Currently in the United States nearly half of all children go through the divorce of their parents. Nearly half of all adults experience disabling emotional distress sometime in their lives. More than a million children are referred to the police or child protection agencies for abuse or neglect each year--and many more cases are never reported. Suicide, according to the U.S. surgeon general, is at epidemic proportions.
At the same time, television, movies, video games, news media, and popular music saturate our children and us with oversexed and violent images while minimizing how disturbing these images can be. Advertising is everywhere, telling us we need to drink more beer, buy fancier cars, wear designer clothes, and look more like anorectic or steroid-pumped models. Parenting in this environment can easily become overwhelming, and so can the search for answers.
I have spent many years helping families find the answers they're looking for. My first inspiration for helping troubled families came from Leo and his friends, who lived in the dingy, gray and brown world of a 1930's housing project in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was a seven-year-old plugger and I was a freshman at Harvard College. He and his friends wanted companionship, something to do, and someone to take an interest in them. I wanted the same and a way to mute my homesickness for Seattle, Washington. Two of us from Harvard and eight boys from the Roosevelt Towers gathered every week behind dusty, wire-covered windows in the grimy basement of one of the towers to talk, play games, plan field trips, and learn to get along with each other. Leo always seemed amazed to be with us. He was skittish, like a beaten puppy—afraid, but too curious and needy to leave. Leo and the other boys became the highlight of my week and a surrogate family. Many times I imagined how my life would have been different had I been raised as they were.
For two of the next three years I worked in similar programs with children and teenagers from other Boston area housing projects. The hope I saw in their eyes still inspires me. Their fear and aloneness has stayed with me. I later finished medical school and became a psychiatrist to children and adults in emotional turmoil. With this book I hope to reach out again to families in pain with this offering of inspiration, information, and ideas for change.
This book is for you if you find yourself saying, "I'm sick of everyone arguing with each other, but I'm all out of ideas." Many families feel that way, at least sometimes. You need good ideas for change, but most of all you need to believe that you can change your family. That's what I'm here for. This book can also help you understand why someone else's family is in so much pain and what you might do to help.
I want to inspire you, to jump-start a change to a new way of thinking. I want to prove to you that your family can change, no matter how great the difficulties seem. You'll read about people who have changed themselves and their families, and who show how one person can make it happen.
This book has many practical suggestions you can use right now to change your family. It also has many moments of reflection. Some of these reflections are based on my experiences with my patients and my professional knowledge; others are spiritual in nature. I want you to believe as strongly as I do that life is precious and the human spirit can cope with almost anything and that you can change the painful patterns in your family.
Stop Arguing and Start Understanding is only the start of your family's journey to health. It will help you change the way you think about your family's problems, show you where you can find the help and strength you need, and inspire you to keep going for as long as it takes to make your family safe and loving.
You won't need any more energy to solve your family's problems than you already use living as you do right now. You will learn to save your energy for actions that create hope and success rather than waste it on dead end arguments and other contests of will.
My approach to family healing is built on six principles:
Healthy families create a refuge for everyone they touch, a place where we can grow healthy children and a healthy future. If you are a thoughtful and determined person who wants to mend your family's hurtful ways, you can do it with a workable plan and the tenacity to see it through. That's what this book is all about.
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