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Firespitters

by Gary Benton, MC

160 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #03-2623; ISBN 1-4120-2044-1; US$19.95, C$25.00, EUR16.25, £11.26

If you have struggled with a difficult or angry child, this book can help. It is full of real ideas and explanations of why your child acts that way. Humorouly written with practical suggestions, this book helps parents manage a firespitting child.

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About the Book      About the Author      Sample Excerpts      Catalogue Info

About the Book If you have struggled with a difficult or angry child, this book can help. It is full of real ideas and explanations of why your child acts that way. Humorouly written with practical suggestions, this book helps parents manage a firespitting child.

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About the Author Gary is a native Northwesterner. He grew up in the greater Seattle area and attended Federal Way High School. He attained his Associate of Arts degree in business from Highline Community College, his bachelor of Arts degree in Social Welfare from the University of Washington and his Master of Counseling degree from Seattle University. Gary has been in social work for over 31 years, providing marriage and family therapy, anger management and domestic violence treatment. He was the Director of the Family Anger Management Institute of Family Services, the Executive Director or Federal Way Youth and Fmaily Services, Auburn Youth Resources and the Executive Director of New Hope Child & Family Agency which provides adoption, pregnancy counseling and foster care services where he served as a Vice President of CRISTA Ministries. Currently he is the Executive Director of Life Manor Assisted Living, a ministry of Life Center Assembly of God in Tacoma. Gary is a frequent local and national seminar speaker and trainer who addresses a number of different topics to a broad range of groups. He provides training to groups as diverse as the national corporations, Parent-Teacher Associations, school teachers, Juvenile Court workers and Ministers. He works at the national level with teachers on the topic: Succeeding with the Difficult Young Child. Locally he presents seminars such as: Managing Change in the Workplace, Improving Communication, Living With Teens, Developing a Vision and Mission, Dealing With Difficult and Angry Clients, Domestic Violence Treatment, Stress Reduction and Grief Loss and others. His workbook for parents of diffcult and angry children, Firespitters, was published in 1999. Office phone: 253-779-3801; e-mail: gwbenton@aol.com

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Sample Excerpts

CHAPTER 1

PUTTING ON THE OXYGEN MASK

I was flying to Los Angeles recently and, as usual, the flight attendant was going over the safety issues. Now, honestly, I've heard those instructions enough to not be very interested anymore; but, for whatever reason, I listened this time. Should the cabin lose air pressure, the flight attendant explained, an oxygen mask would fall out from the compartment above me and I was to put it on. I was assured that even though the little bag wouldn't fill up, oxygen would be flowing to the mask. She went on to say, "If you are traveling with a child or someone who may need assistance, put the mask on yourself first, then help the other person with you."

There's an important lesson in that comment and we'll come to it soon. Meanwhile, I hope you'll find this book to be more than you expected. I hope you'll find it to be more work and more rewarding than any other thing you've done to improve yourself as a parent. I hope that someday your child thanks you for all the things you did to contribute to his or her success. And I hope this book will be a part of that experience.

For sure you won't find this a recipe book for getting good child behavior. There aren't any recipe books written exactly about you or your child. We both know that. Rather, this book is about what it takes for you to write the recipes for getting the behavior you want from your child (most of the time). Even so, I've always been bothered by the saying, "Children don't come with instructions." Because, actually, I believe that they do. The instructions are self contained in both the child and in his or her parents. I heard a very respected pediatrician speaking on a morning talk show giving advice to parents. He asked this question: "Do you know what a pediatrician is really worth?" The host said, "No." "Two grandmothers," he replied. "Two grandmothers know everything a pediatrician knows, and then some."

HOPE

You are your child's best and most enduring hope for the future. You will be there when the school sends him home sick. You will be there when she learns to ride her bike and falls and gets discouraged and hurt. You will be there when his favorite pet dies. You will be there when she experiences her first love and, soon after, no doubt, her first heartbreak. So it's not a teacher who will be there. Nor a counselor. Nor a pastor. It's you! And your child knows that and wants that and needs that.

I have worked with children and families as a therapist for more than 27 years now. Most of the children I've worked with and most of the families, too, for that matter, were in serious trouble. Many of the children had been abused, neglected, used. And yet in almost all cases the child longed to return home, back to the abusive mother or father, back to the family. There is something so powerful and so important about the parent-child bond that it transcends most of life's problems.

So this book will begin by focusing on you, then on your child, and finally on what the two of you can do together to solve most of the life problems that you now face and will confront again in the future. I'll start with you because I truly believe parents are the key people in a child's life, and that you will pay the price for your child's success long after everyone else in the world has given up. If you are like me, you are often bewildered by parents who will stick by their serial killer son believing in his innocence until the very end. I have often thought those parents lived in denial about the terrible crimes and immeasurable suffering their child has caused. Maybe they do. But, maybe, it's more than that. Maybe it's the way all of us as parents and children are really designed to be - bonded to each other forever.

So I'll begin with the most important person in a child's life: his or her parent. You. Once you've had a chance to work on "you," we will work on your child. A friend of mine says the secret to understanding is to ask the right questions. Hopefully you will be asking the right questions and discovering new answers as we work our way through the challenge of raising a difficult and angry child.

FREE ADVICE

This book will start with the flight attendant's advice. Take care of yourself first before you take care of this challenging child. Put on your self control first, before you try to control this difficult child. Be Internally Controlled. Not Externally Controlled.

CHAPTER 2

WHAT DO ASPIRIN COMMERCIALS SELL? Really. Have you asked yourself that? Some of the most interesting stuff on television are the commercials. The title of this chapter suggests one of my favorite questions to ask parent groups when I am speaking. You'll get a chance to figure this out pretty soon. I want you to just sit back and relax. I'll ask you to put the book down in a moment and do something you probably rarely do: watch TV. Specifically, I want you to watch commercials. As you do, answer this question: "What is this commercial selling?"

MEMORY BUILDING

Your conscious memory, my conscious memory, your child's conscious memory is built in two pieces: a factual piece and a feeling piece. In other words, we remember both facts and feelings. Research (and experience) tell us that facts with strong emotions or feelings attached to them are far more likely to be remembered than facts with little or no emotion attached to them. For example, many of us can remember many details about the birth of our children years ago but may have trouble remembering where we were just two weeks ago. The birth of a child has many strong emotions attached to it while our day two weeks ago, unless there was some remarkable experience, is hardly remembered at all.

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Catalogue Information

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