Disruptive Home Behaviors
All major child
raising problems have minor beginnings. It’s like never
doing any minor repairs on your home. The minor problems
can be overlooked until your house begins to fall down – major
problem. Not fixing a leaky pipe until it rots the wall – major
problem. Listening to your kids whine just a little each
day about something, or watching them not always doing their
best job, or some days not getting their work done at all,
until one day all these minor behaviors explode into outright
refusal to cooperate – major problem. The difference
between their behaviors and what they need or want begin
to grow apart (Thomas, Becker, & Armstrong, 1968).
How do kids become
uninspired and unhappy? Most people wait for major problems
to happen before they’re willing to change. Children
with problems never have the time to get what they want because
they always have problems. After a while they quit trying.
They just shrink their wants to match what they’re
getting. They gradually become unhappy and uninspired. Kids
become uninspired and unhappy not because they don’t
have what they want, but because they don’t know how
to get from where they are to what they want (Skinner, 1971).
Life is merely a
game. It’s not a question of whether you want to play;
it’s a question of do you want to win. The problem
is that most people know what they want to win but they don’t
know how to play the game to get there. Their ignorance forces
them to live in daily discouragement. Once they’re
discouraged, bingo, the Pike Syndrome catches another fish
before they even start the game.
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