The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

The Selfish Path to Romance. Download chapter one for free at DrKenner.com

Here's an email from Amanda:

Hi, Dr. Kenner. I have a five-year-old son. He's been having issues. He doesn’t listen at school or home. At home, he tears the sheetrock off the walls. It’s a picture that I mean. This is one heck of a strong five-year-old. I remember trying to carry sheetrock, and it’s one of the worst back-breaking memories in my life. We were building our own home, so you've got a five-year-old strong enough, angry enough to tear sheetrock off the wall.

Amanda continues, “He destroys toys. He mouths off to us. He doesn’t do what he's told. We have tried grounding him, spanking him, and nothing works. We need help. We are going crazy.”

Amanda, your five-year-old—let's give him the name Joey—is going crazy too. He’s got parents who are telling him what to do, grounding him, spanking him, using physical force against him, and he doesn’t know how to make sense of his world. He’s got so much anger pent up and doesn’t have a rational way to express it. He hasn’t been taught that. The parents, who were supposed to help civilize him, have fallen short, and he's capable of tearing sheetrock off the wall.

So you’re like many, many parents who just don’t know that there are much better skills out there. Grounding backfires. Spanking backfires. So does that mean that you have to be a pushover? If you can’t tell a kid what to do, then what? Do you just order them around? You’ve got to tell them what they have to do: You have to brush your teeth, you have to clean up your room, you have to do your homework. And you have to tell them what they can’t do: You can’t touch the hot stove, you can’t stay out late, you can’t have candy before dinner.

So as parents, we always feel like we’re in the police role. How do you deal with that? We can’t force a kid’s mind. Try forcing your husband’s or your wife’s mind, and you’ll see them snap at you. It’s the same with kids. When you try to force a mind, saying, “This is what you’ve got to do now; I’ve structured your day; this is what you can’t do; and the fun things you can’t do”—you want to play with your friends, but you can’t do that now—then there are all these punishments and penalties. Gosh, you know what? It’s enough to make someone not want to be a parent.

So how do you turn that around? Do you become a wimp and a pushover? “Ah, do whatever you want. Walk all over me, ruin the house, trash the house. I don’t care.” Do you become neglectful, or do you become the “hippie parent” of the 1960s, who just said, “Oh, cool. Whatever goes, goes. You want to do dope? Dope. You want to steal? Who am I to say? Everybody has their own opinion. Just have fun in life.” If you don’t care, you’re also a very highly damaging parent because indifference or neglect is even more painful than anger.

If people have given you the silent treatment, it’s easier to deal with their anger than the silent treatment. If people disdain you or ignore you or treat you as if you’re invisible, it’s one of the most poignantly painful things you’ll ever go through. And I’m sure that all of us have had moments of that happening. I had a sitter who refused to talk to me for a day—a babysitter. My parents were away for three weeks on a very long trip, and it felt awful to feel invisible. Or if you’re with a partner who just doesn’t value you anymore, you feel invisible.

So that’s not the alternative. So I have this huge buildup here. What am I going to tell you? Well, stay tuned. No, I’m not going to do that to you.

There’s a wonderful book, How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk. It’s on parenting. I also wrote a course, Parenting as It Could Have Been and Ought to Be. I don’t know the title right now; I’m trying to rattle it off here. Parenting as It Could Have Been and Ought to Be. Yeah, it’s close enough. You can go to the Ayn Rand Bookstore, or my website also, DrKenner.com—that’s my husband who’s helping me in the back here. I adore him.

If you want better parenting methods, you need to learn the skills to reach your son’s mind, Joey’s five-year-old mind. It’s the same with relationships. If you want to reach your husband’s or wife’s mind, you can’t order them around: “You should have done this. I told you to do this. Why didn’t you do this?” You just never reach a person’s mind that way.

So how do you reach a person’s mind? First, you need to listen to them. What’s he upset about? Why is he destroying toys? Where is that anger coming from? What do you remember from your own past? Did your parents listen to you or not? Would you have loved that? If you would have loved that, learn how to do what’s called active listening. Don’t listen for two sentences: “Mommy, I’m really upset.” “Well, I know you’re upset, but you have to put on a smiling face. You can’t go through life upset.” That’s not listening; you just cut them off.

Listen: “I’m really upset. I don’t know how to get along with the kids at school, or I’m having problems in math. Help me out here.” Or, “Mom, I don’t like it when you and Daddy fight,” or “When Daddy comes home drunk.” He also may have been abused, and if you don’t let him talk, you’ll just treat him as a bad kid who’s tearing sheetrock off the wall.

Kids have a call for help sometimes, and when they act out a lot, they’re hoping the parent will say, “Hey, what’s up?” and actively listen. So skill number one is to learn how to draw your son out to actively listen. “Tell me more. I want to hear more, honey. You sound so angry. We fight a lot. Tell me what else bothers you, and what else, and what else,” and gather all your data before you come in with an approach.

Then, instead of punishing him for what he’s disclosed, work towards solutions. “Honey, I know you don’t like to clean your room. Let’s come up with a better solution. Do you need organizers? Do you want some help? Do you want some tips? What would help?”

So I’m Dr. Ellen Kenner. I hope that helps you.

And here’s a little more from Dr. Kenner:

Wouldn’t it be more cruel for society to let people die when, with some effort, it could save them?

No, because the cruelty is not a question of saving someone’s life or letting them die. The cruelty is that the choice is removed from the person concerned. I would like to be able to decide what happens to my own body.

Now, that’s really interesting, especially with what’s been going on in the news. What do you do—pull the plug or not? I know when my father-in-law was diagnosed with terminal liver cancer, the doctor pulled my husband and me aside. We were saying, “Well, what do you do? Do you take invasive measures or not?” He said, “No, he’s in his late 80s. No doctor will operate on him at this age, and it doesn’t make any sense to do it. He’ll be dead before his next birthday.” That was basically the diagnosis, and it was said fairly untactfully, but that’s a separate issue. We thought, maybe we should have hospice come in. And the doctor looked at us and said, “This is not your choice.” He said it a little nicer, but he wasn’t a very tactful doctor. He said, “This is your father-in-law’s choice.”

So that’s how they handled it. They gave my father-in-law the choices, and he chose hospice. He had a very, as much as you can say, a lovely death. He didn’t suffer in pain or have to go through invasive procedures.

Now, my mother-in-law faced the same situation. They could no longer feed her; all her veins had collapsed. They would have needed invasive procedures. She needed oxygen, her lungs were filling with fluid, and she was dying. What did they do? Prolong her life with terribly invasive measures? She would have died in the hospital with tubes all over her, and it would have been painful. They said she could have hospice come in. By that time, my husband knew and said, “Ask her doctor and nurse to talk to her.” And that’s what happened. She decided to live without invasive procedures. Essentially, she chose to die. So I do believe it is your right to make that choice.

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Here’s an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance by Drs. Kenner and Locke:

"Help protect one another against stress. Consider Sandra, who felt overwhelmed by stress. Although her job was intellectually challenging, her boss was bad-tempered and critical. He never praised good work and constantly blamed subordinates for bad results, most of which were due to his own poor leadership. The hours were long and unrelenting, often including weekends. Sandra went home every day in a tense and resentful mood. After this went on for some months, she asked for help. Her partner, Scott, suggested she seriously consider quitting her job, taking a rest for a while, and then searching for something better. He showed her how their budget could be adjusted to compensate for her lost salary. Sandra took his advice, and her stress diminished dramatically. She subsequently found a better job with much less stress."

You can download chapter one for free at DrKenner.com, and you can buy the book at Amazon.com