When I ask you to listen to me, When I ask you listen to me, Listen: When you do something for me, But when you accept as a simple fact that So please listen and just hear me,
and you start giving me advice,
you have not done what I asked.
When I ask that you listen to me,
and you begin to tell me why I shouldn't feel that way,
you are trampling on my feelings.
and you feel you have to do something to solve my problems,
you have failed me, strange as that may seem.
All that I ask is that you listen,
not talk or do- just hear me.
that I need to do for myself,
you contribute to my feelings of inadequacy.
that I do feel what I feel, no matter how irrational,
then I can quit trying to convince you
and go about the business of understanding what's behind my feelings.
and if you want to talk,
wait a minute for your turn- and I'll listen to you.
(If anyone knows who the author is, post a comment- thanks)
Active Listening Poem- author unkown
Posted by:Lloyd Woodward--Thursday, March 05, 2009
Getting hard-to-wake-up teen up in the morning.
Posted by:Lloyd Woodward--Tuesday, March 03, 2009
Consistency is the key to waking up teenager in the morning. Yes, we all feel that teens should take the responsibility to wake themselves up. In a perfect world. However, there are teens who would fail at this task; however, once woke up many of these will attend school and succeed. The following routine is designed to eventually help the teen wake up on his own or with a simple alarm.
More powerful than rewards or reinforcements is this: if you have the power to get your teen's behavior where you want it, just do that. If you want them to do the dishes turn off the TV that they are watching and insist that they do it now. If they violate curfew and if you know where they are, go and get them. Likewise, if your teen needs to be out of the house by 6:30 AM, then play loud music or loud annoying sounds at 6:00 AM. Give any other warnings you feel necessary. By 6:15 apply the stimulus. The stimulus should be something that causes your teen to wake up and rise out of bed. You decide what the stimulus should be. You know best what will wake him up.
What stimulus will work best? Only you know the answer to that and you may have to try a few things first to see what works best. However, be certain that you have something that will wake up your teen. This may vary from a hand assisting the teen out of bed, ripping off bed clothes, to delivering a small amount of water on his face. If your teen is a very heavy sleeper, you may need to resort to the latter one. No one likes to use water to wake a teen up; however, watching your heavy sleeping teen miss school and fail is not easy to do either.
High Risk Situations: Some teens wake up nasty. They may make threats or use other intimidating behaviors. The fear that generates buys them extra sleep time. Only you can judge the real risk factor. Ask yourself these questions when assessing the risk factors.
1. Has your teen hurt you in the past at any time at all? Have they struck you? Have they thrown things at you? If so, then you are at high risk and you may need to bring in help before you apply an effective stimulus like applying water.
2. Has you teen made specific threats to you about how they plan to hurt you? If so, your situation may be considered high risk and you may need support from professionals or family members before you attempt to wake them up with a stimulus as powerful as water.
Even if your situation is high risk it may be to your benefit to bring in support people and apply water, that is, if all other stimuli have failed or if you judge other stimuli to be pointless. If you bring in support people it is important that a parent applies the water when possible. Even if you can't do it the first time make sure that with support you are soon the person to use the stimuli to wake your child up. Gradually, you should be able to wake up your child by yourself without support people present. If, however, even without help you continue to be to afraid to wake up your teenager, then you have a different situation to consider. At this point, you are afraid of someone who lives in your house. You do not feel safe. Your ability to supervise this teenager is compromised. Perhaps, for safety's sake, there is a better place for your teenager to live.
The following is a standard wake up reminder protocol that a parent can use to guide the morning wake up. If you follow your protocol daily it should help provide consistency.
1. Have a time that you start the first stimulus, usually music or noise from an alarm clock or from some other source. The first stimulus could simply be a verbal warning from a parent. If your teen has a computer in his room you can try this naked alarm for an annoyingly loud alarm clock. It is free. I like the bugle music. You may share this with your teen and ask him which music will wake him up the best. Do this the same time every morning.
2. Go in five, ten, or 15 minutes later (make it the same every morning) and apply the second stimulus. This should be different from the first stimulus. Choose the second stimulus with your teen in mind. What will work? Is it a hand guiding them out of bed? Is it stripping off the bed clothes? Is it applying a bit of water to the face? Keep in mind that teens may wake up angry. If your teen has a history of violence then consult with a counselor or probation officer before you attempt the water and read the High Risk section above. The nice thing about the water is that you usually don't have to keep repeating it because it is the most effective wake-up. Don't use it if you can find another successful method. Apply the second stimulus the same time every morning.
TIP on implementing Step TWO: This is the application of the second stimulus. This is not the time to start a conversation. You are trying to get the teen, even though he may be asleep, to condition himself to wake up to the first stimulus in order to avoid the second stimulus. If you go in to chat at this point, this may interfere with the second application and you may be annoying your teen even more than if you just poured a small glass of water on his face or head. If you go in chatting when it's time to apply the second stimulus then you are conditioning your teen to wake up to the chatting not to the music or whatever you chose to be the first stimulus. We want your teen to eventually be able to wake up to the first stimulus (because on some level he knows the second stimulus is on the way) even when you are not there. Don't get in the way by trying a last ditch effort before applying second stimulus because he learns that he doesn't have to get up until the last ditch effort.
If your teen wakes up but refuses to get dressed and go to school, then this is a different problem. We will consider this in another post. Sometimes however, your teen wishes to lay back down in bed and try to return to blissful sleep. He may find another place in the house in which to sleep. Using more water may make it unlikely that he will choose his own bed as a safe place to continue to sleep. The beautiful thing about the water application is that if it is applied correctly, to the head and face, it is not likely that he will return to sleep. He may still refuse to go to school but at least he will be up and awake. Once awake do not allow him to return to sleeping because he will have his days and nights mixed up, causing this problem to become a vicious cycle.
1. First stimulus is ____________. Time to apply first stimulus ____________.
2. Second stimulus is ___________. Time to apply second stimulus __________.
3. Repeat Second stimulus at _____. Time to Repeat Second stimulus _________.
The repeat of second stimulus may be necessary for a teen who is awake but refuses to get out of bed. It may be necessary for a teen who tries to find another place in the house to sleep.
To read role-play on waking teen up click here.
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Meeting at Alliance Office for 2-28-09 cancelled.
Posted by:Lloyd Woodward--Thursday, February 26, 2009
Sorry. Do to a situation beyond our control we must cancell this meeting. We will be back at this location on 3-14-09. We will meet at the Eastern Probation Office on 3-7-09.
If you were needing a meeting give Lloyd a call instead. 412-861-6757. It's not the same but for this weekend it's all we got!
Losing Your Teenager and Gaining an Adult - Part 4 of 6 Written by Lori (reprinted from 2-26-08)
Posted by:Ken Sutton--Thursday, February 26, 2009
I am a mother in a Middle-America, double income family that consists of my husband of 30 years, my daughter age 27 and my son age 21. I grew up in the inner city where I met my future husband in high school; we married after college and moved to the suburbs to start our family. This is the story of my son's drug addiction that started in his teenage years told in six parts.
I describe the events leading to my realization that I had lost my teenager to drugs and the steps I took to cope with that realization, get my son help, and rebuild my family with our new adult son in drug recovery. I am offering my story to help raise the awareness of the teen drug problem, to help destroy the stereotype of the drug addiction as being an inner city issue, and to share some of the lessons I have learned with the hope that they may benefit you and your family.
“My so-called guidance that I inflicted upon my son was really enabling his addiction, because I was there to save him from the harsh reality of recovery. I didn’t understand that the road into and through recovery is brutal. … and most of all; I didn’t want to believe that it had to be me that brought this bottom (of the road) to him. “
As parents we still hope for that relationship with our teenager and we continue to try to force it to happen. However, we come to a point where we realize that it will never be.
So as parents, we eventually come to the end. The end of hoping that we can salvage our child’s teen years; The end of hoping that there is a chance that we can still be their parent as they are a teenager. There comes an end to the chance of having a relationship with our teenage child. Regardless of how much we need our teenager, they will never be. And the longer we hang onto our teenager, the longer we trap them and ourselves into an existence of co-dependency and manipulation.
In many ways dealing with the loss of our relationship with our teenager is like dealing with a death. We must take the time to mourn this, so that we can move on and allow our teenager to move on. And we must look for our own inspiration so that we can to continue to support our now emerging adult child.
There are many sources of strength and support, including God, support groups, other parents, etc. I often find that lyrics in music provide surprising wisdom. There is a song by Martina McBride called, “In My Daughter’s Eyes”, and piece of it is as follows:
I realize what life is all about
It's hangin' on when your heart
has had enough
It's giving more when you feel like giving up
And this is kinda what we do. We keep hanging in there for the sake of our drug-addicted kid. We do realize that it is not about us. It is about us supporting them. It is about us doing what is necessary for the benefit of our child’s recovery, regardless of our needs. It is about us allowing our teenager to proceed into recovery so that they can begin a new life, where they can start to realize new dreams
And our teenager is struggling with what they have lost. Our teenager must come to terms with this, for they have lost their teen years and all the events of those years. Our child gave them to drugs. And this really does hurt them more than it hurts us. So we must hang in there when our heart has had enough.
We must also trust that our drug-addicted teenager will emerge as an adult in drug recovery when we feel like giving up all hope. We must trust in something, in order to let go of our teenager, so they can let go of their teen years; To begin to come to terms with what they have lost, and begin to heal; to gain strength; to move into adulthood and into drug recovery.
Now we must look to the future and support our children in their recovery. I am convinced that true recovery does not start until they assume responsibility for it themselves. And we as their parents must allow them the freedom to accept this responsibility. We must give them the freedom that they need to pull themselves up from the ashes of their teen years and move forward as an adult
However, this is just too hard. We still want to be there for them, to give them guidance and direct their recovery. But the reality is, we need this more for ourselves, than any other reality that we are truly effective in guiding their recovery.
There have been many times when I did not understand the actions of my son’s counselors when he was in placement, and I felt the need to intervene. Surely these people do not know what they are doing! However, I always stopped myself and asked the question, “Whatever I did, Did it ever work?” And regardless of how much I want to believe that I really did know what was best for my son, the answer to this question was always a resonating, “No!”
Since he started his drug use at the age of 13 until he was forced into placement by the courts at 17; what I was doing was not working. In fact, it helped the addiction process to continue. And if I feel guilty about anything today, it is the length of time it took for me to realize that I was not effective in dealing with my son’s addiction. And the longer I believed that I was, the further he sank into this pit of heroin. Maybe if I acted sooner, maybe if I didn’t wait so long, maybe if I had listened earlier, maybe his addiction would not have developed as deep as it did.
That is a regret that haunts me every day. My so-called guidance that I inflicted upon my son was really enabling his addiction, because I was there to save him from the harsh reality of recovery. I didn’t understand that the road into and through recovery is brutal. Nor did I understand how necessary it is for an addict to walk this road into order to reach the other side. And I certainly didn’t understand the actions that were necessary to force him to the bottom of this road, and most of all; I didn’t want to believe that it had to be me that brought this bottom to him. I ran from that responsibility for years; shifted it to others, while I continued to believe that he would ‘see-the-light’ and calmly accept recovery. But these demons of addiction that occupy our children; These demons never seek recovery. And as long as we appease them, these demons will continue to stay and play.
So we are not wiser than our children’s drug counselors, or wiser than the recovering addicts in NA. We are not wiser than all the experts that are addressing our child’s drug issues. They can help our children more than we can.
So, we must accept the fact that there will always be a piece of our child’s life where we do not fit, because we are not a drug addict and we will never understand that piece of their lives. We must let go and allow them to move on. We must allow them the space to be able to assume responsibility for their own recovery and allow them to seek advice of others, and it may not be us. And even more so, we may not be involved and we may never know.
End of Part 4 - Come Back Next week for Part 5
A brief preview from next week:
“And I tried, to the exclusion of my marriage, my daughter, my career, my friends, and everything else around until the exclusions included my health. But I could not fix this. … And the more I tried to fix it the more we all sank into the co-dependency of manipulation and enabling. “
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Transfer of Power from PO to Parent
Posted by:Lloyd Woodward--Sunday, February 22, 2009
Is it possible for the Parent to benefit from the power that the PO has? Can the parent actually become more powerful by allying themselves with the PO? It may sound like a harebrained question at first, but to become more powerful as a parent keep the following tenets in mind:
1. Keep no secrets with your teen regarding his success following his Conditions of Probation. Sometimes it seems like the right thing to say, "if you do that again, I'm telling your Probation Officer." However, this implies that you will keep some things secret. Secrets keep us sick.
When your teen accuses you like this: "I tired of you threatening me with my PO!" reply "I talk to your PO all the time! Do you expect me to keep things secret from him? I won't do that. I am not here to keep secrets for you."
2. Have frequent and regular contacts with your teen's Probation Officer and /or attend Parent Survival Skills Training regularly, which is sponsored by Juvenile Probation. Make sure your teen knows that you have regular contact with Probation.
3. Play an active role in your teen's hearings. It is good for your teen to see that you stand up in Court, tell the truth, and if appropriate ask that the Court hold your teen accountable.
4. Take an active role in disciplining your teen. Don't leave it up to the Probation Department unless it is a very serious infraction and the consequences are automatic. Take the lead. Hold your teen accountable without the PO's help when possible, but always report openly to the PO about what has occurred. Suggest discipline (such as a week-end in the sanction unit) that you think will work and don't be afraid to ask the PO to be stricter than he planned to be. If your teen sees that you are using the Probation Officer as a tool he will glimpse that you are the agent of power, and the power will flow from the PO to you. On the other hand, taking a passive role in discipline insures that only the PO will receive the power and not the parent. Practice phrases such as, "I spoke with your PO, and he agrees with me that we need to blah blah blah."
As we say in group: If you want the power take the blame: if you take the blame you get the credit.
In other words, be the bad guy. Don't try to make the PO out to be the bad guy and you have no influence. You do have influence, that is to say that you do have power. Don't deny that you have power.
