Your Kids Are Your Own Fault - Truth-Telling Parenting Book by Larry Winget

Over the decades, a lot of bad advice for parents has been published. Strategies such as false praise and permissiveness may have played to parents' fears of losing the love of their child, but the consequences have been horrendous.

Larry Winget, with pet bulldog

After watching in-your-face truth-teller Larry Winget's entertaining speech to 2012 graduates, I decided it was time for me to read his parenting book, Your Kids Are Your Own Fault (2010).

Larry Winget, best-selling author, TV personality and celebrated speaker, describes himself as a one-trick pony. In his own words, "There is one central theme in all that I do. That central theme is personal responsibility."

Also, he's brutally honest and forthcoming when he dispenses advice. Reading one of his books is like talking with somebody with a hair-trigger bullshit detector, a grasp of the facts and an absolute certainty about the truth. When he "tells it like it is," he knows he makes a lot of people feel uncomfortable, but he doesn't care. Too much is at stake to mince words. It's a style that doesn't always go down easy. One of my Twitter followers described him as a "blowhard."

As I read Your Kids Are Your Own Fault, I found that I didn't agree with everything he said. But I did agree with 99% of it. And I love his style. For example, the current tendency to diagnose kids with attention deficit disorders and medicate them to be compliant in the classroom is a matter of controversy. Here's Larry's take on it, and no, he doesn't mince words:

"Medication is easier to administer than discipline. It takes ten seconds to get your kid to swallow a pill. It takes a constant 24/7/365 effort to discipline your child."

"Teachers have twenty-five little monsters who aren't paying attention and are looking out the window, picking their noses and eating their boogers instead of learning their lessons. When one or two in the class need some extra attention in order to behave, rather than messing with the fragile psyche of the child by putting him in the corner like Mrs. Bowman did to me, some teachers call the parents of the kid and suggest Ritalin."

"Okay, it's your kid and not mine. I am just expressing my opinion here. But tell me how the baby boomers, the most productive generation in the history of our nation, were able to accomplish so much without childhood drugs? How did all of us deal with our hyperactivity without medication? The answer: Our parents and teachers busted our skinny little butts and told us to shut up, sit still and pay attention! That's how."

I think that's what my Twitter friend meant by "blowhard." On the other hand, I agree with Larry on this one. Plus, I like the way he grabs your attention and makes you think about what he's saying.

He also says:

"Kids mess up. It's what they do. I see it all the time and so do you. I lived with it for lots of years with my own boys. But sometimes I realized that my kids were messing up because they didn't know any better. That is often the case; kids don't do the right thing because no one has communicated what the right thing is. As parents, we often expect something from our kids they can't deliver because we failed to communicate with them what we expected. When that happens, and the kid messes up, it is actually our own failure, not the kid's."

That may make some parents uncomfortable, but it's the truth. Kids can't read their parents' minds. More on this:

"When you communicate your expectations, it is important at the same time to also communicate what happens when those expectations are either met or not met."

"All actions have consequences. Even non-action has consequences. This alone is a great lesson to teach your child."

Another example of in-your-face truth telling:

"People tell their kids, 'You can be whatever you want to be.' That isn't realistic. You should not be telling your kid that he can be whatever he wants to be. Why? Because he can't....The truth is that he can be whatever he has the basic talent for being and is willing to work hard enough to become using that talent. That is a realistic statement based in fact. It doesn't sound as fairy-tale-like and it doesn't have quite the ring to it that 'You can be whatever you want to be' has, but it's the truth."

Multiply the above quotes by 100 and you pretty much have Your Kids Are Your Own Fault: A Guide for Raising Responsible, Productive Adults.

I think kids need to hear the truth. I really do. And I think parents need to hear it, too. That's why this book has been promoted to one of my top three parenting books. The other two are David Walsh's Why Do They Act That Way? and John Rosemond's Teen-Proofing.

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2012. Building Personal Strength .

Catch MIB3's Will Smith - Master Motivator for a Work Ethic!

Will Smith

Will Smith's Men in Black sci-fi spoof movies are so quirky they defy classification. Elvis Presley a shape-shifting alien? Hoo! These flicks have been incredibly popular, and I must say they were a roller coaster ride. I caught the previews of the latest Men in Black 3 and it's definitely on my list. IMAX 3D? Any way that won't be fun?



Lately, though, it's not Will Smith the actor who's captured my attention. It's Will Smith the motivator.

Seriously. Remember that scene in The Pursuit of Happyness when optimistic but out-of-work Chris and his 5-year-old boy are evicted from their home? When things were at their worst, he didn't want his kid to feel defeated. I love this scene. It really inspires...



See what I mean? And I love the great ending. Lump in throat time...



And then I discovered that when Will Smith is invited to talk about his personal life, he reveals himself to be a world-class motivator. The real Will Smith is a lot like Chris. I love what he says about work. Not all of us are born with talent, advantages and other gifts, but all of us can work hard at what we do. Listen to this...



You might be more talented than me. You might be smarter than me. But if we get on the treadmill together, either you're getting off first, or I'm going to die.

I will outwork you. Oh my. That pumps me up, man. What if every teenager heard, understood and internalized this empowering thought about work ethic and effort? Visions of hope and possibility! Can you imagine what would happen?

Do you know a young person with a strong work ethic? The ultimate graduation gift... 

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2012. Building Personal Strength .

The No. 1 Thing You Need to Know about Personal Development

Truth-telling time.

You can't change who you are by reading a book.

You can't change the way you act by watching a video.

What matters is what you do. Not what you know.

Books, video clips, quotes, motivational speakers, seminars, CDs and DVDs - all these things may inspire you, spark ideas and give you food for thought.

But the bottom line is this: when the world challenges you, when your life surprises you, what will you do?

Nearly every time, what you'll do is execute your ingrained behavior patterns. This has always been true.

Aristotle: "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."

If you want to change the way you hit a golf ball, you have to hit enough balls to ingrain the new pattern. On the course when it counts, it won't work to try to figure it out while standing over the ball. You have to have already ingrained the improved swing through countless repetitions. Practice, practice, practice.

You know this. Everybody knows this. Personal development is no different.

If you want to develop yourself personally, yes, you need to know what to do. But then you need to actually do it countless times. At first, your old habits will override your good intentions. But if you keep at it, eventually you'll have more successes than failures. The new habit will begin to take over. It's not easy, but it's the only way to succeed at personal development.

Yes, by all means, read the books and enjoy the presentations. But be realistic. This is only the introduction, the first step. If you don't do the work, nothing will change. You gotta do the reps. If you think you can achieve personal development any other way, you're fooling yourself.

A resource that will help you do the reps.

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2012. Building Personal Strength .

10 Breakthroughs in Personal Development

I was thinking about ProStar Coach today, the online virtual personal development coaching system, which has been in use for over two years now. Our vision was always to help adults get stronger for the challenges of work and life. It was as if we wanted to replace the old, cynical bumper sticker with something more realistic and empowering:

"Life is hard. And then you get stronger to get what you want."

All adults need more strength, but not all of them realize it. And not many adults know about the core strength areas, or that it's possible to exercise them. But these areas of human capability are real. They influence whether you'll achieve success and happiness, and people can intentionally become stronger.

ProStar Coach is so different from any other learning resource, because as we built it we kept our minds open and ended up incorporating an impressive number of breakthroughs in personal development. I actually wrote them down today as I was thinking about it.

1. Focused on changing behavior. Knowing what to do doesn't mean that you'll do it. So unlike most learning and development programs, ProStar Coach focuses on permanently changing behavior patters. Amazingly content-rich, it contains thousands of helpful insights, but it doesn't stop there. It coaches users to apply know-how in their lives and learn from these experiences.

2. Workouts in a virtual gym. The learning experience is a lot like working out with a personal trainer in a fitness center. You do the reps. But instead of physical strength, you work on getting stronger as a person - personal strength, relationship skills, and critical thinking skills.

3. Personal strength. It's the only learning system in the world that helps people get stronger in 40 different areas related to strong self, strong relationships, good judgment, and effective action. Learning is supported by 7 different exercise modes to accommodate personal learning style.

4. Relationship skills. Dozens of behavior-based instructional videos skip the entertainment and fluff. The videos are about one-third the usual length and are densely packed with how-to content. It's the most comprehensive set of people skill resources in one place, including related resources in other media.

5. Critical thinking skills. All the exercises use an approach that gets you to use critical thinking skills.

6. F-A-R. It uses a simple, powerful behavior change system that guides you through Focus, Action and Reflection - over and over until the new behavior is ingrained.

7. ProStar employs 6 kinds of virtual coaching...
- Coaching videos that orient the new user to the system.
- Follow-up coaching program to begin development and acquire self-development routines.
- Self-directed and self-paced F-A-R system.
- Coaching Network of real people for advice, ideas, encouragement, and accountability.
- Exercises that coach learners to apply learning and reflect on experience.
- Concierge encouragement and learning tips based on individual use of ProStar.

8. Two modes of interactive learning. You can be guided by the structure of the virtual coaching, or you can use ProStar in a self-directed "coach-free" mode. Or both simultaneously.

9. Revolutionary feedback system. Moving beyond traditional multi-source (360-degree) feedback, it's self-initiated instead of centrally managed; uses a "micro-feedback" approach to focus on a single top priority area for improvement, not dozens of ratings; and it incorporates a powerful element called "feed forward," which gathers suggestions for future action from many people. It can be used for diagnosis - finding the top issue among many possibilities. Or it can be used to check progress in a single area. It's like asking real people for their impressions and suggestions. And the technology makes gathering all this a simple, quick, anonymous process.

10. Youth-friendly. It's a learning system for adults who want to change old habits that get in the way of success - and build new ones. But ProStar was also designed to appeal to success-oriented high school and college students and people new to the workplace - to build success skills and strengths early, so they don't have to do the hard work to replace bad habits later in life.

Ten breakthroughs! I didn't realize there were so many until I forced myself to write them all down. It wasn't our goal to make ProStar Coach so different. We just wanted it to actually work to change people's behavior patterns to make them more effective in their careers, in leadership, in small business, in relationships, in parenting, and in preparing young people for success as adults.

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2012. Building Personal Strength .

Straight Talk about Work Ethic - Larry Winget's Real-World Graduation Speech

Larry Winget

My colleague, Meredith Bell, has published an article about truth-telling author and speaker, Larry Winget. You've heard the phrase, "tell it like it is." Often called "the pit bull of personal development," Larry is famous for telling it like it is.

My favorite book by Larry is on parenting - Your Kids Are Your Own Fault - A Guide for Raising Responsible, Productive Adults. I just love what this guy has to say.

As I write this, schools everywhere are graduating their senior classes. It just isn't possible for any of these gatherings to hear a better graduation speech than the one Larry Winget gave on the set of Fox News. So I'm featuring it here in case you know any graduates who'll be looking for work and need to know the score.

Watch the video, and if you feel like cheering, send the kid a link to this post.



Meredith and I have spent hours talking about the importance of a work ethic. Here's my article on the awful things that happen to kids who were never encouraged to developed one...

Another great graduation speech - by the late Steve Jobs... 

The ultimate graduation gift...

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2012. Building Personal Strength .

Are You Strong Enough to Accept the Truth?

You may have heard of the five stages of grieving loss, described in On Death and Dying (1969), by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, M.D. (1926-2004). The five stages are:

• Denial
• Anger
• Bargaining
• Depression
• Acceptance

Three things I like to keep in mind when considering this theory...

• The important stage is the last one - acceptance - which is the goal of grieving.
• The stages aren't rigid. They don't always happen in this order, and some people skip stages as they move towards acceptance.
• I like to add a sixth stage after acceptance - affirmation. It's important to affirm what is real and natural and good, and that can only happen after acceptance.

I consider acceptance to be a personal strength, because most of the time you have to be strong to accept the way things are. To acknowledge a hard truth, such as "My beloved is dead," "My coworkers don't like my work," or "This habit is endangering my health," you have to face up to unpleasantness, perhaps even the hard work of doing something about it. So it's much easier to deny it.

But before you launch into accepting things, I encourage you to give some thought to what you're about to accept...

You could accept a lie, instead of the truth.

You could accept the way you wish things were, instead of acknowledging the way things really are.

You could accept nonsense, instead of seeking something valid, good and useful.

You could accept a miserable situation, instead of doing something about it.

You could accept negative, erroneous attitudes, instead of healthy, life-affirming ones.

You could accept poor quality, instead of insisting on high standards.

You could accept living with a problem, instead of doing something to solve it.

You could accept your shortcomings, rather than work on getting stronger.

Truth, reality, quality, balance, solutions, your best self - pursuing these can enrich you, but to make them a part of your life you'll have to be strong. You'll have to do the hard things.

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2012. Building Personal Strength . (Permission to use image purchased from fotolia.com)

Intimacy, Separateness and Social Media

Recently I attended a lovely outdoor dinner party hosted by friends in my neighborhood. About 25 people were there, most of them familiar acquaintances. It was interesting and fun to "catch up." And I met some people for the first time. The weather cooperated, and I had a good time.

Talking with these people, I was reminded of the limitations of intimacy. All of us assume that we "know" each other; but realistically, we know very little about what we've been doing each day or what's going on now. If there are issues, things going on behind closed doors, we're not privy to it. That's how life works; our separateness is a very real thing.

It's true even when it comes to best friends and family members - even immediate family. For example, do parents really understand what's going on in the lives of their teenage children? Most don't. I've never met a parent who did. It's not that we're too busy, uncaring or ignorant. It's just that we lead separate lives, and the people around us don't really know everything that's going on.

My eyes were opened to this reality at a reunion with some of my best high school buddies. We were close back then, but I learned that we really didn't know each other very well. And after 40 years, we had no idea who these familiar guys in old people's bodies were. If we were curious, we'd have to try get to know each other all over again. And that would take us only so far.

We try to stay in touch with our family and best friends. Our relationships depend on it. And of course, time spent in-person, face-to-face is the best way of maintaining intimacy. Everyone knows that.

But spending this kind of quality time with all these people is hard, if not impossible.

So we talk on the phone. We hear the real voice, even the tone of voice, to get most of what they're thinking and feeling. It's a real-time back-and-forth conversation.

Also, there's chat or instant messaging. You don't get the nonverbal message, which the experts say is the major part of the communication. But at least the back-and-forth communication is real-time, or almost. No talking, just typing. So this digital form of communication is one more step removed than a phone call from being with the real person.

Even further distanced are email, texting, blogging, Facebook, Twitter, etc. These messages are essentially brief, delayed in time and practically devoid of emotional content. They call it social media, but it's the least social of all the media. It's almost like a way of communicating without having to really connect or communicate much. In other words, it' a way to have a relationship without the intimacy - a way to stay in touch with an acquaintance without ever revealing your true self or getting to know the person.

I've used social media to stay in touch with certain people I've never met - for years. Some of these folks seem like interesting people, the kind of people I'd like to know better. I've even talked on the phone with some of them - our most revealing interchanges, by far. I would even love to meet them in person sometime - a huge step towards intimacy.

But as I've said before, there's this impenetrable separateness that limits how intimate we can be.

I think social media is popular with teenagers because they're experimenting with relationships, and this is a way to do it without the risks of true intimacy. Also, inexperienced as they are in relationships, they're fooled by these shallow tweets and posts, believing they're a form of intimacy.

I guess I'm a retro old fart when it comes to texting. I participate in social media, but I have no illusions about it. I have my iPhone, but I don't send text messages. To me, texting is the most impersonal and distanced medium devised so far. You type out these little word bites without having to actually converse.

Like a few other trends in the culture, I'm going to pass on this one. If you have a cell phone and want to communicate, don't text me. Call me. Maybe we can have a real-time conversation. If I'm not available, leave a recording of your voice. I want to hear your voice; I enjoy getting the nonverbal part of the message.

Besides, there's something ridiculous about sending a message one character at a time, using my big fat thumbs on those teeny-tiny keys. It reminds me of 100 years ago, when the fastest way for people to communicate long-distance was the telegraph, where you clicked a key to send a two-line message one character at a time.

I can't make myself do it.

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2012. Building Personal Strength . (Permission to use images purchased from fotolia.com)

How Books about the Teen Brain Fall Short

I've been writing about the teen brain for several years now, and I'm currently gathering the most important insights into a book for parents. I'm doing this knowing that during the past eight to ten years dozens of articles and about ten books about the teen brain have already been published. Why not just refer readers to the best of these works? Why another book about the teen brain?

The reason is that while all these articles and books report the research findings, they fail to get to the heart of the matter. Some of them communicate well to parents, but they get the science wrong. Some of them get the science right, but they don't communicate well to parents or tell them what they need to know. There are several hugely important insights and recommendations that parents of teens desperately need, and they aren't coming through in these books.

A good example is an excellent book I read recently, Welcome to Your Child's Brain: How the Mind Grows from Conception to College (Bloomsbury, 2011), by Sandra Aamodt, Ph.D., and Sam Wang, Ph.D.

Parents will be engaged by the title. They need to know about their child's brain, because there are sensitive windows of development with outcomes that last a lifetime. There are certain things parents need to do and not do at certain times, and they need to know what these actions are.

One thing I appreciate about this book is that it's thorough and responsible. It gets the science right. Better than any book I've read, it makes the point that there are specific developmental stages. The authors have studied and worked in neuroscience for years, and the science they cite is up-to-date. I'm an avid reader of books like this, and I loved the extensive glossary, the hundreds of notes and scientific references, and the detailed index. I enjoyed this book far more than the pop science treatments of the teen brain that get some of the science wrong.

But all this rigor becomes a problem. It's as if the authors wanted to write a book for parents, and they ended up writing a book for other scholars and scientists. For example, the development of the prefrontal cortex happens during adolescence and is hugely important to the development of the basic structure of a child's intellect. Here's what the authors have to say about it:

"One sign that adolescent brains are becoming more efficient is that activity is better coordinated between distant brain areas. This improvement is seen in signals varying together (coherency) and traveling over distances more quickly. White matter is only 85 per cent of adult size and continues to grow even into the forties. As white matter grows, axonal fibers are likely to be widening, and fatter axons transmit signals at higher speeds. Because white-matter axons mediate communication between distant brain regions, this change is likely to have strong functional implications - though at present we don't know what they are."

And: "In a longitudinal study of children, the pattern of developmental changes in cortical thickness predicted intelligence more strongly than did the adult configuration at age twenty. Dendritic branching in neurons was also correlated with intelligence in a few studies."

This is a technically responsible way to describe the research. But what does this mean to a typical parent? I've been studying brain science for over 25 years and I found the description challenging. If you say important things to parents in a way that makes it hard for them to understand, you confuse them.

The problem is while the authors know their business, they've been writing about these topics professionally for scientific peer review for more than a decade, and this is how they're used to writing about them. But this kind of writing doesn't communicate to parents. There are some important points to be made, but what parents need to know is mostly buried in this kind of review of research.

I think very few parents will be able to wade through all this technical description. But if they do they'll be convinced that there are stages of brain development that are important to the successful growing up of their child. But aside from being aware of the stages, what should they do as parents? There's not much of this in the book, and what's here is hard to find among the 300 pages of responsible scientific journalism.

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2012. Building Personal Strength .

Want More Good Luck? Some Helpful Advice...

Often when I look over at my wife, Kathleen, I think: How lucky I am to be sharing my life with her. I can no longer imagine living without her.

And when I think realistically about it, luck had a lot to do with our being together. How we met, fell in love and eventually got married was a chain of events that began with an incident that turns out to be one of the luckiest things that ever happened to me.

It began over 20 years ago, when I was busy speaking and consulting. I got a call from a friend who was working for a large consulting firm.

“An association of retired CEOs is chartering a cruise ship,” he said. “They want to travel around the Caribbean for nine days combining fun and education. They want us to do a program, but they don’t want to pay for it. My company is passing. Do you want the gig? You’ll only have to present for an hour. Other than that, just enjoy the cruise. And you’ll meet people who could bring you some business.”

This wasn't an easy choice for me. I'd be away from work for ten days, and I'd receive no fee. There was a possible quid pro quo - I might meet a few well-connected former executives who could eventually bring me some business. After a long, uncomfortable pause, my intuition told me to go for it. “Count me in,” I said.

Well, it was a memorable cruise, and they liked my program. I met quite a few highly successful businessmen, and one of them later became a friend and mentor. We helped each other on several projects over the years.

In 1991, my friend asked me to give a consultation to a banker who was advising one of his business interests. The banker was Kathleen. She found my coaching valuable and in return offered to give me a “best of Miami” tour that Saturday. We became friends. We stayed in touch, and five years later we got married.

So, if I had said “no” to this no-fee opportunity, I wouldn’t have met my mentor, he wouldn't have introduced me to Kathleen, and we wouldn't be married today.

It was one of those decision points that have the potential to change one’s life in a big way. Life works this way sometimes — a sobering thought.

It was a momentous decision, and a lucky one. This is not the only lucky thing that's happened to me in my life. I could name a dozen more. Remembering this chain of events caused me to reflect on luck. Because "luck," whatever it is, does seem to play a part in our lives. Good luck. Bad luck.

Some thoughts...

Luck is when something significant happens, and the cause is external to you. You had no control over what happened. For example, in Vietnam I was on a patrol when a soldier in our group stepped on a booby-trap mine. It killed him instantly, and it seriously wounded the guy in front of me and the guy behind me. I was untouched. I'm writing this piece right now because I was lucky that day. It's a huge deal, but I had no control over what happened.

So you can't make good luck happen. You can't go out looking for it, hoping you'll be favored with it.

Also, you can't always tell when something lucky is happening to you. You can't always foresee the consequences or how momentous they may be. My story about how I met Kathleen is a good example.

In order to enjoy the benefits of good luck, you have to follow through. You have to make the most of whatever situation the "lucky" event put you in. So once the good luck door is open, you have to walk through it.

And because you rarely know when the "good luck door" is open, in order to reap the benefits of lucky happenings you need to always exercise your best judgment, skills and personal strength. In other words, you need to bring your best to every situation. Otherwise, something potentially momentous may happen to you, but you could do the wrong thing, go down a different path and never experience the chain of consequences that leads to the benefit. In other words, good luck can turn into bad luck if you aren't the kind of person who gives life your best shot every day.

So when someone says to you, "Good luck!" you know that person cares about you. But you need to get real. You've got work to do if you want to walk through some doors that you don't even know are open.

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2012. Building Personal Strength .

Virtual Gym Workouts - Get Stronger As a Person

Personal strengths are behavior patterns that help you strive against adversity to do the hard things in life and work. Some examples...

Self-awareness - Honesty - Vision - Proactivity

Self-development - Integrity - Intuition - Initiative

Self-confidence - Trust - Optimism - Effort

That's a dozen personal strengths. In ProStar Coach you can work on any of these - and more than two dozen more.

People skills are behavior patterns, too -- for interacting effectively in relationships. Some examples...

Listening - Giving encouragement - Giving positive feedback - Giving constructive feedback

Giving feedforward - Guiding learning - Stimulating thinking - Coaching for accountability

Receiving feedback - Engaging in dialogue - Resolving conflicts - Encouraging ideas

That's a dozen people skills. In ProStar Coach you can work on any of these - and more than a dozen more.

You make a muscle stronger by repeatedly exercising it. You can exercise it with physical labor in the world, or you can do specific, repeated exercises in a gym.

You make a behavior pattern stronger by repeatedly exercising the behaviors in the world. Or you can get coaching to do exercises in ProStar Coach, an online virtual gym and coaching system for working on personal strengths and people skills.

A gym is a place where you use exercise resources and coaching to get stronger. A physical fitness gym is for building physical strengths for physical strength and health.

ProStar Coach is a virtual gym for exercising personal strengths to get stronger as a person to deal with the challenges of work and life, whether you're a small business owner, a parent, a manager, a student, or an individual who wants more success.

Are you the kind of person who wants to get stronger? Are you the kind of person who's willing to do the work?

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2012. Building Personal Strength . (Permission to use photo purchased from istockphoto.com)