What kids really want

              One of my favorite things we talked about on the topic of parenting was Michael Popkin’s explanation of “Mistaken Approaches”. Michael Popkins is the founder of a program called Active Parenting that helps educate parents about raising their children. Popkins points out that there are many needs a child has, however they themselves do not always even recognize these needs. When we as parents do not recognize these needs as well our children could act in ways they don’t intend to be harmful in order to meet those needs. For example every child and teenager needs physical contact and a feeling of belonging. Teens sometimes may act like they don’t need this, but they desire it more than they realize. When these needs are not met children often act out in ways that parents tend to label as “attention seeking”. This is what Popkins would call a “mistaken approach”. Instead of writing off these acts as attention seeking he would encourage parents to recognize the unmet need and fill it. In this case providing physical contact and giving the child opportunities to feel like they belong would help fill that need. Many of these misunderstandings are where conflicts arise between parent and child. As we step back and think of our child’s needs we can then better understand why they act the way they do. In effect we can better parent according to those needs.