Dr. Laura's Advice on Child Rearing

lalaaston — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 16:30:17 -0600

I
can remember sitting in my fifth grade class and my teacher, Mrs. Katz,
asking the class, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" She then
gave us time to think over our answer. After a few minutes, she went
around the classroom to stand up and tell everyone about our ambitious
futures.

Shyly and slowly each fifth grade student of Mrs.
Katz's Bayview Glen Public School class, took their turn and said
professions to her like "I want to be a doctor when I grow up or I want
to be a fireman." And then came my turn. I stood up by my desk and said
loudly to the class "When I grow up, I would like to be a child
psychologist." The students laughed as they had no idea what that was.
Well, I had no idea on how to even spell psychologist.

So even
at the age of ten, I knew that I wanted to work with children and
families. There was just something deep inside me that knew. Plus I
wished when I was a child that a child psychologist would come into my
home and make life better for my brother and me.

I went to
college and got my degree in child and family studies. I then trained
and worked for the state of California as a behavioral specialist.
However, what prepared me the most to become a social worker, were my
childhood experiences being in a family with two family members living
with mental illness. What prepared me to become a social worker was
from my experiences in my childhood with mental illness, my schooling
plus my field experience. With that said, nothing prepares you for when
a parent looks you in the eye and asks you if you have only known their
child for 2 months then what makes you the expert on their child.
That's when you have to work on building trust and respect.

I
did have an extreme case, while working at the child and family agency,
with a twelve year old boy. He had been suspended from his junior high
school numerous times, had beaten up his younger brother, was very rude
to his parents and at twelve years old was still wetting the bed. (The
fact that he was wetting the bed told me that he had some deeper
psychological issues inside of him and was crying out for help.)

His
parents contacted our agency and asked for a young counselor (I was 24
at the time) to come and work with "David" at his home and at school.
They asked for a younger counselor so I could still relate to him and
he still could relate to me. Yet his mother still said to me "So how
many children do you have?" When I answered none so far, she wanted to
know how I could be of help since I didn't have any children.

After
I had visited "David" parents and his younger brother's home it seemed
that things were a lot worse then had been reported. I had found out
that "David's" parents were fighting all the time, his father had just
lost his job, "David" was about to be expelled from school and the only
thing that "David" truly cared about was watching WWF wrestling. He
would race home and turn on the TV without doing his homework and
chores. Then he would play with his wrestling ring and figurines.

What
would you do to help this child and his parents? My behavioral
specialty background told me that he needed to care about life again
and be rewarded with positive and negative reinforcement. I spoke this
over with my mentor at the family agency and her advice was that
"David" needed tough love. I first spoke to his parents separately and
suggested that "David" needed a harsher approach. Boy did "David" hate
me for awhile.

First thing that I did was limit his WWF
wrestling TV watching until he had behaved well enough to gain back the
privilege of watching again. We stripped his room of TV, video games,
books, toys and only his bed and clothes were left. Then I suggested a
rewards sticker chart. When "David" was kind to his parents and brother
he would get a sticker. When he wasn't he would have to sit in his room
for a period of time with nothing to do. Over time "David" really
started to take pride in his achievements and every time he
accomplished a task, like no longer wetting the bed, he would earn
something back for his room like his video games and toys. Over a four
month period "David" earned all of the things for his room and turned
his life around.

After seeing all of his hard work, my own
reward to him was to take him to the movies to see The Scorpion King
starring The Rock (a wrestler). "David" was so happy. He did stay in
school and although he still had some other difficulties he graduated
from high school and is able to hold down a job.

Please check out my favorite red weasels blog and friend La Belette Rouge. Weasel this post is for you. It just so happens that La Belette Rouge now lives in the same city that I use to be a social worker in. I love her blog, the way she writes and how she sees the world!

My
advice to anyone about child rearing is that every child needs to feel
that their voice can be heard. We all want children to become
productive members of our society and every child can do this with love
and support. I think it could have been very easy to discard "David" as
a lost cause, but instead we all fought back.

Tell me your
thoughts on how you might have handled "David" if you had been his
social worker? Do you have any questions or topics you would like me to
cover regarding child development.

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Dr. Laura's Advice on Child Rearing