Growing Great Relationships

This is an example of a parent making her needs known so as to change the status quo in the life of a family. “I must tell all of you how I feel lately.  I am unhappy and frustrated in my role as a mother.  The way we communicate with each other, with frequent arguments and threats, is personally very upsetting.  I don’t feel our love, caring and support for each other coming through.  I would like to see this family as place where we all feel connected to each other in a close and positive way.  I see our family as a kind of sanctuary from the hardships of life and a place to get the energy to face the challenges life presents.  I am committed to doing what is necessary to work with you to make this happen.  How about it?”

It is safe to say that implementing Family Centered Parenting will require persistence and patience but that the rewards will far outweigh the effort needed to bring about change.  Clearly, those families with relatively young children will have an easier time because the status quo is not yet entrenched.  Logically, therefore, families with teenagers will likely experience the greatest resistance to change.  In these families patterns and habits are well established.  On the other hand, older children do have additional life experiences to bring to the table.  Furthermore, the conflicts surrounding the management of teenagers in of itself are often of sufficient magnitude to alter the status quo.  This creates the opportunity for change and the creation of new systems within the family.

The status quo can evolve into a pattern of inconsistent fulfillment of responsibilities, parental disapproval, punishment and no change in the overall pattern. Disrupting the status quo by adopting Family Centered Parenting practices will require an initial investment of extra time and energy by parents. Remember that punishment is quicker. Therefore a child will most likely resist having to examine his behavior and to commit to a plan for change. As parents we often experience the dissatisfaction with the status quo before our children. We might have an image of a harmonious family in our minds, either as a result of our own growing up or an ideal we have set for ourselves. Our children might have never experienced or imagined this possibility. Their reality is the day to day life of the current family. Therefore, a parent will most likely be the proponent of change before the children. If this is the case, and it often is, there will be resistance and suspicion about implementing Family Centered Parenting.

Established habits and patterns of family life don’t change easily. According to needs theory, these behaviors are the best choices individuals have made to meet their needs at a given point in time. As we have discussed, these choices often have undesired consequences and are at the root of our negative emotions (anger, anxiety, depression). In other words, even if there is a lot of unpleasantness going on in the family, the status quo is an attempt to be need fulfilling. Therefore, things have to get pretty bad before individuals will be willing to give up current habits for new ones.

?By now it should be clear that adopting Family Centered Parenting practices will involve a number of transitions in the life of your family that in the short run won’t be painless. The age of the children and the degree a family is already implementing procedures similar to the Family Centered Parenting strategies will determine how smoothly the transition progresses. The long term prospect is that Family Centered Parenting will provide a family life that is positively need satisfying for all family members, increases the joy of raising children and also builds a foundation for creating and maintaining life-long relationships between parent and child.