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Tough love parenting is a term which is thrown around, usually with the meaning that the parents have tried everything and nothing worked so now we have to make our child miserable until they behave.  Here’s the thing.  Kids need guidelines and leadership, from the parents, in their life.  It’s no wonder that kids from single parents are 3 times more likely to have a run in with the law than two parent homes.  If you exclude two parent homes where one of the parents has an addiction the data skews even more to 5 times more likely to have a run in with the law.

So then, if the family is a two parent home with no addictions, the main reason why tough love parenting is needed is that the parents have been lacking in guiding and leading their child for quite some time.  Rather than be offended whether this is true of you or not lets do a quick quiz and see how you do.

tough love parenting quiz

1. Do your children have chores that must be done by them?
2. Do they do them? or Do they complain when you remind them?
3. Are their grades in the top 20% of their class?
4. Do your children talk back to you often?
5. Do you honestly enjoy your children’s company?

These are only 5 questions but there could be many more.  If you answered no to at least one of these questions or answered yes to #4 then you need a boot camp on rules and parenting.

Here’s the thing, what a lot of parents call tough love parenting really ought to be renamed leadership parenting. Often simple guidelines like the ones mentioned in the quiz above, when enforced, are enough to totally transform your child into just a great person who is a joy to have around.  If you need help creating this kind of consistency, I highly reccommend you contact Dr. Bocknek at bocknek@takebackthehome.com or visit the website at takebackthehome.com.  Dr. Robert Bocknek is the problem solving expert for parents and families.  You or your family can take one of his courses or can have him come to your town for one of his empowering talks or seminars.  If you are considering painful tough love parenting steps beyond what what the quiz talked about, its not to late to first try Dr. Bocknek’s easy to follow and phenomenally effective guidelines to a great home.

Good luck.  Sincerely, Dr. Bocknek, the problem solving expert for parents and families.

www.takebackthehome.com, www.keyboardculture.com

I was talking America today with another gentleman and the person I was speaking with kept basing his argument on how the rest of the world doesn’t like us. At first I thought he had a point… but then I started remembering  being a teenager again and what happened to me when I spent too much time trying to be liked.  I thought of all the stupid situations, the trouble and embarrassment I got myself into.  Then I said to him, we don’t need to care if the rest of the world likes us.  We are the backbone of the world.  Only we, America, because of our youth, are not stuck to some old cultural predjudice that dictates the kind of hate that we see in Northern Ireland, with the Croates and the Serbs, the Hutus and the tutsis etc.

I’m not saying old culture is bad, in fact, au contrare, it is that we, America, are in my opinion the best of what those old cultures have to offer.  We are an accumulation of people who were cheated, stolen from, persecuted by our homeland.  The people who made it to America aren’t just brave people who left their homeland.  We are adventurers, intelligent, revolutionary.  We are the center of all that the world can be and should be.  Our failures are much more important to the world because of who we are.  We may have bad leaders, have bad periods of time and make awful decisions but we are all that the world has to turn to against the tyranny of the likes or the Iranian regime, or of Putin, or the taliban or Al Queda.  I believe, subconsciously, those other countries see us as their child with all their hope of the future on our shoulders. Our failures are their failures.  It is so painful to watch us falter, they yell at us.  But like all parents, when the child grows up,  they come to realize we don’t need their guidance anymore and in fact are a bit resentful that we don’t follow them.  Good parents, at some point, come to realize maybe the child can actually guide the parents since they have grown up.  Bad parents never see the light.

Look what the Europeans do when Russia invades Georgia.  They do what they always have done…nothing.  Russia is still inside of Georgia despite agreeing to leave.  They will stay there until America pushes them out.  We as Americans need to stop worrying about what other countries like or dislike about us.  As with aging parents, some stay dynamic and can be guiding post to the child throughout their life.  Some aging parents are just adults who stopped growing a long time ago and are becoming the child whom need to be cared for.  I believe that’s what these other countries have become.

Rather than worry about being liked, we, as American families need to begin to raise up ourselves and fill the higher calling that being American requires. We need to  look at what our narcissistic, integrity void government, and business practices have brought the world to in these recent weeks.

We as individuals need to regain that positive can do attitude. Only then can we expect to be able to bring up a leader who we can respect, who can call us forth.  In our own families we need to ask ourselves are we living with integrity.  As parents are we teaching our children our values or are we leaving it up to Youtube and Myspace.

As parents do we need to be liked by our children? NO!!! We hope our children like us but we need to be respected first.  Is our goal to be our children’s friend or their leader?  Do we not sometimes have to make decisions for our children that they really hate because it is the right thing to do, not just for them but for the entire family?

I believe we first need to raise our own bar in the family.  Parents have to stop the 60s guilt of trying to be nice.  Love your kids, love your spouse.  Be a superstar in your family.  Don’t worry about being liked by your kids.  When you are on your game they will respect you and feel safe with you and trust you.  Then, you will be able to guide them.  Only then can they truly like you.

As with the family, America doesn’t need to be liked. First it needs to be respected then the rest will follow.  If we as Americans can’t create positive change than which country do we turn to? We know the answer to that question.  No one.  So when you get one of those moments when you feel like hating America, think what you can do today to facilitate your family to be better and live it.

I am sitting here this morning and realizing how completely out of order , our nation and I suspect the world is.  I went to bring some turkeys to the local food bank last wednesday morning and they were so excited that I was bringing them.  I thought there would be lines of people getting ready to donate for the holidays.  As of 8:30 am no one had come.  They were so thankful to me.  Of course, I felt great for the giving, but then they asked me what made me bring them.  I told them I thought this year would be extra hard so I wanted to do something.  I asked if a lot of people brought food and they said no.  They got a lot of calls but typically there isn’t a lot of follow through.  This really got me to thinking.

Many Americans are waiting for the government to play their role to fix our problems. We are waiting for this miracle cure from them.  I sat in astonishment listening to people tell me how the republicans screwed everything up and how we needed a change and how Obama would be the face of that change.  I kept listening to how he was going to be doing things differently and now am watching him fill his cabinet with mostly Bill Clinton cabinet people.  This got me thinking on two things; the first being aren’t people pissed off that it is more of the same, (not the big change as promised), and the second being, if it is more of the same… has America got a case of ADD?  Before the election, change was seen as so critical that we didn’t care what the change would be.  Hence, no one cared that we were willing to elect a man, who during the primaries, people in his own party thought was too inexperienced to be president.  Then when he doesn’t do anything new we don’t care anyway.  Probably, in the not to distant future those same people will be complaining that government didn’t fix their problem. It’s unbelievable!

The aim of this article is not to whine that Obama won.  The aim is to make people realize that the government was elected by us, and  because of corruption in both parties we were screwed.  We can’t come to any other conclusion except that.  Furthermore, the only solution for us is for your own family to take responsibility for your problems.  Government is the worst  reflection of us.  Their selling us out at every level it is a reflection of a lack of integrity that is pervasive in our society.  So if we are waiting for them to solve our problems  we can’t possibly recover.  People listen, government’s only job should be to protect us from evil entities like the leaders in Iran, Russia and Venezuela and to keep ethics high in business by writing good laws that protect consumers and prosecuting people who break those laws.  That includes people within the government.  So since they can’t be counted on to protect us from corruption we just need to be sure they stop spending our money, that we work so hard for.  Our goal, then, for government is to stop reflecting the worst of us and start to reflect the best of us.

How do we get the government to reflect the best of us? Its a trick question.  They never will.  But, here’s the thing.  If we, in our own family, start to behave with a higher level of ethics society will reflect that.  The candidates who rise from a more ethical society will be a product of that better society and hence will be a better government.

How do we begin? If you’ve read some of the previous blogs on parenting or have taken some of our courses or heard a Dr. Robert lecture you will already have a framework with which to proceed.

Lets create some basic steps to live by.  Go to church, synagogue, temple, mosque on a frequent basis.  For you non g-d believing people (I don’t know why you would want to be but that’s your choice), you have a harder path to tread.  Notice, I say go to your place of worship frequently.  Why frequently?  Because you are who you hang out with.  If most people you know go you will go more and it will just be a part of your life.  When you go, focus on the higher power, not on socializing, not on how you have to save others.  This will go against what many of you believe.  But listen to this; G-d is all knowing, all powerful and we can’t know why he does what he does.  What we can definitely know is that G-d gave us teachings of how to live our lives, how to treat others and how to behave in society.  Find ways to find commonality with other groups, not divisive points.  People only follow by example, not by preaching.  You will know you are becoming this higher self by the people you find attracted to you.  I warn you though, going on the weekend to services and then having an affair, or gossiping about others or doing unethical things at work or watching others do unethical things during the week is at best a one step forward-one step backward endeavor.  Remember, our kids are always watching us.  We may not be able to affect how someone in the next city is behaving but we can always be a guiding light in our own family.  Be appreciative whenever the opportunity arises.  Appreciation opportunities are arising constantly if you are looking for them.  Be giving.  Live with the concept of abundance, not shortage.  This means others don’t have to lose in order for you to win.  Look for the win-win,  not the win-lose or compromise solution.  No one is ever happy with compromise. In short,

STEPS TO HIGHER ETHICS IN THE FAMILY

1) Be the beacon of light.

2) Be appreciative.

3) Acknowledge others for their actions, (verbally and physically), often.

4) Find ways to find commonality,not differences.

5) Don’t complain without first looking for a solution.

6) In a tough situation, think, what is the best thing I can do right now.

In closing, your family is the answer to the nation’s recovery so be part of the solution and not the problem.  On a regular basis, be the best you.  Vote for people who are the most ethical.  Be abundant.

Cheers, Dr. Robert

You may be thinking in this economy about how to save money. That is an excellent thing to do.  In this economically uncertain time it is critical you save every dime you can.  As I mentioned in a previous post, this year especially, I highly recommend that you spend much more time with family and less time shopping.  This year may very well be the year you talk about for the rest of your life.  If you’re old enough it may be your year that is similar to your grandparent’s stories of how bad it was back in the old country or how bad it was during the depression.  But this conversation isn’t about how bad your life is going to be. Its about how to enrich your family life during stressful times.

This is a time to look within yourself and see what you can do for people who really have nothing for Thankgiving or the Holidays.  It doesn’t have to be allot.  It needs to be what you can do.  For instance, two of our boys work at the local supermarket and are given a couple of ten pound turkeys.  We are going to give them to the local food bank.  We are also going to look in our pantry for any old can of something we bought that no one is likely to use or may use but we really can afford to give it up.

If you can’t give anything or don’t want to, donate some of your time to serve food at the local food bank. If you have never done something like this you don’t know what you are missing.  Giving to a cause that has no seeming benefit to you pays you back ten fold.  If you want to really have a great thankgiving just try giving.  It will make watching the football games or the Macy’s parade seem like the waste of time that it is.

For your family,  as you donate stuff or your time, bring your kids. Let your children see the bounty they themselves have.  As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, the key to solid relationships is the appreciation and acknowledgment of others in your life.  For those of you having difficulty communicating with your children donating or volunteering will give you and them a chance to step out of your rocky relationship and alter it.  What I mean by this is, in bad communications someone is usually breaking someone else’s rules.  An example of rule breaking could be your child breaking your rules by getting bad grades or not doing their chores or cleaning their room.  For the child, it may be they feel like you are going in their room without their permission.  What ensues after a rule break is an argument until the rules aren’t being percieved as being broken anymore.  What doing the donation does is take you guys out of that dynamic and puts you in a situation where you are on the same team, working together to help others.  What happens then is you get to see each other in a more positive, non confrontational situation with each other.  If your child refuses to go or doesn’t want to go…explain to them how we really need to help some people and thank the other volunteers for taking their time.    Also mention to your child often that you want to somehow make a bridge with them how you really feel bad about the discomfort between you.  Ask them to “please come with you and how much you would appreciate it”. Often when you or your children see these other volunteers donating their time it will call your child forward to participate.  Nothing but good can come from these moments.  When trying to create bridges with your child you need to be thick skinned.  They are children and often haven’t learned the restraint that comes with time.

When you feel like you have tried everything to get into better communication with your child realize there are always other avenues you haven’t come up with yet.  Donation and volunteering may be that avenue.  You can also try being a big brother or sister.  Years ago I was listening to an interview with Tony Robbins where someone was telling him how their business was bad and how he had tried everything to get his business moving.  Tony said “You tried everything”?  The man replied he had.  So Tony said ” ok, let me hear your top 30 marketing attempts or strategies that you have used”.  And the man replied he didn’t have that many.  Tony then said ” you haven’t tried everything, you just didn’t try the right one yet”.   So when you have reached your threshold with your children, always realize there are always other ideas to bridge that gap.

Take Back the Home Foundation is designed to help you with your family.  Don’t waste any time, contact us and see what we can do for you and your family.  Cheers, Dr. Robert.

I was listening to a radio show this morning and they were discussing how we should never tell our children they failed.  Now, make sure you read all that I have to say so you aren’t offended by the first 1 or 2 sentences.  First point being; When our children fail on a test in school or do poorly we need to tell them they failed.  If we don’t tell them they failed and say things like “well maybe you just didn’t understand it’, we as parents  failed.  In life people fail and other people succeed.  People win while others lose.  If we don’t let our kids understand this very basic point from the beginning we are setting them up in life to believe that their actions don’t matter.  We are setting them up to believe that life will be fine whether they put in a subpar effort or not.  That’s just not the case in life. Is it?

Now lets talk about what to do and say when our children fail.  When our children fail we need to discuss with them how the failure came about.  Lets be realistic most failures in school and in life come when we do all we can.  In school, mostly its because we didn’t study or didn’t study enough.  When we had questions about some of the material we didn’t ask our teacher to clarify a point or if we did we didn’t get into understanding enough to own the material.

I would like to tell you a personal life story.  When I was an undergraduate at Boston University I was taking a premed Biology class.  To be honest with you up until this class I only studied what I was interested in and was bright enough to get by in the other subjects.  So I studied, like I always did, what I thought was enough.  Out of 60 students, on the first mid term, I got not just an “F” but was in the bottom 15 of the class.  I was never so devastated in my life.  “How could I have failed like that?  Mr. Supersmart”.  I was in a panic.  “How was I going to go to graduate school”?  I spent the entire rest of the semester studying more for that class then all my other classes combined.  On the final I had to be in the top 10% to have a chance to get into grad school.  I wanted to drop out. I talked to the professor to please let me out.  She told me to think about it and come back the next day.  I would like to tell you I got brave and saw the vision that told me to go on. But that isn’t what happened.  I just avoided going to talk to her and literally studied around the clock, not because of anything other than I didn’t know what else to do.  The short of it was I pulled out the Final grade enough to get a “B”.  I tell you this story because that class changed my life.  I literally became a student that day.  Not just in that class, but in life.  From that point on I learned what it would take to make something of my life.  I learned that my actions and my actions alone will shape my destiny.  At the time I didn’t think of it that way but I knew I would sink or swim in my life based on what I did, not on what I justified was good enough.

So, here’s the thing with your children. Yes, tell them they failed.  Then go over with them what they can do to improve and improve drastically their studying technique, (and it is a technique).  Explain to them the only real failure now would be not to get back on the bike and work hard and work hard enough to succeed. Then you ride them.  Everyday, you want to see their homework.  Everyday, before anything else they study to completion.  If they have questions go to teacher, ask questions  and get answers.  How hard is hard enough and how will you know?  By the next test results, of course.

Don’t let your children go through school riding on their intelligence.  All kids eventually, like myself hit the class that beats them when they get overconfident.  I didn’t have the guidance when I was a child.  You, as parents, are in the position now to save your child a lot of pain in the future by teaching them these critical lessons.  That’s the problem with reading blogs like this.  Once you’ve read it you can never again say you didn’t know what to do.

So tell your kids they failed.  Show them how to win. Congratulate them to death when they really excel to embed in them how good it feels to succeed.  Once they really know what failure is, they can go on to be a success.

A child’s failure to succeed is a failure in the family. If you read our other blogs on roles in the family and applied the technology, you can remind them that they are failing in following what they agreed to in their role in the family, not all the roles, just this one…and not just this one but this one this time.  This enables you to acknowledge again what you are happy about so that the failure is understood in the context of how they are performing.  Give examples in your life of times where you failed but righted the wrong and what you learned from it.  Trust me if you remember the story it did change your life.

If you need help with your child’s education, or how to motivate them.  Write us.  We are experts.  We can get you and your family to where you want to be.  We can do one on one counseling or courses that gets your family the help it needs. Remember, success is overcoming your ego and asking experts.  You can figure it out yourself but you will waste so much time.  Time, you could be using for much better stuff like spending quality time with your family.

Cheers, Dr. Robert.

The recent events in the economy have lead me to revisit a talk I haven’t given in quite some time.

We, as families, need to rely on ourselves and not the Government. When we start to think we are going to be taken care of.  When we think someone else can solve our problems.  When we blame someone else for our problems, we are in big trouble.  If you think about it, choosing anyone but ourselves for our current situation can only lead to one finality.  That finality is that you are helpless to dig yourself out.  You have given control of your life to total strangers.  If you don’t agree with what I’m saying now, let’s do a test.  Would you rather get your Doctor or Chiropractor from the yellow pages or from a referral from some trusted family member.  Would you rather have the government determine how much you can make based at work or would you rather make money based on your hard work and what someone is willing to pay you.  If you would rather have the government decide you should try living in North Korea or Cuba.  I say this because, those two countries still do it that way.  In case you haven’t noticed even China is making a massive push into self reliance.  Look at the results in that country when the government there got out of the way.  In fact in China, the only thing you hear about the Chinese government is about corruption, their involvement in Darfur, arming that government to slaughter its own citizens, or its attacking Tibet or harassing Taiwan.  Look what has happened in Russia since Putin decided to recommunist the country.  Almost all foreign investment has started to pull out of that country.  And they are starting to look like the evil empire again.

If you are thinking, well that’s there and not here.…wasn’t this last election about blaming the government for our economic mess.  People were jumping on screaming about the republican party making it so only poor people and middle class pay taxes.  No one wanted to look at that the biggest contributors in the election were the hedge fund managers, who made billions, and uniformly gave to the democrats, not the republicans.  The second largest contributor to president-elect Obama was the head of FannyMae and Barney Frank was sleeping with one of the heads of FreddieMac.

If you  knew how little congress works and making $160,000 per year, you would be sick.  If you haven’t read Dick Morris’ book “Fleeced” you must so you can see how both sides of the isle in government are taking so much of what you have for nothing.

I want to fire you up.  I want you to read the blogs on family that I have already posted and will to continue to post. There is no more important time to spend time with your family.  There is no more important time to bond with your family.  There is no more important time than now to make sure your children are doing as well as possible in school, that you are scheduling meetings with their teachers to see how you can help them do better.  There is no better time than now to share with your children how hard you are working to make sure they have a roof over their heads and putting food in their mouths. There is no better time than now to share with your children how much you love them and how proud you are of them when they do great in school and in sports and when they falter they pick themselves back up again.

If this sounds like cheerleading…It is.  I want your family to succeed.  I, and everyone of your fellow countrymen need your family to succeed because if you are not part of the country’s solution you will inevitably be part of the country’s problem.

Contact us, ask about how Take Back the Home can help your family, church, affiliation.

Good luck, keep reading,           Doctor Robert

To learn more go to www.takebackthehome.com

I want to talk briefly about about family and the holidays. The first part is about what you should do with your own family during the holiday season and the second part is what you do for other families.

As we begin the massive commercial onslaught which  always begins at this time of year please first take a moment and think what would be the greatest gift you could give to your family this year.  I hope what comes to your mind is… time, and lots of it.  Quality time.  You may have money or not have money but I can guarantee you what you and your kid’s memories will be in the future; It will be what conversations you had, what games you played, what practical joke you did, what hug you gave, what appreciation you shared with them.

A comment made about Yasser Arafat during the palestinian/israeli peace process was that he never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.  Today, this year is the year to say at least one great sincere comment to each member in your family.  If you are the leader of the family, stand up at the table and say what you appreciate about your family.  Have each person at the table, including the kids, stand up and say something endearing.  Be careful…the tears will flow.  Achknowledement and appreciation are the cornerstone to make this a great holiday, one that you will never forget.

In the line of acknowledgement and appreciation add gratefulness and generosity, be sure to give some food to some local facility.  You don’t have to even spend money.  You can empty out the pantry of stuff you never opened and take toys you know you children will never use again.  Even better, with the toys, share with your children about less fortunate children and how giving them some of their toys will change their lives for ever.  Bring the kids with you to drop them off so they can experience what it means to give.  Be sure to talk to them how good they feel doing it.  Play an imagination game with them seeing this little poor child being so happy with the toy.

As I hope you can see, when you make your holidays with your family really special, things begin to change.  Your relationship grows.  Your kids will have a better sense that family is about caring, sincerity, integrity, giving.  Know that by being a great family you help your neighbors. You make everything you touch better.  If each of us do this imagine what our country will be like.  So don’t miss your opportunities to be a great family.

A huge problem I have seen in my counseling of families is when parents don’t have their children contribute in the home.  Somehow along the way many families have reached the point where the parents work, the parents cook, the parents clean the dishes, cut the lawn, take out the garbage and perform every duty that needs to get done while the children are in the next room watching television, playing video games or on the computer.  Even if you are wealthy enough to have maids who do all these things, your kids need to contribute.  What kind of message is this sending to the kids?  What kind of appreciation are they going to have for others efforts when they themselves haven’t experienced the work that goes into keeping their lives going.  I’m not saying they need to contribute exactly as the parent does.  I am saying they do need to contribute.

When people are constantly on the receiving side and not equally on the giving side either consciously or unconsciously they feel guilty.  If they don’t alleviate the guilt they will act out inappropriately by being rude or disrespectful.  Don’t take my word for it.  Try to get them to do chores and see if they just do it or act out.

Every one in the family has a role to play.  Explain to the children your roles and then let them know theirs.  Our children are no more or less important to the family than we as parents.  So let them contribute.  If you don’t, can you imagine the kind of wife your daughter will make.  Thinking she should be treated as royalty.  Imagine the kind of woman who will want a man who is a slob, who won’t help do anything around the house.  Don’t do this to your kids.

For information on how to facilitate chores in the house write us back.  We want to hear from you.  Sincerely,  Dr. Robert.

One of the most important behaviors a family can do is have at least several meals together.  Relationships develop with time.  Since the dawn of man families and communities used the eating and preparing ritual to solidify the clan.  In modern days it is easy to fall into the trap of we are too busy and before you know it days, weeks, months and years have past and you are sitting there wondering why the family isn’t close anymore.

I’m going to give you a couple of important tips to get the most out of your meal together.  If you have teenagers:

1) don’t use the meal time to talk about bad grades or issues in the house.

2) Ask great questions, like any new girl friends or boy friends.  You can tease them.

3) Ask them about any sports they are playing

4) Tell them about your day and what you went through so they can see you are human

5) Share you with them.  Try to remember what it was like to be a teen.

6) Joke with them.  Remember no matter what this is your family.

If you have issues to talk to them about tell them before the meal later you would like to a few minutes with them to discuss stuff.  If they ask you what…you just tell them let’s talk about it later.

Action is what gets a great family.  don’t make this into an interesting blog.  Implement the meal immediately, be patient and watch your family love grow and grow.

Any comments…Please just write to me.   Cheers Dr. Robert.