In my years as a family therapist, 1 approach worked consistently to get angry and defiant little kids to be loving and obedient:
10-minute sessions EVERY DAY with each child where the parent just asked questions, paid attention, and showed them love.
Stopped so many behaviors.
Some played Go-Fish, some colored pictures, just just sat together. No screens. 10, literally timed on a countdown clock they could both see. Questions and questions with no advice or directions or scolding. Just interviewing with interest as if the parent cared about their child
10 minutes a day with each child turned things around even for families with older kids who were starting to use physical violence against adults to express their anger.
Being treated like they were loved changed their entire behavior pattern. Imagine that.
If you want your kids to listen to you, they have to feel loved and they need to know you’re interested in them. That gives them something to lose if they act badly. Kids naturally want to please their parents but many feel like it’s impossible so they go the opposite way.
Give your kids love and be interested in them and suddenly they’ve got something to lose if they act badly. You don’t have to ground them or scream at them or spank them. Defiant kids will use those punishments as fuel.
But your disappointment is way more powerful, if attached.
It all comes back to attachment. If your kids feel unworthy of your love and believe you don’t even like them, they won’t listen. They have a vested interest in forcing you to give them attention instead. And they’ll convince themselves they don’t need your love.
Give your kids clear love and focused attention. Develop their attachment to you. Natural processes will kick in and they will fear losing their connection to you. So they’ll fear displeasing you. That becomes enough.
Then you love them unconditionally, but attention is earned.
Attention becomes their currency. And if they can get that attention for good behavior, they’ll do it.
But you have to make yourself pay attention to good behavior.
You get out of your relationship with your kids what you invest in it. So invest smarter. Pay more attention.
Paying attention to your kids improves their mental health.
If you want to give them a healthy future:
✅Put your phone down
✅Make eye contact
✅Ask questions
✅And listen with interest
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Why are an estimated 40% of men neurochemically incapable of feeling loved?
Something about modern life is activating a specific survival adaptation that turns off men's ability to experience the neurochemical markers for feeling loved by others.
Here's what's happening...
Men have the ability to shift their brain chemistry to respond to hard times and bad environments. This shift happens in childhood based on experiences that shape how you perceive the world to function.
Hard and lonely childhood can lead to a different brain.
Here's how...
If no one gave you the bonding hormone OXYTOCIN in childhood, or if your stress and cortisol levels were too high and they BLOCKED the receptor sites for oxytocin, and if others seemed either inconsistent, unreliable, controlling, or negligent, your brain entered a new pathway...
Men, if you don't understand your wife's desires, she's never going to desire you.
Here's what you need to know to drive her libido through the roof:
Even most women don't understand how their own sex drive works. They can make vague statements about feeling "safe" and "close to you" but they can't measure what that means or give a clear pattern to follow.
Most men get lost here.
This is what you need to know:
1) Safety
This comes down to having basic needs covered including
-Shelter
-Food
-Protection from violence
-Protection from abandonment
-Stability and predictability
Those last 2 might sound surprising, but women need their environment (including you) to be predictable because-
Too many men live in quiet desperation, cohabiting like roommates with a wife who grows more angry and critical as time passes.
Facing a deteriorating relationship with your spouse can feel like a never-ending battle. It can even feel hopeless.
Here's how to fix it:🧵
Most husbands around the world share a common goal: to mend their relationship and rekindle the warmth and affection that once was.
Yet, no matter how hard they try to break through their wife's armor, their efforts seem only to add fuel to the fire of blame.
This is because...
The root often lies in a deep-seated incompatibility in how the two face challenges and resolve conflict, an incompatibility that went unnoticed early on.
There IS an answer. And it's not what you'd expect.
Most single men today have NO CLUE how to answer this question. So I'm going to make this simple for any man looking to attract a loyal and passionate woman.
Here's what women want from you: 🧵
In my clinical experience, women want FOUR THINGS from men. My 15 years of experience in Psychology as a therapist/coach as well as my 15 years of happy marriage prove they're true.
When I speak with women in private, these 4 things are what they reveal they NEED for attraction.
1) Consistency.
Sounds boring? Far from it. Women put moral character at the top of the list, and sticking to that moral character with consistency.
They need to be able to predict how you'll act under stress. Will you be weak and fall apart? Or stay firm as a man?
The wife feels lonely and sad, but the husband has no idea why. They love each other but don't like each other anymore.
This is by far the most common married couple who comes to me for help. And there's a specific reason this is happening.
Here's the reason:
There's a hidden relationship dynamic playing out in about 50% of adults:
Growing up in families that didn't teach the vital skills needed to maintain a functioning romance has led to generations of adults who can't maintain a marriage and make it thrive.
Here's why:
You learn skills by seeing someone else using them or by having someone transmit them to you through experience.
In other words, if your parents didn't have a thriving marriage or raise you to form intentional bonds, how will you know what to do?
Approximately 33% of lottery winners go bankrupt within 5 years.
39% of first marriages end in divorce.
Both are a skill issue. Even if you get what you hope for, in this case a loving partner, you need skills to make things work.
Here are the you need to keep romance alive:
1. Conflict resolution.
In a recent survey of divorced individuals, 43% said they found it impossible to solve problems with their partner.
Conflict resolution is a set of skills you SHOULD learn as a child based on how your parents negotiate with you.
Or you MUST learn now.
2. Communication skills.
65% of divorced individuals also cited poor communication in general as the main factor that led to everything else breaking down (including affairs - more on those in a moment)
But men and women communicate differently, and for different reasons...