Carl Pickhardt

“Your job is to manage your relationship with me to get the freedom you need to grow. Part of my job is to tell you how to accomplish this objective. "First, you must understand change. Growth is change—the experience of moving from old to new, from the same to different, from familiar to unfamiliar, from known to unknown. Adolescence is change. To yourself and to me, you are no longer the old, same, familiar, known child that you used to be. Now you are becoming a new, different, unfamiliar, and unknown person for me to live with. This transformation is very important for you to understand, because as you change in your teen years, I change my parenting in response. "To your becoming new in some ways, I miss some of the 'old' child I knew. Feeling sad and lonely from this loss, I may hold on to the way you used to be to resist the change.”
― Carl Pickhardt, The Connected Father. Understanding Your Unique Role And Responsibilities During Your Child’s Adolescence.

“We disagree with the choice you have made, this is why, this is what we need to have happen now, and this is what we hope you can learn from this experience.”
― Carl Pickhardt, Who Stole My Child?: Parenting through the Four Stages of Adolescence