In my previous blog, I mentioned the challenges of managing difficult teenager behaviour and how teens are simply misunderstood. In this article, I will address one of the crucial elements in my TTP method that is to look at Your Unique Family Blueprint.
The simplest way to talk about “Your Unique Family Blueprint” is that this is the makeup of your family. This encompasses you as a person, your life experiences before you have a family and when you have a family with another person who also has life experiences of their own.
Let’s start with you. Have you ever watched “Who do you think you are” - a very popular UK show helping celebrities trace their family tree and history. The show has a lot of viewers because everyone wants to know who they are, where they are coming from, how their families were raised, how they became who they are and how these things impact on the future line of the families .
The truth is when you learn about yourself, your family history and the impact of your life experiences and adversaries, it helps you make sense of your life. It also helps you better understand who you really are, including your values, your beliefs, your expectations, your relationships, your thoughts, your behaviours and your feelings, and so on. It is important to understand how these elements drive and shape you. Why? Because when it comes to making sustainable change in your family, you need to know the roots, tackle the causes, not the symptoms.
Your teen’s challenging behaviour, your difficult relationship with your partner, the hostile communication style, the constant argument at home, the struggles to ask for help, or say no to your teens are good examples of symptoms. The causes are the “WHYS” that you need to find out. Why is your teen’s behaviour becoming increasingly challenging? Why are you always fighting your other half when it comes to parenting? Why are you struggling to ask for help when you really need it?? Why does every conversation end up in arguments at home? Why do you choose to give your partner silent treatment instead of talking things through?
Without knowing the “WHY”, it’s literally impossible for you to make any sustainable change at home. I have heard a lot of families saying we tried this and that parenting strategy and it worked for awhile but then it didn’t. If you are reading my blog, I hypothesize that you probably have similar experiences. One of the reasons that parenting strategies don’t work long term is because these parenting strategies are too universal when they really need to be more specific to your Unique Family Blueprint and family circumstances.
Now, you probably are thinking…. How can you know the “WHYS”. It's a very important question to answer, but before I dive into the WHYS, let’s look at what your Unique Family Blueprint really means in my TTP world.
In my perspective, it is about why and what drives your family to behave, think and feel as a unit and as an individual in certain ways, including:
✅how your family interacts, relates, communicates, loves, repairs, argues, fights, connects and involves emotionally and so on
✅how your individual beliefs, expectations values and experiences of being parented come into play when you interact with your family
✅how your life experiences, vulnerabilities, and any significant life events and adversaries happened in your life impacts on you and your family
✅how does your family operate in the systems around you and be influenced by the systems around you.
This is the very first and the most important step in my TTP method for the above reasons. I love learning about families’ life stories, their ups and downs, their strengths and struggles, their cries and joy, their relationships and fights, and what they did to overcome life adversaries and how their families arrived at the place where they are today. This gives me phenomenal insights on their Unique Family Blueprint. I can then help families make sense of these and explore the WHYS with them together. In turn, this gives us the weapon to develop strategies that meet the family’s unique needs and achieve sustainable outcomes.
You can now see why the parenting classes/programmes you attended, the parenting books you read, the podcasts you listened to can not help you find effective and sustainable strategies.
For sure, there are things you can do to help understand the WHYS, you can find out the whys from your observations, from the lessons you learned from the past, from feedback you receive, but in reality, you really need an EXPERT to help you unpick the WHYS by understanding your Unique Family Blueprint so that you can truly understand your family and to learn impactful ways to manage the challenges at home with ease and success.
Mary was a good example. She attended a very reputable teen parenting programme, and was taught to put consequences around her son's use of social media. She was so happy that she learned something that could potentially be helpful. She went home, did what she was advised. She got a blackeye from it.
Why? The trainer taught her the strategies without knowing her family background and her Unique Family Blueprint.
I can be that EXPERT for your family. With my extensive experience helping hundreds of families achieve exceptional results at home in the shortest time possible (90 days).
You can jump into our Heal Family First Method: 5 day taster where you get to experience instant positive change at home using the TTP principles. Book here.
Until then,
Remember, 🌈there's always hope, endless hope
Pei-I