This week I feel like I learned some things that helped me better understand who I am as a person and some of the experiences I went through as a youth. We spent most of this week talking about the work of Michael Popkins and his Active Parenting model. Popkins postulates that parents should respond to children's needs and not to their behavior. He said that their behavior is just a symptom of the need they have that isn't being met. This hit home with me especially as we went through the list of behaviors Popkins defined and what the corresponding need is. In my childhood, I rebelled a lot and Popkins says that is because I didn't feel powerful and the parenting approach my parents should have taken was to give me choices and consequences instead of just restricting what I did. My biggest problem with my parents was they were never willing to let me do things that I wanted so I felt powerless and I rebelled and did what I wanted behind their backs. I liked another one of Popkins scenarios, he said that children who engage in risky behavior are not having their need met to face something challenging. He said that as parents the way you could help fill that need is encourage your child to tackle something hard like building a car from scratch. I love Popkins ideas, it seems to make so much sense to me that our behavior is just symptoms. I would love to hear anyone who reads these ideas to comment about their childhood and if their behaviors were symptoms of their needs not being met.