Christian Family Help

The Drama Triangle

2012-04-20T12:46:00.002-04:00

The triangle

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"Hurricane" Supply Plan

2012-04-11T21:40:00.000-04:00

I am not preparing for the apocalypse. I don’t have an emergency bunker. I don’t even have a basement, because I live in Florida. But I do have an emergency supply. How about you? Do you have an emergency supply?

I remember just a few years ago, when we got hit here in Florida by three hurricanes in one summer. It was a nightmare. We lost power for a combined total of three weeks. It was so hot! The most inconvenient thing was probably the lack of air conditioning, but something else stands out in my mind. We had to wait in line for gas. Now don’t get me wrong. We only had to wait for about fifteen minutes, but there was such a fear that there would be no gas, that everyone was lined up for it. This made the price go through the roof. Granted, it was half what it cost today when it “skyrocketed.” But still, at the time it made an impact on my thinking.

What if you could not get food for a week? This still seems like a pretty crazy idea to me…but gas is $4.00 a gallon, and I freaked when it was $2.15, because of the hurricanes. Our gas comes in to port from Tampa. I live in Orlando. What happens if gas tankers get delayed by a week or two? Your grocery store may rely on shipments each week. Your gas station definitely relies on shipments each week. If you live paycheck to paycheck, this may throw off your routine for the week. Do you go out to restaurants instead of cooking your meals each night? We used to do this. It was regular for our family to go out to eat at least once or twice per week. Now we make our lunch, instead of indulging in quick serve lunches out. We are trying to get our family out of debt, so we gave up going out for lunch or going out to restaurants, unless it’s really a need. Maybe we go out now once or twice a month. But because of our habits of going out to eat, we relied less on the grocery store. If we needed something we would go get it the night before or the day we needed it. What if you couldn’t get what you needed for a month? What would have to happen for this to be a reality? It’s way more likely than you may be prepared to believe, until after it happens. But we are able to make a small adjustment in our home to be prepared for things like the occasional hurricane or panic stricken raid on the grocery store. We have a “Hurricane Supply.”

You may be wondering why I bothered to put quotes around the word hurricane supply. Besides, I live in Florida and I just talked about getting hit by hurricanes. This hurricane supply is different. It’s maintained all year long and it is designed to get us through one month of food needs. Plus it has the added bonus of not making us look like we are expecting the end of the world to be coming tomorrow (which it is not). We have enough canned vegetables and non-perishable protein type foods to get us through a month. It needs to meet a few conditions. You need to be able to eat it without a heat source. You need to be able to open it without an electronic can opener. You shouldn’t have to add water to it.

You also need to make sure you have some way to get water for a few weeks too. That part may make you look a little more “end of the world” like. But there are a few things we can get to later for that. So the question now is why do I do this?

Answer: 1. Because I can’t predict what is going to happen six months from now.

2. My wife and I feel safer knowing that if our panicked neighbors haven’t prepared anything for an emergency in intensity like a hurricane, they are going to go tear apart our grocery store before we get home from work. We don’t like having to leave work before the neighbors tear apart our grocery store. We like to get there as soon as we can, but not just to beat the panicked neighbors. Besides, we want our neighbors to get less panicked by going to the grocery store and getting it all out of their systems while we are coaxing our co-workers out from under their desks. Actually, since my coworkers are all psychology instructors, they’ll probably be trying to coax me out from under my desk. Who knows what kind of emergency could come. Perhaps no emergency will come in the next six months. So why go to all the bother of having a hurricane supply?

Great question. Now instead of buying groceries each night, we are able to plan for the week and plan for the month at the same time. This helps us save a great deal of money. Plus, we have a month worth of canned veggies to pull from each night. No going to the grocery store for a can of green beans, or corn. We can also then buy fresh vegetables when we choose to, and canned vegetables for cost savings. You can get lots of canned vegetables when they are buy-one-get-one free. There are also lots of coupons for vegetables when you buy multiple cans at a time. This is when we stock up our hurricane supply. Canned tuna and canned chicken go on sale too. These products usually last more than a year on the shelf, so you can eat them when it’s convenient for you.

After coming to the conclusion that we can be vastly more prepared just by planning for a one-month emergency, we know that most events that we could plan for are already addressed. Most likely the world won’t fall apart. We aren’t expecting a nuclear war or aliens to take over the White House…this year. Besides, how would you really plan for either of those scenarios without putting on a tin foil hat? If we get nuked, we’ll cast our lot with our neighbors and take part in the same fate as them. If aliens take over the White House, we’ll just hope it’s an improvement over our own politicians. We believe that the most likely scenario is that we will be using our hurricane supply for just what it is… a hurricane supply. But for you people in Iowa or Kansas, you just never know when a “hurricane” may come your way. If you go to the grocery store, and all you can get is a week or two worth of food, will you be able to help your neighbors next door? If one of you has enough food for a month, you’ll feel better knowing that all you need is two week worth of food that you can share with them.

Examples of an emergency lasting a month:

Straight of Hormuz blockade=unpredictable gas prices (add at least 50% to the price of gas for at least a month)

War between Israel and Iran: same as above

War between Iran and America: same as above

Hurricane Katrina: ask anyone who lived in New Orleans

Another stock market failure like in 2008 would be worse due to the constant bail- outs of banks and entire countries in Europe (Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal etc.)

If Saudi Arabia cut off our oil supply…that would be bad…not likely, but bad.

So to conclude, this is not quite an apocalyptic preparation scenario. You should consider having a month worth of food. The benefits greatly outweigh the negative. You will have a cheaper supply of food, because you bought it on special or with coupons ahead of time. You won’t need to go to the grocery store multiple times per week (or day if you live in my house). You will feel more secure if prices of food and gas increase dramatically. You will be able to bless your neighbors in times of craziness, whether they need to borrow a cup of sugar, or something more intense if aliens invade. The downside. If you share this information with your friends, you are automatically crazy until a hurricane comes and they didn’t buy any batteries for their flashlights…or food for next week. Then you will be someone who can offer help in a time of need.

Why We Have The Ten Rules

2012-04-10T21:03:00.001-04:00

So for the last week I’ve been trying to narrow my focus for the “Ten Rules For Your Home” material. I received a few questions from people asking how to get started in coming up with rules. The main concerns were, “How do you keep the leadership role of the father in the home when the teenager is coming up with the rules?” Another question was, “Why do you do time out when it does not seem like it is working?”

These are great questions. When I enter the picture as a counselor, things have usually gotten to the point where the family needs immediate help. They can’t wait three months to see improved behaviors in their child. Usually the school is giving ultimatums to the family about their child’s behavior too. A comforting word from an overly optimistic counselor will not get the school to stop sending home letters about their kid’s bad behavior. There needs to be some sort of plan to get everyone in the child’s life on the same page. This is why I needed something adaptable to the most difficult family situations. Families with less intense issues can always scale back the plan if it is too much.

Working with teenagers can be very frustrating at times. Having the ability to manipulate concepts is a new skill for them. They are sometimes overwhelmed by the new information that they are now capable of understanding, but they do not have all the right places in their mind to store the information from new processing abilities.

I came up with the “Ten Rules” after my two years as a counselor in a Specialized Therapeutic Group Home. I was responsible for the counseling of foster children who needed an extremely high level of supervision. We had a 24-hour staff that was accountable to where the children were at all times. These workers all had differing opinions of how things should be run, but we couldn’t do it a different way for each staff member. Additionally, I learned that the kids would have been very happy for us to try to run the group home eighteen different ways. They could exploit that. That is why we emphasized the concept of “splitting” or divisions. By having a common plan, we were able to keep the children from using the different “parenting” styles of the workers against each other. Sometimes the kids understood it better than the grown ups though.

So when I left the group home I began working with children in an outpatient type setting. They had at least one parent. I realized that these children also had stability issues that I could address by simplifying the structure of the group home. I wanted to also make it a Biblical model, because I am confident in the Bible’s relevance for everyone. I noticed that many of the parents were mad because their kids were “disrespectful.” I asked them to tell me how they will know their kids are being respectful. They would say something like, “He’ll say yes ma’am or no ma’am. He won’t use profanity anymore, or he won’t get into fights at school.”

I would ask those same parents to write those down as rules, and about half the time, they would not write down those rules. Since I had so many kids, and about half of the parents would not work on coming up with rules, I began working on the rules myself with the kids. I would send the kids home with the rules, and many of them would get really excited about their counseling! In turn, their behaviors at home would improve. Imagine how a teenager feels when they are getting into trouble, and they begin to take responsibility for their actions. It is so disappointing when they get home and their parent is not involved in the counseling that they demanded the child receive. The only time I had a hard time with this design was when parents just did not think it was necessary to be involved in participating in the therapy. They would say things like, “Can’t you just get her to do what I say?” Unfortunately, those were the cases where I was least effective in helping the families. The “Ten Rules” is a model designed to help the parents and the child communicate about expectations. This behavior management template also allows the counselor to work on the deeper issues once the clear expectations are set at home. Many times it even improved marriage conflict, because it gives the parents an opportunity to parent from the same set of expectations. In time the “Ten Rules” get replaced with the language that the parents learn to use in the moment. In essence, it teaches the parents how to step outside of the issues they inherited from their own development, and to parent from a Biblical model, instead of an inherited wound of the heart from their own parents.

2012-04-08T21:16:00.001-04:00

I wanted to start off with a slide show that I used for a speaking engagement at my church. I hope that it is helpful for you. In my counseling sessions, I begin with challenging the family to develop a list of rules similar to the Ten Commandments in the Bible. I came up with the idea after working in a group home for foster children. We had a very complicated structure, and I wanted to help families develop boundaries and structure with a Biblical template.

Empowered parents

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The Christian Family Help Blog

2012-04-08T17:25:00.001-04:00

This is going to be a blog focused on bringing relevant help to families. It will be written from a perspective that incorporates principles from the Bible. We hope that your family will find answers to your questions here. We will address many different topics ranging from behavior issues, communication improvement and money management. We also hope to talk about our experiences with family relevant items that you may need help with. For instance, one of the most important aspects of family life is the memories we make with our children. I spent ten years as a professional photographer, and sold cameras for three years. You may want to learn more about what kinds of camera investments make more sense than others. I used to have this type of conversation twenty times a day when I sold cameras. I was a teaching type of salesman by nature. I loved to talk about what type of camera makes the most sense for a given situation. I would like to review photography techniques and wise purchases for photography. I am a mental health counselor now. My wife Lauren is a speech therapist. We have a desire to bring you ideas to try at home in order to improve your life at home. We use just a few techniques in our own home that dramatically reduce the challenges that arise concerning discipline, communication and money. We hope to be able to walk along side you (virtually anyways) as you minister to your family.