Helping children learn the important lesson at hand

Psychologist Jorge Partida, PsyD, shares advice for parents on how to help your child learn from their mistake after getting in trouble with the law
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Helping children learn the important lesson at hand

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If your son or daughter gets in trouble with the law, it´s important for you to take this moment as a cry for help. It´s important to try to understand and to try to read into the behavior of your son what is the type of trouble they have gotten into. Is it around violence or is it around addiction? Is it sexual acting out or behavioral acting out? Depending on the cause of the behavior that your son has gotten or daughter has gotten involved in trouble with the law, it´s going to tell you a lot about what might be going on in their life. It´s very important for you to utilize that time of getting in trouble as a critical period of change. Children have the ability to transform their lives if there is an important involvement early on. The way to really get involved is to be able to have your children see this as a punitive situation, meaning it´s something that they wish that would not ever happen to them again. Oftentimes we tend to rescue our children before the lesson is learned. Let them go through the experience of difficulty. Help them process what this has meant and ask them what they have learned. Depending on whether you see your child being resistant to the lesson or being open and insightful, that´s going to make the big difference. If your son is able to see that he has made a mistake and he is able to convince you and convince himself that this is a bad way to go, you´ve done a great job. If you see that there is a great deal of resistance, there is a likelihood that your son will continue to get in trouble. It´s important for you to continue your involvement, stay connected, stay involved, find ways of being able to find support for your son or daughter because that cry for help needs to be addressed. Find the professional help that you need and do it now.

Psychologist Jorge Partida, PsyD, shares advice for parents on how to help your child learn from their mistake after getting in trouble with the law

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Jorge Partida, PsyD

Psychologist

Dr. Jorge Partida is a Psychologist, Green Advocate and Indigenous Healer. He was born in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico and immigrated to Chicago at nine years of age. Dr. Jorge has been a consultant on many national and international projects in the areas of education, health, diversity and spirituality.  Dr. Jorge has worked with local and national governments to coordinate services for those most impacted by poverty, war and displacement.  He has worked in Liberia Africa in the repatriation of boy soldiers and has worked to form “intentional communities” in poverty impacted countries of Latin-America.

Dr. Jorge is the author of The Promise of The Fifth Sun and A Week of Awakening.  His writing integrates psychology with native healing traditions to form an easy to use self-help approach.  Dr. Jorge has designed and facilitated healing workshops that incorporate ritual and practice. 

Dr. Jorge has served as Director of the PsyD program at John F. Kennedy University and as Deputy Director of Behavioral Health with the San Francisco Department of Public Health.  Today, Dr. Jorge is the Executive Director of the United States Green Building Council-Los Angeles (USGBC-LA).  He believes that the discussion of sustainability provides a platform to address today’s most complex issues. 

For more than twenty years, Dr. Jorge has presented mental health segments on television and radio. He has worked with many networks, including Univision, Telemundo, HITN-TV in Spanish and CBS, UPN, NBC and PBS in English. 

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