Tag Archives: family

  • Do Your Kids Know Their Own Story?

    January 20, 2012

    3 Comments

    Trotter children are immediately identifiable by their curly hair

    Each of my children has a story we tell them about some way in which their lives have mattered.  I believe that it’s one thing to tell a kid they are important and that they matter, but it’s something of a gift to them to be able to tell them how they have mattered.  Then they’re not just a lowly child floating out in the world with no real base or purpose to start with.  It grounds the message that they have value in their real world.  It’s concrete evidence for them that just because they exist, the world is a different, better place.

    My oldest Noah was born when his father and I were not married.  If it wasn’t for him, we would not have formed a family and his siblings wouldn’t be here.  And his birth also changed me.  Before having him, if you had walked up to me at any given moment and said, “I’m sorry, only real humans are allowed here.  Penguins such as yourself belong elsewhere” and I would have shrugged at being caught and thanked you for telling me I was a penguin – I had been wondering about that.  I had a bad case of imposter’s syndrome.  Practically from the start, parenting Noah was something I just knew how to do and I felt completely comfortable doing it.  It was almost like working out of an area of spiritual blessing and was an important step on the way to me knowing (hopefully) more and more of who God created me to be. 

    Collin, who is now 12 was born while his dad was very sick.  His medical care was awful but we were young and hadn’t yet realized that the system works differently once your illness has no identifiable cause or treatment.  They eventually told us that he was crazy – really, they did.  They even gave us a black binder with a report saying so.  Continue reading »

  • What sort of garden do you grow?

    December 7, 2011

    2 Comments

    The best parenting analogy I have heard compared having a child to being given a plant.  Some plants are more demanding to grow than others.  Some are more sensitive to change.  Some must be nurtured for many seasons before they will show their flowers and bear their fruit.  Others are easy and sunny and thrive on neglect.  We create a lot of trouble when we try to force the artichoke plant that shows up to grow the way an oak tree grows.  After all, who wouldn’t want to be an oak tree?  Well, an artichoke plant, for one.  Or it could just accept that he’s supposed to be an oak tree and be one unhappy, messed-up artichoke plant.

    That is what is at stake as we parent: will we send a healthy, thriving plant out into the world?  Or will we be sending out an artichoke that knows all about how to be an oak tree and nothing about why he should want to be an artichoke.  It’s not easy.  We sometimes don’t know what sort of plant we’ve been given until something goes wrong.  Sometimes we were the ones sent out into the world with no concept of how to be who we are.  And gardening is frustrating.  You can nurture a plant to perfection only to have a rogue deer show up and eat the buds off.   Some plants are just ridiculously difficult to grow.

    For me, I think of it this way: My job is to help my child learn to be the person they are made to be while living in this world.

  • Illustration of Mother and Children Carrying Thanksgiving Dinner by Douglass Crockwell

    Thanksgiving Family Survival Guide

    November 23, 2011

    1 Comment

    Since I am a contrarian at heart and everyone and their brother is doing the “Let’s talk about what we’re thankful for” bit, I’m going to offer up something completely different.  Because as important as gratitude is, I also know that on Thanksgiving there are an awful lot of people for whom the answer to “what are you most grateful for?” is “that I don’t live any closer to these people.”  So for those of you going over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house which had damn well better have a well stocked liquor cabinet waiting, I’ve dug through the archieves to create The Upside Down World’s Thanksgiving Survival Guide:

    1. Develop an Appreciation for the Absurd: My grandmother once had to be dragged away by a horrified aunt from her very concerned inquisition into the causes of my obesity.  One of my cousins made a big deal out of being “sorry we didn’t get a chance to talk” after resolutely ignoring every smile, nod, wave or question we threw her way from the next table over at my brother’s wedding.  Learning to laugh is a much better tactic for dealing with people being absurd than any other I know.

    2. Learn to Tolerate Conflict: Wishing you would have stood up for yourself is only marginally less painful than the discomfort of conflict.  The main difference being whether you hold it together long enough to cry in private or abruptly leave the table to cry in the bathroom.  Thanksgiving probably isn’t the best time to confront your family with a list of all the things they have done to hurt you, but speaking up for yourself is a form of self-care you should learn.

    3. Learn to Avoid Conflict: At the other end of the spectrum, sometimes we need to tone it down.  Not every confrontation needs to happen and not every invitation to conflict needs to be accepted.  Learn to see the difference and how to stop it before it gets started.

    4. Deliberately Look For the Good in People: Thanksgiving with relatives is the perfect place to put this idea into action.  One of my grandfathers used to corner us to give us long lectures and force newspaper clippings about the harm done by smoking into my one sister who smoked.  Never mind that we weren’t the ones smoking and this strategy was not likely to obtain the desired results.  But he was doing his best to express concern for his granddaughter.  He wasn’t a nuisance, he was a grandfather who didn’t seem to know what else to do in the face of her intransigence.   Sure it’s easier to smile and nod and escape as quickly trade gripes with whomever else is currently raiding the liquor cabinet.  But isn’t the fact that we’re all trying to avoid being the one everyone is talking about around the scotch part of what makes these gatherings so stressful?

    5. How to respond when someone you know is making a big mistake: mostly you need to smile and nod and just be there.  And admit that you might be wrong.

    6. Thanksgiving is a great day to practice “Forgiveness Day”! Just decide ahead of time that everyone and everything is forgiven.  It sounds crazy, but will make the day much easier.  And force you to practice all the other suggestions as well.

    7. Brush up on your listening skills: I have a relative who used to call the house and engage in this conversation:

    Me: Hello?

    R: Hi.  Uh, this is xxxxxx.

    Me: Hi, xxxxxxx.  How are you?

    R: Good, good.

    Long awkward pause.  I used to wonder how long he’d let the dead air stand, but after a while I just felt rude and would say, “would you like to talk with my yyyyyy (person they always called for)?”

    R: Yeah.

    I get that not everyone is that interesting.  But learning to be a better listener helps.

    8. Brush up on Tolerance and Boundaries: Seriously, if you read no other link from this list, read this one.

    9. Don’t Get Upset Over Things You Can’t Control: on Thanksgiving, that list is topped by the names of everyone you will be visiting with.

    10. And let’s not forget that no matter how odd, offensive or annoying our relatives may  sometimes be, there will be a lot of genuine love and good will being sent your way.  Be sure to catch all of it that you can.

  • An example of my 1st grader's homework

    Homework in kindergarten

    November 19, 2011

    4 Comments

    An example of my 1st grader's homework

    So, I have my kids in the local public schools which has real drawbacks and benefits.  One of the things I am struggling with is when – if ever – to push back over some the homework issue.  Like has happened at a lot of schools, homework has creeped down into earlier and earlier grades.  So, my 1st grader has nightly homework and my kindergartener has homework once or twice a week.

    There are so many problems with this.  First of all, there has been a bunch of research into the matter and homework has no benefits – not educational, in fostering good work habits – until at least junior high.  The problem is that this conflicts with deeply ingrained ideas about the importance of starting good habits early, the need to practice those habits, etc.  So although it is literally a fact that homework for elementary kids has no benefit, people think that it must and won’t let go of it.  When confronted, people either deny reality or fall back on another admirable goal: parental involvement.  Which leads to the next problem . . .

    I am very involved in my kids life without your help, thank you very much!  And I don’t particularly feel the need or desire to document the time I spend involved with them.  And what if we go two weeks without reading together and then devour 4 books in a weekend?  I don’t need/want the schools making me feel like part of their job is to hold me accountable for reading to my kids!  The best predictor of whether a kid will be a reader is whether they see their parents reading and how many books are in the house – NOT whether I spend 20 minutes a day reading to them.  Needless to say I read on occassion (ha!  on ocassion.) and I have a few books in the house.  If I got nothing else right while homeschooling, at least I made readers.  I really don’t need or want the school’s help.  This is the one thing which I have held my ground on, I steadfastly refuse to document time spent reading to my kids – not for bribes of pizza or so my kid can get her gold star.  I’m not going to do it.

    But it’s not just the tracking of minutes reading that is a problem.  It’s the homework itself.  The homework is BULLSHIT.  It would be much easier to settle into complacency over sending my kids to school rather than homeschooling if I didn’t actually have to confront the bad pedagogy and pointless drivel which passes for school curriculumn.  Not to mention that it’s pointless to have my daughter “read” the same story each night for a week when by the second night she is reciting it from memory.  This does nothing to help her learn to read.  (And don’t even get me started on spelling lists.)  Seriously, people – sending this crap home each day is not confidence inspiring.

    It doesn't get better - an example of my 7th grader's homework

    I’m struggling with how to handle this.  I don’t believe in telling my kids things that I know aren’t true, so it’s hard for me to try and convince them that homework actually has a point.  Mostly I just focus on the expectation of the teacher that it be done and the star that the teacher will put on her chart when it is done.  I did finally start sending the names of books Michaela read to me or other family members in lieu of reciting the week’s story from memory (I still let her do that when she wants to – memorization is an important skill.  But it doesn’t count as reading.)  I have started refusing to help her with worksheets like the one above and insist that she figure out what she’s supposed to be doing herself instead.  Do I say anything to the teachers?  I know its not really their fault – and they are so sweet and seem to be genuinely good teachers.  It’s not really even something a teacher can do anything about.  Sending home work with kids is something they are all expected to do.  But there is  pressure on my girls to conform and jump through the hoops to get the grades (good skills to have, but hardly what the main focus should be about).  I want them to be successful in school, but I don’t want them to fall for bullshit claptrap like doing things simply to collect gold stars instead of to learn.  I know that my and even my daughter’s teacher’s power to effect change is pretty limited.  Schools are inherently limited in how flexible they can be.  Other parents no doubt completely disagree with my suggestions.  Curriculum is a huge investment and can’t be tossed on a whim.  Etc, etc, etc.  So . . . anyone have any suggestions, insights, experiences to share?  I’m all ears!

     

  • conflict-final-3

    Learning to avoid conflict

    November 18, 2011

    2 Comments

    For some people the problem isn’t tolerating conflict; its learning to avoid conflict that’s the challenge!  Conflict is part of life, but its important not to allow unneeded and unproductive conflict to become a regular part of life either.  Even when it’s necessary and productive, it’s not fun!

    As a rule, if the conflict is triggered by your emotional state (I’m crabby) or an emotional reaction (you’re pissing me off), it’s unneeded.  If there is an ongoing problem or pattern that is upsetting, there are many much more productive ways to find a solution than letting your emotions lead you into conflict.

    Also, if you are walking into a conflict knowing what’s going to be said and with no realistic hope of resolution, do what you can to skip it.  Maybe the time isn’t right or the best solution hasn’t presented itself you.  Or maybe its one of those things which will always be a sore spot that you just have to deal with.  But conflict with no hope of resolution is generally pointless.  Just avoid it.

    How to avoid it?  Smiling and nodding is a good go-to method.  (“That’s an interesting approach.  I hadn’t thought of it that way before.“)  As is just admitting your own struggle: (“I’m really irritable right now.” or “This is always a sore spot for me and I’m not up for getting into it.”)  Asking to revisit the issue later can also be helpful.  (“I’m sorry, but I’m just not up for getting into this right now.  Can I come and find you so we can discuss it when I’m feeling better?”)

    Sometimes peace isn’t the destination you’re headed towards.  When that’s the case, simply keeping what peace you can salvage is the healthy, feel-good way to go!.

  • Salt-N-Pepa-copy

    Let’s talk about sex, baby!

    November 15, 2011

    1 Comment

    Note: A few years back I did some writing for a now defunct Christian magazine.  I never put these articles up here because the magazine owns the rights to them, but now that they are defunct, well, I’m going to share!

    In the early ‘90s Salt-n-Peppa famously sang “Let’s talk about sex, baby” and boy, oh boy do we take their exhortations to heart.  Sex is everywhere.  Even young children are constantly barraged with images, information and messages about sex.

    Advertisers and entertainers are busy talking to your kids about sex – are you?  If not, it’s time to get started.

    The reasons people avoid talking with their kids about sex are myriad: squeamishness, fear of saying the wrong things, embarrassment over their own failures.  Unfortunately, there is a whole world out there which isn’t embarrassed to talk to your kids about sex and they don’t care if what they have to say is right or not.   With so much noise, you can’t afford not to be in on the conversation.

    If the idea of talking with your kids about sex is off-putting, consider something reassuring: your children need good, accurate information about human reproduction, but they can get that out of a book.  A lecture explaining the function of “Tab A” and “Slot B” isn’t what they need most from you.  What they need most from you is discussions about human sexuality.  They need to hear what is and isn’t OK and why.  They need talk about love, commitment and purity.   They need an ongoing discussion with Mom and Dad about what it means to be a healthy, Godly sexual person.

    This may seem like an impossible task which pits our cultural milieu against God’s unbending plan for sex.  However, you and God have more influence than you might think.  Polls asking teens and their parents what they think about sex have consistently found that parents and God come out better than might be expected.  A recent survey done by The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy found that the number of teens who listed “parents” as having the greatest influence over their decisions regarding sex outnumbered those picking the next five choices combined.  Additionally, 90% of teens say that providing a strong message in support of abstinence is important.   71% also think that religious leaders have a role in teaching about sex.[1]   Your kids are listening and open to God’s message.

    What should you say to your kids and when?   We would do well to head God’s words in Deuteronomy 6:7 “Impress [these commandments] on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.”  Ideally, your conversation should start as soon as they ask questions about babies and notice differences between men and women and continue on through to adulthood.  This is certainly a different approach than the traditional “birds and bees” talk at adolescence.  However, a billboard along your path advertising “Gentlemen’s” Clubs doesn’t care about your child’s tender age.  Don’t wait until everyone else has had their say to speak up.

    As to what to say to your kids, these core principles should guide you:

    • Stay positive.  God created sex as a beautiful gift, not something dirty or dangerous when used within the boundaries he proscribes.
    • Stay biblical.  God created sex for marriage.  Period.
    • Encourage the avoidance of temptation.  The enemy loves to use our God given desires to harm us.  When we play with temptations, we are cooperating with that mission.
    • Teach God’s superior vision of masculinity.  Almost any male is capable of virility.  However it takes real manliness to practice respect and self-restraint.
    • Teach God’s superior vision of femininity.  A woman who gives her body away will always find someone to tell her she’s beautiful.  A woman with strength and character will be found beautiful without giving her body away.
    • Allow for God’s mercy.  Romans 3:23-24 says “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace. . .”  If you speak condemnation over those who fall short, your child will see you as hard of heart and close his ears to your words.  God freely offers grace – you should to.

    Whether your child is 6 or 16, there’s already a conversation about sex going on.  Make sure you’re in on the discussion!

    [1] Bill Albert, (2007).  With One Voice: America’s Teens and Adults Sound Off About Teen Pregnancy.WashingtonD.C.: National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy.

     

     

  • Hobbes the dog

    My Dog’s an A-hole

    November 14, 2011

    2 Comments

    Hobbes the dog

    This afternoon, I strapped Olivia into her stroller and headed out the door for a nice, long walk.  I was going to fetch the dog to come with us, but my darling Hobbes had somehow managed to escape off his tie-out where I had left him to pee and bark at deer 20 minutes earlier.  Again.  Not to worry he wasn’t lost.  He’s never lost.  All that was lost was any hope of a nice, peaceful walk.  Because once Hobbes gets loose outside, it’s pretty much impossible to catch him.  We can put on a show of trying, but that’s mostly so anyone he’s bothering will see that we’re trying.  But I’ve seen this animal run at 20 mph for 2 miles straight (I measured it one day while he was chasing our van.)  He can reach speeds of over 30 mph in a burst.  (See van chasing above.)  He knows we can’t catch him and free from all the restrictions and control we usually exercise over him, his real personality comes out.  Turns out he’s a total jerk.

    He ran right up to us and happily began barking loudly at the stroller.  Because the stroller has wheels and Hobbes believes that the proper reaction to anything with wheels is to bark.  Even though we live on 2 acres on the edge of a 12 acre field at the dead end of a long road, this is a real problem.  If he is loose he runs right in front of any wheeled vehicle, plants himself and barks.  If you slow down too much, he tries to bite the tires.  I keep telling people to just drive off, but not understanding how fast the animal is, they think they’re going to hit him.  I keep assuring them that we will not hold them responsible if they run him over.  Heck, after spending 5 minutes trying to convince some poor fool he’s cornered to just gun it while Hobbes barks incessantly and gnaws on their tires, I would be totally fine if they run him over, back up and do it again.  Even the kids, as much as they love the dog, know that if he’s ever run over by a car, it’s his own damn fault.
    Hitting him with a stroller wasn’t likely or going to do much good, so I just strode off purposely and hoped for the best.  As I expected, he followed.  Which meant that at least he wouldn’t be wandering into one of our poor neighbor’s open garage or chasing them down should they have the nerve to try and leave or arrive at their own home in a wheeled vehicle.  Unfortunately, that just means that he would be tromping over different people’s property.  Which might not seem like a real big deal in a neighborhood where everyone has a couple of acres.  Except that the whole reason people buy a house on a couple of acres is so they have a large buffer zone between themselves and anyone who hasn’t been invited near.  Perhaps it doesn’t bother them as much as it bothers me when he does it, but I just don’t think people are all that cool with a strange dog wandering up their long driveway and barking at them.

    The Land of Trotter - I'm so lucky!

    There was very little I could do to keep him from lopping around other people’s property while I walked.  He’s fast.  And I’m a fat lady pushing a stroller.  He was happy as a pig in slop.  Thankfully, since it was mid-afternoon, few people were even home so I don’t think we bothered anyone.

    Now, the one thing that I do have going for me is that Hobbes has grown attached to me and while he won’t let me catch him, he’s not too keen on losing me either.  This came in handy when a short bus turned down my street just as I was about to cross the highway to the new, largely undeveloped subdivision on the other side.  Hobbes joyfully took off running and barking.   I had a nightmarish vision of him menencing some poor disabled kid and their helper as they try to off-load a wheelchair.  Their only hope would be that the sight of a chair lift would send Hobbes into such spasms of excitement that he would hyperventilate from all the barking and pass out.  Knowing that there was nothing I could do to control him, I did the only thing I could and resolutely crossed the street without looking back.  As I had hoped, Hobbes decided that the fun of chasing a bus down wasn’t a good enough reason to risk me giving him the slip so he abandoned the bus and crossed the highway to catch up with me.

    According to all the Dog Whisperer that I had watched when planning to get Hobbes, pretty much any dog can be trained by an owner who exudes calm, assertive energy.  But Hobbes knows when you’re faking it and he’s a dog – he’s got all the time in the world.  It was windy this afternoon and I left the road to go poke around the remains of an old homestead in the woods to get a break from the cool breeze.  Hobbes followed, of course.  But he knows from experience that these sorts of closed in areas with lots of distractions do make it a little more likely that I will be able to catch him.  I have no chance of sneaking up on him.  The best I could hope for was that if I ignored him for long enough he would let his guard down while standing next to me and I could nab him.  But again, Hobbes is an a-hole.  He knows that this is my strategy and wasn’t about to fall for it.  After a while, I tried staring him down to try and assert my authority.  He stared back.  I didn’t blink.  He barked at me.  (Anxiety.)  I remained unmoved.  He looked away.  (Avoidance.)  I held my ground.  He moved just beyond sight.  (More avoidance.)  I took a step over so I could see him trying to hide behind a bush and continuing to stare at him.  He took off running.

    The whole rest of the walk home was like that.  If he started walking ahead of me, I would turn sharply without even looking at him.  He follows me, not the other way around.  It was getting to later in the afternoon and the neighborhood wasn’t as empty as it had been on the way out.  When he ran off to bark at a septic truck and the man working it, I walked quickly away without looking back.  When I heard him returning to me at 30 mph after realizing that he was in danger of losing me, I would do a 180 and walk right past him before turning back towards home.  If he wandered off to my side or rear, I would walk faster in the direction of home to trigger his fear of losing me.  If he wandered off ahead of me, I would turn around and walk back the way I just came, trying to assert the fact that he follows me, not the other way around.  I must have looked like a crazy person out in the street, turning in random directions and retracing my path back and forth.  But the area I live in is hilly and I bet I burned a bunch of extra calories walking randomly back and forth and up and down the street like that.  That’s some consolation, right?

    A tired dog is a good dog

    Finally, over two hours after we set out, we reached sight of our house just as the kids were getting off the bus from school.  Hobbes resisted the urge to chase the bus back out of the neighborhood and followed the kids home.  They went in the house and he stopped and waited for me to catch up.  Because he may be a jerk, but he is a jerk who knows who feeds him.

  • Picturesugaretc-179-300x200

    The real reason prosperous humans have fewer kids

    November 2, 2011

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    The more kids, the harder it is to keep the house clean.  When you live in areas with Western levels of prosperity, there’s a lot of crap for kids to make a mess with!  So to have more than a couple of kids, either you have to be a super organizer or you have a very high tolerance for mess.  Or I suppose you could be super mean and restrictive to your kids.  Most people simply have 1 or 2 kids.

    I think that those countries trying to boost fertility rates could help a lot by making it easier to pay for household help for families with more than one or two kids.  But then that’s another entitlement, blah, blah, blah.  But I bet I’m on to something here!

    Because, trust me, more stuff + more kids = more mess!

    Picture from Sh*t My Kids Ruined

  • give-laundry-to-your-mom-cefjgijnacfhdfgk

    Mom’s Going Crazy Recipe

    October 7, 2011

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    Want to drive yourself crazy?  Do what I do: have a set of kids, wait 5 or 6 years and have another set.  Try to figure out if you screwed up the first set so you can better parent the second set.  It’s a terrible pastime, really; going back and revisiting every parenting decision you made along the way to try to judge the outcomes.  I used to wonder how people who had obviously screwed their kids up felt about the whole mess.  Now I find myself wondering if I put myself into that category by not doing things the way everyone else usually does them.

    I didn’t punish a lot.  I yelled, but always let the kids know that freaking out was a fault of mine and let them see me struggle with it.  I was more than willing to hold a firm line, but my end goal was always to gain agreement from my kids on the sort of people they should be trying to be.  I answered every “why” question I possibly could.  I spanked only to gain a kid’s attention, never as punishment and tried to refrain from it altogether.  I taught my values by explaining my opinion, giving a respectful explanation for the other side’s point of view and why I disagreed with it.  I would always remind them that one day they will have to choose what to believe for themselves.  I disciplined by correcting, explaining, listening, refusing to let things go when a kid persisted in a behavior that was a problem.  I tried to coach rather than criticize.

    Doesn’t that sound nice?  I thought so.  But here’s the thing: my boys were really difficult.  True story: I was telling a friend once about the time Collin, my younger son, was 4 years old and locked me out of the house.  We were all outside and I was working in the yard.  Collin had asked for a popcicle and I said no.  A few minutes later, he wasn’t nearby, so I went to check and see what he was doing.  I went to the house and could see Collin sitting on the kitchen floor eating a popcicle.  And I discovered that he had locked the door behind him.  At this point in the story, my wide-eyed friend actually gasps.  “My kids know they would be in so much trouble if they did something like that!” She tells me.

    I just had to laugh.  My kid knew they would get in trouble.  That’s why he locked the door – so he would have a chance to eat as much of the popcicle as he could before I got to him.  “That’s the difference between you kids and mine,” I explained to my friend, “your kids would actually care about getting in trouble.  Mine are just incredulous and offended that I have the temerity to stop them from doing whatever they want.”  My husband always blamed the boy’s obnoxiousness on them not being afraid of us.  Having kids who were afraid of the parents always sounded like a bad idea to me.  I dunno.  Maybe I was wrong.

    I recently asked my oldest (now 16) for an explanation of why he was so difficult as a kid.  He told me that it was the “why?” question that drove a lot of it.  If it didn’t make sense to him, then he didn’t see why he should do it.  If I got really worked up he would decide that he should comply just to humor me.  So, pretty much my worst critic’s view of what was going on was true.

    But then he went on.  He told me that he knows it was a lot more work to do things the way I did – by seeking compliance and answering every genuine “why” question I reasonably could.  And by coaching and coaxing rather than criticizing and punishing.  But he says he now credits that with being the reason he feels really prepared to meet the challenges that have and will come his way.  He says that when I would give him answers to his “why” questions, I was showing him how to think about and approach things.  In time he saw that I was right more than wrong and began to adopt more of my thought process for himself.  Some things I tried to impress on him (like the importance of cleaning up all the time), he still isn’t buying into.  And he will never be as emotional as I am.  And he’s still got a lot of growing up to do, but he said that even from his limited vantage point as a 16 year old, he found the way of thinking about things I had modeled to be very useful when he found himself dealing with people and situations which were foreign to him.  He said that he tested the things I had taught him against what he saw going on around him and found my guidance to be reliable.  He says my way was worth it.  Then again, he wasn’t on the receiving end of his non-compliance for all those years!

    Interestingly, he also tells me that there was an important role for the physical punishments we -particularly my husband – would sometimes impose when no other threats, punishments or corrections would work.  Sitting on the wall or holding their arms out for long enough to get very uncomfortable were regular events for a period of time during the late elementary and early middle school years.  I always felt bad about this because in an ideal parenting worlnd, a parent would not have to inflict suffering on their own child just to get them to co-operate with simple instructions.  And my son confirmed what I had long suspected: that he was rarely deterred much by the threat of punishment.  He said that it wasn’t that he didn’t think he would get in trouble – he was usually quite certain he would.  He said that in the middle of things, he didn’t care that he was going to get in trouble.  But he does credit these physical disciplines for helping him learn to control himself.  First he had to learn to control his own body in order to comply and not have time added on.  He was always a kid who seemed to be careening through the world with no great awareness of what he was doing, so this was important to him.  He says it also taught him to control his emotions.  My kids have always been highly dramatic in their emotional outbursts (no idea where they’d get that from!  lol).  But while sitting on the wall, he started to realize how pointless all the yelling and wailing was, how it just made him feel worse and didn’t win him any points with us either.  He said that up until then, he was always so caught up in his outbursts that he never really thought to try and stop himself.  I would still love to be able to say that I had raised my kids without deliberately inflicting suffering on them, but this was a kid who needed the lesson of self-control more than almost any kid I’ve ever known, so I’m glad he learned it at all.

    Thankfully, my girls so far are soooo much easier than my boys were.  Which unfortunately makes me even more paranoid sometimes: what if I did something wrong that made my boys so much more difficult to begin with? Did I do too much for them?  Did I pay too much attention to them?  Am I now rationalizing to justify for my inability to spend as much time following my 1 year old around as I did with my boys?  I am all powerful queen of the universe, after all.  Everything must somehow have its source in me – right?  And really, that mindset right there is the real recipe for a mom looking to drive herself crazy!  I probably ought to stop!

  • angry_parent1

    Question for Parents: “Are you angry?”

    October 6, 2011

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    Here’s a question for you parents: your kid does something boneheaded.  It wasn’t necessarily intentional, but it was entirely preventable.  You discuss with him what went wrong and what needs to be done about it.  At the end of the conversation the kid asks, “are you angry with me?”  What’s your answer?

    Is there a place in parenting for holding anger over our kid’s head?  If your kid doesn’t have to deal with anger when he screws up (although the issue is always addressed), will he not take you seriously?  Any opinions?