Not all Power Rangers are the same.....

When my son Luke was just three years old, I became the Executive Director at the Family Nurturing Center of Florida. Although I considered myself to be a good Dad, I would soon find out that I had plenty to learn from the Nurturing Parenting curriculum utilized by our dedicated Parent Educators.

To receive my certificate as a recognized facilitator of the Nurturing parenting programs, I decided that I would learn from the foremost authority on the subject, Dr. Stephen Bavolek, who authored the program. Four days later I returned from Covington, Kentucky with the certificate in my hands and some incredible new information in my head. Like most folks, I was parenting my children utilizing beliefs and techniques from the old school way of parenting. The problem with that approach is that there is no "old school" where parenting was taught and studied; only the passed on information we received from our own parents and/or caretakers. Dr. Bavolek's program, on the other hand, is a thoroughly documented, studied, and validated approach to raising children that offers proven techniques and strategies to provide the best environment possible for your children to thrive. I was amazed at how little I knew about the negative emotional and developmental effects of many commonly utilized parenting techniques.

The first test to my new nurturing self came shortly after I returned from Kentucky. Luke came sprinting across the living room at home, hysterically crying so loud that I could barely understand him. "Red Ranger is broken! Red Ranger is broken!" Of course I knew he was referring to his Mighty Morphin Red Power Ranger and I noticed that his powerful right arm had been dismembered from the rest of his Ninja self. I was also able to see a trail of perfectly healthy Green, Yellow, and Blue Power Rangers with all their appendages attached.

Now before I accumulated my new nurturing parenting knowledge, my first response might have been to immediately redirect Luke to the undamaged trail of Power Rangers. "Look at those Power Rangers, they are OK!" Or I may have tried to quiet his crying with a gentle "shhhhh" or say "Don't cry, it's only a toy".

While these are certainly not abusive approaches to a crying child, the Nurturing Program offered me new techniques to handle this situation that are both effective in immediately comforting the child and healthier for his long term emotional growth and development. Two critical aspects of the Nurturing program taught me the importance of validating our children's emotions and understanding the perspective that the emotions are coming from. Empathy for others, especially your own children, is a value that must be practiced on a daily basis by all parents.

Why do we cry? Why are we afraid of the dark? I am not a psychologist, but I do know that that our emotions exist for a variety of reasons. Webster's defines emotion as a "psychic and physical reaction (as anger or fear) subjectively experienced as strong feeling and physiologically involving changes that prepare the body for immediate vigorous action."
Fear, for example, is an important emotion for our survival in dangerous situations. We are more likely the descendants of the cavemen that ran away from saber tooth tiger and other predators than of the cavemen who had no fear and were consequently eaten. While fear can be a life saver, crying when we are sad helps us deal with loss or disappointment.

I knew when Luke came to me that he was upset for a reason that was dramatically significant from his perspective. From watching the show, he knew that the Red Ranger was the inspirational leader of the Power Rangers, and that losing him would be devastating to the Power Ranger team. While redirecting Luke to the Power Rangers who were not broken is not a bad idea, I now knew that this would not work if I did not immediately recognize his feelings of loss and disappointment about the Red Ranger's right arm.

Empathy is commonly referred viewed as "walking in another one's shoes" but in this case, parents can learn by walking in their children's shoes to put this incident in their perspective. In Luke's evolving emotional world, the Red Ranger is almost human and the tragic loss of an arm will seem as significant to him as his injuries are to you when he trips and falls.

So when Luke ran to me, I said

"What happened? Oh no!!!!! Red Ranger lost his arm, that must make you sad!"

And then I waited for his response. He paused briefly from crying to tell me, "I'm sad".

"Do you think we can fix it?"

"I don't know"


The conversation continued and to my surprise the crying ended far sooner than if I had tried to "shhhh" him. My work with the Nurturing Program has helped me understand the role that emotions play in the development of a young person. We must realize that simply stopping the crying baby from crying does nothing to comfort the feelings that led to the sadness.

When Luke saw that I recognized how devastating this incident was to him, his emotions were validated and we were able to move on and play with the other Power Rangers. When parents dismiss the emotional reactions of their children as "silly" or "unnecessary" they may be laying the foundation for emotional insecurity as the child matures. I am not suggesting that parents have a full blown funeral service every time a child breaks a toy, but I think we should consider what the culmulative effect could be if we frequently dismiss or ignore a child when they are upset.

Understanding the value of emotions, however, does not mean giving our children everything they want because they cry. That is covered in another module of the Nurturing Parenting program that helps parents deal with temper tantrums and other more complex behavioral issues.

The bottom line is that when we talk to our kids when they are upset, we let them know that we care. When our kids know that it's ok to be mad, glad, or sad, they become comfortable with their emotions and ultimately will be better prepared to handle the adversity and/or prosperity that will inevitably come their way as they grow up. I realize that this same technique might not work for everybody. Simply put, there is no absolute perfect way to handle every situation as a parent, but the odds for success increase if we add to our parenting toolbox.

And whatever you do as a parent, learn the Power Ranger hierarchy and you might understand where you kid is coming from! All Power Rangers are not the same.

by Joe Nullet

What Mom and Dad did not Know

You hear it all the time. "Well, my mom and dad (hit, spanked, kicked my butt, fill in the blank) me and I turned out ok." The reality is that most parents will draw almost exclusively from their own parental experiences to form the basis for how they will raise their own children. While most of us were fortuneate to have loving, caring parents to emulate, many new parents today grew up in less than ideal situations and may continue a cycle of potentially abusive behavior towards their own children. The problem is that parenting for most people is a very personal issue and many systematically reject any advice on how to raise their own children. We will eat oat bran when the latest medical study tells us it will help us live longer, but if a research study indicates that certain parental behaviors may inhibit the emotional and social development of our children, many will immedietly discount the results as contradictory to their own beliefs and not applicable their situation.

Parenting is something that you apparently become an expert at simply by doing it. If your kids grow up without major stints in rehab or prison, you were successful! We can and must do better than this, but today's parents must avail themselves to the resources available that our parents did not have. The physical, emotional, social, and spritual well-being of our children is too important to ignore the volumes of accumulated and updated parenting knowledge. Would you want the surgeon removing a tumor from a loved one to use the technique her father used 20 years earlier? Or would you want her to have studied the most recent research available? Why is the emotional well being of our children any different or less important? My parents did not have an instruction manual when I was born, but the information to assemble one today is there. When it comes to raising your own children, you should talk to other parents, read all you can, and listen to the experts to formulate you own educated, nurturing approach to parenting. Your kids deserve nothing less.