When dealing with the child protective services system, you may be expected to make a few changes to keep your children or have them returned. It doesn’t help to dig in your heels and refuse to make these changes. The system is bigger than you are.

You will need to make the changes they demand and even more than that, make them believe those changes are permanent. You won’t really fool them if you try to pretend you’ve changed. You might fool them for awhile, but they’ll figure it out and you’ll be worse off than before.

It isn’t enough to just do something to please a judge or a social worker. The change you make has to be a real change. You have to truly change.

Don’t say that you should not have to change, that the way you’ve been doing things is just fine. The way you do things may be just fine to you, but the system has different ideas than you, and the system is going to win.

True change begins on the inside. It starts with you understanding that what you’ve been doing is related to how you think and feel. You can’t make a change by just doing something on the outside that you don’t feel on the inside. So, you begin by looking at how you feel on the inside and think about how that comes out in your behavior.

For example, you may want to be a physically healthy person, so you give up soda, cookies, cake, and donuts. You start eating asparagus, broccoli, and brussels sprouts. You don’t really like asparagus, broccoli, or brussels sprouts, but everyone says that healthy people eat them so that’s what you do.

How long can you keep that up? If you don’t learn to like those healthy foods, you’d be lucky to eat them more than a day or two before you go back to your favorite foods that are keeping you unhealthy.

You might say, “But I can’t make myself like something I hate.”

Well, that’s just not true. That kind of defeatist attitude will result in one thing only: defeat.

I grew up hating spinach. I would throw all sorts of tantrums if my mother tried to make me eat it. One day, I saw this recipe for something that used fresh spinach. I decided to give it a try. The spinach bothered me at first, but I kept telling myself to give it a try and to think about what I liked about spinach. I let myself like it. That’s different than making myself like it. See the difference?

Now, I’ll pick spinach over lettuce in salads. I even make a drink in a blender with spinach as one of the main ingredients. I changed on the inside, and it resulted in healthier behavior on the outside.

Think about some of the changes you are being asked to make. Ask yourself how you can let yourself like doing things that way. You may find out that you prefer it.

True change is like that. It’s what the system is hoping to see in you. Is your family worth the effort?