As I settle into my role as the editor for parent resources here at Mad in America, I’m reaching out to folks who have something to contribute to the conversation and asking them if they would be willing to condense what they know into a Ten Tips format for easy digestion and comprehension.
The first four are now available. Tim Carey, an Australian clinical psychologist and the director of Flinders University’s Centre for Remote Health in Alice Spring, Australia, presents ten essential questions that parents who want to parent in healthier and more effective ways can ask themselves. Among them are “How often do you let your children be?”, “Do you admit it when you’re wrong?” and “Do you ask questions rather than give commands?” You might think of Tim’s contribution as a brief refresher course in good parenting.
Drs. Sarah Parry and Filippo Varese present the findings from their Young Voices Study in an easy-to-use Ten Tips piece called “Ten Tips for Parents of Children Who Hear Voices.” They write: “Over recent months, we have been hearing from young people who hear voices and from their parents/guardians. As we’ve previously discussed, hearing voices is by no means unusual during childhood and an experience that some young people find helpful and comforting in times of stress and difficulty. As well as talking to young people, we have heard from parents from the UK, Norway and Australia about their experiences of supporting their children, seeking help from health services and how they have come to make sense of the voices their children hear.” If you are parenting a child who hears voices, this is a must-read Ten Tips piece. And it will also prove interesting to other Mad in America readers.
Our third Ten Tips piece is from Maureen Healy, whose mentoring programs help parents and children worldwide. Her piece is called “Ten Tips to Help Children with ‘Oppositional Defiant Disorder’.” Whether or not you believe that there really is some pseudo-medical “disorder” that deserves the diagnostic label of “oppositional defiant disorder” (and I don’t), you will find Maureen’s tips, for example praising small steps of cooperation, focusing on problem-solving, and partnering with your child, very useful.
In “Ten Tips for Helping an Explosive Child,” Dr. Ross Greene, author on many useful books for parents including The Explosive Child, Lost at School, Lost & Found, and Raising Human Beings, shares his top ten tips for helping an explosive child, among them how to help children whose skills do not currently match what is expected of them.
You can access these pieces here:
Ten Tips for Parents of Children Who Hear Voices
Ten Tips to Help Children with “Oppositional Defiant Disorder”
Ten Tips for Helping an Explosive Child
I hope you enjoy these offerings and find them useful. If you’d like to suggest someone, either yourself or someone else, who might be able to provide a useful Ten Tips piece, by all means let me know (and, if you can, provide me with contact information for that person). These can be “experts” or “experts by experience”—that is, I’d love to hear from parents and from children-who-are-now-adults as well as from professionals. You can send that information to me at [email protected].
Please enjoy this Ten Tips series!