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Conflict resolution and rules for fighting fair

October 24, 2008 By Megan 3 Comments

Anger and arguing by Col6085 at stock xchngEverybody fights. Conflict is a normal part of growth. It is how the conflict is dealt with that makes the difference. Bad behaviour, like hitting or abuse (verbal abuse is just as bad), is unacceptable. I cannot count how many times children have been dragged into my child therapy room for learning conflict resolution. Parents…kids learn through modelling. The sooner YOU model conflict resolution, the quicker you can save your dollars on all that child therapy.

Do you know the Rules for fighting fair? Not many people do. It is not a trade secret to we counsellors and I am always happy to share my tools of the trade (Professionals, have you seen what’s available on our Worker Resources page?).

Conflict gets things done. Conflict changes things. Conflict is a healthy part of adult life and coping. Conflict is a verb, not just a noun. Conflict as a verb describes the doing; the way an uncomfortable situation is dealt with.  When conflict is handled in immature tantrum throwing ways, it is a fight. When conflict is handled in a systematic and decisive way using clear communication and emotional inteligence, it is a sign that two or more adults are present.

As much as I adore kids, hanging out with like minded adults gives me great pleasure. I pick an adult by the way they handle conflict. Goodness, when I have interviewed for staff, conflict resolution is always weighted heavily on my interview scoring system. Why? I value emotional intelligence and I expect it in people that I work and live with.

Are you an adult, or are you a co dependent child adult? Welcome conflict and handle it according to the Rules for fighting fair.

PS: I am not confessing to be perfect here. I have thrown a tantrum or two in my adult years. Although I feel ashamed to act like a child that knows no better, I also know that I can change my behaviour, my thoughts and my actions because I am in control of myself and I can regain control when I lose it. I value change and I value being a non violent adult.

These may be helpful for your new emotionally intelligent way of being:

Anger Volcano
Children learn the cycle of violence from our parenting

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Filed Under: Blog, Parenting Tagged With: ,

Megan’s book for sale on site

October 23, 2008 By Megan 2 Comments

Bitss of Carmale Marmalade on Toast front coverBitss of Caramel Marmalade on Toast is now again available on this site. Just in time for Christmas, buy a children’s chapter book and allow your child to get deliciously lost in some child safety focused bibliotherapy.

Suitable for ages 8+ (including adults), Bitss of Caramel Marmalade on Toast is great for getting boys to read. Full of adventure, Aussie toilet humour (you should see how Marmalade pees!) and strange Australian plants and animals, it is a sheer delight to travel the route of power with Bitssy, Marmalade and Caramel.

This is what the back cover says:

Bitssy is too scared to go outside because the Caramel monster will murder her family. On her first bold venture into the world out front, the monster seizes Bitssy and a dreadful end-of-the-line war erupts. Defeated, and in her final heartbreaking moments, Bitssy heeds a haunting echo to take her body wherever she wants without fear of being hurt. Drawing heavily upon her inborn wildness, Bitssy calls up a deep forgotten power and battles like her wise Dingo ancestors would have done. Not impressed, Caramel tries to unsuccessfully trick Bitssy’s family into keeping her trapped. When Bitssy frees herself from the jaws of deception and the coat of trickery, it is Caramel who becomes jarred by her own sour sugar coating and is carted away. Bitssy and her dying mother, finally sample a different flavour: the sweet life that was fed to them by Bitss of Caramel Marmalade on Toast.

Are you on the Imaginif mail list?

Want Megan to pen a personal note? What will she write for you?

Bitss of Caramel Marmalade on Toast is also available through St Luke’s Innovative Resources for $16.50:

Through the character of Bitssy, a young dingo pup, protective behaviour therapist, Megan Bayliss captures every child’s sense of playfulness, inquisitiveness and fear while delivering vital messages about body safety and a solution-focused approach to Bitssy’s issues.

Special offer for this week only (ends 5 PM Sunday 26.10.08, Australian time).

Link to Imaginif and get a FREE copy of Bitss of Caramel Marmalade on Toast.

Leave me a comment if you have linked…just in case trackbacks don’t work. This offer is only available to new links, not existing links.

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Filed Under: Blog, Protective Behaviours: BITSS model Tagged With: ,

Duracell powers parents for child safety

October 23, 2008 By Megan Leave a Comment

Power of Parents in keeping kids safeChild Protection is a community responsibility. Every parent has the power to assist in keeping their children safe. Child Safety is not the job of the government who often only intervene AFTER harm has occurred. You have the power to keep your kids safe. You have the power to source the knowledge to keep your kids safe.

Imaginif takes child safety to a community level and encourages everyone to develop a child safety bias. So too does Duracell and the  National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). Thank goodness Duracell is providing the power to keep us all going!

The following email invitation has just come in from the brand marketers tasked with  powering an American child safety community focused program: the Power of Parents.

Hi Megan,

My name is Brian, and we are working with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and Duracell; to promote child safety awareness for teachers, parents and guardians. I thought since your site is read and valued by influencers like yourself, you would like to hear more about the Power of Parents child safety program.

NCMEC and Duracell are partnering for the third consecutive year through the Power of Parents child safety program to arm families with important new information about school year safety.

If you’re interested, we would like to invite you to participate in a phone conference with the National Safety Director of NCMEC, and address any questions either you or your readers might have about child safety concerns. We hope that you will share your views and opinions about this program with your readers through your site, and share with them some of the answers to their questions.

To learn more about the Power of Parents campaign, please be sure to visit http://www.rocketxl.com/duracell/powerofparents/assets/ .

Space is limited, so please let me know if you’re interested and would like to participate in the conference call. We would love to have your voice included, and hope that your readers will volunteer questions that you can address as well.

Thanks and take care,

Brian

Rocket XL

www.rocketxl.com

Who has questions they would like to put forward to the National Safety Director of NCMEC?  Because of time zones (I’m in Australia) I possibly will not attend the conference but I am more than happy to submit reader questions via email to Brain.

Visit the Power of Parents website.

Download the Power of Parents Child Safety handbook (this is a worthwhile booklet that contains age appropriate child safety discussion and protection tips. It focuses on abduction and missing children but is supportive of instilling protective behaviour knowledge into all homes because statistics support that abducted children are overwhelmingly taken by someone they know).

Team the above Power of Parents Child Safety Handbook knowledge with the BITSS games and activities set out in Parent Sense, Imaginif’s FREE protective behaviour tutorial for parents.

Parents are powerful. Lets use our power for good. And Duracell….GREAT corporate social responsibility here. Thanks for sharing your power.

Duracell, powering parents for child safetyNational Center for Missing and Exploited Children

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How to change in two easy steps

October 22, 2008 By Megan 8 Comments

Traffic sign (Reduce Speed) by sundstrom at stock.xchngSick of the way you act, react, live your life? Want to change something in yourself but not sure where to start? Cannot afford a therapist because what would they know anyway? I’ve heard all the excuses for not changing. So don’t change, stay the same and stop the whinging…now that would be a change!

Change is only hard because we are sucked into doing the same thing, the same way all the time. If you can change your clothes, your furniture arrangements, your patio garden or even the speed of your driving in different zones, then you can change yourself.

Try these two therapeutic exercises as a way of preparing and being comfortable with impending behavioural and psychological change:

  1. Do something different. Nothing big mind you, because you will set yourself up for failure. Change the way you brush your hair (upside down perhaps), change the hand you brush your teeth with, sleep on the opposite side of the bed…do anything regular in an irregular way for your daily habits. If you can continue the change for a week, just seven days, then you are ready and committed to changing your behaviours and mindset. One change brings about other change. Watch yourself, go easy, because if you can do this for a week, you are already on fire and big things are about to happen to you.
  2. Imagine someone that you greatly admire standing in front of you. What is it that you admire about them: Their strength, personal power, assurance, ability to clearly articulate? Visualise yourself stepping into them. What’s it like to be them. Become mindful of how your body stance would change if you were them. Step out.  Step back in again and feel their strength, personal power, assurance, confidence in clearly articulating their position. Do you like it? Take a little of them with you then when you step out. They won’t mind because they don’t own the patent on emotions, thoughts or behaviours; emotions, thoughts and behaviours are there to share in beneficial ways. Continue to do this exercise for as long as you need to. As you progress in your feelings of worth and you see yourself change, you may want to change the person you visualise so that you develop different behavioural and psychological traits.

It takes approximately 1000 determined attempts for an old behaviour to be gone: smoking for example (I’m an ex smoker – go me!). Likewise, it takes approximately 1000 attempts for a new replacement behaviour to become habitual. You know the old addage that practice makes perfect….it’s actually true of behavioural, emotional and psychological change too. Practice the above two steps toward change and you are already taking your 1000 steps toward a different you.

Here’s an extra tip to help you change yourself: If you choose to get rid of a particular thought pattern (or feeling, like, resentment or bitterness) that is playing in your head like a scratched CD, replace it with a different, more positive, thought (or feeling, like joy or peace). Once again, you must be persistent and force yourself to REMEMBER that you have chosen to change. For example, I want to stop thinking that I will never get rid of my debt level; every time I find myself stuck in that bad thought rut, I think of something positive, something that brings me joy…I will change my mind channel and think of how FANTASTIC and STRONG I felt when my previous marriage’s joint debts were paid out.

Winners change…losers stay the same. Choice is yours and you are the only one who can make the change happen.  It is not the responsibility of anyone but you.

This article is written for someone special who wants to change. I know they would love comments about how you have made change happen in your life. What worked for you? How did you change yourself?

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Filed Under: Blog, Motivation Tagged With: ,

Child protection is in poverty

October 21, 2008 By Megan 3 Comments

“Mothers make the World Go Round” Copyright Jean Burman 2008Child protection is a choice. Are you making wise, and rich, choices?

Part of the definition of poverty is the inability to make choices. The more focused we remain on financial definitions and constructs of patriarchy, the more people, particularly women and children, become impoverished. I choose to keep kids safe. I choose NOT to be impoverished in child protection matters.

The recent Blog Action DAY Against Poverty produced a record breaking myriad of excellent and though provoking posts on ending world and local poverty. I agree that financial poverty needs to end and that there needs to be sufficient fiscal contributions for ALL people to live a life where their basic human needs are met. However, I also yearn for a world where ALL people are given choices in keeping their kids safe. When starved in the third world or surviving domestic violence and daily life in the first world, child protection choices get forgotten.

Children matter and children remember how parents parent.  What will your babies remember about you?

Mothers in the third world look to us in the first world and aspire to have lives like ours. They yearn to be able to live like we do, wear what we do, raise our kids the way we do.  When they see us feeding our babies out of bottles, they think that is what is best for their babies too. When they see us dress in the trendiest clothes and give our kids every technological gadget on the market, they think that is what being a good parent is. When they see us invest heavily in our children’s academic education and financial security they stop watching us because we are so far removed from their lives of mere survival. They wrongly think that are failures and they begin to give up all hope because they cannot make choices the way we do.

This makes me furious at us. This makes me want to sob and to shake us all. So many of us also invest heavily in emotional intelligence, empathy and care as a value. These are things that do not cost money yet produce triple bottom line outcomes. But, too many of us do it privately and in isolation: in places where other impoverished parents cannot see what we are doing. Too many of us are scared by what child protection means (“Does it mean I am being a bad parent?” is a common, yet totally wrong, fear.).

Too many of us are scared by the ability to make our own choices or to stand up and publicly say that child protection, good parenting, is the top of our value list. Too many of us have the inability to make choices around child protection because we are impoverished by a system that takes away our control. Too many of us are…stupid, lazy and fixated on financial goals.

When third world mothers see us making poor child protection choices, they may well follow suit. Is this what we collectively want? Throwing money and food at these parents will not help child protection beyond survival level. Modelling a care model; care for everyone, including children, is a non financial way of making maximum impact on reversing the impoverished nature of an inability to make choices.

Being an out of control parent is so much easier that being a good parent. But, out of control often reflects disempowerment and an inability to make choices. I am in control, I am rich and I care. I choose to give money because money buys basic necessities but I also choose to give service, knowledge and consistent modelling of child protection at a grass roots level.

Is child protection in poverty in your home or do you make child protection choices? What will you do today to model child protection to impoverished parents everywhere? Here’s a few ideas to get you considering child protection in a poverty framework:

What is child protection?

Parent Sense: The BITSS model of Protective Behaviours

Coffee, Tea and Chocolate for Child Protection

How do you display your bottom line on protecting children.

Gorgeous post card painting is from talented Cairns artist and mother, Jean Burman. Her post and painting for Blog Action Day: We are sometimes rich in a way that is hard to measure.
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