10 of the most Frequently Asked Questions By Susan P. Epstein, LCSW, Parent Coach

Parenting in the 21^st century is challenging and confusing for most parents. Families look and are different than years ago. Dads are raising kids more and more and more and more are the primary caregivers. We have to parent differently now. What values do we want to pass on? What do we want to teach our kids? What kind of people do we want them to be? Dads need to provide an environment for their children that is nurturing and loving with clear expectations and consequences that teach but do not shame. A Parent Coach can help with these challenges.

1. Question: What are some key reasons that a dad would seek out a Parent Coach’s help?

Answer: You have a child with difficult behavior (lack of respect, anger, back-talk, interrupting, tantrums, etc), or who is acting out or not doing well in school.  Also if you are going through: divorce, remarriage, blending a family, trauma or loss, teen alcohol or drug use, or if you want to improve family communication, balance or support.

2. Question: What should I look for in a Parent Coach?

Answer: An expert in the areas of child development and family dynamics.  They should be non-judgemental, good at building rapport, creative (they tailor plans to your family’s needs), patient, and a good teacher and mentor.

3. Question: What if I have already read parenting books and taken my child to a therapist and I am still struggling?

Answer: That’s okay and it means that you are searching for answers. Parent coaching can help because the coach works with you to tailor a parenting plan for your family.

4. Question: I have a special needs child and/or my child has been diagnosed with ADD/ADHD, Conduct Disorder or Bipolar Disorder. Can a parent coach help us?

Answer: Absolutely, most children/teens will respond to a behavioral plan if the plan is designed for their developmental stage and age.

5. Question: Is waiting until your child is a teenager too late to change their behavioral patterns?

Answer: It is best to start as early as possible. But, even if they are 16 or 17 years old you can still turn that behavior around fairly quickly with the right plan.

6. Question: What is the biggest challenge that dads face in today’s world?

Answer: That has to be a combination of disrespect from their children and parent guilt. They go hand in hand. “If I discipline my child for being inappropriate he won’t like me but then I feel guilty because I know that I am not setting limits and this isn’t good for him.” A dad may feel guilty because he is stretched thin and overwhelmed. This is especially difficult with divorce where the kids are going back and forth between two homes. If dad doesn’t want to be “the bad guy” he might let behaviors go that need to be addressed.

7. Question: What are some of the biggest fears that dads have?

Answer: Dads believe that if they yell and scream at their kids that they will damage their children for life. They are also told that if they spank their kids that Child Protection Services will be knocking on the door.  Some dads are afraid to utilize their power and feel as if their hands are tied and they don’t know what to do.

8. Question: How does parent coaching take place?

Answer: Weekly parent telephone sessions and email, group parent telephone sessions, in-home sessions, and coaching products like books, DVDs and audio CDs.

9. Question: What if I am interested in hiring a parent coach but not sure?

Answer: Most parent coaches will provide a free consultation to see if you can work together.

10. Question: How long would I work with my parent coach and what are the costs?

Answer: Every coach has their own recommendations based on the family situation. Minimum is usually 3 months up until 12 months. Sometimes after a period of time weekly calls aren’t as necessary and the appointments can be shorter and less frequent.

Cost varies depending on your coach’s experience and expertise. Expect to pay

$500 -$1200/month for individual coaching. On paper it seems like a lot of money but most parents will tell you it was well worth the cost since the alternative of doing nothing could cost 10 to 20 times that amount. (Residential schools, therapies and medications, attorneys).

Group coaching is less expensive because you are sharing time with other parents. But, this can also be beneficial, knowing you are not alone!

Respect begins at home. When children don’t respect parents, they rarely respect their teachers and if they don’t respect their teachers this transfers to other authority figures such as neighbors, coaches and law enforcement. As young adults they have difficulty holding a job because they lack the social skills and respect that is necessary to make it in society.

Susan P. Epstein, LCSW, Parent Coach, works with parents whose children and adolescents are unmanageable. Susan graduated from the University of California at Berkeley School of Social Welfare.  She is a licensed clinical social worker in Connecticut and Rhode Island and also completed training with the Coaches Training Institute. Susan has written and published two parenting books, “The Take Back Your Parenting Powers System” and “Are You Tired of Nagging?” An expert in the areas of family dynamics, parenting and child development, Susan will uncover and unleash your parenting power. Get your free special report on how to get well behaved kids now at: www.ParentingPowers.com

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A Family First Entrepreneur is someone with an entrepreneurial mindset who keeps his or her family first.  As we look deeper into this definition, we must acknowledge that when business people put their families first, those two elements—business and family—affect one another in profound ways.  For example, when I want time with my kids, that choice relates to and has a direct effect on the time I spend on business and other endeavors.  Family First Entrepreneurs make business choices based on the potential impact they will have on their families first, and on business profitability second.

Another impact that people who align with this principle realize is that their families’ ability to function properly can also affect business.  There is nothing like family trauma to make a day at work both unbearable and unproductive.  They realize they need a healthy marriage and family life to be their best while producing a living.  You can see that one affects the other in profound ways, so Family First Entrepreneurs need a healthy work-life balance.

Lastly, Family First Entrepreneurs have an attitude about wealth creation which puts the goal of building wealth for the enhancement of their family first, and for “material possessions” second.  Things like time with family are bought before the Ferrari.

Whether you’re an empty nester, a single person, or have chosen to not have children, you still have a “family.”  If you are someone who puts your family first, who wants work-life balance, and who would enjoy creating wealth entrepreneurially…I welcome you to the club.

You can read more of Marc’s blogs and learn about his new book “ONO, Options not Obligations” at www.MarcWarnke.com.

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Michael Kimmel is a professor of gender studies, specializing in men’s issues.  His new book, Guyland, explores the emergence of a new developmental stage in men’s lives.

Cory: Tell me about your work and how you decided to write Guyland.

MK: I started writing Guyland because there was something going in this new developmental stage between adolescence.  People are getting married 6 or 7 years later than they were 50 years ago.  So, what are people doing in that time?

I began to talk to my students.  They seemed to be drifting.  They seemed to be delaying the ability to have a plan for their lives, to know what they were going to be like.  How they were planning to be the husbands and fathers they were trying to be.  I wrote this book to try to explain this world they live in, why Guyland has emerged…and how to navigate this world and be the kind of adult that [they] say [they] want to be.

Cory:  So you’re saying you’re hoping to create a dialogue among guys about how to use this time to prepare?

MK: Right, how to navigate this developmental stage more consciously and more ethically.

Cory: You’re not advocating getting rid of this developmental stage or going back to a time when people got married earlier?

MK: Absolutely not.  This developmental stage is here to stay.  Many guys that I talked to are saying things like, “What’s the rush?  Why do I have to commit to a relationship and then be married to someone for 70 years?  Give me a break!”  Other guys are saying, “That world where you retire at age 65 and you get a gold watch, that world is gone.  Corporations aren’t nearly so loyal.”  What happens is that guys are taking more time to commit to careers, more time to commit to relationships.  I don’t put any value judgement on that.  What I think is that’s the world we live in, so are we going to make that a time of drift, or are we going to make it a time when people engage ethically in these issues at this time in their lives?

Cory: So, what led you to be interested in this subject in the first place?

MK: Observing college kids.  Having a 9 year old son, watching him at the very beginning start to think about what masculinity means, what it means to be a guy, what guys are like and the differences between guys and girls.  Most of my scholarship has been on the evolving and changing definitions of masculinity in America, in response, in part to the changes in women’s lives.  And I think that the most important component to this.  In the past 30 – 40 years women’s lives have changed so dramatically that it has left a lot of men confused about their own world.  If women are our equals on the athletic field, in the corporate boardroom, in the operating room in the hospital, what’s distinctive, what is there that makes us feel like men?

Cory: You’re saying that because of women’s rights coming to the forefront, men are becoming confused about their own role in society?

MK: I think some are confused.  I think some have become angry, defensive.  I think there is an edge to a lot of Guyland.  I get a lot of, where can a guy go to just be a jerk? We can’t say disgusting things about girls anymore.  Y’know, where can a guy go to just be a guy?  To just be alone with other guys and just be as jerky as he wants to be?  They feel like there’s no place any longer that’s just for them.

Cory: Would you say that guys in Guyland are happy?

MK:  I wouldn’t.   They spend a lot of time being drunk and sloppy and proclaiming how happy they are.  If guys are truly honest about it, they are not thrilled about all the sorts of things that go on and that they have to participate in – all the drunken revels, the binging, the hazing, the hooking up.  I mean, it leaves you feeling kind’ve empty the next morning.  How does a guy get a map to leave this place of being so excitedly entertained all the time with every new video game, CD, movie, all the entertainment that is constantly swirling around?  How do you navigate your world, your way through this place, and that’s why I wrote the book.

Cory: If you could sum up how a guy gets a map out of Guyland, what would say that is?

MK: Most guys drift out.  Five or six guys from the same fraternity will rent a house.  Eventually around 27 or 28 they will start to drift away.  One guy will get a job where he has to get up at 7:00 in the morning, so he can’t go out binge drinking every night.  Another guy will get serious with his girlfriend, they’ll move in together.  Another guy will say he’s going to go back to law school so he has to study real hard.  Gradually they drift away.  Most guys eventually get through this, but they don’t get through it unscarred and they don’t really develop a good life plan for their careers or for being the good fathers we want them to be.

They want to be good fathers, by the way.

The second part is, they do it with some help.  They need the support network.  One of the things I talk about in this book is how to develop the really good male friend.  Finding one other guy with whom you can share your feelings without the sort of mask and bravado that you always have to have out in public.  Remembering your parents, keeping them involved in your lives.  Remembering to maintain those relationships.

The final thing, and I think this is really important, is to listen to their own hearts.  In the name of masculinity, we guys are often asked to go along with really stupid stuff.  Guys who are making cat calls on the street and we are sort of shuffling off, hoping she doesn’t see you, all the kind of stupid stuff that we are asked to put up with all the time.  You know you don’t’ feel very comfortable with it, you laughed when I said it.

The other night I was reading the very first Harry Potter book to my 9 year old son and at the very end of that book Professor Dumbledore says it takes a great deal of courage to stand up to your enemies.  It takes even more to stand up to your friends.  That’s what I think guys need to do as well, and they need to look inside themselves at their own sense of right and wrong and stop being bystanders because it’s just easier because they’ll pick on you instead, and do the right thing.

Cory: Who inspired you to go into this kind of work and research?

MK: Feminist women.  That’s the easiest answer.  I started my graduate work doing 17^th century French history and I got turned around to thinking about male/female relationship.  At the time in graduate school feminism was exploding all around me.  Women in my life kept saying you’ve got to write about this, think about this in your own life.  I changed the course of my life and eventually taught the very first course in the state of New Jersey on men and masculinity.  I’ve started, with other people, a sub-field of gender studies on masculinity, and that’s been the subject I’ve become an expert on the past 20 years or so.

Cory: I took a gender studies course in college.  One professor talked about male issues and it was really interesting.

MK: Was that professor male or female?

Cory: Female

MK: Most of the people who are interested in gender are women.

Cory: Most sociologists who study gender are women?

MK: Most people who think about gender are women.  Most people who think about race are black people.  White people don’t spend a whole lot of time, unless they’re white supremacists, thinking about how white they are.

Cory: So a lot of the guys who are wrapped up in this lifestyle aren’t thinking about it.

MK:  Right.  There’s a lot of confusion, a lot of reluctant bystanding, because they feel like they don’t have a choice.  My students to a man tell me they want to be good fathers.  They don’t have a clue.  They’ve done no preparation, no practice.  They’ve never diapered a baby, they’ve no idea how to cook, clean, anything that you’ll have to do if you’re a parent.  You know, for them, being a father is like this mystical state of being.  Suddenly when the baby emerges they think they will know all the things they need to know and of course they won’t.  So one of the things I’m interested in is helping them develop those skills.

Cory: How would you go about trying to get your students interested in seeking out information [on being] good husbands and fathers, like you’re talking about.  Why don’t they seek out the information?

MK: Most guys are not egalitarian parents because their wives do it.  They don’t do it because they don’t have to, no one forces them to do it.  My wife wanted me to clean a lot more than I normally do so I tried cleaning up the living room, I vacuumed, and she came in and said, “this is a mess.”  Then she re-did it for me.  I can’t do it right, she’s always going to re-do it for me, so I stopped.  So, I say to these guys, if you were working at your job and your boss came in and said this is all wrong, would you stop?  Would you say, “That’s okay, I can learn to do it better?”  Why is it that when it comes to house work, guys just “stop?”  Why not say, “I can learn to do it better?  Show me what to do.”  I think that a lot of guys don’t have a plan for this and don’t know they need one.  In my experience, obviously there are a ton of mommy bloggers out there, obviously they have a lot of free time, talking about being a good enough mother.  A lot of working mothers feel guilty that they’re not being the kind of mother that they want to be, that they’re not baking home-made chocolate chip cookies from scratch every day.  The reason they’re feeling so guilty is that so often they are comparing themselves to their own mothers who did do that sort of stuff.  They’re comparing themselves to their mothers and they don’t match up because they have careers.

The thing about dads though, is that instead of feeling guilty, we compare ourselves to our own fathers and we feel pretty damn self-congratulatory.  If we do one dish, fix one meal, make the bed once, do the laundry once, we’re doing light years better than our fathers did.  We’re out there patting ourselves on the back, so we don’t need to read a blog about it.

Cory: Anything else you would tell me [and our audience]?

MK: There are two things I would say to your audience.  I speak to your audience as young men thinking about being husbands and fathers, but a lot of the men you connect with are probably also themselves the fathers of young men.  It is essential that both mothers and fathers stay involved in their sons lives.  We have this model of helicopter parenting early in their lives, we micromanage them and completely over-schedule them, and they go off to college and we go, “Okay, bye, see you later.”  Then they go off into this vacuum where there’s no adult supervision at all.  I think both parts are wrong.  At a young age parents need to back off a little bit, and we also have to stay connected to our sons when they do leave home and go to college.  Instead of being helicopter parents, I call it being power strip parents.  You help your kids stay connected, you provide grounding for them, and if it gets to overload you run interference.

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Pornography is sometimes viewed as “normal” or an “art form.” A person might say, “What’s wrong with it?…I am not hurting anybody….everybody does it.” Those who promote, want to use, or can’t stop using porn, often have this perspective.

Here are some of the harmful consequences:

1. Porn often leads to more harmful sexually addictive behavior; e.g., compulsive masturbation, fantasy, promiscuity, exhibitionism, soliciting prostitutes, pedophilia, and rape. The user tends to gravitate toward the type of porn most being observed.

2. Porn by its very nature isolates an individual-making him more intent on satisfying selfish needs even at the expense of his marriage, family, financial stability, and career.

3. Porn stimulates a very powerful sexual desire followed by sexual release, most often through masturbation. Unfortunately, the release provides only momentary satisfaction, then an escalation of the behavior is required in an attempt to maintain a high level of sexual arousal.

4. Porn has the ability to control the user where he cannot stop. The fantasies occur more frequently as the addiction progresses.

Of the two pleasure centers in the brain, one is high impact, thrilling pleasure stimulated by pornography, erotic fantasies, or new sexual encounters. The other is a steady, less intense pleasure realized by walking on a beach, making love with a long term partner, helping a child with homework, experiencing deep feelings (painful or pleasant) and sharing them in a significant relationship.

A man doesn’t have to act out in dramatic ways to create harm in his life. Satisfaction can be achieved in small ways and still be detrimental. A beginner gets tastes of the high impact pleasure and slowly starts to integrate fantasies, images, and desires into everyday thoughts and behaviors. Even if he does not graduate to more involvement, this infiltration will still have a negative impact.

Supermodel Christy Brinkley’s family was destroyed by pornography. She and her husband, Peter Cook, had viewed porn together and considered it harmless. Then she discovered he had been masturbating via a web cam over the internet and had an affair with his 18 year old secretary whom he had groomed for sex since she was 15. She then pursued a public divorce trial to openly display his shameful behavior. In the settlement she was awarded full custody of the children. These severe consequences are just one example of what can happen to people.

People who stimulate the high impact pleasure center too often rarely get enough satisfaction. Porn can generate this type of pleasure with little effort. Once a man is hooked, he will have an extremely difficult time transitioning to healthy, more stable pleasure.

In my psychotherapy practice, couples enter therapy where the man has been caught using porn or acting out sexually. His wife is shocked, dismayed, and extremely angry about the betrayal. More often than not, they both believe it is about willpower and if he could only stay away from the computer, the prostitutes, or the porn, everything would be okay. They fail to realize that the sexual behavior is the symptom not the problem.

This is not like a substance addiction where a user can avoid a drink, a pusher or a drug. This compulsive behavior is lethal, since a man cannot simply avoid erotic thoughts. Especially in our culture, provocative images are everywhere. The underlying problem is that he is addicted to high intensity pleasure and does not know how to experience pleasure from everyday, ordinary life situations; such as, spending quality time with his family or having intimate talks and sharing with his wife. Frequently, neither partner knows how to enjoy these simple pleasures, therefore, it is not just the man who needs therapy. The marriage needs an overhaul where both have to address emotional issues.

I inform the couple, “this unfortunate, painful event can be used to open your eyes and turn your marriage around…you can end up with a wonderful marriage, one you never knew was possible. Yes, your husband betrayed you and he is responsible to repair the damage done to you…and his behavior is indicative of a person who is unhappy, bored, anxious, even depressed in his marriage. He did not know what to do to address his unhappiness. If he is so unhappy that he is willing to endanger his marriage, then more than likely you also are in an unsatisfying marriage….at some point you both will look back on this and the porn will no longer be an issue…in fact you will even be grateful that he got caught.”

The couple needs to learn to replace the depression, loneliness, anxiety and the high intensity pleasure with the everyday pleasures of delight and wonder for their marriage and their family life.

With the clinical evidence rapidly mounting against pornography use, the question remains: how can couples explore intimacy and their sexuality with suffering the negative effects of pornography?

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Legal Action Step #1: Prepare Your Playbook — Games are won and lost on pre-game preparation and strategy.  You can increase the chances your team will be successful by preparing your playbook in advance rather than trying to figure out what to do on the fly.  Get your team together for monthly team meetings and determine together where you are going and what you want to do when you get there.  Write down your team’s objectives and the action steps necessary to get there.  Create a playbook for the team where you keep everything organized so that every member of the team has access to vital team documents, such as insurance information, banking information, retirement account information, income and expense information.  Share the playbook with your Wife so that if anything happens to you, she’ll be able to keep the team on track for success.

Legal Action Step #2: Document Your Game Plan — Think of your estate plan as the game plan for your life.  Most people mistakenly think an estate plan is all about planning for death.  That’s faulty thinking.  In truth, your estate plan is about making sure the people you love most would know what to do if anything happened to you.  It’s important to have this game plan spelled out even if you don’t have a whole lot of assets.

Consider the following situation that recently came across my desk – a janitor who hadn’t done any planning because he probably thought he didn’t have enough wealth to need a plan was recently hit by a car.  He didn’t die, but he was hospitalized, unable to communicate or sign documents.  He had only $10,000 in a bank account in his name.  This was $10,000 that his family desperately needed, but could not get access to without a court order because the janitor didn’t think he needed a game plan for his assets.  He did.  More importantly, his family did.

These are the legal documents you’ll need as part of your game plan:

No matter what, you need to have an Advance Health Care Directive (names the person you want making health care decisions for you and tells them how to make those decisions), Durable Power of Attorney (names someone to handle financial matters for you), and a Will (designates what should happen to your assets at your death).

If you also have money or own your home or other real estate, you will want to have a Trust set up to make sure that what you own passes to your Wife as easily as possible.  A Trust also keeps everything private, which is important because there are men out there combing the probate records to find out what devastated spouse is inheriting a big chunk of change so they can weasel there way in at a vulnerable time.  By putting your assets in a Trust, you are protecting your Wife and kids from prying eyes.

If you are not only a good husband, but also a good daddy, you’ll want to also have in place a comprehensive Kids Protection Plan® to make sure that your kids will always be raised by people you know, love and trust.  You can take the first step (naming legal guardians for your kids) for free at http://www.KidsProtectionPlan.com.

Legal Action Step #3:  Fund Your Game Plan — Whether you are the family breadwinner or not, you will want to make sure your team has a stable financial foundation.  You should have at least $250,000 to $1,000,000 of TERM life insurance on your life.  It’s cheap.  It’s there for your family just in case you get yanked from the team before you’ve gotten to the end of your playbook.  I’ve known men who are philosophically opposed to insurance.  I call bulls**t on that.  It’s not a philosophy.  If you love your family, you have insurance on your life to make sure their financial needs are met if you can’t be there.  And, if you are the breadwinner, you make sure you have enough insurance (or savings) in place to support your Wife until she’s well into her 90s even if you check out of the game 30 years earlier.  It happens and if she’s staying home and playing defense so you can mount the best offense possible, it’s your responsibility to make sure she’s got support even if you aren’t there.

Legal Action Step #4:  Recruit the Right Coaches for Your Team — Every successful team relies on the guidance of a strong coach or even team of coaches.   Depending on the size of your assets and where your income comes from, you will need a variety of coaches on your team.

If you own your home, have a retirement account, and you are accumulating assets, you will want to start your team with a Personal Family Lawyer®.  Unlike typical lawyers, a Personal Family Lawyer will guide you to create your playbook, document your game plan and keep it up to date, all without breaking your bank.  By making your Personal Family Lawyer the head coach you consult before making financial plays, you’ll actually save money by not buying insurance you don’t need, entering into bad deals and otherwise making bad financial decisions.

If you have your own business, you will want to add a CPA or other tax professional to your coaching team.  Your CPA will ensure you are making the most of your tax deductions and should work together with your Personal Family Lawyer.

If you have more than $500,000 in investable assets, you’ll want to consider adding an investment advisor to your coaching team.  Your investment advisor will ensure your assets are allocated properly and that your investment strategy fits into your overall game plan.  Your investment advisor should work closely with your Personal Family Lawyer to understand your overall strategy.

While this list isn’t even close to exhaustive, be taking these four initial actions steps, your team will be set up for the maximum chance of success no matter what comes your way.

Alexis Martin Neely is America’s Personal Family Lawyer, author of the bestselling book “Wear Clean Underwear! A Fast, Fun, Friendly – and Essential – Guide to Legal Planning for Busy Parents” and the nation’s leading legal expert guiding you to more wealth, health and happiness through smart financial and legal decisions for yourself and your family.  Subscribe to Alexis’ online magazine Family Wealth Secrets at http://www.FamilyWealthMatters.com.

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