2336. Suggestions for Raising Children — Part X

Tactical Parenting: Encouraging Teens and Super-teens

Teens: As described earlier in the series, it works best to nurture toddlers and lead tweens. After that, from start up of puberty to age 18, coaching works best.

This part applies to both sexes but mostly about boys and exclusive of sex. Part XI will continue next and primarily aim at girls and sex.

The nature of children late in upbringing is pretty simple. They think they are adult-equivalents capable of logical and well-reasoned decisions. We call what we see as immaturity, but they can’t admit it.

Because they resist parental influence in favor of peer approval, the best way to handle them is trust them as mature as possible within parental limits. Of course it’s risky, but parental pressure for them to change is even more risky. In their minds, they are fully developed as they emerge puberty. Their sense of self-development ends there; they have ‘arrived’ and know how to live their lives.

I only have a few suggestions, because I don’t examine how teens act today but the way they are born alike.

1. The essence of coaching is leading by example, hinting at options, and attracting the admiration of those being coached.
2. Don’t try to nurture teens, especially boys. They take it as being treated as infants. Girls can use some nurturing after being traumatized.
3. In the teen psyche, directions to do this and do that are not far removed from nurturing.
4. Teens are convinced they are equivalent of adults but not as endowed as they deserve with the things they need: e.g., money, influence, people to listen, and endorsement that they do right. If not available from parents, they reach for it from peers.
5. Out of the certainty that they are right and deserve better just for who they are springs their breadth of aspirations and intensity of ambitions. It can easily take them into destructive behaviors, as determined by the governing control of their self-image and self-like developed since their third year in life.
6. Respect for parents—developed earlier in childhood—has the greatest influence on guiding teen ambitions toward mature and adult-like objectives. Lack of both respect and desire to please parents opens opportunity for immature and destructive behavior. But you know all that, and parents discover it after it’s too late. They didn’t pay the price to have a good teen. They didn’t inculcate mutual respect throughout the family and help the child develop a healthy self-image beginning in toddlerhood.
7. Teens can’t face their immaturity because it makes them feel bad. WADWMUFGAO and so teens experiment to feel and like themselves better. It’s the root of 1) reaching for immediate gratification in and often overdoing sex, crime, violence, and drugs. 2) Finding inability to feel good and reaching to end one’s life.

Coaching displays trust and respect that uplifts them in such ways that they pay attention to coaches—as long as boys don’t have to acknowledge that’s what they’re doing, especially to peers. Parental patience, guile, and dedication to preserving teen dignity are great internal linings for the shoulder pads of coaching.

Super-teens: From age 18 to 21, it’s the final stage of abandoning adolescent values, standards, and expectations. Parental coaching becomes more trustworthy when advice is sought before offered.

I recently stumbled onto a teen porn site. Two to three dozen 18-year olds in action on the open and advertisement home screen. My first thought was of their humiliated fathers. My second was how immaturity allows stupidity. My third was the promotion of penis envy among men and how size is almost meaningless to females except in their imagination and as promoted by men. My fourth was of those immature girls building miserable futures as their financial worth fades with age. My fifth was of porn men losing all respect for females and later trying to raise daughters with self-respect. My sixth was to quickly conclude that the porn lobby was the primary mover behind the 26^th Amendment. It gave 18 y/o the right to vote, escape minority status, and become legally eligible for exploitation before porn cameras. We as a supposedly civilized society are so f’ing gullible.

I just got too personally involved. Don’t know how I will handle it yet, but the last in this series will deal with girls and sex in childhood. May take more than a day to do it, so tomorrow may be an empty day.

2191. Anorexics, Suicides, et al. — Part 6: Self-interest

Self-interest motivates everyone. It’s our future; it triggers our actions. It determines what we do and say after this instant in time even if only to stand and think about what’s next.

A child’s self-interest starts as a function of genetics inherited at birth and self-esteem indirectly programmed into the subconscious by infant caregivers. After his conscious mind opens, his self-interest determines whom he will become after any moment in life. He knows best what’s best for him at that moment. Do his own thing or follow mom’s instructions? Probably without thinking, he acts.

When planned or dreamed of, it’s ambition. Or perhaps instantaneous, such as play with a toy. Or unexpected as in yell from anguish or flee mom’s anger. Or perhaps try to alibi but fail his way out of punishment for what he knows he shouldn’t have done, which prompts him to modify self-interest for different action and outcome next time. Lessons learned shape self-interest continuously.

Self-image is the picture of who and what we are. Self-interest is what we should say or do and to or with whom we should say or do it. Self-interest is our life agenda. Success broadens and deepens our belief in self, which broadens and deepens our self-interest and our liking of self. As self-developers, children are just like us.

Just as adults do, children learn from successes and failures made doing or saying what they think they should. However, kids don’t always make the call. Adults have a nasty habit of overriding a child’s assessment of whether he experienced a success or failure. It makes a critical difference in upbringing of children.

Parents or authority figures have multiple occasions. They call a boy’s actions as:

• successes and the boy agrees. If he acknowledges to himself that it’s deserved, it enhances his belief that he’s pretty good, which improves his self-image, confirms his self-interest, and adds to his liking himself as boy and perhaps undersized adult. Consequently, adult intentions are rewarded.
• successes and the boy thinks it undeserved. It registers as just okay in his heart. He didn’t do anything out of the ordinary. He just did something that others thought okay. Belief in self is unlikely to change and ditto for self-image, self-interest, and self-like. Consequently, undeserved praise may not be wasted but it’s not effective for parental intentions.
• failures and the boy agrees. He acknowledges to himself that he didn’t do what he should have, which enhances his belief that he knows what he’s doing, which improves his self-image, which modifies his self-interest, which adds to liking himself as boy or perhaps undersized adult. Consequently, just the mention of failure is sufficient to energize change in the boy. OTOH, highlighting well-intended actions as his incompetence is to challenge and over time belittle his self-image, drown his self-interest, and reverse his self-like.
• failures and the boy disagrees. He acknowledges to himself that he did do what he should have, which enhances his belief that he knows what he’s doing, which modifies his self-interest either to
  • refuse to adjust to parental expectations, which adds to his liking himself as an individual and potential adult
  • or adjust toward adult standards and expectations which weakens his self-image, which demeans his ability to like himself. Consequently, boy-judger disagreements foster potential for more relationship difficulties.

The difference in the boy’s modification of self-interest depends upon how he respects and accepts the judgment of parents or higher authority figures. The greater his respect for those who judge him, the less inclined to disagree with them. The less his respect, the more easily the boy disagrees.

In the final analysis, the boy-and-his-judges relationship determines the final outcome. And that dear ladies is why moms are so good at raising boys. Girls are somewhat different but moms are even more capable for adjusting girls’ self-interest. So it needs no more attention than just follow the boy’s model above with this exception. Girls do not think unearned gifts are undeserved.

To help make kids like themselves better, guide rather than demand of them that their personal agenda includes consideration for the interests of others. As their self-interest expands to consider others, selfishness dies and self-centeredness weakens a little. Starting in childhood produces more mature candidates to enter and pass through adolescence with little turmoil and thereby produce more mature adults.

Self-worth follows tomorrow.

2174. Dating in Mid-life — Part B6: Chaste vs. the Adultolescent

If a man indulges in a “side dish” while dating a woman to whom he has not pledged his exclusivity, what does it say about his character? Is he worthy of respect, and does he have the potential to be Mr. GoodEnough?

If a man is after a woman rather than just chasing her for sex, her insistence on chasteness works in dating and courtship. Some men, however, are unable to satisfy the expectations of women for physical fidelity during the dating/pre-courtship stage. They can’t remain loyal enough while a relationship develops, and they find ‘side dish’ (or two, or even three) for interim enjoyment. A reasonable but ultimately unsatisfying alibi exists, with roots that extend back to his childhood.

As an example, it happened to Her Highness Tooconfused. Nearing a year into a satisfying courtship and following the guidelines described on this blog, she discovered that he was wandering on her. Regular contact slowed and then stopped for a week. He returned without explanation. As she says, “He had been busy chasing and bedding a friend of a friend (small world heard it through the grapevine). Did they end up dating? No. The ’side dish’ was a once or twice night stand for him.” Judging him as insufficiently loyal, Tooconfused broke off. He kept trying to come back, but she declined without explanation.

What follows is mere speculation about her man. But, I describe an upbringing that will produce an adult male who thinks her man’s kind of dating behavior is normal.

This man appears to be an ‘adultolescent’. That is, physical adult and mental adolescent. He grew up without learning to be a mature adult. Parents are usually blamed, but it’s not the whole story.

First, children do not primarily shape their values, standards, and expectations from the examples set by parents. Absorption is only partial and can be very small when not exposed to parental care that includes these qualities that are admirable among boys: respect for the child as a person albeit a little one; respect for him as self-developer looking for ways to satisfy his self-interest; nurturing that satisfies but is appreciated only for real hurts; and leadership handling that the boy dislikes in the short-run, learns to admire before puberty, and then appreciates when delivered in coaching form during the teen years.

Children are self-developers. They learn and absorb what they want to. They follow their self-interest as far as adults permit. And they develop from what they learn and absorb, which usually comes mostly from other children, and some or many may be older. You can see it begin in three-year olds; they more easily pay attention to and associate more comfortably with children than adults. Consequently, kids are primarily the personality products of who they grew up with other than adults. (Old school moms knew it intuitively and restricted associating with certain kids. ♫ I remember it well. ♫)

Second, parents apply growing-up pressures but often the wrong kind. Parents, especially adultolescents themselves, often reinforce immature peer pressures. Tooconfused’s man likely experienced an upbringing similar to the following.

• His parents may raise him to be a good or great child, rather than a prospective adult. They focus on how he performs and appears to others in fun and games, sports, grades, popularity, self-esteem, and childhood likeability rather than guiding his motivational urges toward adulthood. The difference in pressures that parents apply (outperform a cousin or the kid next door in sports, grades, popularity) and expectations he should meet (make mom and dad proud, make an all-star team) make parental life more involved and beneficial for parents and seemingly a more enjoyable upbringing for him. A good child reflects well on parents.
• Or, his parents may ignore guiding his self-development so that he absorbs the values, standards, and expectations from TV idolatry, celebrity worship, and children with whom he associates. If neglected, parents may wonder but don’t much care that immature values govern his life.
• Either way, his standards and expectations are shaped by trying to live more for the moment and less for the future. It reinforces the males’ primal urge to focus on the present and let the future come as it will. Live to think and act as a child rather than try to learn, absorb, and emulate more mature values and adult-like expectations, such as better planning for his future.
• Raised to focus on short-range thinking rather than practice for long-range achieving, he enters puberty with no more guidance or parental expectation than to continue as a good kid. Perhaps he was indulged and spoiled, perhaps not. For the most part, the responsibilities up to which he is expected to step leave exceed his abilities. His sense of responsibility is too weak or short to prepare very well for his future. The present remains too simple or enjoyable to think of how to improve the prospects for adulthood. He can continue as he does now. He can handle it, or so he’s been conditioned to think.
• He enters adolescence unprepared to exit as a mature adult. Too little assignment of responsibility that over time strengthens his sense of duty (making his bed, cleaning his room, helping mom without her asking). Too little reaching out for adult-like achievements. Too little stimulation of adult ambitions. Too little success achieving long-range goals. Too much enjoyment of teen fun and games. Too little self-discipline. Too little earned self-respect. Too many self-imposed pressures that push toward immediate rather than deferred gratification. Too much time spent learning to bend female thoughts to his will. Too much time studying how to convince girls to uncrossed their legs. Too much time spent indulging the irresistible attractions among females. All of that morphed into his normal behavior.
• The adolescent focus just doesn’t aim at affirmatively learning how to be a responsible adult. It remains focused on immature behaviors and lessons learned that work well and improve popularity among peers. Thus, he passes through the emotional turmoil of puberty only to adopt beliefs based on peer associations and immature values and expectations. He confirms his childhood preparation and superiority as more desirable than parental hopes and dreams for his adolescence.
• His early childhood prompted by the desire for him to be a good child left him with less than a full bag of adult values and beliefs, which was exacerbated by teen-peer influence focusing typically on excitement, adventurism, activism, and today’s sexual freedom. After age 21, he has little or no internal guidance except from childhood values and beliefs reinforced by mounting immaturity among his associates. (Leadership by example, even poor influence by peer associates, is always the most effective.)
• Mature adult values not inculcated before puberty leave a vacuum to be filled by teen peers. His belief system finishes filling up with the only values he’s willing to accept, those more like his own. He seeks and associates with peers who think and act as he does.
• Values and beliefs embedded before puberty last for life if reinforced in adolescence. In his case, beliefs based on values about being a good—but turns out to be irresponsible—child leave him handicapped with women. Unless adultolescent themselves, women expect to associate with men mature enough to be husbandly responsible and fatherly dependable.

In the end, both parents and peers shape the personalities of kids. Parents lay the groundwork, and once lain, peers influence heavily the shape the personality takes. Actually, peers by a wide margin predominate in the process. In the case above, his presence in the adult world is physical, but his heart and mind remain habitually influenced by teenage thinking and habits. Having a ‘side dish’ now and then is perfectly normal for his deeply embedded adolescent-minded values and beliefs.

The dish of chaste loyalty that Tooconfused served up, which required both delayed expectation and gratification, was not as appealing to him as the temptation of a ready-made side dish. After all, how important is loyalty to adolescents? She was mature; he was not. She was ready to exchange mutual loyalty; he couldn’t meet her expectations for very long.

Could he ever become devoted to one woman? Could he qualify as Mr. GoodEnough? That’s another story waiting to be told by the woman who tames such a man sufficiently well that he wants her more than any other. Tough, but it can be done. A few women are that determined, patient, hard-headed, and soft-hearted. I’ve made my best effort to explain what she faces.

P.S. You’re blessed today. Her Highness Cinnamon worked extensively to make this article more easily readable. I’m responsible, however, if you find fault with content. Guy

 

1928. Compatibility Axioms #191-200

191. Both change after their first intercourse together. He changes for the worse for her; she changes for the better for him. She pays the price, but he gets the reward.  [101]
192. Men do whatever they have to do to have frequent and convenient access to sex. They marry if it’s not available outside of marriage, which makes it very normal for women to avoid premarital sex. [101]
193. Females are in charge and dominate the unmarried sex scene, until they yield to males and lose some respect and much leverage. [101]
194. Men marry expecting to dominate the marital sex scene, unless she conquers him for marriage before he conquers her for sex. [101]
195. The more that boys lose intense ‘battles’ with girls to get sex during adolescence, the more that boys respect females. They learn from being denied that females generally have other things they value, think, feel, need, want, crave, aspire, dream, and pursue and that grown men can respect. [101]
196. Girls teach boys to respect females or boys never learn to be female friendly except for sex. Consequently, women ‘inherit’ and must deal with whatever their generation of girls turned boys into during the hormone hurricane of adolescence.  [101]
197. Small breasts have great value. Proportionately the erogenous zone is more attractive and more easily attracts a man’s hand to tweaking and pleasing her instead of cupping or playing to please himself. [102]
198. Large-breast fixation in a man is just adolescence grown older, which makes enlargement self-defeating for women who hope to capture and keep the more mature man. [102]
199. Living with or chasing women with small breasts signifies the man is more likely to forsake adolescent immaturity and approach sexual activity more maturely.  [102]
200. Women are not ignorant about men, but much of what they know is wrong. They ignore the male nature in favor of expecting what women want to see and hear. With their natural relationship expertise thus weakened, they make mistakes dealing with their man. [103]

1195. Coffee and Tea with Mrs. G. #31

Ladies, I see my man facing this dilemma: He has material for many more articles that address girls trying to succeed with boys. He planned to provide some post-grad reading. However, over the 26 days and 26 articles that he published Boot Camp for Girls, no one commented. No girls! No women! No mothers! No fathers! And no boys! Silence!

Did any of you see worthwhileness? No feedback means little appropriateness and no interest about adolescence. I hate to see hubby spinning his wheels. Dilemmas make his temper flare easily. It tends to make him unlivable. Heh, heh!

I pray for blessings on you and yours.

Mrs. Guy

544. He’s Wary to Marry — Section 2

Most of what follows in this series originates with females mentally locked onto the wrong things for generating a happy marriage. Adolescence, politics, Feminism, wishful thinking, and assorted fickleness overpower their female nature. They act unnatural. Males sense it, disrespect them, and avoid permanent relationships.

N She discourages her man. She insists that he fulfill her wishes. She tells him HOW to do what she considers his responsibility. For example, repeatedly prompting him to ask for a raise.

N She doesn’t uphold or she lets moral values deteriorate in her home. Lower standards of behavior invite disharmony, when her man expects harmony and her to ensure it.

N She downplays her nurturing skills as part of de-emphasizing her female nature. For example, she claims he can nurture the kids as well as her, so that she can pursue other interests.

N She dresses erotically to capture her man and follows up with sloppy attire and careless grooming that turns his head toward other females.

N She shows no respect for what he values highly: A female at his side just as good or better looking than other guys have.

N She endorses winning as the only thing to justify how one plays the game of life. This is the man’s game, and it disturbs parental balance rearing kids. 

Thus, and more will follow, she prioritizes earthly values above her God-given, Nature-provided, inherently powerful, and highly respected female capabilities for handling males in all walks of life.

483. What Moms Never Hear —K: Self-image

Self-image (aka self-concept) buds in infancy, blossoms in toddlerhood, explodes in the tweens, blooms again in the teens, and tends to settle down in adulthood.

·        Definition—Self-image is the mental and spiritual ‘picture’ a person has of Self. Who he is in life and how he fits in his world.

·        It identifies us to us. From it, we know who we are, how we mix with our world, what we can and can’t do. When fully developed, it tends to restrict us to doing what’s ‘normal’ for Self.

·        The roots lie in cooing, crying, smiling, and whatever else produces feedback to the infant. Added to genetic hardwiring, loving care and encouragement program the subconscious mind about its ability to affect its world, to influence its surroundings.

·        Toddlerhood opens the door to testing the world, examining realities, and programming the subconscious with a steady stream of new abilities—new ways to view Self. The greater the exploratory and adventurist nature of a toddler, the broader and deeper spreads his self-image.

·        Development of self-image explodes in the tweens. Kids face new pressures, social structures, and experiences outside the home. Greater accomplishments and varied experiences morph into a much enlarged self-image.

·        Puberty inflicts temporary damage that may turn permanent. Self-image undergoes doubts and confirmations to make Self fit into a world rocked with hormonal hurricanes. But, it didn’t come to stay, it came to pass.

·        Self-image blooms again in adolescence. It’s a growth period. Boys expand their search for independence and significance. Girls expand their search for involvement and meaning. Self-image grows with successes, narrows with failures, and steadies out with acceptance of Self as the third decade of life arrives.

As with adults, self-image sets boundaries on our behavior, which we usually observe. When we don’t, we take corrective action or rationalize to explain or excuse it to ourselves and others. Our self-image keeps us on the track we imagine as right for our life.

471. What Moms Never Hear — C: Big Picture

Children pass through five development phases. (All times are approximate and with phase overlap for both kids and parents passing through their own development.)

©     Babyhood, the most critical formative phase, is roughly the first three years and ends with opening of the conscious mind.

©     Toddlerhood, a transition phase, is roughly the second three years and until or through first grade.

©     The tweens, also a critically formative phase, is roughly from first grade until puberty.

©     Puberty, another transition phase, occurs when the hormone hurricane arrives and rearranges a child’s persona and disturbs his or her personality.

©     Adolescence, a refining phase, is roughly the teen years, although development aka self-development doesn’t fully end until about age 21.

To optimize child development, Nature guides parents to fill different roles that coincide with these phases: Nurturers in the first two, primary and secondary leaders in the next two, and coaches in the last phase.

Parental influences are next post facto.