Over the years we have found out that many teenagers steal because they believe that they are unloved and do not belong. A young teen that feels this way tends to think that they have the right to hurt other people because “nobody cares about them”. And all he is trying to do is make up for that pain that they feel. This is what is called the “revenge cycle”.

It is for this reason that you must make sure that your child feels loved and knows that they are wanted. Find ways to let them know that they are important to you and the rest of the family. Be sure to separate the deed from the doer and show love while working out a plan to fix the problem.

Another reason why children steal is because it seems like the only way that they can get what they want. Many parents take the idea of not spoiling their teenagers a little too far and offer nothing to them in terms of ownership.

Of course do not feel that you have to give them what they want every time your son or daughter asks for something, but rather make sure that there is a way that they can earn money or allowances from you. Set up a family system where they can take on responsibilities while at the same time earning a few dollars. This will go along way in preventing your teenager from stealing.

Keep money from sitting out in the open. Oftentimes teens will take money because it is just laying out in the open and it is too tempting to pass up. Learn how to keep your money and your valuables out of site and in a safe place.

If you have two or more kids in the house and you suspect that one of them is stealing from each other, then start immediately to help the issue by getting them their own private lock box in order to protect their items.

Last but not least, if your teenagers are stealing from another sibling, then it may be due to jealousy in the house. Ask your children whether they believe that you favor one of them over the other. Listen attentively and do not dismiss their feelings.

Even if they think that you are indeed favoring their brother or sister, even if it is totally false, do not turn the other way. Listen to their response and discuss with them how you feel and be sure to keep the discussion in a positive manner, without criticizing them.

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Children need as much freedom from you as you need from them, but they are entitled to a sincere explanation when you leave them, particularly when they are very young in life. Like most people, you may have a job that requires you to be gone from your children for long periods of time. Your job should never be a source of guilt on your part. But do try to explain to your children, as sincere as you possibly can, just why you have to go away and leave them with a babysitter or at day care.

For example, the next time your child asks you about your time away from them each day then you may say something like:

“Mommy has to go to a place to work so that I can bring home all of the money to pay for all of the things that we have. Remember that good dinner that we have every night? Well Mommy’s work gave me the money for that. Watching your cartoons is fun right? Well Mommy goes to work so that we can have money to turn the television on with electricity. I also like to work and be with my friends, just like you have fun with your friends. And I think about you all day too, while I am with my friends at work, until I get home to make dinner.”

Whatever the truth is for you within your own specific circumstances, your children are entitled to an honest explanation of why you leave them each day. Many parents tell their children that they go away to work because they want to, or because they have to. These answers are vague and do not do anything at all to help you child understand why you are not there with them. Be honest, but let them know why you are leaving them.

When you are constantly leaving home without any understandable explanation for your kids, then you are teaching them that they really do not count as total human beings. You are showing them that you demand explanations from them, yet never offer one yourself. Let them know without guilt that they do count and that you do appreciate their feelings and their concern for you not being around all day when working.

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Take six-year-old Kristal for instance. She is very sweet and cooperative one moment, and then all of a sudden turns very angry and defiant the next moment.

The smallest things set her off like unexpected changes, food she doesn’t like, having to go somewhere with her parents. She literally throws tamper tantrums every half hour or so. Does this sound like your kid?

Let’s look at little Scott as another example. Scott is a nine-year-old bright kid that lives in a great family setting with wonderful parents. The problem with him is that he has a very short fuse and often acts before he thinks.

Anytime things do not go his way he starts yelling loudly, calling people names, and will even hit other kids. This behavior is not limited to any one particular place. In fact, Scott will act wildly like this both at home and in public.

Do any of these kids sound familiar to your own? Does the above behavior scenarios remind you of your own children’s strong willed actions? If your child or children resembles any of the above two examples, then fear not because you are certainly not alone.

Having worked in the local school district I have seen hundreds of kids every year whose parents and teachers described them as difficult, stubborn, rude, or just totally impossible altogether. These are all children that had extreme behavioral problems and were frustrating both to the teacher staff and especially to their parents.

You must understand that your child’s strong willed behavior is not a conspiracy on his part to make everyone’s life difficult. They are simply doing what argumentative strong willed children do. These children tend to push the limits further, test harder, resist longer, use more drama, scream louder, all more than the normal child.

Statistically speaking, school teachers have labeled these children as the small 10% of the students that cause 90% of the school problems. Parents see these same children as their life-long challenge, a pain, an unknown negative force in their lives.

Personally speaking, I view my strong willed child as a challenge. I know he will grow up to be a good person and well behaved. And because of my affection and care for him, I use a lot of tender and patient parenting when dealing with his “difficult” problems.

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Kids make these quick sudden “blame decisions” because they have been taught that accepting self-responsibility is going to have a negative result with their parents. Take a step back when your child gets in trouble. What does he or she say? How often does he say it? Take notice.

Most often, children will say “He did it,” or “It’s not my fault,” or “My teacher gave me a bad grade,” etc. If this describes your child then you must examine your own previous attitudes. Consider how you have treated them in the past when trouble would arise.

The realization will then set in that you have punished them in the past whenever they accepted responsibility after getting in trouble. Think about it. You have taught them that when they do something wrong, and admit it, then they will still get punished. Now can you see why they are so quick to blame?

The young child who spills a glass of juice as a three-year-old, and receives a response of anger and frustration from you, now believes that he is a disappointment and interprets this anger and frustration as rejection.

No child wants to be rejected. And to avoid this “rejection” they will be very quick to put it on somebody else, especially if Mommy and Daddy are going to be mad. Your child will seek out any excuse possible to avoid that kind of reproach. Children always want to be loved.

So what would be a more positive approach to your children if they do something wrong? Let’s take the above example if your young child was to drop a glass of juice on the floor. Instead of yelling at him, instead of a slap, instead of a harsh tone of voice, try a more peaceful approach.

A healthy response would be to say “That’s ok Adam, we all spill juice sometimes. I know that you did not do this on purpose, now let’s get this cleaned up together.” Add to that a smile and a big hug and kiss. Regardless of how many times Adam has spilled something that day or that week, your response should always be the same, loving, caring, understanding.

By doing so you will avoid teaching your child to avoid responsibility out of fear of being slapped, yelled at, or criticized. These actions will also go a long way into both the development of his self-esteem and your parent-child relationship. It is a great investment in your child.

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The real feeling of guilt means to be immobilized in the present over something that has already occurred. It is a negative and confidence-crushing feeling. Guilt is a tool used by adults to make other people feed bad. We tend to use it more on children because we think that it is a good way to control their behavior. I understand that your intention is merely to control your child and put a halt to whatever they are doing that is causing trouble, but using guilt can cause more internal and external social problems within you child for years to come.

Whatever the intention of adults may be when they are reinforcing feelings of guilt in children, it presents only negative manifestations. Such negative manifestations include panic, fear, introversion, sleeplessness, shame, lack of initiative, and loss of self-esteem.

When you use guilt as a way to prod children of any age into doing or acting how you want them to, or to feel bad for something that is already over, you are taking a huge step to helping them become anxious thinkers. Anxious thinkers are filled with the physical manifestations of anxiety.

Although using guilt on your children will grant you the temporary quick-fix to a troubling situation that your son or daughter is causing, this guilt is felt within the child and works fast to internalize feelings of anxiety. Have you ever played the “feel bad game” with your child? Most of us have at one point or another. To an adult it is very innocent and with no harmful intentions, but to the child it the start of guilt and worry.

A very basic example of a “feel bad game” is when you pretend to cry or pout with your three-year-old and force her to give you a kiss because she cannot stand to see you feeling bad. Congratulations, you have just introduced a high feeling of anxiousness to her mind by creating what may seem like a harmless game to you. Your child has then learned very quickly that she has not choice over whom she kisses because she is to give attention to whomever is making her feel bad in life. Is this how you want your kids to make all of their decisions as young teens and then adults?

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If your goal is to be a successful parent to your daughter and you are not paying attention to the outside influences on her mind, then start paying attention. Your job is to make sure that your daughter is self confident, healthy minded, and secure with her body as it is.

In a recent survey, nobody can say it better than a young teenage girl who participated, and she said: “Being self conscience about my looks and my body is a constant challenge for me each and every day. However, it is something that I am slowly overcoming through proper exercise, healthy eating, spiritual awareness, and self-acceptance. By working out and eating well I have come to realize that it is more important to have a healthy body than a ‘hot’ body”.

Why is it such a challenge for the young daughters of our life? It is because our culture says that the most important quality of women is how they look, not what they do, not what they think, and not what they feel. Don’t agree? Turn on your television any day or night of the week and see what mental visions and negative social programming is going on when your daughter’s choices are being shaped by what her favorite show says is “cool” or “what to look like”, etc.

Do whatever you can to reinforce the message of health and self acceptance with your daughter. Emphasize greatly the importance of feeling healthy, not of just looking good. Talk with your daughter about how it feels to be in your body and ask her about her experience of her own body.

Learn to discuss things from the inside out. How does it feel during and after exercising? What types of workout exercises feel the best? How does it feel when eating healthy for a long period of time? Ask her why she likes to exercise. How does she feel after having too much junk food at one time? Was it worth it?

These are all questions that you can use to engage in your daughter that will also keep her reminding herself about her choices for a healthy lifestyle as opposed to just a “good looking” lifestyle. Women who are only concerned about their looks tend to try finding security under the knife or by going through terrible eating practices throughout adulthood, while never really feeling comfortable under their own skin.

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For example, something that we may have swore to a few years ago may now be almost impossible for us to imagine ourselves being. When we look at old photographs we wouldn’t imagine wearing the same clothes as we did in the past as was shown on the photos. The things that we take for granted as absolutes, impervious to change, are, in fact, constantly doing just that.

So the real question here is, how do you teach your children to handle this phenomenon called change, and how do you deal with it in your everyday life? Are you teaching your kids to resist change or are you teaching them that change is good and that change means growth? The child who grows to an adult accepting change as a way of living, that welcomes change as a healthy functioning person, is on the road to a very fulfilling life.

On the other side of the token, those children who are intimidated by change and avoids new experiences because they fear failure, will stay destined for a very unhappy life who will always have a reason not to go after their dreams. It appears that it is unhappy people who most fear change and if you are raising your children to fear change, then you are raising them to be extreme neurotics who will be unable to handle the world it its ever-changing phenomena.

So how do we as parents strive to teach our children not to fear new things? Teaching your children to welcome change involves adopting new attitudes and changed behaviors in your everyday dealings with them. Teaching your child to overcome fears of change will also involve you coming to grips with your rigid thinking and actions.

You must also take a closer look at the risks involved in raising children to welcome rather than dreading the change. Learning to embrace change begins with you examining your own attitudes and behavior towards the unknown for both you and your children.

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One of the best ways to raise children who are good listeners is to model good listening skills. Be a role model. Live a life of good communication between you and your spouse. When two parents are really listening to each as a way of life, not only with that relationship improve, but it will show the children the value and importance of paying attention.

Besides having our children listen to the parents and teachers better in order to show more respect, what other reason is there for becoming a better listener?

One very important result of being a good listener is that the person avoids coming to false conclusions. You can start your child off at an early age to avoid this communication pitfall. Sometimes not listening and not paying close attention to other people can result in hearing only a portion of what the people are actually saying.

This leads to faulty conclusions and irritating conflicts that could of been avoided had the person listened more closely. By getting your young children to become better listeners, these kinds of situations will be minimal as the become adults and are communicating in a social setting with other people.

Listening games are a great way to start teaching your young ones how to listen. For example, there is one game that will help teach your child to listen that is called “Silly Skits” where you create skits on paper and have your child create their own as well.

Each skit will have a picture of two people or two animals “conversing” with each other. Simply point to one of the characters and tell your child what they are doing. Then move on to the next one. Afterwards you can ask him what each was doing. Your child will have had to remember what you said each time about the character’s “conversation”.

This will help improve your child’s listening skills as the skits get longer and longer. Try little games like this in your spare time. Not only will this help your child’s listening skills grow, at the same time you are implementing quality time between parent and child.

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Having fights within the family is definitely not a fun and pleasant experience. Each fight, regardless how small, will leave you drained of energy and feeling negative afterwards. Not only will you feel bad for the things you said and did during the fight, but your children will walk away feeling rejected, lost, unloved.

And do you wonder who suffers the most when fights occur in the family? Your children. You know that it is the kids that suffer the most when you have had nasty explosive fights. And you also know that a great deal of ugliness comes out that you would rather not have exposed to them on a regular basis.

Although a majority may think that fighting is healthy and natural, it is time for you to stand against this notion. As having the responsibility of being a parent, it is time for you to start making a conscience choice to find another solution to fighting. A family fight is something that you should be looking to totally eliminate from your life and the life of your children.

When I say that you must rid your life of fighting altogether, then you need to know exactly the kind of fighting that I am referring to. Fighting can take many forms. It means to participate in verbal exchanges which involve intense anger, rage, and sometimes physical abuse to your children.

Fighting with your kids also means to have verbal assaults on each other by rehashing the same old drama over and over again until your children are so frustrated that they become emotionally immobilized. Is this the kind of “healthy fighting” that you and your kids are going through? Do you still agree that is is “Ok” to have such negativity in the house?

If you genuinely want to eliminate fighting in your home with the children, then you absolutely must come to a decision yourself. And it does not involve waiting for your children to change. You must officially make fighting a thing of the past. It means that you must take a vow and
refuse to raise children in an atmosphere of violence, both physical and mental. It means choosing love over anger, each and every time.

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As kids hit adolescence they invariably begin to separate from their parents as a natural part of growing up. Ironically, it’s also a time when parents (and very legitimately) have concerns about their son or daughter’s safety as they venture out more into the world on their own.

This is quite a difficult time for most parents. It is a time of change, a time of testing. On one hand you are frustrated because your child isn’t as close as they once were, and on the other you keep pushing and pushing to know more about what going on in their life. It’s a catch-22 scenario; you cannot be close, yet you need to be close to keep them safe.

Balancing your desire to know all the details with your son or daughter’s right for privacy, and the respect implied when you acknowledge that right, is a very tricky feat to accomplish indeed. However, it is a balancing act that is well worth the effort, especially for those of you who want to be the best parents that you can be.

Your first step is to do your best not to be a nosy parent. Do not go digging around your teenager’s belongings. Never try to listen in on conversations. And avoid trying to keep your kids away from friends or activities out of spite to try to keep them safe.

Nosy parents like this do nothing more than drive their kids underground. This is the exact opposite result that successful parents are looking for. Consider real hard what privacy means in your own life. Think about how you like to be respected both as an adult today and how you would have wished your parents treated you when you were a child. Practice these philosophies on your children as they are growing as teenagers today.

What does privacy mean for young teenagers? They describe it as “psychological and physical space”. They want to have private conversations with their friends that their parents do not hear. They want to able to get away by themselves and think how they want. They want a room all their own, regardless if it is tidy or messy. They want to be able to shut the door behind them when they feel like it. They want private journals without fear of their parents sneaking in and reading them.

Of course you have to be cautious and watchful, but all we are saying is to use common sense. Do not drive your kids away from you. Remember what is like for a young boy or girl to be entering that stage in life where new feelings and experiences are happening to them on a daily occurrence.

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In today’s article we are going to discuss car seat safety, which directly relates to children who are small enough where they have to be sat in a car seat during travel times. Contrary to what many men and women believe on the subject, if you are using your lap to hold your child in the car then you are subjecting her to the most perilous place for a child to ride.

If you were to get into an accident with your child in your lap, then you probably wouldn’t be able to hold onto her once you were jolted by the sudden shock of being rammed by another car. And even if you could hold onto your child, then your body would invariably crush hers as you were thrown against the dashboard or windshield.

The most important thing that you can do as a caring parent for your child when traveling is to buy and install a safety approved car seat. In fact, car seats are a requirement of the law in all fifty states across America.

Unfortunately, all studies point to the fact that parents do not properly use these car seats. The most common problems occur when parents place rear-facing seats in front of an air bag, putting the car seats in the wrong direction, or failing to strap the harness properly over the child and into the seat.

Did you realize that most fatal children’s accidents involving traveling occur within five miles of home and at speeds less than twenty five miles per hour? These statistics cannot be ignored yet many parents think of these “small trips” around town as a safe way to ride without their kids strapped in properly, if at all.

Below are 3 tips for you to take into account when it comes to your children and car seat safety:

1. Choose a car seat that meets current-date federal safety guidelines. Do not use a car seat made before 1981. This is the year that these regulations came into effect.

2. Use a car seat 100% of the time, no exceptions! Whether you are driving to the store 2 blocks away or taking an hour long dive, stay safe at all times.

3. Look for a car seat with a harness that is easy to adjust when the seat is in your car. You are more likely to use a seat if it is convenient.

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The very best way to help prepare your preschooler to get ready for bed is by reading him a story. This should be a nightly ritual in which your child recognizes that at the end of the story, the lights go out, and he must lay down to sleep. Once the story is indeed over and you have said your good-nights, do not let your child attempt to stall you any longer than he already has. Also, do not allow him to talk you into staying with him until he goes to sleep. Your child needs to get used to going to sleep on his own and if you are always there when he nods off to sleep, then he will always depend on you each and every time he goes to bed. Also,try to avoid any type of physical activity before bedtime as well. The more calm and comforting your preschooler is a few hours before it is time to sleep, the easier it will be for him to relax and get into the mindset of bedtime.

It is common for most children at this age to sleep through the night, but will often wake up to check out his surroundings before falling back to sleep. However, there may be nights when your child is having extremely active dreams that causes him to awake. Children this age have very vivid dreams that often represent the way he viewed the events of that day. They may reflect some impulse, aggressive feeling, or inner fear that only comes to the surface by way of these scary images or dreams.

The older the child gets, perhaps after the age of five and up, the better he will be able to understand that these mental images are only dreams, but as a preschooler he may still need to be reassured that it is not real. As he awakes in the middle of the night crying and scared, immediately run to hold him while talking about the dream he had. Stay with your child until he is calm. And for your own peace of mind as you go back to sleep, do not forget that these are only dreams that your child is having and not a more serious problem.

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