Kids and Responsibility

As I mentioned we interviewed Dr. Michael Ungar about his book Too Safe For Their Own Good: How Risk and Responsibility Help Teens Thrive.

Before I get blog our interview and the interesting points he made, I want to touch base on this same topic but with respect to younger children.

As children grow older they are trying to make sense of their world and take on become more adept at physical activities as well as mental tasks. We are all striving to learn and overcome the challenges set up for us. If we as parents set up roadblocks by being overprotective then our children would not be walking or speaking. We need to encourage this growth in order for them to mature and grow.

Why is it that we are so overprotective. At the playground we should be encouraging the climbing behaviour. We can be somewhat fearful of the heights but we need to change our responses from one of fear to one that is more encouraging and asking if they feel comfortable with what they are doing. Risks as Dr. Ungar stated are about perception of danger, not the danger itself. Sometimes children have no fear and that is where we step in to instruct them and work with them but not to stop them unless the safety issue is paramount.

The risks out in the world are not really that bad. For our children to be more street smart they need to experience being on the street. We coddle them by driving them everywhere, partly it's convenience but the other part is our over riding concern for safety. We need to walk with them around the downtown areas of town or city, talk with them about the life of the downtown, talk about traffic and some of the dangers, etc. etc.

From the young child to the teen they need to experience and learn from life's experiences. How will they grow to be independent productive citizens if they have not made some mistakes and hopefully learned from them.

Too often we are coddling our children, stepping in and solving their problems and then wonder why they are taking greater risks in the teen years. More on this next time.

They're growing up!

Where did the time go? Now I have a 20 yr old and an 18 yr old. It seems like just yesterday that they were in elementary school and needing us a little more than they do now.

The other day we had a radio interview with Dr. Michael Ungar who has written a book about teens with a penchant for risk-taking or responsibility-seeking. I'll elaborate on our interview in a future blog but first I'd like to put down some thoughts of our children maturing and growing up.

Our daughter just arrived home from a school trip to Costa Rica. Quite well organized and not a lot of risks from the travel end of things but certainly from growing up with a few personal challenges. My wife and I thought that she, after two weeks away, would be ready to be home. Well no her first words to me was how she could have stayed for a longer period. Yes, she was happy to see us but she expressed that the trip taught her that she can do this without the homesickness.

As she finishes up her high school years, she is now looking further afield—to travel and explore the world. Her experiences in the past weeks being billeted with a Costa Rican family gave her a mature insight into another culture. Although she had some “touristy type” experiences she felt that she gained so much from not staying at hotels and doing tourist things. This was another one of those turning points to being an independent young woman.

During the past couple of weeks, while my daughter was away, our son has come to the conclusion that he needs to move away for his academic and sports pursuits. He has realised that what he wants in life is not necessarily here (at this point in time).

I often hear parents saying that it is cheaper to go to college or university in town. Why go away? I spent my undergraduate years away from home. It was a good experience for me. I had to take on the responsibilty of looking after my needs. Too often today, we are taking that opportunity away from our children. We must find ways to allow them to take on life away from us. Yes, we are there to support them but on their terms.

This all leads into my blog on our discussion with Michael Ungar in the next day or so.

A glimpse of parenting

This morning as I was driving to work, I caught sight of a father and son sitting on a bench waiting for a bus. It was one of those glimpses into parenting that warms the heart. Not sure what they were doing but they were hunched close together over a book and the connection of father and son was truly evident.

Often, I am reminded that our quality times with our children are often unplanned and not necessarily of a lengthy duration. However they are meaningful and sometimes even memorable.

Last week on my son's 20th birthday, he and I went out for dinner to celebrate. (His mother and sister were both out of the country on Spring Break.) It is not often that we get to spend a great deal of time together—school, girl friend, differing schedules—but we had planned this dinner together. Although the experience of the dinner was only for an hour or so, we were relaxed and were talking about what his thoughts are for the future. Not a lot of dialogue but certainly meaningful. Looking across the table at him I felt how he has matured into a delightful young man and a flood of memories of enjoyable times spent with him through the years.

Enjoy those moments at whatever age your child is, they are precious.

Conflict in relationships

I was interested to hear Dr. Marty Klein talk about conflict being crucial for intimacy. When I think about intimacy, it is about risk-taking, getting to know the other person in difficult circumstances. Letting people in on the “secrets” of your life.

Conflict then is about disagreeing with another and with a partner it may be some fundamental disagreement which is at the core of the person. Sharing an intimate thought that one feels may break up or at least strain the relationship.

Dr. Klein suggests that when you are in conflict with a loved one, you are in it as partners not adversaries. You are seeking to find a solution—a negotiated settlement. So the conflict has “rules” ways of dealing with it. Allison often refers to dealing with conflict with one rule that both sides don't “gunnysack”. This essentially means not getting off track and reminding the other person of their behaviour 2 months ago. Stay focussed on the issue—don't divert from it.

The goal of conflict should be to collect information that generates some solution to the problem. If as a couple or parent/child conflict you treat the other as an opponent, it is harder to deal with the other when a resolution is formulated. If you have been “name-calling” or using accusatory tones, the conflict escalates.

Try to understand what the other is thinking and feeling AND try to let them know your thoughts or feelings. Generally in a close relationship, you are probably just miscommunicating.

Agreement in any relationship

Continuing with reflections and thoughts that I came away with from Dr. Marty Klein's keynote talk at the Canadian Men's Health Conference this week.

So much of the quality of our relationship with others is based upon communication. I believe that the quality of the relationship is directly related to the quality of the communication (i.e. a poor relationship with another individual can be equated to poor communication).

One of the many points that Dr. Klein made was the importance of clear agreements between people. Whether you are dealing with a spouse, your child, a business associate or colleague, it is important that agreements between people are clearly understood by all parties. Within a family (partner to partner or parent to child) it is important to understand that the agreement between the persons involved is owned by both (all) parties. Agreements are not one-sided. Dr. Klein in his humourous style stressed that an agreement must not include the word “try”.

“I'll try to make it to your hockey game.” “I'll try to be home before 6 pm for dinner.” “I'll try not to get upset and yell at my kids.” To the other person the interpretation is that you are going to do what you say. For you it is mainly an attempt to do said behaviour—not a certainty. Don't agree to try. Either promise and follow through with the commitment or apologise that it is not going to happen. Both ways give the other person the bank account of trust which I've mentioned in previous blogs.

Dr. Klein also stated that we must take responsibility for broken agreements/promises. “I am sorry.” “ You are right.” Don't balme someone else. If you break an agreement you need to own up to it. Our society is too quick to blame others. Again what are we showing our children when we do not own up to our mistakes, our broken agreements.

Sometimes you need to renegotiate agreements. But both sides need to agree.

Finally and again we don't always display this quality but we must follow both the “spirit” and “letter” of the agreement. When an agreement is made it is made with an intention shown by words and acions. Follow through and commit to both the meanings.

Next time up, I'll reflect on conflict.

Sex, Love and Intimacy

This was the title of a talk By Marty Klein at the first Canadian Men's Health Conference here in Victoria. Dr. Marty Klein, a terapist and marriage counsellor, was a very humourous and thoughful speaker. It provided me with a great deal to reflect upon not only in my own marriage and life but also in the relationships that surround all adults.

He started out simply by talking about each of the terms and how our interpretation of their meanings can be different from person to person. With love he talked about the importance of trust and caring. If those two ingredients are not included then does love really exist. On intimacy he spoke of taking risks—opening yourself up to another person— being somewhat vulnerable and letting the other person know you even if it's hard. With intimacy there is also the focus of a connection between two people. With sex, he said that what people are really looking for is pleasure and closeness. Although there is a connection between these three terms, they are certainly not interchangeable.

One of the tings that I took away was the importance of communication between partners. Here we go again. Relationships thrive and survive on communication. How important it is for couples to be able to communicate their thoughts and feelings about sex, love, and intimacy no matter how difficult it is at the time. Letting the other person know what you like or don't like with respect to things sexual; showing your care and concern and trust with respect to love; and becoming more intimate by opening up and even letting the other person know what you may not like about yourself.

What I found truly inspirational about his speech is how all of these thoughts on trust, caring, love and intimacy (and even sex) relates in many ways not just to our most personal relationships but our wider circle relationships with family, friends and beyond.

Next time, I'm going to reflect on some thoughts of Dr. Klein with respect to agreements.

Sibling Rivalry

Well, one of my favourite topics on the radio is sibling rivalry. On this week's show also did a segment on this topic.

Parents are always trying how to figure out how to stop sibling rivalry. Well as far as I know you can't really stop it. As Allison mentioned kids are egocentric and because they are thus they don't naturally share toys or other things. And it is usually the sharing of things that starts the family feud.

As the adult we need to have a number of approaches to this family battle scene. Of course safety is our first concern but if safety is not a factor with the older siblings sometimes it is best to ignore or walk away and let them solve the problem. You may also try to listen to each child's side of the story without passing judgement and assist them in resolving the conflict. (A great opportunity to have children learn conflict resolution skills.)

One of Allison's sayings to a child that is trying to “tattle” on the sibling is: ”Tell me to get you brother/sister out of trouble. Don't tell me to get your sister/brother into trouble.” A wise word which may assist in reducing the need for you to be involved.

Lots of times, we parents just make the conflict worse by jumping in and going on about it. Often kids will move on from the situation.

The fact is siblings have conflict. Try something different next time it erupts.


(Sunday morning at 9 am Pacific time on Village 900 or http://www.village900.com)

Homework

Allison and I were talking on our radio show today about a number of topics. The first part we discussed homework and how parents can support their children. (This topic has also been on the Island Parent Forum as a “What Do You Think?” topic.)

As a former teacher/administrator, my feeling is that homework is part of a child's education but should be relevant to the day's work and not given out as busy work. It does help the student learn to organize him/herself and take on the responsibility of their learning. As parents, we need to provide an appropriate place for our children to do their homework—the diningroom or kitchen table, a desk in their room, etc. With a younger child up to grade 3 or 4, we should be around to help in some ways BUT not to do the homework.

As the student grows older the responsibility for the homework clearly is their issue. It should not become the focus of a power struggle. If you, as the parent, are getting anxious or angry over homework, you need to check yourself and find out what it is that is bothering you. This is not your issue.

Don't get over-involved.

More quotes and parenting

I was reading the other day that healthy children have healthy parents. Now this is meaning health from the emotional point of view. Children who have good role models-good mentors- develop into productive and healthy citizens.

As parents we might want to reflect on our emotional well-being so that we can show our children the path to a happy and satisfying life pursuing their goals and dreams.

Eleanor Roosevelt is quoted as saying, “Friendship with oneself is all-important because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.” We need to like and love ourselves, take time for ourselves and live our lives to be truly happy and content with our life. Our children need us for support but also for what we can give them through our lives and our living life.

More Quotes for Parenting

It was near the beginning of my blogging that I wrote about 5 Givens of Parenting (the first two seem to have been lost in cyberspace). Oh well, the second given that I had adapted from David Richo's book— The Five Things We Cannot Change … and the Happiness We Find by Embracing Them—is that things do not always go according to plan.

Here then are two quotes that I feel are appropriate and support this contention.

“We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”
Joseph Campbell, Mythologist and educator

“Of course there is no formula for success except perhaps an unconditional acceptance of life and what it brings.”
Arthur Rubenstein, Pianist

Too often we are planning our children's lives such that we miss out on glorious opportunities for the relationships to grow and the unplanned quality times to flourish. This does not mean we do not envision or plan what we would like to happen for ourselves and to some extent our children. Visualising outcomes is a very powerful tool to help us and others realise goals. It's just we should not be tied to the plan and accept what life gives us as an opportunity to further grow and develop.

Both the above quotes remind me of tourists who are behind their camcorders so much that they seem miss the whole adventure.

We as parents sometimes go overboard with our micromanagement of our children. Stop and smell the roses. Take the time to enjoy the moment—planned or unplanned.

Quotes and parenting

A number of weeks ago, my wife was asked to supply her favourite quote for a woman's group she belongs to. She was at a loss to come up with one immediately. In fact she searched the internet to come up with something that was meaningful to her. As she was going through the process I too was not able to come up with one in an instant.

It did get me thinking that there are some great quotes out there—not that I can remember most or any of them—that can help us get through a difficult patch or give us some food for thought.

At work we receive many books for review in the magazine. One such book that we didn't review but is in the staff washroom and I look at almost daily is “The Little Book of Bathroom Meditations” by Michelle Heller. Packed with lots of quotable quotes that give you some pause for reflection.

As parents we often need a pause for reflection. A time to think of what's going on in our lives with our various relationships—spouse, partner, children, colleagues, strangers, etc.—and how we deal with issues confronting us.

So here are a few quotes that I've read and think are helpful in some of our daily dealings.

I often think that we as parents protect our children to the extent that they do not really learn from some experience with failure. Thomas Edison said “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.” Look at the positive spin on that. Often when we or our children fail (or at least do not live up to our expectations about something), we often blame others—the referee, the teacher, some other person or group—and do not look at what we've done and learn from it. It is interesting Thomas Edison (a successful inventor) is that way because he doesn't see failures but keeps on looking for the answers and uses those set backs as opportunities.

As parents, we need to show our children how to take some risks to help them grow and flourish. We must step back at times and let them “fail” and learn from the failure.

Quality Time with Children

So much is said about having quality time not quantity time with children. Unfortunately, to have quality time we need a fair bit of time (i.e. quantity time). I've always found that the quality time I had with my children wasn't planned and happened when there was actually a good amount of time spent with them. This is not to say that you shouldn't plan some time but it does not always come out as you had planned.

Think of the many outings that you have experienced as a parent that turned into minor or major disasters. When I first started my blog I did talk about Five Givens of Parenting - one of them being that things do not always go according to plan. Well sometimes you can't plan quality time but you can certainly try to make time for your children and some of it will turn out to be quality time.

The other thing that is important is to have fun. Enjoy your children, laugh and play with them on their terms not yours.

The Importance of Children

I had the opportunity, as a Board Member of Big Brothers/Big Sisters here in Victoria, to meet with the new Representative for Children and Youth (Province of BC) today. Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond is a woman of vision for our children in this Province. A number of points that I took from the meeting is that we as a society must put children first—kids really matter—and it is imperative for our society to give them a status of importance.

In of her role, she sees that she needs to push for an independent, non-partisan (i.e. non-political) plan for children with some measurable targets and indicators to show how we are doing as a society in this area. Too often children are being lost within our systems because we have not set some goals to strive for. One area that comes to mind is how the children in care in this province are doing poorly in educational outcomes. The ministries involved in these children's lives are seemingly acting independent of one another.

One of our points at the meeting and what I have been writing about fairly consistently is that mentoring is an important part of children's development. Another important part that Mary Ellen mentioned is the role of an advocate in children's lives.

I look forward to seeing what positive things that Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond will bring to help us work towards a better society for our children.

Inspiring Thoughts on Parenting (3)

“If children live with kindness and consideration, they learn respect.”

Often in my years of teaching and education, I heard teachers talk about a lack of respect. They insisted students refer to them in formal ways—such as Mister or Sir—and that this inspired a respectful attitude. Over the years, I have found that those teachers who gained the respect of their students didn't insist on formal labels or titles but gained it from having a genuine respect for their students.

It seems that the gaining of respect is like the gaining of trust (which I was writing about a few blogs ago). If a person show trust in others generally that trust will be reciprocated. Similarly to gain respect we must show kindness and respect for other people.

Being considerate of our children and really listening to them with kindness, does teach them respect. Too often we, as adults, give lip service to these notions. We do not truly “walk our talk”. It is like the teachers who demand respect. Do they really get the respect they demand? I'd contend that no they do not. I'd go further to say that they don't even deserve the respect they are demanding.

Role modelling is again one of our truly effective ways of teaching our children and the way they truly learn the values we wish to pass along.

Parenting then and now

A little aside from the last few days of talking about Children Learn What They Live.

Allison and I were taping a TV Show last evening and the host was looking for our take on parenting now with what it was like when we grew up. It is interesting to look at the differences. Certainly one of the key points is that parenting was not seen or talked about as much as it is today. Dorothy Nolte (author of the poem and now book “Children Learn What They Live”) was probably one of the few parent educators.

We had more freedom in our childhood to come and go as we pleased at earlier ages. This can be seen as a positive in that our play may have been more creative and possibly more physically active.

But parents did use spanking as a punishment (disciplinary method), which we would deem as wrong. Some other points are that we as a generation of parents may be more lenient - less strict. As Allison said it is preferable to the physical punishment of spanking which is out of anger in most cases.

Another point we touched upon is the overprotectiveness of parents today. Controlling their children's behaviours rather than teaching responsibility as they grow and mature. From an early age, we should be looking at our role not only as role models, but as teachers. Helping our children learn and take on responsibility in their daily life. From teaching them how to dress themselves to walking to school on their own. Taking on some household chores and taking on the responsibility of their schoolwork are other things that belong with our children not us as parents.

Think back to when you were growing up and what is inspiring about your parents and what, perhaps, were the flaws of their parenting. There are some legacies that they have given us. Take the good ones and incorporate them into your parenting style.

Inspiring Thoughts on Parenting (2)

Continuing on the theme “Children Learn What They Live” we can cite many examples of of positive role modelling with our children.

“When children live with acceptance they learn to love” is a way of showing how parental unconditional love for our child helps in the development of their self-esteem and their own loving behaviours. We accept our child for who they are and not for what they do. To realize that each child has his/her own strengths and weaknesses and we celebrate those weaknesses and strengths.

How do we celebrate weaknesses? Well in conversations over the years with Allison Rees we have talked about personality traits and how they can have either positive or negative connotations. For instance a determined person could be viewed as being stubborn. Now most of you would agree that stubborn does not easily elicit positive feelings. So celebrating a weakness is really putting a positive spin on it.

Acceptance of our children for themselves and not what we feel they should be, is yet another gift we can bestow on them. Helping them in the exploration of their strengths and weaknesses shows them our love and support and how they can best use these “gifts”.

Inspiring Thoughts on Parenting

A number of years ago, I had the privilege of interviewing Dorothy Law Nolte on one of our first Island Parent Radio Shows. She wrote the poem “Children Learn What They Live” in 1954 when she was a mother of 12 and 9 year-olds, a writer of a weekly column on creative family living and teacher of family living for the local school board—truly a pioneer Parent Educator. In 1998, she took the poem and expanded her thoughts into a book with the poem's name and subtitled Parenting to Inspire Values.

Inspiring values is what parenting is really about. And this poem gives us many great thoughts about bringing up our children. You will certainly find it enlightening to read and reflect on the poem in its entirety but I would like to consider a few of its thoughts over the next few days.

One thing to note is that of the 19 lines the first 7 deal with negative behaviours while the last 12 look at positive terms.

“If children live with criticism, they learn to condemn.” It certainly gives us pause to think that our children are emulating us and using us as their role models. What sort of role model do we want to be for our children—with what legacy do we wish to leave them. Certainly, I would not want to have my children be intolerant of others. One point to consider is that the criticism here is seen as negativ. I do believe that there is constructive criticism but haven't heard it expressed too often.

On the positive side,“If children live with encouragement, they learn confidence.” We can't teach confidence. The lesson comes from our role-modelling and mentoring behaviours not from instruction. Through thoughtful and honest encouragment, the confidence and self-esteem will blossom.

Family times together

I was reading an article (“Living in the Realm of our own” Erin Anderssen, Globe & Mail, Sat. February 24/07) about the way our society has become very individualistic in this age of technology.

The piece got my attention because it started with a parenting coach talking about her family eating different things at dinner time. Each family member may have different likes and dislikes, so their dinner would be reflective of that diversity.

The essay went on to discuss more about our society being more of an iPod generation of individuals.

One point that struck me as interesting was that the latest numbers from Stats Canada revealed that more and more people are watching TV alone and eating alone more than ever. I have often wondered how much value we as parents and families place on being together at dinnertime or even watching TV. I have heard my children ovver the years talk about friends who eat alone where we have always had a family dinnertime. (There are obviously some days that one or other are not there for dinner but most evenings the 4 of us sit down for dinner.)

The idea of community, to me, starts at home. If there are some times during the day that the family comes together over a meal or even watching a TV program together, there is a sharing and a security that grows from those communal times.

Big Brother is watching you!

One of my pet peeves about parents today is that sometimes they are over-protective and over-intrusive in their child's life. Our editor, Sue Fast, wrote in her editor's column (March 2007) about the gadgets that are available to keep an eye on our children. There is a Teddycam, Carchips and tracking devices made some humourous observations it does give me (and Sue) pause to think about our world and some of today's parents . Although she writes in a humourous fashion, the products she describes are real and available.

At what point do these gadgets actually constitute an invasion of privacy. We do want to protect our children, but sometimes the means does not justify the ends.

Yes, we had a baby monitor but we didn't keep it much after our children were toddlers and in their own bed. I have heard of cases where the baby monitor has been kept well past the “baby” stage.

Kids need their space and privacy just as we do. Would you like to have every word you uttered monitored by your parents? Respect is a two way street, we need to respect our children and their privacy if we are going to gain their trust and respect.

It's time for some commonsense parenting.