Joe Van Deuren |

December 3, 2013

Peace is Possible

Peace is the “cultivation of understanding, insight and compassion, combined with action. Peace is the practice of mindfulness, the practice of being aware of our thoughts, our actions, and the consequences of our actions.” Thich Nhat Hanh

Creating peace in our home is not just a matter of there not being fights amongst the siblings, or the parents or the butting of heads between parents and children. It is not the stopping of conflict or arguing. Peace is cultivated with the awareness of our thoughts, speech and actions and the affect it has or may have on others.

Imagine living with those that thought about the effect of their words and actions on everyone else in the family. Imagine when everyone in the family respects the space of others, and follows the golden rule of doing to others as you would have them do to you. Imagine the another side of that rule – doing to others as they would have you do to them. Imagine the good feelings from being aware of the things that trigger bad feelings or of seeing the need for pitching in to help all in the family.

This is the awareness that is required to create a culture of peace. This is the Balanced Life Skills Way.

December 1, 2013

Life Skills: Patience – The Definition

Each month we will discuss a life skill with all of our students. This month the word is Patience. This word will be defined in the following ways for our students.

Young students: Patience means: “Waiting without complaining.”

Older students: Patience means: Waiting without complaining for something you want or need.

Each age group has a worksheet that parents can use to continue the discussion at home with their children, and one for adults to allow them to think more deeply about the skill and how it applies to them. Would you like to receive the worksheet? Stop by our studio at 133 Gibralter Avenue in Annapolis, MD and tell us the age of your child. We will give you a worksheet and invite you to watch Mr. Joe discuss the word with the students in class. You can also follow our discussions here on this website.

If you would like to become a member of Balanced Life Skills, come TRY CLASSES FOR FREE. We are not your typical martial arts school, in fact we are an education center, working with our students on physical skills along with empowering families with compassion, awareness and respect. We believe in every child and build their self – confidence. Balanced Life Skills takes part in community service and encourages each student to do the same.

Come in and talk to the parents that are here and watch the class for the age group you are interested in. Learn about the Balanced Life Skills Way.

November 28, 2013

Parent Coaching Series Looks At Anger Management In The Family

It has been 10 days since I last posted on this site. I have been busy teaching at AACC and at Freetown Elementary School. It simply amazes me the concern that parents, teachers and even children have on the feelings and expressions of anger. These feelings that we see expressed in explosive ways are most times a result of other emotions that are not understood either by ourselves and certainly not by others.

On December 10 and 11 Balanced Life Skills will be presenting a 30 minutes discussion on Anger Management in the Home. All adults are invited to attend. I thought it would be helpful to define “peace” to begin with and then give some helpful hints to attaining peace in the home. Can we do it all in 30 minutes? Of course not. But we will give some good solid suggestions to begin working on with the whole family.

In later announcements we will provide other curriculum, blog posts and opportunities to learn more. The Balanced Life Skills Way is one of peace, for ourselves, family, schools and community. I personally invite you to become one of the families in our school who value peace in our community.

November 18, 2013

Parents Who Are Interested In Quiet – Conflict Resolution

Have you ever felt like a referee when you children are fighting over what seems to be such a silly object?

As a parent most of us has gone to the older child who is the most likely to listen to us, therefore ending the conflict the quickest, and asking them to walk away or to give in to the other child? It is easy to understand that this can contribute to the resentment the older child feels for the younger child. Soon the child will grow tired of being the one responsible for resolving the conflict – with the younger child seeming to “win” all of those battles. As Bill Cosby once said, “Parents are not interested in justice, they’re interested in quiet!”

Families are teams and parents you are the coach. The job of the coach is to set the tone for the family (team) and teach skills that help all the players to get along and for the team to be successful. As Coach we are not allowed to trade our players to another team and we should not pretend that we are doing great when we are not, nor can we hide from the problem at the refreshment stand. As Coach we would like to get the players all on the same page and have good sportsmanship. As the Coach we set the example, teach the skills, and keep some order in the “locker room”. There are times when we need to bench one of the players, but most important is teaching skills to resolve conflict. Check out the Conflict resolution handout.

Virtually all behavior that creates conflict is done so in order to get attention and to fill a need. The four area of needs that we get met when we have conflict and become angry is:

Attention
Power struggle
Revenge
Learned helplessness

We will discuss all of these in other post’s in the weeks to come.

November 15, 2013

5 Emotions That Trigger Most Anger

When I observe anyone who is expressing anger with a behavior that is damaging to themselves or to others I personally feel their pain. There are many causes for the way we feel and express anger but they can be generally summed up with emotions or events:

Embarrassment – not achieving a personal goal
Loss of respect – shown by an invasion of space either verbally or physically
Fear – feeling of inadequacy, not being enough,
Shame – Not being happy with ourselves in a certain way, then projecting that on others.
Sadness – Grieving over a loss and the unfairness of that loss to ourselves.

I am sure that there are other causes but these 5 sum up the majority of causes of anger. The most common one is Fear. That little reptilian part of our brain that causes us to react when we perceive an attack by either Freezing, Fighting or Fleeing causes some people to appear angry when in fact they are very scared underneath.

Learning about ourselves is the first step in managing our anger. Which one of these is creating our reactions? Do we show anger the most when we are embarrassed, disrespected, fearful, shamed, or sad? When we can identify what is happening within ourselves, then we can think about what is happening to others, including our children.

I have seen all of these situations and the causes can go very deep. In my own case it was not until I realized that the death of my father at a very early age was the part of the reason I was so quick to react to situations. Knowing this allowed me to look more deeply at myself and find other triggers. This is the work in anger management that I do now, helping others, including children to learn to recognize and communicate their personal triggers.

November 13, 2013

How Others See You May Trigger Emotional Reactions

The way we see ourselves and the way others perceive us are usually not the same and many times are very far apart. We discussed the 6 different identities that take place in a conversation in our last post. Many times we are unaware of how our behavior appears or is experienced. For instance if we are a much taller or bigger person than those we are interacting with, just because of size we may come off as intimidating.

There may be other reasons others may feel intimidated including our voice, body language or facial expressions. It may be the quickness that we speak or the critical nature of our speech. We may be prone to outbursts or sarcasm that in our mind are acceptable, but to others is seen as abrasive and put-downs. Our words or actions may be triggering in others reactions that may trigger a reaction in ourselves. This spiral of emotional triggers can very easily get out of control.

While we may have many positive character traits, we will never know how others perceive us unless we ask and are open to how others perceive us. This step of becoming aware of our effect on others will help us decide if we need to adjust our reactions and find ways to respond that are not aggressive or intimidating. – need to be aware of the intimidation factor that comes with the position we hold so that our expressions are not seen as intimidating others.

Using empathy we can ask ourselves, “If I was being spoken to at this time in this manner would I feel safe or unsafe.” Answering very honestly will give us feedback in how we would like to proceed.