The Ranches Podcast

We all have memories from distinctive times in our past. Every family goes through things. Tough times…challenging times…celebratory times…times of change. Emotions link to memories and memories are a part of what makes us. What will our kids remember about quarantine? I don’t believe that I am out of line in calling this a distinctive time in our lives and in the lives of our kids. “School’s out for Summer” was just a catchy lyric in my day, it was never intended for the month of March. This is the reality for millions of kids today; a complete disruption to routine and rhythm and a societal abandonment of the consistency and predictability afforded kids by school, sports, teachers and the structure of their time. Seemingly, in an instant, everything has changed. Stay at home is the new normal. In addition, parents are at home and, while acting as the new teachers, also have jobs that, in many cases, have moved home. It feels like all the rules have changed. The dog is happy to have company while the cat just wishes everyone would leave again. As a rule, people just aren’t very good at new normals or temporary changes or disruptions to predictability and consistency. We love our routine and our rhythm. The same goes for our kids. As a result of these circumstances that are beyond our control, the most agile and adaptable are outpacing the most athletic and disciplined. Athletes, as it turns out, aren’t as essential as we thought, while nurses are more essential than we ever imagined. We miss our sports but need our medical professionals What does all of this have to do with parenting and kids?  The most agile and adaptable parents are also most likely to outpace those who are more dedicated to traditional routines, rules, structure and pace. Agile and adaptable people are looking for opportunities while their counterparts cling to what used to be. Those who fail to adapt find themselves powerfully equipped for a society that no longer exists.  If we set aside our own personal feelings aside, what will our kids remember about quarantine? I have two children being impacted (1 high school and 1 college) because they will have to remember the graduation ceremony that did not happen. Their graduation memories will not be filled with a ceremony celebrating their hard work. While we will celebrate their accomplishments, they will not know the feeling of the calling of their name and that walk across the stage that we all took. Somehow, it just doesn’t seem remotely adequate. But what will they remember about their parents? Were they a burden and an inconvenience? Would we have rather been anywhere else? Did they miss out because they were penned in? Will they think that their parents missed work more than they loved spending time with their children? Can they quote, “This is a teacher’s responsibility! Not mine.” Will they remember parents who say, “I can’t wait until this is over.” Or will they remember a parent saying, “I don’t really want this to end.” And, “I’ll miss being around you all the time when this is over.” Or, “We should continue to eat dinner together…even when we don’t have to.” And, “We had such a great time and became so much closer as a family.” Or, “Who needs FaceTime when we can talk face to face anytime?” Those memories will be determined by us and they will be concretized with either feelings of “burden and inconvenience” or “opportunity and optimism.” We, as their parents,

Join The Ranches as they explore the fringe. The fringe is when you're kind of on the edge of a spectrum, political, parenting or whatever it is. It's the extreme edges of not mainstream, it's on the fringe of things. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to stay up to date with Raise Them Up Podcast.

Today we're going to talk about control and control issues. We are all at some point or another catapulted into this idea that we need to have control of something.

It's important that we as parents recognize our obligation to our children at this time. The appropriate response to these last few weeks is staying home, limiting your exposure and only going out for essentials. That's an appropriate response. Hoarding necessities is not, and kids are paying attention to that.

For children to become responsible adults we need to teach them proper accountability. If we do this, children will not grow up to become adults that think nothing they do is wrong.

Most kids when they get to a point where they're overwhelmed they get into a mini tantrum of some sort. Learn more at: http://www.theranches.org

I’ve worked with “at risk” youth for most of my adult life and have lived with or near the same population of youth for my entire life. In that time, some things have stayed the same while other things have changed in startling ways. Most of the kids that I have worked with have wanted to be valued, accepted, appreciated, validated and given a path toward their future that takes into account their individual values, beliefs, strengths and challenges. That has stayed extremely consistent. What has changed is the tendency to be offended. Whether learned or copied, being offended has become a overly relied upon strategy for dealing with challenges from others. In many ways, being offended feels good. It takes disagreement and forces a victim-perpetrator dynamic upon differences of opinion. Disagreement takes work and a willingness to regulate one’s emotional responses so as to find resolution. Being offended allows for an abrupt end to disagreement by prioritizing the victim and vilifying the perceived perpetrator. Kids are paying attention to adults and are learning to silence those who disagree or offer constructive criticism by mandating that the offended is cleansed of responsibility and the offender is mean, uncaring and a perpetrator of hatefulness. Many kids have chosen to become activists against authority or conformity or those offering help by branding those with differing views as hateful or old fashioned or uncaring. For me, being offended serves little to no purpose unless it is in response to personal and unfair attacks. I most often choose not to lazily or arrogantly fall into being offended simply because it serves to silence healthy communication and disagreement. Healthy relationships allow for disagreement, but more importantly, disagreement with a prioritization on maintaining important relationships allows for growth and an expansion of thought. In the end, a diversity of thought is important while being offended usually serves to damage or destroy relationships. I have often been accused of staying engaged long past the point where others walk away offended. Maybe we’d all be a little better off if we stopped relying upon being offended and started considering where others are coming from while choosing to carefully and thoughtfully considering our own views on things. If my only argument against a view that I don’t hold or a position that I haven’t considered is to be offended, am I not simply closed minded and intolerant of others? Many of the kids and adults that I’ve worked with have some unhealthy and self destructive tendencies and beliefs. It is hard to challenge those tendencies and beliefs in search of brighter tomorrows when kids and adults choose being offended as their desired strategy to stay the same and to shun growth. As the adult, I choose to set an example of working through differences, listening, challenging, explaining my strongly held views and trying to understand where others are coming from. I can’t think of a single time where being offended has served to help someone see things differently and grow. I don’t always get it right, and I have room to grow. I tend to try to always seek first to understand and then to be understood. Unfortunately, many that I’ve worked with want to be understood before gracing others with a desire to understand. As a result, I work to choose not to be the victim of others and I choose not to be offended in most cases. Disagreement is healthy and anger can be dealt with. Being offended, in most cases, simply serves to keep my mind closed and limit my relationships with people who see the world differently. I too want to be valued, accepted, appreciated, validated and given a path toward my future that takes into account my individual values, beliefs, strengths and challenges. If I’ve offended you, I am sorry and I hope you know that the relationship is what I value as long as the relationship can support disagreement...

The Ranches is, at its very core, a place for kids to get a fresh start and to develop new tools and learn new ways of navigating life. In most cases, kids come to The Ranches with inadequate and unhealthy ways of dealing with relationships and with conflict. Initially, we start the process of orienting kids to their new living environment. New room, new roommate, new schedule and new rules. While we’ve all had to navigate these situations in our lives, for young people this can be fairly traumatic and a fairly abrupt entry into a place that they have little to no experience with. Everything is new. It is in this first phase that we begin to see how kids naturally operate. How they handle peers. How they handle change. How they deal with and view authority and, in many cases, how they see themselves. We see boys who’ve had to navigate the label of toxicity and how much of their behavior is associated with shame and fear. We also see girls who’ve had to navigate expectations, shame and isolation. When kids first arrive at The Ranches, we see them at their most raw and their most vulnerable…and often scared of what is to come. As kids adjust, we start to introduce accountability to them and help them to see how accountability effects their daily lives. It is unfair to say that they have never experienced accountability, but it many cases they have experienced inconsistent, unpredictable and sometimes violent accountability. For most of the kids, this creates a resistance to accountability and to being held accountable. Definition of accountability: the quality or state of being accountable - especially: an obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or to account for one's actions. As you can probably imagine, most kids – really most people – struggle with accountability…especially when it comes from perceived strangers. Along with accountability usually comes conflict, stress and a plethora of negative behaviors. For the staff of The Ranches, this is often uncomfortable and difficult to emotionally process. Why does this child that I don’t really know seem to hate me and everything that I try to communicate with them? Well, this is the work that we do. To understand the struggle with -accountability, it helps to know what kinds of behaviors that we deal with in kids when we attempt to introduce consistent, caring, committed accountability. In working with the kids at The Ranches, our goal for accountability is for them to achieve competence and competence requires accountability. Their resistance to competence and accountability usually comes in several forms. Transfer of Blame – Kids often seek to transfer blame to others. In transfer of blame situations, we see the blame become the most relevant part of accountability to the child. “It wasn’t my fault! My roommate did it!” or “You’re not my parent!” are typical utterances at The Ranches. While one is true and one may indeed be true, these statements serve the child by transferring the all-important blame for the transgression onto someone else. “It isn’t my fault,” therefore you can’t, or shouldn’t, hold ME accountable. “I need (vs. want) this!” – We work tirelessly to meet the needs of the kids at The Ranches. It is part of our mission. Because of our deliberate choice in meeting the needs of our residents, the kids often attempt to turn their wants in to needs in an effort to force us, through guilt, to give in to their wants. If accountability is to be avoided, turning accountability into an accusation of not meeting their needs is a powerful strategy. “I lied because I didn’t feel safe enough to tell the truth” is just one example of this behavior. Safety is a basic need and reshaping situations to be a need unmet is typical and, at times, prolific.

One of the only ways accountability can really exist is to have reasonable consequences. Everybody has a different version of reasonable, but kids do need consequences for their behaviors.

Welcome to The Ranches "Raise Them Up" parenting podcast. We know kids do respect and want limits. We also know, that a relationship can get fractured to the point where a child does not respect the parent. If that's the case then things can get very difficult. It can be difficult to get back on track. Learn more at: http://www.theranches.org

Welcome to The Ranches "Raise Them Up" parenting podcast. There's a lot of talk about Empathy in the world today and how we need more of it. Empathy is the ability to see something from somebody else's perspective. As a result they can "walk a mile in their shoes". Learn more at: www.theranches.org

Christmas is a special time for most of us. We are looking forward to spending some time with family and friends. But for many of the kids, Christmas comes with a host of mixed emotions. While the gifts and celebrations are a welcome distraction from living away from home at The Ranches, Christmas also comes with consistent and constant reminders of how far away from ideal their life has been. For many kids, like those at The Ranches, Christmas often reminds them of what has been lacking in their lives; Hope. It’s now easier than ever to give to The Ranches and to designate your gift for specific items that are needed by kids throughout the coming year. Our Catalog of Hope: https://www.theranches.org/gift-catalog/

Welcome to The Ranches "Raise Them Up" parenting podcast. Bullying itself is all about control. Bully's are trying to control the things around them. Learn more at: http://www.theranches.org

With the kids at The Ranch we tend to focus a lot on dealing with trust. Why would they trust us? We have to earn it from scratch. In a family setting there are four elements that create trust.

Welcome to The Ranches "Raise Them Up" parenting podcast. Equine Gestalt Coaching is life coaching with the assistance of horses. We're able to raise awareness about different issues we may have. Learn more at: https://www.theranches.org/equine-coaching and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffOQ9kuMYgw