Read Life Code: The New Rules for Winning in the Real World Online
Authors: Phil McGraw
Life Code: The New Rules for Winning in the Real World (25 page)
As I said in Strategic Step 3, do your homework. Compile facts so it is not just your child’s word against the bully’s. That might include pictures of bruises or scratches, damaged or destroyed personal property, text messages or email chains, witness statements, and so on. Present the evidence and make your case, all framed as a request for help with an appreciative tone for an overworked and underpaid staff. Ask how you can help from your end. Be prepared for a broad range of responses. Some will just be “all over it,” while others will not. Some will say that since they don’t see it and much of it happens “off campus,” they can’t really help. If that is the response, let them know, again in the most respectful tone, that you believe it is the school’s duty to provide a safe learning environment, free from fear and intimidation. Let them know, in no uncertain terms, that you are prepared to take the issue to whatever level required to get an effective intervention—whether that means the school board, State Department of Education, or local police—or that you are prepared to hire an attorney, but that you will not accept “It’s not my problem” as an answer. Nonhysterical parents armed with objective evidence have a great deal of credibility, and folks will quickly realize that you will not be “dismissed” with excuses or promises without action.
Aside from serious injury or debilitating disease, I think the bane of contemporary parents would have to be bullies.
So, how am I doing in negotiating with you about becoming an active negotiator? I hope I am making headway, because I don’t want you to be the only one who doesn’t “get it.” I don’t want you to keep accepting what life deals up rather than working to get what you want, need, and deserve. You are already a negotiator, because you simply can’t live in this world and not negotiate. I just want you to be a purposeful, skilled, and committed participant in the game. Since it is happening anyway, you might as well get really good at it! I want you to understand the
new
rules and apply them to the world you live in, the
real
world, and learning to effectively negotiate means you can walk away from the table as a winner every time.
Parenting in the Real World
“We may not be able to prepare the future for our children, but we can at least prepare our children for the future.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt
Now it’s time to talk about how the new “Life Code” applies not only to you, but also to your family and your role as a parent.
I put this chapter at the end of the book because I first needed time to show you that you do, in fact,
need
a new “Life Code” to survive and thrive in the real world of today. Your children were born into a very different world from the one you were born into and grew up in. And just as you needed an “urgent awareness” to change your understanding of how this new world affects you, now you have to learn how it affects your children and your ability to protect and nurture them. You had to gain some new insights about today’s real world before you could share them with your children and change how you go about preparing them to live independently.
Now that you know about the “Evil Eight,” the “Nefarious 15,” and the “Sweet 16,” you ideally have different points of view, a different awareness, different insights, and different understandings of the real world and what your child is going to have to deal with than you did when you started this book. Every one of these lessons can be conveyed to your children in age-appropriate ways.
When the game changes, so do the rules, and—boy, oh boy—has the game changed for your children! That means your challenges and responsibilities as a parent have changed, so your tactics, including what you have to do to prepare them to survive and succeed, have to change as well.
When the game changes, so do the rules, and—boy, oh boy—has the game changed for your children!
Otherwise, as Albert Einstein said, you’ll be trying to “solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” The lessons you were taught by your parents to prepare you to exist safely in this world are no longer sufficient.
To begin with, the family paradigm has changed radically. When I grew up, the typical family was still a working dad, a stay-at-home mom, and two or three children in a neighborhood full of intact families. Today, the divorce rate is around 40 percent, and children living with a single parent or in a blended family are common. And this creates a whole new environment of risk for children.
Did you know that, compared to a child living in what researchers refer to as an intact family:
A child with a biological mother who lives alone is
14 times more likely to suffer abuse
.
A child with a biological father who lives alone is
20 times more likely to suffer abuse
.
A child with biological parents who are cohabitating but not married is
20 times more likely to suffer abuse
.
And, most shocking of all:
A child with a biological mother who is living with a man who is not the child’s father is
33 times more likely to suffer abuse
.
2
2
Source: Dreamcatchers for Abused Children.
When I’ve presented these statistics to audiences on my show, the reaction is incredulity. But there’s more:
Children living in households with unrelated adults are nearly
50 times as likely to die of inflicted injuries
as children living with two biological parents.
3
3
Source:
Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics
, 2005.
Children of single parents had 77 percent greater risk of being harmed by physical abuse than children living with both parents.
4
4
Source: National Incidence Study.
These are statistics you probably haven’t heard, and they are jaw-dropping. And this information isn’t from some radical group with an agenda that’s trying to make single parents look bad. They’re facts from sources like the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Along with the changes in family structure, the “outside world” has changed. There was a time when people lived in neighborhoods, and the kids you played with were the next-door kids. And if a strange person showed up on the streets, he stuck out like a sore thumb. I grew up in a neighborhood in Oklahoma City where we could play under the streetlight until midnight in the summer because our parents knew we were just three doors away with the other kids, playing “kick the can” and stepping on crickets.
But it’s completely different today. A whole corridor of risk for your children has opened up that wasn’t even on the map when you were their age. We are a much more transient society. Kids don’t necessarily go to the local school; they go to private schools or to public magnet schools in different districts. Parents may be divorced, so their kids live in two different neighborhoods, where they’re not as well known. Because of all this, an interloper doesn’t stick out as much anymore.
And people who mean harm to our children have much more access to them now than they used to. Bullies used to attack their victims on the playground, in the locker room, or on the school bus. But now, even if you take your children out of a school because they aren’t safe there and send them to a school in a different neighborhood, bullies can follow your children home—through social networking sites, email, instant messaging, and Twitter. And all that name-calling and harassment will follow your children to their new school.
You may think your children are in their bedrooms doing homework, when, in fact, bullies are brutalizing them on the Internet. You may think your children are just playing video games, but if you’re anything like I was until just recently, you aren’t savvy enough to know that those game controllers they’re holding in their hands can get them on the Internet just as easily as their laptops can.
One episode of
Dr. Phil
featured an extreme version of this kind of cyber-bullying. A woman made national news when she allegedly tormented a 7-year-old girl dying of Huntington’s disease. The woman reportedly posted on Facebook photographs she had doctored to show the face of the girl, superimposed on a skull and crossbones, and the girl’s mother, who died in 2009, embraced by the Grim Reaper. She reportedly said she made the pictures of the girl and her mother because of a grudge that had gotten blown out of proportion, but she now regrets the whole dispute with her neighbor.
A whole corridor of risk for your children has opened up that wasn’t even on the map when you were their age.
What makes someone a bully? Are some children genetically predisposed to be a “bad seed,” or are we raising a nation of bullies? More and more “girl fight” videos are being posted online. One that I saw featured four girls attacking a 12-year-old-girl for about three minutes until some neighborhood boys broke it up. What’s most shocking is that these girls—all between 12 and 13 years old—supposedly weren’t enemies; they were supposed to be friends! The footage was shot the day after a slumber party where they had all been hanging out together. Or were they so sinister that it was all a setup to lure the victim to the beating? Neither is a very encouraging option.
On another episode of
Dr. Phil
, I spoke to the parents of a boy who received an obscene tattoo on his buttocks from his bullies. The bully “ringleader,” who was convicted and recently sent to prison, wanted to apologize to his victim. But he and his mother also wanted to “set the record straight.” They both said that the victim
wanted
the tattoo! As I’ve said on my show many times, no matter how flat you make a pancake, it still has two sides. But in such cases as these, neither side makes me feel better about putting a child out there without serious forethought and preparation.
Are some children genetically predisposed to be a “bad seed,” or are we raising a nation of bullies?
So, how do we, as parents, protect our children in this rapidly changing and threatening world? I’ve always said that the word “parent” is both a noun and a verb. Our job as parents is, at least in part, to prepare our children for the next level of life. First, when they’re in diapers and can’t walk or crawl, they’re totally dependent on us, and all we’re doing is just helping them survive. We’re teaching them to eat and drink. Then, we have to start socializing them to communicate and interact and follow instructions. We prepare them to get along with other children in kindergarten and grade school. Eventually, we help them go out into the world and negotiate the hazardous terrain.
But these days, our kids—
your
kids—are exposed to complex, intimate, adult relationships when they’re only 12 or 13 years old. Worse still, they start entering into very grown-up relationships well beyond their level of maturity—and that’s a real problem. Too often, kids are thrown into stages and phases of life without any preparation whatsoever. It doesn’t occur to a teenage girl, for example, that she might be in a chat room or on Facebook talking to a 45-year-old registered sex offender who is “grooming” her, all the while pretending to be a teenager. Your children have the knowledge but not the
wisdom
to navigate the Web. They might know which buttons to push, but they don’t know when they’re being played.
And even in the “real world” instead of online, we’re not the only adults in our children’s lives. Since we will never be the only voice in our child’s ear, we need to make absolutely certain that we are the
best
voice in their ear. Here is a hugely important question that I want you to ask yourself right now: What do you really know about the adults who you turn your children over to? Do you know what kind of upbringing your children’s teachers had? How about their coaches? Scout leaders? Sunday school teachers or clergy? If that sounds blasphemous to you, it is not. We’re not talking about God here; we’re talking about the people you trust your children with.
Since we will never be the only voice in our child’s ear, we need to make absolutely certain that we are the best voice in their ear.
Remember when I said I should’ve written this book a long time ago? This is one of the main reasons: I just wonder how many children would have been protected if their parents had read this book, or one like it. I wonder how many parents within the Catholic Church or those putting their children in football camps with Jerry Sandusky at Penn State University would have asked more questions or done more background checks if they had had this conversation and had been stimulated to find answers to this question: How much do you know about the people you are turning your children over to?
We have to question everything we have been taught. If it stands up to the challenge, then fine, go ahead and hang on to the thought, value, or belief. But if it doesn’t withstand the challenge, then don’t hesitate to abandon that old way of thinking. For example, parents typically tell their children to “mind” the adults in their life. “Don’t talk back, and do what you are told.”
Are you kidding me!? What are we thinking? This is truly a higher form of insanity. If you tell your child to “mind the adults” in their life, you could be feeding them to the lions. Ninety-plus percent of child molesters are known to the child! Only about 10 percent of all molestation is a product of “stranger danger.” It’s sad but true that the people we need to watch the closest are the ones in the best position to hurt us if they go rogue. So, the best protection you can offer your children is to teach them to self-protect. Instead of telling them to “mind the adults” and “do what you are told,” you should be teaching them to listen to their instincts and telling them to pay attention to any “funny feeling” they have. This goes back to what I said to you earlier about rejecting the idea of it being appropriate to give people the benefit of the doubt. This is just another example of why that is a really bad and outdated idea.
