Emotional Freedom Tapping for Children

Recently, I spoke with a friend, a mother who wants to take the Parenting: Your Child As Zen Master Course I'm offering this summer in Bozeman. We were talking about Emotional Freedom Tapping (EFT), a methodology we'll use in the course. When I'm relating to my children, if I'm clear, then I have more to offer them--more of myself, my skill, my love, my wisdom. As I was explaining the benefits of EFT, I mentioned this as a technique she could teach her son.

Her response was honest and something I know from my own experience as a parent. She said, "Why don't YOU teach him. He may not want to hear it from me!" So, my next course will be for children--An EFT Course for either elementary, preadolescent or adolescent children, or perhaps young adults who are this generations older children (since, according to some experts, kids today aren't adults until they are about 28 years old!).

Case in point: in studying for the MCAT's, our youngest bumped her score up from 30 to 36 after ONE tapping session with an EFT coach. So why not a better baseball game, more confidence with friends, studies, the opposite sex? I can see a lot of opportunities here and want to know what you think.

Enjoy the video about EFT from Gary Craig, well know 'spreader of the EFT message'!

How To Connect On Mother's Day

We have a tradition in our family of acknowledging each other on holidays. Last Christmas, I bought small, ribbon-tied journals with different patterns and colors and had each person put their name in the front of their journal. Then each person passed their journal around our circle, and every family member had opportunity to write a personal note in each person's journal, acknowledging them for what they saw in them. Afterwards, everyone put their journal under the tree, and on Christmas Day, they had a chance to read their journal to themselves, or some family members read parts of them aloud.

It was a sweet and connecting experience, and I'm thinking about what would be fun for Mother's Day dinner. I'm excited about this Mother's Day because there will be three mothers at our table on Sunday night. One will be me, another our daughter who is expecting this summer, and another will be a friend, colleague, and the CEO of the non profit organization (http://www.moretolife.org/) in which I train and coach.

If the timing is right, I'll have each person at the table tell a story about their mother. In this fast paced world, we've lost much of the art of conversation. Tolfler says in his latest book, Revolutionary Wealth (http://www.amazon.com/) that Americans don't eat dinner together, and in fact, they don't even watch t.v. together anymore since everyone has their own t.v. or computer to engage them.

I want to encourage lingering around the table, conversation and connection. I can't think of a lovelier Mother's Day gift.

Predictors of Relationships

Recently, our daughter and son-in-law were over for dinner, and my husband told a slightly embarrassing tale from our early marriage. The story was exemplary of me....and my "managing-others" automatic behavior. Fortunately we all had a good laugh.

It goes like this--After we'd been married a couple of years, Claud and I took a six week trip around the U. S. It was 1972, and we traveled from Houston, Texas through the southwest, up the California and Oregon coasts, over to Montana, where we had met in 1969 while working at the Many Glacier Hotel in Glacier National Park, and then to Michigan to visit friends before making a bee line home. Our mode of transportation, a white utility van we had revamped, was complete with curtains, a bed and all the camping equipment necessary for living on the road. We didn't have a lot of extra money so, magnanimously, I put myself in charge of trip finances.

Outside of Las Vegas, while stopped by road construction on a steamy hot day in our un-airconditioned vehicle, I deemed as the perfect time to offer Claud breakfast. I poured him a cooking pan worth of corn flakes, topped it off with some luke warm milk and suggested if he ate it, we would save the expense of eating out in Las Vegas.

John Gottman (www.gottman.com) has been doing research about couples, and he says that in the first three minutes of interviewing a couple, he can tell whether or not the relationship will work. A friend also told me that when a couple marries, research indicates that if either the bride or groom smash the wedding cake on the other's face, that marriage is likely to end in divorce. Makes sense to me, considering the inherent disrespectfulness of that one act.

In the small things, we can notice how we are in the grander scheme. However I am in this moment and this moment and this moment paints the larger picture of my life, and the story Claud recently told was one that predicted a problem I would have in both my marriage and in my parenting--my tendency to manage others.

My commitment of late is to get it that I'm only responsible for my life and live each moment from that perspective. It's not my job to fix, to manage, to not see hurt, pain, discomfort. It is my want to be present and hold the possibility for transformation. And that is enough.

Fundamental Responsibility

As it turns out, I'll be teaching not only a couple's course this summer in Bozeman, Montana, but also a Parenting Course. Each of these are pilots, and my intent is to eventually teach them online. So if you're interested in one of the courses, or both, please email me at djanmatney@gmail.com. I'll start the online courses this Fall.

I believe that our most salient reasons for personal development are within the context of our intimate relationships. I simply gain steam to do my personal work because I want my relationships to be connecting and real and loving!

When I take the focus off of my child or my partner, and pay attention to myself, the deeper gifts of parenting and partnering are mysteriously and not so mysteriously uncovered.

That doesn't mean I am unaware of what I think my children or partner are doing that may not be working for them. It just means that I am noticing what I have the most control over--my own reaction to them. Each time I do that, my spiritual path unfolds again.

A fundamental responsibility of self is what we'll be aiming for in both courses so that participants can be accountable for their part in their relationships and create genuine intimacy.

Sibling Rivalry

When our children were young, I remember tying to stop their fighting. One day I put our two younger children in a room alone and said, "Come out when you've settled this." I don't remember if they worked it out or not, but I do remember the huge relief I felt at getting myself out of the middle.

Siblings sometimes fight, and though that can't be completely controlled, I think it's important for parents to both allow the arguments and have some ground rules.

Here are some tips when your children fight: (from Siblings Without Rivalry www.fabermazlish.com )

1. Set up these two golden rules and reinforce them if ever they are broken:

a) "NO hitting in our house. We don't hit. Say what you want to say with words! It's not o.k. to hit."

b) "NO name calling in our house. That's not o.k. You can say you're angry or frustrated about what happened, but no name calling."

2. If someone is hit, always pay attention and show empathy toward the child that was hit, and ignore the one who did it, except to do 1."

3. Treat children equally, spending equal time and equal money (or as close as you can get!) on each child.

4. Spend special time alone with each child.

Birth Control?

I worked for fourteen years as a psychotherapist, and when dealing with women with depression and/or anxiety, I never, in all those years, asked the question "Are you taking birth control pills?" In recent years, I've become more concerned about the hormonal imbalance and resultant anxiety and depression that can happen from birth control pills. Statistics indicate only a small minority of women are negatively emotionally impacted, but that's not the feedback I get from the women in my life.

If you have daughters who are considering birth control medication, you might want to read the discussion below that women, boyfriends and physicians are having. And another source for discussion is here. It's different news than the published stats.

One young man watched the transformation in his girlfriend after going off birth control medication, and when he was asked about taking the pill for men, he immediately said, "No way." He's not sexist, just wary of suffering as she did.
Not taking birth control pills may seem antithetical to the Feminist Movement and certainly, the medical establishment's view, but sussing out your own answers for your own body is important.

This doesn't address the issue of adolescent sexuality, and how to advice our children to protect themselves emotionally and sexually as they grow and mature (Check out www.adolescentsexualitytoday.blogspot.com for a conversation with Dr. Karen Rayne on this issue.) It's just a different cut--Even if children make seemingly healthy choices with their burgeoning sexuality (i.e., "yes!" to birth control pills), that particular choice may not be the best choice for their mental health. It's important that we, as parents and professionals, pay attention and sometimes let go of "the way it's done" so we notice the way it is for that particular person.

The Antidote: Forgiveness

I'm teaching a couples' course this summer and have been pursuing two of my favorite related books, The Seven Principles of Making Marriage Work, by John Gottman and Getting The Love You Want by Harville Hendricks www.amazon.com

At first blush, this may seem unrelated to parenting, but the milieu in which children live and breath is established not only by the internal state of parents but also by the way in which parents relate to each other.

I'm particularly struck by Gottman's "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: criticism, contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling", and how these problematic behaviours impact couples (and as a result--children).

Gottman www.gottmaninstitute.com claims that in the first minutes of a couple's conversation, he can predict how their relationship with turn out, and interestingly, I think Shonnie Lavender, couple's coach, claims the antidote for these very problems.

Check it out on her recent blog "One Skill is essential to a lasting, happy marriage." www.marriagevowworkbook.com, and let me know what you think.