larissa's blog

Imagine this. Your 14-year-old daughter is standing next to you, wiping up the dishes you’ve washed. You are discussing the general hum drum of life.

Out of the blue, she asks, “Am I your friend?”

Wow.

“Am I your friend?”

What would you say?

Transcript of highlights from Joyful Courage – Podcast by Casey: Episode 90 – Larissa Dann

Are you looking for a life-long warm, mutually respectful, loving, relationship with your children?

“Mum. I’m not choosing to be here, living with my family. I should be in England – that’s where my stuff is, where I’m paying rent. I should be working and beginning my life there now that I’ve finished studying.”

The Behaviour Window is a powerfully simple model that helps us understand ourselves, and our reactions to other people. I’ve found the concept to be transformational in helping my everyday response to my family, and in my work.

My daughter and I pull up in the five-minute waiting zone outside the bus station. She relays her brother’s text messages to me.

“Bus is running late. I’m hungry”.

I sit gazing through the windscreen. I have not seen my man-son for eighteen months. I remember my swollen eyes as I hugged his taught frame goodbye at the airport, and cannot believe this was over a year ago. I wonder why I am so calm. Where is my feeling of anticipation, of excitement? Oh, could it be because Christmas is in three days, and I am overwhelmed with work, planning, and general busyness? No time to feel!

The glass doors glide silently open. Wearing a dark, pin-striped pencil skirt and stiletto-heeled shoes, I step nervously into the hushed court entrance. My parents, wary and apprehensive, flank me.

I am in shock. I cannot believe where life has brought me. Mum and Dad - my champions - are just as stunned. Borne of the stoic generation, they keep their feelings in check.

“It is one thing for a child to want to know the ‘limits of her parents’ acceptance’ and an entirely different thing to say that she wants her parent to set those limits on her behaviour” (Dr Thomas Gordon, Parent Effectiveness Training.P.E.T.).

In all the parenting literature I read, there is one particular phrase that will ensure I skip an article, one concept that is guaranteed to raise my hackles.

Three of us are in the car – my young adult son, my learner-driver teenager, and me.

“I’ll supervise”, says my son, and my daughter nods, grinning at him in collusion and trust.

“OK Mum. I’m looking after things, remember?” says my boy. And I see the curve of my daughter’s cheek as she laughs in agreement.