situations for weeks at a time. There were incredible results, which made for a very exciting project.

One of the professors on my committee, Harold Kurstedt, is a brilliant management systems engineer. He also taught parts of the training. He would often press me on how I did what I did in coaching. I told him it was a mix of several therapy models and my own personal style. I didn’t know how to explain it, much less teach someone else how to do it. After three workshops, he came up to me, handed me a sheet of paper with a diagram, and said “Here’s your model.” He had captured Solution Focused Coaching.

Though Harold was a great mentor, I worried that he expected me to work magic on the stage, particularly when he took me to Virginia’s Forum for Excellence to teach a group of 300 people. He wanted me to ask for a volunteer from the audience, have them share a personal or professional struggle, and come to a magical ending. The volunteer should feel empowered with a clear solution and exude enthusiastic confidence. Oh yes, and I had 15 minutes to do it in. I had only done this in therapy settings, or in small groups with trainees I knew well from hours of personal interviews and coaching. I was so sick with nerves that I didn’t sleep the entire night before.

That day, as the presentation got underway, Harold turned the time over to me to demonstrate Solution Focused Leadership and Coaching. I said a silent prayer for a homerun issue. An engineer from India raised his hand first. Just great. What if I couldn’t understand his heavy accent or his engineering projects, much less truly help him come up with a solution. Fortunately, prayers are answered. He and his wife were building a new home and their relationship was suffering as they fought over decisions constantly.

In a nutshell, I used the model, which includes keys like:

1. I listened without interrupting.
2. I was curious about his strengths and how he had solved problems in the past.
3. I explored exceptions to the problem story.
4. I focused on solutions, not the problem.
5. I was affirming.
6. I summarized what I had heard.
7. I kept whittling things down until together, we came up with a doable plan
He was ecstatic and couldn’t wait to get home and implement the plan. He was sure things were going to be different this time. People in the audience crowded us afterwards, wondering if the engineer had been a plant because it worked out “too perfectly.”

The point of my story is that this wasn’t magic. I wasn’t exceptionally brilliant. Simply put, there are powerful, true principles in communicating effectively. If you put real effort (and it takes effort) into learning them, you will experience greater ease and satisfaction in any realm of your life. If you have tried, but still can’t apply them consistently or effectively, get someone else to apply them for you. Find a trusted teacher, a coach, a clergy member, or a therapist to help. It sure beats trying to sludge through problems in the same old ways, expecting better results, and being consistently disappointed.

Every other month, Notes From Home will pull ideas from our extensive parent curriculum on the Family Bridge to teach principles of good parenting. We hope you enjoy learning and being reminded of solid and successful principles as much as we at Homeward Bound do.

To Your Family’s Happiness!

When a family gets the diagnosis that their child has a learning disability, there is usually a mix of emotions. Sadness that their child has a life-long struggle ahead, and relief that they now have an explanation for why things have been going the way they have.

Families that I have worked with here at Homeward Bound are some of the most engaged parents I know. They feel completely bought into our philosophy that parents own the leadership role in their home, and they are ready to learn and experiment on whatever tools or guidance we can offer. Parents of teens with learning disabilities often take this engagement to a whole new level. These folks are beyond the initial devastation or embarrassment of having a child who struggles, and are moving full steam ahead into learning what can be done to help their children have as fulfilling and successful a life as possible.

My suggestion for all of us is to learn from what other parents have done in walking that fine line of modifying situations to allow for more time or less anxiety in learning, and searching out experiences to stretch and engage their children. All of our children, and we ourselves, have our strengths and weaknesses. The problems don’t come in having a difference, but in neglecting the opportunity to rally the forces to find the professional and community help for the child and for the caregivers.

We hope you will find the resources listed in this month’s Notes From Home educational as well a jumping off point.

Five years ago I bought a Brown Swiss milk cow and brought her to our home in the city. We were the only people within miles around that had such an animal as this. Even my neighbors, who like to have a few animals around, couldn’t understand my madness.

They reasoned to themselves, “Why would Tim, of his own free will, choose to take on the headaches associated with an animal that needed milking twice a day, 365 days a year, rain, snow or shine? Why would he add something to his kid’s chores that he would have to monitor every day and that would undoubtedly be the source of contention in his home as the kids would argue about who’s turn it was?” My answer: I love milk! Actually, there was a greater purpose in mind and it was driven by a fear we shared that our kids would grow up to be lazy, entitled, and unable to delay gratification. On the flip side, we wanted for them to feel strong, capable, and…basically, not entitled.

Now, if you think I’m an amazing parent, please hold your applause until the end of the story because you might just change your mind. I’m going to be transparent with you. This is an honest story of the good intentions I’ve had that I’ve not always followed through on. Maybe you will learn something that will help you to stick to your guns and do what you feel your family needs when the rest of the world seems to be going a different direction. Maybe you will reach out and encourage me to keep with it. My hope is that both will happen.

Why a cow? There are a lot of ways to teach our kid’s to do hard things with jobs, volunteering, sports, academics, music, etc. It was my method of choice because of my rural upbringing. I was familiar with it. It was also a ready-made do or die situation. The garbage doesn’t moo, keeping the neighbors awake, if it isn’t taken to the curb.

I tell my kid’s the now famous stories of my grandfather who plowed the fields with a team of horses as a 10 year old boy. At his age, his stature placed his chin just above the draw bar, and as he walked behind the plow whenever he hit a big rock, the draw bar would smack him under the chin hard. In his own words he said “I would sit down and “bawl” for a minute, then get back up and keep plowing.” Why did he do that? Because it was expected of him as the man of the family while his father was in the mountains logging.

My own dad, at the age of twelve, rode his horse alone into the High Uintah mountains to pick up bummer lambs from the sheep camps, to build up his own herd and earn some money for the family. On some of his trips he would come back after a couple days, hitting a number of sheep camps, with 4 gunny sacks of 3 lambs in each with a hole for their heads to stick out of.

The Heidi experiment did what I had hoped, but after a lot of frustration and failed attempts. One night one of my son’s was in bed asleep when we got home. He had not milked. I had to wake him and have him go relieve Heidi. It was hard not to just do it for him, as it was not intentional and he has always been pretty cheerful about the chore. Still, we learned that it paid off when one night while Grandma was babysitting, she heard him get up at midnight to go out and milk, because he realized on his own that he had forgotten. He may not remember that night, but it was a thrilling thing for a parent to hear. It was measurable evidence that he was learning responsibility.

With all of that said, Heidi is no longer here with us. She is on my dad’s farm with three little calves doing the milking for us. Why? Frankly, it was more convenient for us as parents and we were tired of the complaints and battles. So what about our younger kids? We will just need to come up with something new.

There it is, I have fallen into the same trap I am warning you about, because it was very inconvenient to try to teach our kids responsibility. You won’t be perfect. You are learning how to teach and are overwhelmed with your own responsibilities. However, here are three points to remember as you read the great suggestions within this month’s issue of Notes From Home:

1. In today’s world of instant gratification, life won’t teach our kid’s these lessons automatically like they did in the good ol’ days. As parents and mentors, we have to deliberately set up circumstances for our kids to learn responsibility and ownership.

2. If you are doing what your neighbors are doing for their kids, it might not be enough. You might be giving too much and expecting too little. Do some research into what you are currently doing for your kid’s that they could do for themselves, or do without.

3. Do not underestimate your child’s capacity to work through challenges or problems. Do not rob them of the self confidence that comes from working for ownership of a talent, value, possession, or education. The most entitled kids, are actually the one’s who have the least confidence in their own power to produce it themselves.

To Your Family’s Long-term Success and Happiness!

Tim Thayne, Ph.D.
Founder
Homeward Bound

Saturday morning I woke my 16-year-old son Talmage earlier than he had hoped, and asked him if he would go with me to work on our church’s welfare farm. In his usual easygoing manner he agreed without argument, but was quiet for our 20-minute drive to the farm. We were just two of a small group of men, and a few boys drug along by their dads, volunteering to help clear a new plot of land of rocks in preparation for spring planting of corn.

Talmage listened to the stories of our group as we joked about our younger years and expressed concern on the state of the next generation of boys to enter adulthood. He quietly worked and listened as we heaped seemingly unending quantities of rocks into piles.

As we made our way toward another section of the field strewn with thousands of rocks that needed our attention, Talmage said, “Dad could you tell me a story of when you were younger and you got into trouble being mischievous?” I of course denied everything with a smile so that he knew not to believe me. “What do you mean? I’ve never gotten into trouble!” “Dad, I’ve heard a couple stories so I know that you did.” he said with his own smile.

In that moment, I sensed that my son might have been looking for evidence that his own dad was more like him than I let on. Talmage wasn’t asking simply to be entertained with fun stories. He wanted to affirm that he was normal, that he was still “on track” to turn out just fine even though he didn’t love working like we men seemed to.

I’ve heard it said that expecting a 21 year old to be independent today is like expecting a 13 year old to take care of himself a couple of generations ago. All I can say is…really? Are we raising kids that unprepared? Is this delayed adulthood completely fine and we have nothing to worry about?

Well, I believe that we do have reason to be concerned about our boys and young men. I believe that there are far too many boys delaying responsibility for far too long, growing up confident in their video gaming skills, but scared and insecure when it comes to the prospects of needing to fend for themselves and eventually a family.

Societal factors are certainly playing a role; I acknowledge that. Marriage rates are going down. Age of first marriage is going up and being put off longer. Boomerang children are becoming the norm instead of an anomaly, and we have a new stage of development that we’ve never had before called “Emerging Adulthood”. It seems that there is no clear event now at which a boy moves from dependence and childhood, to independence and adulthood. Adulthood just kind of “emerges”.

This month’s Notes From Home is on boys and the challenges they face in the world today. I hope you will find inspiration in the sound advice and research reported here. As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts.

To Your Family’s Happiness!

Tim Thayne, Ph.D.
Founder
Homeward Bound

You may have seen this news story. An Australian woman saves her horse when he sinks up to his chest in a quicksand-like mud while out on their daily walk on the beach. She stayed with Astro, holding his nose above the rising tide water, while her daughter called for help, bringing in firefighters and veterinarians. They came with fire hoses, a winch, and finally a nearby farmer’s tractor. They were able to help him escape after three hours, with only a little bruising and dehydration.

I love horses and get teared up watching the clip.

http://www.wptv.com/dpp/news/local_news/water_cooler/horse-rescued-from-quicksand-like-mud-in-geelong-australia-while-owner-nicole-graham-assisted

I talk to parents daily who are stuck in the mud alongside their son or daughter, as they struggle to break free from the sucking and sinking spirals they are trapped in. Their mom’s and dad’s will mortgage the home, borrow against their retirement, open their hearts and hopes up to treatment experts. They are willing to stay right there, as long as the rescue takes, making sure their child is calmed, supported, and safe.

For parents who haven’t yet been in a major struggle with your teen, count yourself lucky. But learn from the stamina and grit of these other parents. Your teens can be helped by others in their life, but they only have one Mom or Dad. Bless you for all you do for them.

To Your Family’s Happiness!

Tim Thayne, Ph.D.
Founder
Homeward Bound

Do you remember where you were on 9/11/01 at about 9am EST. I do and I’ll never forget it as won’t most Americans. This article is not about national security, terrorism, or even patriotism. This is about the contrast between that horrific event and another life changing event that took place in the Thayne household the following Tuesday morning at the same hour.

Still shocked by the attacks on the World Trade Towers, Roxanne and I put one foot in front of the other to keep trudging forward. I wanted to gather with family and friends and do something to deal with my emotions, but life went on. Although our world and our peace had been shaken just a few days earlier, we still had a family to take care of, work to do, and, as it turned out, a new baby to birth.

I won’t go into all the details of the early morning hours on Tuesday the 18th, but I will share that Roxanne went into labor and we prepared for what we expected to be our 4th son. We had planned for a home birth with a midwife and everything worked like clock work except the midwife. She had successfully delivered hundreds of babies, never missing one, but on this particular day, a series of events took her back to her own home and then everything started progressing.

The baby’s arrival coincided with the very hour terrorists stunned America just 7 days earlier. We were thrust into the here and now. Roxanne with an intensity of pain she had never before experienced, and me with an acute awareness that we needed divine help, there we were, in our bedroom, having our baby.

Instructions from the birthing classes we had taken over the years prior to our other son’s being born came back to me. I was a doula (birthing coach), a midwife, and a husband all in one. I was at my best because Roxanne needed me to be and we delivered the baby together. Roxanne was amazing!

Wrapping the newborn in a towel and placing “him” on Roxanne’s chest, I proclaimed “We have another boy!” A rush of joy and relief that the baby was breathing enveloped me and we shed tears of joy together.

Within a few seconds, maybe a minute or so, my feet were back on the ground and I realized that in all of the excitement, I had not really checked to make sure it was a boy. Unfolding the pink towel to get a better look, I confirmed that we had a ….. GIRL!!! Joy too great to express followed!

I had witnessed something, experienced something too life changing to put into words. In my arms was a new girl in my life that would prove to have profound impact on me as a father. Next to me in our bed, was the strongest, bravest, person I knew. I had a new appreciation for the love of my life. Two special girls!

In this months Notes From Home we are sharing research, stories, and insights about girls. What makes them special and unique. This is not a discussion comparing girls to boys. At the end of the newsletter, I encourage you to click on the links to listen to Nora Urbanelli as she talks about “What Today’s Girls Think About Sex”. She does an incredible job of educating us on the challenges girls face in our world today and specific ways we can protect them. I couldn’t recommend it more highly.

To Your Family’s Happiness,

Dr. Tim Thayne
Founder Homeward Bound

It’s Valentine’s Day, and we are being pounded with cards, chocolate, romantic music and dinners. Whether you buy into all of the hoopla, or choose to celebrate your love in quieter and daily ways, you do have to agree that it’s a good thing to celebrate.

Last spring, Roxanne and I went to England and Scotland for our 20th anniversary. We arrived just days after the royal wedding. Estimates say that something like 2 billion people watched as Prince William and his long-time girl friend Catherine Middleton were married in the 1000 year old Westminster Abbey. The truth is, I never thought I would be among their numbers. Roxanne would tell you that I pride myself on staying apathetic towards the lives of the rich and famous. I’m more moved by the less assuming lives of the commoners around me who will never grace the pages of People Magazine.

But there I was, 4am Mountain Standard Time sitting in front of our HD television viewing the royal wedding. How did I get there at that crazy hour watching something I never planned to? Well…it probably has something to do with the fact that my wife has been a Princess Diana fan since her father, a professor of British history, went through the trouble 30 years ago of waking his young family to watch as Prince Charles wed Lady Diana. The memory of that unique family event is still vivid in her mind as something special.

When the alarm rang at 3:30 a.m. Roxanne woke our daughter, her sister and her two daughters, and her mother for the event. Bundled in blankets with tea and biscuits on china plates, they watched. I lay there wanting to fall back to sleep. Instead of sleep, a sense that I wanted to share in whatever was causing my wife and daughter so much excitement prevailed and I stumbled out of bed. I didn’t want to hear about this wedding for years to come without being able to picture what they were talking about.

Humbly I confess, my time was well spent. Let me share some of the things that impressed me.

First, this story is one of hope, happiness and commitment between two people to love, serve, and be faithful to each other…and there were 2 BILLION people witnessing it. Positive stories don’t attract that kind of attention normally and when commoners like me marry, as beautiful and inspiring as it is, only close family and friends witness it. For a day, all of Great Britain, and millions on every continent celebrated marriage.

In the witnessing, here’s what impressed me in order of importance. The Dress! (I’m kidding.) I was intrigued by William’s spurs. Did you see the spurs? My guess is about 1 in every 10 million viewers saw them.

No, for me it was the words spoken by the head of the Church of England. They were beautiful, lofty and inspiring and should be written down for the couple to reference throughout their lives together. It was a time of vows and sacred promises publicly made, (no other marriage ceremony has been so public!)

I loved the tradition that came with it. It was not casual, at least not American casual. It was formal, reverenced, and filled with tradition. The fly by of the World War II fighter planes represented to me victory, freedom, and sacrifice. I admit that I teared up. It was much more powerful than the more modern jets that also flew over because the older planes linked me back to the stories of World War II and what those people endured.

“The Kiss” on the balcony at Buckingham Palace was one of the most anticipated events of the day. Why? My guess is that this public display of affection connects people to all the prince and princess stories of our childhood with weddings, horse drawn carriages, and the symbolic kiss that represents commitment, love, affection and happily-ever-after.

While I know that this is no fairy tale story with a ride-off-into-the-sunset ending, there were so many great take-aways. The biggest for me is that there are moments in our lives when an experience shines. These are moments when our lives are right where they should be and everything works out just like we hoped, or even better. Those highlights are just as real as are the grinding times. Stories like this inspire me to live my life so that my trend is ever upward, closing the gap between the holiday’s assigned for us to show love, and my every day loving rituals. Let’s be there for our loved ones in good times and bad, in sickness and in health.

Here’s to your Happily-Ever-After!

Tim Thayne, Ph.D.
Founder, Homeward Bound

“Unmotivated” has got to be one of the top 5 descriptors we hear from parents when telling us about their struggling teen.

It turns out that motivating our kids, and helping them learn self-motivation, is one of the great tasks of parenthood.  We all know that there is a lot riding on our children acquiring as much of this magic dust as possible.

As with so many of the other disciplines and qualities we hope our kids develop, it’s easy as a parent to notice only the reverse of these qualities.  Laziness, dishonesty, or disrespect assaults and insults us.  We can’t miss them.  However, it’s a lot more difficult to notice the quiet and more tentative acts of initiative, honesty, and kindness.  Just because we haven’t noticed great motivation in our kids, doesn’t mean that the seeds aren’t waiting for the right conditions to spring forth.

So how do we encourage motivation in our kids?  Again, as in just about everything else in life, a balanced approach is usually best.  Let me share three examples of how parents haven’t done it right.

First:  I worked with a young man who really enjoyed tennis.  His father was a very successful business man and recognized the fact that his son was motivated around the game.  Dad was thrilled.  He knew that self motivation was a key ingredient to his own success.  The father decided that since his son had some self motivation and natural ability, he would oversee things to ensure that he was spending the time required to become great.  He hired a personal tennis coach, sent him to summer camps, and entered him in tournaments.  Sounds good right?  Well, in this case the father effectively commandeered the boy’s passion and made it his own.  Unfortunately, the tactics backfired and it wasn’t long before the boy despised tennis and wanted nothing to do with it.  This parent was way too “Hands on”.

Second:  I’ve also seen another approach, sometimes used by me honestly.  When you see disturbing signs of apathy or laziness, you wrongfully assume that if you push, you’ll find more of the motivation you are looking for in the child.  So you point out the fact that your son sleeps too late on weekends, is constantly leaving home too late to avoid being tardy at school and that he never pick up his clothes from his bedroom floor without being nagged.  Now, instead of feeling motivated to change those things, our teens resist change and the label “lazy” or “unmotivated” seems to fit more than ever.  This type of parents is too “Hands On” as well.

Third:  This strategy is used by parents who recognize their teen’s passion and work to facilitate it.  As the teen spends more and more time in one area of life, the parent removes any obstacles to running with the dream.  When we are too accommodating of an interest or gift, teens may choose to ignore the less desirable skills of life, i.e. grades, chores, respectful behavior, etc.  In an effort to be supportive, parents inadvertently teach teens that it’s ALL about their interests.  Over time, the teen starts to feel that he has no obligation to things that don’t interest him.  This is a good thing run amok. It’s too ‘Hands Off.”

In watching my own kids I have seen major lacks in motivation, and then surprising feats in discipline.  As you well know, every child is different, has different interests, and gets up for different things.  Your challenge, Mom and Dad, is to help them become aware of what is exciting to them.  As an adult and a student of your child’s gifts, you are best qualified to show them new ways to utilize their energy around that motivator.  You will also have to be the bad guy and remind them that they can’t toss the rest of their life in pursuit of that goal.

To Family Happiness!

Tim Thayne, Ph.D.

Founder

Homeward Bound