Seeing As Your Shoes Are Soon to be on Fire

Nothing is a bigger burden on children than the unlived life of the parent.

—Carl Jung

Dating couples should share their views and hopes about how they imagine their married life together.

Reward the positive. Always. Way more than you think is necessary. No one ever got mad about getting too many gold stars.

The key to it is to not just practice extinction alone. You have to teach a positive replacement behavior.

Besides ignoring, though, you also need to have a positive replacement behavior.

Whenever she starts engaging in an undesirable behavior, you need to extinguish the behavior. So what you do is the opposite of what she wants. Terminate the conversation—take away your attention.

What you need to do, recognizing that what she wants is for you to pay attention and interact with her, is to use what is called “extinction.” Basically “planned ignoring.”

All I really know for sure is that, somewhere between combat boots and Tod’s, a moment will arrive in which I find my feet firmly planted in a version of my own mother’s shoes.
Because I am a mother now.
And so the cycle goes.

What about yourself would you most want your offspring to admire while they’re more likely to harbor resistance?

Some things don’t ever change, but the way we deal with them can.