Category: Family Matters
posting on driftwood

Big Bad World. When to talk to children about the hard truths?

Recently, we took turns having the flu, listening to books on tape and sharing in the misery of the world. We both became engrossed by “Edith’s Story”, Edith Velman’s autobiographical account of Jewish adolescence in Nazi occupied Holland. This piece of human history, which is part of Monika’s national history, is so painful, and yet is so necessary to know and to understand for anyone of European heritage. We began to wonder aloud about how, and when, children should be told about recent or current wars, Holocausts or genocides – be they directed at Jews, First Nations, Africans / Blacks, Arabs, Communists, or Lesbians and Gays?

The human capacity for mass murder is a crushing fact of life. For parents who are squeamish about approaching the topics of sex and birth, how much more difficult is it to tell children about the truly frightening evils of the world—war, environmental degradation, extreme poverty, social injustice, racism, and other unjust by-products of human endeavor? Children, we hope, are sheltered for a few years in a family circle that knows no malevolence. The beaming face of a four-year-old, pleased as punch at his accomplishments, or absolutely confident that her drawing taped to the fridge is a masterpiece, is a sight that every parent wants to savor forever in its innocent, guileless joy. And yet, it is not a mature face; it is not ready to inherit its complicated birthright of an earth that is, for every generation, full of both great promises and terrible threats. Sooner or later, they will learn about the darker sides of human nature.

How old is old enough to read Anne Frank? To hear about Aids in Africa? To see planes flying into buildings? To watch the evening news? To go to the World Community Film Festival and learn about child slavery? To watch Batman? Nine? Nineteen? Ninety?

North American culture is deeply conflicted about protecting children from violence. On the one hand, every major disaster brings out a well-intentioned, and probably useful, barrage of expert advice on how to talk to children about what they have seen or heard. We were eager to debrief children who watched the Trade Towers go down in 2001, or the Tsunami hit the tourist beaches in 2005. On the other hand, we call even the most extreme and graphic television violence “entertainment”. And we have, for generations, accepted schoolyard bullying, especially of the psychological variety, as if it were some dark rite of passage that children must endure, bewildered, without us. At home and on the playground, we leave far too much for children to sort out on their own.

Most children begin, usually sometime in elementary school, to seek out knowledge and understanding about the darker sides of human nature. Parents notice new fears, often of the dark, and of dying. Creepy personifications of death abound—Boogiemen, vampires, Freddy Krueger et al. Children re-create, and try to master in fantasy what they can’t quite put their fingers on in real life. They are learning about their own dark sides, and about the dark sides of others. They are reaching for tools to help them to understand and overcome their fears, and to believe that the good is stronger than the bad.

At this age, perhaps 9 or 10, it is right for parents and other wise adults to offer something more substantial than cartoon images of superheroes and villains. Children who are exposed to violence or other trauma at a younger age will, of course, have need of much more adult guidance, earlier, in order to sort out what they have witnessed. The main idea of adult help is not only to pace the exposure, but, more importantly, to pay attention to what else, besides the terrible truths, children are learning.

In front of the evening news, there is little to learn except the bigness, the strangeness, and the remoteness of violence, and the helplessness of ordinary people to change it, interspersed with commercials. In superhero adventures, children learn that while ordinary people are helpless in the face of evil, someone with magical or superhuman physical powers can contain it…for a while. Superhero figures offer temporary relief from a child’s relative powerlessness, but they have little of lasting value to teach about the resourcefulness, skills, strengths and hope that a real human can aspire to. Well-chosen children’s literature, by contrast, may tell of blood-curdling hardships, fear, despair and disaster, but it always does so within a more intimate story of children, often families, finding their own sources of strength. Many families have their own historical stories of displacement, war, immigration, hunger, oppression and danger. When these stories are told, they become stories of survival and hope, because the children themselves are evidence that the family was not destroyed; they carry the seeds to begin again.

Sometimes adults try to shelter children from hard truths, not because the children are not strong enough, but because the adults themselves have difficulty remembering, thinking about, or talking about it. The many untold stories of war vets and refugees are a case in point. Telling our children a story of strength and hope demands that the adults, first, find that hope within themselves. If an adult believes that there is nothing but despair, and cynicism to offer, then what can they teach but despair and cynicism, also? Raising children gives us the responsibility, and the opportunity, to find more.

One of the best ways to help children to deal with the really bad news about being human is to give them opportunities to pitch in and help. At the recent World Community Film Festival, Serena asked some 12 year olds, who were among the youngest people present, what they had seen. Enthusiastically, they told her about environmental threats, child labor, political intrigue, and more. They were really happy, they said, to be finding out more about the real world, and how it worked. But, Serena asked, did they feel overwhelmed, discouraged, frightened by it? Not really, they said. They already knew what it was to be frightened about such things. What they were seeing at the film festival was how people could do something useful in response to the bad things. They were seeing people who were brave, creative, and who had enough faith to try and help. The children, in turn, wanted to help. All around them, at the bazaar, were opportunities to do something—from writing letters and signing petitions, to cleaning up streams or taking on a fund-raising project. Even better, there were adults

a woman and her dog

Crossed skis: life lessons from the Rockies.

Crossed skis:  lessons from the mountain.

This article was first published in spring, 2008.  It’s one of our favorites, and it recalls our last holiday as a couple before the adopted kids arrived!

By the beginning of March our yard was carpeted with patches of purple and yellow crocuses, snowdrops and mud, as winter retreated from the sea-level coast to the mountains and the forsaken prairies.  By the time this reaches print, the hummingbirds will be on their way, and we will be on the lookout for lambs and calves.  But as April approached, we were not ready to let go of winter.  So we did the opposite of what most people do about winter holidays; we fled spring and headed to the Rockies for ten glorious days of cross-country skiing and snow.  Our goal was to catch the tail end of winter at Nipika Lodge, an eco-resort off the grid in the West Rockies.

 

Packed with food, ski gear, snowshoes, our two dogs, and ourselves we set out in our t/rusty station wagon.  A West Coast Mountain car, it makes up in traction and reliability what it lacks in glamour and comfort.  Two very long days and very sore bottoms later, we arrived at the end of Settler’s Road between Radium Hot Springs and Banff where the resort was known to be.  Off-the-grid eco-resorts can be awfully hard to find in the dark.  We got out of the car and followed a faint light to what we hoped was the manager’s cabin, where we found (in order) Nahanni, the naturalist’s dog, and Gudrun, the naturalist, who cheerfully checked us in.

 

After a day of sleeping and tenderly caring for Serena’s sciatica with ice packs and eucalyptus baths, we began exploring trails along the Kootenay and Cross Rivers.

 

Being therapists and teachers by trade, we are inclined to find philosophical and practical meanings in just about everything.  We do not leave this inclination behind when we go on a vacation.  Skiing, it turns out, is full of metaphors and lessons for real life.  Being writers with a column due, we began a list of observations.

 

1.  If something is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.  Monika learned to ski as a child in Germany, and feels fairly comfortable on a variety of trail conditions.  Serena is a latecomer who learned to ski at the age of forty.  We won’t say how many years she has been practicing since, but suffice to say that she is more often described as a trooper than a contender.  Her most profound discovery in skiing was that she could fall down repeatedly without major injury.  This was freeing.  Perfectionism is vastly over-rated.

 

2.  Things go better if one is well prepared, and stubborn resistance has consequences.  Monika packs sunscreen, layered clothing, wind protection, snacks and warm drinks even for a short run.  Serena, impatient with the packing and organizing, refuses to stretch properly before starting.  “For Pete’s sake, let’s go!” she says.  She spends the next half hour teetering back and forth atop stiff joints, her body moving in a block and her balance precarious at best.

 

3.  There is, in any endeavor and on every downhill slope, a point where momentum takes over and you just have to say a little prayer (or curse), and try to enjoy the ride down.  It’s scary, in other words.  Having finally learned to snowplow, Serena now postpones this moment as long as possible.  She digs the sides of her skis in so hard that she grinds to a standstill half way down a fast slope (an amazing feat for her on simple touring skies).  But absolute control, like perfection, is over-rated.  Better to flex the knees, get really close to the ground, breathe, and let go.   The closer to the ground you get, the less it hurts if you fall.  And if you do make it to the next level spot still standing, it feels wonderful.

 

4.  When your partner is on the ground and her skis are in the air, it’s the wrong time to say,  “But I don’t understand…it was such a small hill.  It’s really easy.”

 

5.  If you cross your own skis, you have to sort it out.  If you cross skis with your partner, sorting it out is more difficult.   The metaphorical implications of this are obvious.

 

6.  Not everything is a personality test.  Monika on skis is more adventurous and hardy, confident in taking small risks and flexible even at fairly high speed.  Serena is physically cautious, with long moments of terror at the top of every hill.  “It may look small,” she thinks, “but what if I can’t stop?  What if this time I injure some part of me that I need, like my head, for instance?”  Monika sails down, while Serena debates whether to snowplow, crab-walk, slide on her butt or take off her skis and walk.  Watching us ski, one would be tempted to label Serena as cautious in temperament, and Monika as a devil-may-care, full-speed-ahead kind of gal.

 

But off our skis, and in matters, say, of the heart, it is Serena who will launch down a steep slope full speed, letting the consequences sort themselves out later.  In career, she is inclined to stop at the top of the hill and think too long before acting.  Monika is cautious in love and career, surveying the terrain long and well before committing herself to a path that she won’t be able to turn back upon.  The ski hills remind us that confidence is situational.  It’s good to cultivate empathy and patience with one another’s pace in love, business, and skiing commitments.

 

7.  We live on an astounding planet.  On our third evening, we sat on the front porch, a dog in each lap, watching the full moon rise from behind a mountain.  A patch of silver light backlit the trees, grew into a small glowing hill, got caught in the branches and finally broke free, a great ball moving toward the heavens.  Then, just when we thought it could get no more beautiful, a single bark became a chorus of coyote howls.  From the Northwest and the Southeast of us came the call and response of two packs, filling the long valley with music that seemed to contain every possible emotion, from ecstatic joy to a deep and haunted longing.  All night the cries came, separated by long pauses of silence, then echoing up and down the mountains.  We were spellbound.

 

8.  Seasons do pass.  Nothing stays the same for long, although all things probably do come around again in their time.  Spring is a subtle thing in the mountains, but it is in the renewed strength of the sun that melts the snow to a soft mush in the afternoon.  Night comes, and freezes the melted patches to ice.  We can’t hold on to much, really.   Seasons, holidays, our youthful bodies, our parents, our dogs; all of these things have their time.  Neither of us is particularly graceful in accepting this, but time makes reluctant existentialists of us all.

 

We hate leaving the mountains, but it will be good to see the hummingbirds arrive again, and to resume the work that we sometimes resent but mostly enjoy. Some changes and hills in the coming year are expected, and some will no doubt take us by surprise.  So if you see us teetering, inflexible and block-like, as we careen along, do gently remind us to bend our knees, get down low to the ground, let go of control, and glide, breath and pray (or curse) our way to the next level place.

fungi

Parents demystified: a guide for children.

Parents demystified:  a guide for children

This article was first published in the Island Word in the fall of 2009. 

Our younger children, adopted last year, seem at times a little bewildered on the subject of parents. Dropped into a permanent family at ages 8 and 11, they experienced a tremendous change in circumstances—not the first in their young lives. From the perspective of pre-teens, we find ourselves a pretty complicated subject—perfectly logical one minute, then spurting questions about improbable events (“Have you left your jacket at school?” “Are you going to follow so-and-so into trouble at school?”) the next. Where, they ask, do we get such notions? Do we go around worrying about all the things that could go wrong with their upbringing? And what’s with the physical touch thing—what are we always pulling them toward us, ruffling our hair, sitting close to them?

So we have begun preparing a primer on how to handle having parents. We thought this might be of interest to others, including children with “normal parents” (come on, we know you’re out there somewhere), who might even write in with tips of their own. This month, we are sharing the beginnings of this project with our readers.

Why do children need parents, anyway? This is a very good question, and children have been asking it since families began. (When was that, you ask? Not as far back as dinosaurs, but definitely before wholly mammoths.) Parents have three big jobs. First, they must keep the children alive. They must provide food, shelter, warmth, and help for sicknesses and injuries. This may not seem like a big deal, but sometimes they are very hard to get. Having parents means that children can spend more time learning and playing, and less time worrying about catching dinner and setting up camp every night.

Second, parents need to nurture the child to become the best that they can be—to learn, to try new things, to find what they might excel at or find joy in doing. Because each child is different, the parents need to pay attention to, and honor, the particular person that you are. You can help them in this by telling them about yourself, trying out many things, and sharing the ones that make you happy.

Third, parents need to teach children how to fit as useful community members: how to be polite, work hard, smell nice and look tidy. Morals, compassion, responsibility, and self-control also fit in here, as do the 3 R’s of readin’, ritin’, and ‘rithmetic. They may get some help with formal education, but parents get children up in the morning and see that they get to school on time and ready to learn. Parents share with children their faith, their values, their traditions, and their way of living a life worth respecting.

These three things: surviving, becoming your best self, and fitting into the community. don’t always go together easily. What if your best self is a pirate, a misunderstood artist, or a would-be hockey player with bad knees? Parents have to deal with that. They may not always understand or be proud of you, but, if you give them a little bit of time, they will always come around to acceptance, because they have to love you. It’s built in.

What’s with all the touching? Why do parents always want to hug me, kiss me, or fix my hair? Families touch. It’s part of how we become close to one another. Dogs, cats, monkeys and people all bond with their offspring through touching. Be grateful if they don’t go through your hair every day, looking for fleas to eat. Monkeys do that.

If you, the child, find it hard to be touched in some ways, you might suggest an alternative kind of touch that feels better. If hugging doesn’t feel good, you could sit next to one another on a porch swing, or exchange foot massages. We know some children whose parents spell words on their backs with their fingers, as a guessing game. Some love to have their hair brushed, and others hate this above all else. Whatever works, find time to let your parents do it. They will be less cranky, and more understanding about that missed homework assignment if you offer them this happiness.

PS. Parents like to smell you, too. So make sure those feet smell good.

Why are parents so curious? Do they really want to know my every thought? It may seem so, but they don’t really want to hear every single thing that goes through your head. They just want know you very, very well. They especially want to trust you. But how can they trust you if they don’t know you? So they ask questions. Lots of questions.

Here is a really big hint for dealing with parents’ curiosity: Tell them stuff you don’t mind them knowing, before they ask for it. If you tell it before they ask it, it’s worth extra points—you are in charge of the conversation, and they will ask you less.

A second hint is this: tell them the truth. You might get by with lying to them sometimes, but parents really great BS detection systems. Once they catch you in a fib or a lie, they move back their trust-o-meter a few notches, and they start asking even more questions.

If it’s freedom and privacy you want, then tell the parents truthful things, often, before they ask.

Why is it so hard to keep parents happy? Won’t they ever just think I’m good enough as I am? This is probably the most common problem with parents: on average they keep up the child-improvement project until about age 40, even though most children stop listening somewhere between 13 and 20.. A few stop giving “helpful advice” as soon as the kids leave home. Others keep trying until death, and then, when they are no longer there to appreciate it, the children change and get everything right. It’s really the luck of the draw which kind you get.

Parents have hopes and dreams for their children. They take your success personally. They probably shouldn’t: it isn’t the parents who study for those exams or sweat through those athletic practices. But, if you are honest, there is usually a parent behind the scenes, helping. They drive you to practices, sit and read with you, amd make sure you eat well. They invest in you—can they help it if they have high hopes? And would you really want them not to have high hopes?

If you really feel oppressed by your parents’ expectations, bring it up when nobody is feeling angry and everybody can be as calm as possible. Maybe by talking, you can come to some shared high hopes. Then you will be on the same team, cheering for improvements.

If all else fails, remember what we said about becoming your best self. They may not be thrilled, but if your best self is a pirate with bad knees, a studio full of abstract paintings and the manners of a monkey, well, they will eventually accept and love that about you. They have to.

Just how long do I have to live with these people? That depends. Parents can be a great source of free (or cheap) shelter and food through university and beyond, if you treat them well! Just give them a daily hug, tell them what’s on your mind lately, keep your stuff reasonably tidy and stay out of the kind of trouble that you know would be bad for you, anyway. If you cook occasionally and clean the kitchen, they will be really, really nice to you in return.

Sounds easy, right? Actually, most people find that it gets difficult with age. One should probably move out at age thirty or when the folks stop buying the pizza, whichever comes first.

Why can’t my parents be cooler, less embarrassing, and more normal? Because they are real parents. Cool, normal parents are actually TV characters. Some are even cartoons (We, too, are in love with Marge Simpson). In real life, everybody is embarrassed of their parents, who were once embarrassed of their parents, and back and back through history.

Embarassing parents do, however, make for great comic inspiration. Take notes—you can use the material someday for your stand-up routine, or your graphic novel. Without dysfunctional families, there would be no great art.

This is so complicated! What else do I need to know? Every parent is different. One likes back rubs, quiet alone times and patchouli. Another will be delighted to share your new Rolling Stones album. You may even be living with a secretly frustrated hockey-star-wanna-be pirate/artist who longs to show you his abstracts in honor of the 2010 Olympics; who knows? The only way to find out is to ask them questions about themselves. Ask about their childhood, their school friends, their heroes, and the dreams they had for their lives. If you have grandparents, you have access to the mother-lode of insider information on your parents. Keep your eyes and your ears open, and ask for help when you need it.

But do I really have to love them? Parents and children are a bit of a grab bag affair: we don’t get to choose one another, and most of us are flawed in some ways. Those who are perfect almost never get family members that measure up: perfect parents can raise difficult children, and perfect children can get difficult parents. Of this we are sure: your parents began with good intentions. They really want to do a good job.

We can’t always validate our parents’ efforts by turning out spectacular, but we can try to show them some kindnesses along the way. Smile at them. Hug them. Claim them in public. Show them, and tell them, that they are, if not the center of your universe, then at least the next couple of planets out in your solar system. Do a little of this every day, and watch the results. Chances are, they will shine.

Will you love them? Who knows? These things tend to take us by surprise when we least expect it. For now, just keep the door open, and try to create a space—through kindness, honesty, touch, and curiousity–that love might choose to enter.

 

tree

Raising Teens, part 2.

Raising Teens, part 2.

Face of the future, or faceless enemy?  Kids and social media.

This series was first published in the Island Word between February and June, 2012.

When Serena was a child, certain TV programs were not allowed at home, including shows that glorified violence (ie, Gunsmoke) and the boomer’s version of vampire delight: Dark Shadows. Nonetheless, she and her siblings loved these shows. They watched them, of course, at their friend’s houses, and at grandma’s house.

There was only one catch to this clandestine TV watching. It could be scary. The night they slept along in the travel trailer after a particularly chilling episode of Dark Shadows, Serena and her sister shivered with every breeze and snap of twig in their grandparents’ back yard. But could they go inside and admit defeat? Never! Because to do that would lead to disclosure of why they were afraid, which would lead to “I told you not to watch that show.”

What goes around comes around, and it seems that Serena’s mother’s favorite curse (“may you have the children you deserve”) may have come to pass in the age of Facebook. We thought that 16 was a good age to allow a Facebook account. After all, it’s rather like driving, in that it can take a child far outside of their parents’ loving, guiding gaze and into territory where bad things can, and do, happen. But sure enough, the kids will find a way. Even at school or in the library, they can easily do now exactly what we wanted them to wait a few more years to do. Only, without our consent, a false identity was necessary. And if they did get themselves in over their heads, there was an additional barrier to parental guidance: they didn’t want to tell on themselves.

So there it is, folks. Counsellors make mistakes. In our defense, we are not counselors or psychologists all of the time. In the long, unpaid hours of parenthood, our attention tends to wander, and we are as prone as the next person to emotions, dreams, and wishful thinking about our children. We underestimated the impatience of children to taste forbidden fruit and to be trusted as adults, and we found our authority rendered irrelevant when we couldn’t lay down the law, so to speak.

Facebook and other social media are the automobile of our generation: they are the thing that our children run wild with while we scatch our heads and wonder whether and how to control the damage. They present undreamed-of powers: to try on different identities, to find kindred spirits across geographical barriers, to become directly involved in causes, and to get instant information on everything from what your best friend is wearing to school tomorrow, to what kind of government reigns in Zimbabwe, to how to make an atomic bomb or an origami crane. Even the schools are on-board, and we are hard pressed to find educational options that support our quaint notion that children really ought to spend their first 15 years or so in the three-dimensional, multisensory world we like to call “reality”.

The automobile brought in the roaring twenties, and nourished the youth culture of the 1950’s. It took a few decades to bring in such safeguards as licenses, speed limits, and crash-tested car safety by design. Where will the internet take us? It will take generations to know.

By the time they reach college or university-age, the good effects of the internet are visible in this generation of young people. They are more aware, and more caring, toward events around the world then even we boomers could have been. National Geographic and Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom were wonderful introductions to the world beyond our doorsteps, but they pale next to the possibilities of online learning, which offers the added opportunity for direct involvement. “Click here to feed an African child for a day,” and “Share this story on your facebook status” buttons put real powers of change at our fingers, and this re-making of democracy appears to be our best hope for a future beyond spreading tyranny and planetary destruction. It is as though they all live in the crossroads of trade routes; those places where ideas as well as commercial goods are brought to a common market and where business, if not benevolence, leads us to broaden our minds.

For some, this richness of diversity is literally life-saving in its ability to offer a niche of understanding and belonging for everyone. If your tribe cannot be found at home, you can be certain of finding it online. Gay. Lesbian, Transgendered and Bisexual teens now have a way to find community and acceptance. Those with shared history, be it personal (as with abuse survivors) or so big as to be built into one’s epigenetic blueprint (as with second- and third-generation children of war), can find each. Life is less isolating than it used to be for all kinds of people.

One dark side of all of this diversity is that one can also find social support for any position, including the some very stifling and even dangerous ones, online. There are groups of pro-Anorexics who exchange tips on how to resist treatment, and White Supremicists who spread the rationale and practice of discrimination. Discussions of even the most illogical, ignorant or cruel ideas tend to reduce all participants to equality at the lowest level. Teens do not have the maturity or the education to critically sift through this marketplace of ideas on their own. They are prone to extremism because of the all-or-nothing absolutism of their limited experience and cognitive processes: the answers are still theoretical, and therefore “right” or “wrong” to them. They will eventually have to make peace with ambiguity and with some forms of situational ethics. But for now, they tend to be ideologues.

A distinctly adolescent blend of over-developed judgementalism and under-developed compassion also contributes to social media’s most troublesome feature among teens: social cruelty. Exposing another person to ridicule or collective disapproval is just so easy. Adults do it all the time, although mostly to politicians and celebrities. But just as the internet brought about the ordinary person’s “15 minutes of fame”, it has made possible the ordinary person’s 15 minutes of shame when their body, their words (true or manufactured), their intelligence or their trusting gullibility are broadcast to a large audience in an instant. Anyone who been 14 must remember how it feels to want to disappear from shame. How much is this experience magnified by social media? Perhaps fewer teens self-destruct from isolation than did in the pre-internet days, but it is fairly certain that more self-destruct from shame.

A third concern on the dark side of social media is its anonymity. When we were teens, we experimented with alternate ways of being ourselves by going to summer camp and meeting kids who didn’t go to our school. Today’s teens have a much more powerful tool for this. They can ghost-write under any number of pseudonyms, and use these guises to argue, to make friends, to have adventures with superhuman abilities, and even to do a “virtual” form of dating, often carrying on semi-romantic relationships with no intention of meeting in person. All of this can be liberating—like a souped-up version of summer camp. Trouble arises when the “real life” relationships, which demand a certain level of authenticity, are replaced in the center with virtual ones, which thrive on inventiveness in deception.

Families and small communities have built-in limits to deception–one can’t, for instance, pretend to be 18 in school when one is really 14. Nor can one present parents and siblings with the photograph of a more attractive person and say, “here I am”. This forced honesty gives teens a sense of continuity—the knowledge that they are the same person today as they were yesterday, and will be again tomorrow. Years of continuity give rise to an inner sense of identity, so that even if sorely tested by circumstance, we can count on having a “Self” that is guided by the values of our past. Large communities, impersonal schools, and, most of all, the infinitely large and impersonal community of online space, tend to erode and to postpone the development of a clear, consistent and integral Self.

It takes a self to have self-worth, and it takes self-worth to survive those inevitable shaming experiences and to want to stay in the world. If the core of the self, under all of the masks, is empty, then we have nothing to offer for our right to exist but the superficial qualities of attractiveness and achievement. In a world that bombards us with images of “perfect” people who appear to magically know how to look both competent and beautiful, who can be beautiful enough? Who can achieve enough?

Wise parents learn that love for our children is not the same as pride in showing them off. We love them for their uniqueness; their irreplaceable selves. What we need in order to fight the dark sides of social media are more ways to reflect back to our kids images of their irreplaceable, authentic, quirky, selves in a loving, appreciative light. We need more ways, also, to show them the value of vulnerability and imperfection, so that they can truly value the round-about journey toward perfection more than the (false) promise of getting there.

Here are some ideas that might help:

• Compromise on social media. Keep the computers in the family room or kitchen. Think carefully about giving children the means to go online from a cell-phone sized instrument, as this level of portability sorely tempts them to be more clandestine and involved in their use of social media. Some families have a rule that friends on facebook must also “friend” the parents, at least up to a certain age (what age? That depends on the child. Maybe 13 or 14 on average, but with exceptions for those whose social intelligence is later or slower to develop.)
• Try to reinforce having a daily limit on recreational screen time, and model these limits as adults (yes, that is hard! But at least show where you stand).
• Use facebook to share things that inspire you with your kids.
• Minimal bottom line: No texting at the dinner table or during family functions. Use these times to share what has happened in your day, including both online and offline interesting experiences.
• Support teachers who use the internet in positive, responsible and empowering ways with tweens and teens. Support teachers, also, who maintain a schooling environment where virtual reality takes a distant second-place to multi-sensory, “real life” experience.
• Encourage creativity for its own sake. Resist the temptation to over-bask (yes, we made that word up) in a child’s achievements, but do bask in the glow when they overcome their reluctance to try or their discouragement when the development of talent comes slowly, and they keep trying. Show pleasure in the process more that the product.
• Model and teach empathy and kindness.
• Develop and encourage a sense of humor that does not rely upon put-downs of other people. Richer humor celebrates the imperfection in all of us and our shared vulnerability in life.

old photo

Re-inventing Christmas for Family Sanity

Re-inventing Christmas for Family Sanity

This article was first published in the Island Word for Dec. 2003.  It’s still a good one!

“We don’t need the baby Jesus,” says Serena’s sister-in-law, “We need Martha Stewart!” “Martha’s in jail”, comes the not-exactly-helpful reply.
“I know! And that’s not the point. This season is out of control and I’m tired!”

Christmas once represented our fondest dreams for happy families, traditions, belonging and peace on earth. But we know few adults who are content with the season as it is now, burdened by expectations borrowed from sentimental greeting cards and advertisements, where children love their gifts, everyone gets along, and, for once, no one is left out. For the adult who is striving to put it all together, Christmas is a demanding project with a fixed budget and a million demands on the tight production schedule. Get it wrong, and our children might be ruined forever, destined to be little Scrooges with no sense of holiday spirit, no happy memories, no baby Jesus at all in their lives. Maybe we are sad, or grieving, or tired. Maybe we just don’t want to do it this year. But we’d better hide those doubts, because the constant piped in cheerful music and the lights pushing just a little too relentlessly against the winter nights seem to say “no darkness is allowed here!”

It wasn’t always this way. In ancient and modern times, the dark and cold Northern winters have forced people closer together to share light and warmth. Where people gather, food and stories are shared. In agrarian societies, winter is the time for making beautiful and useful objects for the home, treasures and toys. The festivals of light, warmth and meaningful stories fit well this time of year, and every Northern spiritual tradition has made use of this time to gather, to teach the young, to share wealth and to enrich the sense of community among its members.

As societies grew from tribes and villages to estates, towns, city-states and nations, the festivals of December changed, as well. We still may long to gather still to hear the stories that heal and that bind us together. But a second agenda has grown along with the size of our tribes. It is not enough to just belong; we are also under constant pressure to excel, to compete, and to achieve security through prevailing in the great race for status. Size matters, we are told, and the size of the Christmas tree, the pile of gifts, and the credit card bills that follow all seem to be necessary if we are to give our families the “correct” experience of the holidays. Where, in Medieval times, the wealthy held feasts to share with the poor the necessities of life, we are now encouraged to build the pile of luxuries ever higher for our own families. We live in fear of gift-giving faux-pas—the unexpected gift that we have no exchange for, the present that we spent far too much or far too little for, the look on someone’s face that says, “this thing is hideous”. Meanwhile, work pressure is heavier, not lighter, than in other months. This, combined with an overloaded social calendar means less, not more, time to prepare the feasts and the decorations, the personal gifts, the wrappings, and every little tradition that our families have come to remember and to insist on repeating or “it won’t be Christmas!”

We have each considered, at least once, opting out of the holidays altogether. We dislike status races on principle. We also dislike the oppressive cheeriness that greets thoughtful or stressed expressions with orders to “smile, you grinch!” and leaves no room for the quiet or sad emotions. We dislike canned electronic music and plastic Santas that say “ho, ho, ho!”

But we keep being drawn back to the hearth. December is still dark and cold, and we want to recreate a holiday of quiet and beautiful hope. We want a holiday that does not banish sadness, but offers comfort. We want to share the stories; from our families, our religious heritages, and our favorite books; that make us cry, laugh, and hold our loved ones a little more dearly.

So, how do we reclaim the holiday season? Each family has its own version of holiday traditions and challenges, so each will need its own plan unlike any other’s. We recommend starting to plan and to talk together early in the season, asking questions like, “What is your very favorite thing about the holidays?”, “what is your least favorite thing?”, and “is there anything you’ve been wanting to try differently this year?” Here are some changes that some families have found useful in simplifying and making Christmas, Channukah, Divali, Solstice or other winter holidays worth repeating.

–Have a time to sit in darkness, and light one candle at a time to represent the people or concerns that we want to “place in the light”. Talk about each candle and what it stands for. Light candles to remember loved ones who have died, or who are far away. Send them love and good wishes wherever they are.

–Read out loud. Take turns reading a story while doing a craft or cooking together.

–If your family has school children, consider waiting until after Christmas Day to deliver gifts. This can take some of the pressure off the early weeks of December, which quickly fill up with school, community and other events.

–Replace 25%, 50%, or all of your holiday gift shopping with gifts that don’t cost the earth, or that make it a more fair place to live. Fair trade and organic tea, coffee and chocolate are all available in now in most cities or from on line vendors. Locally produced goods and services, from Apple Cider to Zippered clothing, are easier on the earth and good for the local community.

–As a family, choose one local, and one global charity to support. Share with your children what the money helps to do.

–Volunteer together (but be careful; leave plenty of time for the family to do “nothing in particular” together, too).

–Spend some time outdoors, paying attention to what the earth is doing this season.

–If nature’s resting time so inspires you, try to claim some dormant time for yourself, too. What seeds of creativity may be sleeping, gathering and storing up energy within you? Send them some love, too, and give thanks for the dark places that shelter and feed them.

–Talk to your children, partner, or others about what gives you strength, meaning or faith in your life. Worship in whatever ways you find most beautiful.

–Invite people over one or two at a time rather than in large groups. Invite someone who you think might especially enjoy being a part of your family for an evening.

–If you have a blended family, try not to buy into pressure to double the list of expectations by preserving every single tradition from before. Talk about it, express your need to keep things simple, and come up with a short list.

–Try very hard not to give past your point of resentment. Giving “too much” and regretting it acts as poison in relationships, and nobody wants that. Risk some honest limit-setting, while not holding back on the reassurance of your fondness for the recipient.

–draw names for gift giving.

As a society, we spend a great deal of time, energy and money making this season happen. Imagine holidays that recharge, reconnect, re-create and re-commit us to what matters the most in our lives. Imagine that what matters is not having the biggest, brightest, or even the best Christmas ever. It’s the same things that have always worked best to give comfort in the dark season—warmth, nourishment, faith, sharing what we have or what we need, and lighting candles in the spirit of love.

Family

Parents’ Days

Parents’ Days

This article was first published in the Island Word in spring, 2006.

It’s that time of year again, when the brave new family forms of our time run up against well-meaning but painful tributes to convention; when single parents and same-sex couples with children grit their teeth; when children whose parents are not there experience simple school crafts like shards of crushed glass upon tender hearts. We’re talking about Mother’s Day and Father’s Day.

Once in a while a brave parent sets forth to question why schools still honor these days by having children plant geraniums in paper cups and copy sentimental poetry on cards. Those who do so are blasted by the defenders of Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, who accuse the rebels of everything from anarchism to ingratitude; bad manners to radical politics. We would not be foolish enough to wade into this territory.

But it does strike us as a situation ripe with insensitivity, to say the least, when a child undergoes a yearly ritual of being made painfully aware of a difference that can only be perceived, in this context, as something missing. Is there any way to make Mother’s Day or Father’s Day less like salt in the wounds of children, and of adults, who don’t have the celebrated parent? And what about parents whose children are estranged, or missing, or dead, or longed for but never born? With no one to deliver the burned toast and cold coffee on a tray, how do we who long for and miss children in our lives mark these days without tears?

In English-speaking countries,
Mother’s Day seems to have had its beginning in 1870, with Juliet Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day Proclamation, a political rallying cry for an end to war:

Arise then…women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
“We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

How far we’ve drifted from Mother’s Day as a political statement! Still, we know plenty of mothers who would rather have $7 a day daycare than a bouquet and brunch. Or how about a rise in the minimum wage, a lifting of family welfare rates, better schools, and free post-secondary education? If we widen our perspective to international issues, Juliet Ward Howe’s cry against war is more poignant than ever. The greatest Mother’s Day gift we can imagine would be a truly world-wide commitment to restoring a world where it is safe for children to play outside.

And what about Father’s Day? To our knowledge a North-American phenomenon, this one was created in 1909 by Seattle resident Sonora Dodd, who dreamed it up while listening to a Mother’s Day sermon, and thinking of her father who brought up the children after his wife’s death. Because “Father” and “Mother” are treated as nouns, not verbs, it made more sense to her to create a special day for fathers as male parents, rather than honoring a man for his mothering ways. And so it is today: we’ve tried to congratulate certain men on their good mothering skills, but no matter how many skinned knees they’ve patched or how many tears they’ve caught for their kids, they generally insist on calling it “being a father” or “papa” or “dad”. Gender seems to be more important to some people than to others.

What makes a man a father? The minimum investment needed to be a mother is nine months of pregnancy and child birth—no small feat. Even then, if the woman does not take the child for raising but opts for adoption, she is accurately called a “Birth Mother”, to distinguish her from the Mother who delivers day to day care. Over 90% of children in Canada live with a woman who fills the female parent, or “Mother” role. But defining what makes a “Father” is more difficult. Nearly half of Canadian children do not live with the man whose genetic heritage they share, and many of these children receive no financial support or visitation from the men known as their fathers. For example, one of the more extensive studies in Canada found that 1 in 4 children lost virtually all contact with fathers within 5 years of divorce (from the Department of Justice Canada). Are these people still fathers? What do they do on Father’s Day? What do their children do?

We suspect that Father’s Day has always been particularly hard on children without visible fathers. In a society that puts great store in fathers (that’s why it’s often referred to as a Patriarchy), the absence of one hurts. “My dad is bigger than your dad” still carries some weight on the playground. Fathers command respect, even in these embattled father-figure times. At school and in the community, a dad is someone who can fight battles for you by making other people listen. It is still a lucky child who knows who his father is, and an unlucky child who, on Father’s Day, has no one to celebrate.

Maybe the answer is a gender-neutral “Parents’ Day”, but that sounds so contrived and sterile. “Parent” is a bloodless word compared to “Mother” or “Dad”. No poet ever spoke of the “Parentland”, “Alma Parent” or “Parent Earth”.

We like to think of “mother” and “father” as verbs to describe different, but complementary styles of supporting and caring for children. Thus, when Serena’s daughter was a baby, she would put up her arms and say, “Ma!” when she was hungry or tired, and “Da!” when she wanted to play. Perhaps if we had all kept this up over the years, we would get both Mother’s Day and Father’s Day cards, along with, “Hey, Mom, will you dad me a loan this month?”, or “I’m so blue, I need you to mom me right now.”

But our best fantasies of Mother’s Day and Father’s Day have to do with political action in support of what caring Moms and Dads want for all children. Imagine a Father’s Day parade with men carrying banners for the safety of their daughters, equal opportunities and education for all children, and an end to war. Imagine a Mother’s Day rally with women marching for high quality day care, a clean environment, and an end to global warming. Imagine mothers, fathers, and grandparents together designing and then demanding a humane, non-adversarial, free and wise alternative to Family Court for the resolution of custody, access and support post-divorce. Imagine that instead of crafts, children spent dedicated “Mother’s Day” and “Father’s Day” time in school learning about the ways that governments and other public institutions could, and do, help families. Wouldn’t that be great?

Meanwhile, we would remind teachers that children need some privacy and freedom around who they choose to make cards and gifts for on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. Then, we would remind parents who have divorced to support their children in sending appropriate Mother’s Day and Father’s Day greetings, and to be as generous and reasonable as possible in supporting a continuing bond with the person who broke your heart. A bouquet and thank you for the person who sends financial support for the kids, or who takes care of them day to day, is never amiss. And finally, we would remind children of all ages to say “thank you” to those who mother and father them, whatever the gender and whatever the ties (blood, adoption, or choice) may be. For whether by choice, adoption or blood, a parent is as a parent does. May we all be blessed with as many people to mother and father us as it takes to get us through.

puppets

Molly and Frost on Spring Cleaning

Molly and Frost on Spring Cleaning

This article first appeared in the Island Word, spring, 2010.  It’s just for fun.  Used by permission (from Molly and Frost).

Serena and Monika have been having a rather ruff time of it lately, with the extra-long winter, seasonal colds, and now our shedding coats to contend with. Spring means mud to dogs, and for some reason that appears to trouble them as well. They need a break. With the return of longer days, an hour saved at the computer is an hour gained for the park. So we’ve given them the month off of column writing, filling in with our canine advice on spring cleaning and decorating for the season.

If there is a theme to home decorating this year, it is Entropy. A true monument to chaos may be above the means of some, but if you have pre-teen children, dense fir, the energy of a Border Collie and the oversized paws of an Australian Shepherd, you can come close to perfection without knocking yourself out.

The first rule of household entropy is to blur the boundaries of indoors and outdoors. Bring mud in; take chewy toys out. Bring sticks in; take bones out. Bury them, and start over. Bring mud in….

Focus on decorating below the knees. What catches a dog’s eye is what’s on the floor. Bouncy tennis balls are a must-have accessory: especially in tough economic times, these classics never go out of style. A few bones scattered about complete the look, and will make any four-pawed visitor feel more casual and welcome. Note: humans should wear shoes to avoid injuries.

As for floor coverings, while the humans have taken to hard flooring for easy mop-ups, we miss the cushy, odorous, full-sensory experience of carpeting. A good compromise is carpet on the staircase, where we can take our extra-nice bits for a good long chew-and-drool session while surveying the living area from a slightly raised vantage point. Hard flooring is fine for everywhere else, but don’t be afraid to allow it to acquire some scratches and stains. If the choice is between scratching the floor or clipping the toenails, it’s no contest. An unscratched floor is…unnatural.

A bonus to having dense fur is that it functions to collect all other loose floor dust into neat clumps resembling small animals that migrate into the corners and around the edges of rooms. These are particularly comforting when we are otherwise alone in the house. As we like to say, “If you’ve got furballs, you’ve got company”. They also make good “practice pets” for very young humans who have yet to develop their canine-friendly social skills.

Did somebody say vacuum cleaner? No, no. Bad Vacuum Cleaner. Noisy. Scary. Put it away—far, far away.

That’s better. Now, on to the kitchen. Don’t like bits of food and gravy in the dishwater, or sticking to the sides of your dishwasher? Here’s a tip from our house to yours: The Doggy Prewash Cycle. We lick the plates, then our people load them into the dishwasher to be sterilized. A similar principle works for cleaning up most organic spills on the floor. Milk, gravy, meat juice, raw eggs, and just about anything else from the refrigerator is no problem when you have two long, efficient tongues on hand to tackle the mess. Indeed, our humans often wonder how dogless households handle such problems. Here it’s nice and easy, and there is time left over to get to the park before the sun sets. Everybody wins.

Well, that’s about it! We could change the bedding and put clothing away, but nobody sees those parts of the house, anyway! With the front room and the kitchen are ready for surprise company, we are ready for the park!

Molly is an energetic Border Collie/Fence Climber cross from the SPCA, who specializes in retrieving yellow tennis balls and ten-year-old children. Frost is a rehabilitated show dog with big brown eyes, soft paws, a sterling pedigree and a devotion to “protecting” us from all other dogs in the park. Writing is a secondary vocation for them, ranking far behind their first commitment of being housedogs and playmates to the Grünberg-Patterson family.

Dr. Serena Patterson is a Registered Psychologist and Monika Grünberg is a Registered Clinical Counsellor in private practice. If you have problems other than household maintenance, you can find them at at Grünberg Patterson Counselling and Psychological Services in Comox. Failing that, try the park!

 

Family

Adoption & Chosen Family

Making family through Adoption

We’ve been taking a hiatus from writing to spend time with T & G, the children who we adopted this fall.  Each of us is in our 50th year, becoming mothers again was not something that we envisioned when we began our 40’s.  But love happens; the more time we spent with our friends’ foster children, the more we felt compelled to step forward with what they needed:  a permanent family base.  This meant also adopting the foster parents into our closest circle that we call “family”, and figuring out how, and whether, the other people who have loved our children before us will change our lives.  Now, as we prepare to spend the first Christmas together in our house, the wonder of what we have done is sinking in.

The poet Robert Frost, telling of the hired man who comes back to the farm where he worked to die, comments that “home is the place where, if you have no where else to go, they have to take you in.”  One thing that makes a family is this commitment to be the refuge of last resort; to offer shelter and care when it is needed and we have it to give.  We don’t do this for just anybody.  Perhaps we should, but most of us don’t.  Friendship holds open the option to cut ties and run when the commitment gets to be too burdensome, or the person changes in ways that we didn’t anticipate, or we ourselves change.  Friendship depends upon equity between give and take.  Family measures that equity in larger terms; what we receive from one generation we hope to give to another, and so it goes.  Choosing to become family to someone is a big deal.

One wonderful side-benefit of adopting our children is that, as we introduce them to our circles and meet their friends’ parents, we hear other peoples’ stories of family creation. The myth that all, or even most people belong to neat groupings of biologically related mom, dad and children is guarded by rules of privacy; Canadians tend to be a rather reserved people.  But when we reveal that we are a new adoptive family, other people tell us their own stories: a beloved child, or nephew, or sibling who was adopted, or a child given up at birth to be raised by relatives or strangers, or grandparents pressed back into the parent role.  The complicated mix of emotions—sadness, hope, joy, worry—that accompanies this kind of loving act belies any simple statements of “this is what it is like to raise a child.”  These complex families are places where miracles and tragedies live in close association; where the bitter and the sweet mix.  It is like we have entered this secret club of people who have been affected by adoption and fostering, and are wise in the skills of gathering in and letting go, accepting what is and advocating for what can be, listening and telling new family stories.

True, it is a little unusual to be adopting children who are not babies.  But we are not strangers to the concept of “chosen family”.  Both of us have found ourselves in adulthood separated from our original families by oceans or mountain ranges, national borders and distances both geographic and emotional.  Most people nowadays choose their spouses from folks that they did not grow up with, but we’ve also built networks of  people to stand in as siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins—a local clan to function in place of those we left behind.

Most strong networks of chosen family contain more than one kind of member—some who are there because they have a lot of skill and confidence in relationship-formation, and others who are there because they have little confidence but a great need for family. When an abundance of skill meets an abundance of need, what will be the result?  That depends…on what?  Some would say, “on whether it was meant to be”; but that puts a lot into the hands of fate.  We prefer to look to factors that we can maybe improve upon—willingness to learn, ability to change, courageous honesty, generosity of spirit, skills for managing conflict, and an equality of commitment to the bond.

Having two amazing and smart children wiggle their way into our hearts was easy.  Perhaps it is simply a clan instinct that told us to do what love required and make our home bigger to fit two more.  But love is an action word; a verb, and it can be done in ways that are wise, strengthening and generous as well as in ways that are foolish and possessive.  Living up to the former will take more than instinct; we’ve made a leap of faith that we can find what is needed as we go along to make this whole thing work.

Human nature is on our side; love comes fairly naturally to our species.  Chances are, with time and a little luck, we’ll become solid sources of comfort and safety to these children; a “secure base” that they can use for calm in the face of stress and challenges.  Chances are they will bring forth in us new strengths and skills.  Chances are, over a life-time, they will continue to love us and make our years richer.  And we are not alone: we’ve joined the secret society of adoptive and chosen families, and they will have much to teach us as we go.

 

Family

Adult Conspiracies: the art of ganging up on teens

Adult Conspiracies: the art of gangin up on teens

In the tiny farming communities where Serena and her siblings grew up, lying was not a option. Oh, you could try it, and most did. But you couldn’t get away with it. The short skirts, the midnight skinny dipping, the incomplete homework, the female integration of Shorty’s Pool Hall; all was faithfully related to parents, with plenty of commentary. They were surrounded. They cursed the adult conspiracy. Not only did it keep them honest against their will; it required constant co-operation and ingenuity to get around it.

When she was parenting, Serena invented a tongue-in-cheek, fictional version of the adult conspiracy in order to deflect that ubiquitous charge against parents: that they are “mean”. “Yep,” she’d say,” I’m going to get the “Meanest Mommy on the Block” pin again this month. I am so proud!” The daughter would laugh, or grumble, or add to the tale; it was a family joke. Better a fictional conspiracy than none at all. But the truth was that by the time her daughter became a teen, Serena felt surprisingly alone.

As we listen to parents with teen children, we are struck with the commonness of feeling alone. Here are some examples of how the adult conspiracy has failed teens and parents (If the reader thinks that he or she is being used as an example, rest assured that these are common stories, disguised to protect real families. Any resemblance to your own is coincidental):

A single mother’s children call their father to complain about discipline and chores. The ex-spouse says, “well, I know I couldn’t live with your mother.”

The star of a youth sports team is caught stealing and fights with his father at home on the day of a big game. The youngster refuses to play unless the father is removed from the stands. The coach demands that the father leave, saying, “We simply can’t risk the whole game over a family problem.”

The student tells her parents that she does her homework during her spare hour at school. She tells the teacher that family problems prevent her from working at home. This continues until a report card shows numerous incomplete assignments. Why, the parents wonder, had they not been alerted to the problem? Why, the teachers wonder, did the parents not check that the homework was done?

With divorced parents, the segregation of generations, large classes and larger schools, it is so easy for a child to slip through the cracks. As one father said of his daughter, who was busy doing exactly the opposite of what she had been told, “she knows that adult attention spans are short. If she waits until we’re distracted, she can do exactly as she pleases.” The neighbors won’t tell on her, the teacher won’t tell on her, and, if all else fails, she can bluff her way through. What child is up to the challenge of developing integrity within themselves, when it is so immediately satisfying to do exactly as one pleases?

Of course, the adult conspiracy wasn’t always such a great thing. For every memory of teens being held accountable by the adults around us, there is another of adults supporting one another in their unaccountability. There were parents who got away with brutality, teachers whose incompetence went unchallenged, and youth leaders who exploited children sexually and emotionally. We were part of the “don’t trust anybody over 30” generation, and we had our reasons.

The cultural shift between the authoritarianism of post-war parents and the anti-authoritarianism of boomer parents was a big factor in the breakdown of mutually-empowering adult conspiracies.   In fact, many of us were so cautious not to reproduce the “Father Knows Best” authoritarianism of our childhoods, that we were sitting ducks for the “Children Know Best” consumer messages of more recent years. Determined that our children would not be shamed or silenced in the face of adult cover-ups, we developed a belief that our children were above lying, and we treated them as guileless long after they were on their way to exploiting our naiveté. Surely this cultural shift, that prematurely liberated children and demoted their parents, is one factor that makes it easier to escape the development of integrity through accountability. (Not coincidentally, it also makes it easier to sell children products that are bad for them.)

A second factor in the breakdown of the adult conspiracy is the general speeding up of life. Overextended at work and usually multitasking, we don’t have the time or focus to listen well to one another, or to monitor children—our own or each other’s–carefully.

Third, a highly competitive economy and large schools feed an over-focus on outcome over process; winning over character. Learning requires the humility to not-know. But who can afford the luxury of not-knowing when every moment is a competition? Plagiarism and cheating have become alarmingly common among students. Adults have provided plenty of models for this kind of short-cutting, from faked medical research, to skimming the most talented teens for a performance choir while neglecting the musical education of the majority. High-profile and world travel opportunities await a chosen few before they have even completed high school. The stakes are too high to resist; the product becomes more important than the road to get there.

Now, as always, teens are built to test their limits, and to push off from their parents’ orbits with all of their might. It is for the teen years that we most need a functional adult communication network, and we have a long way to go toward building (or rebuilding) one.

What can you do? Here are some tips for helping the teens in your personal orbit step up to the challenge of developing integrity—even when they would really rather avoid it!

1. Know your self. Hidden motives often block adult co-operation around children. Competition for the children’s affection is a huge temptation, especially between former spouses. Even teachers and coaches can be lured by fantasies of heroism, believing a child’s story unconditionally before trying to understand the parents’ point of view.

2. Value teaching over performance product. A winning sports team, a stellar theatre performance, a world-class chamber choir, or the highest school Provincial Exam scores: none of these is more important than making better, more honest people out of our children. Neither the game, nor the show must go on.

3. Have courage. The fear of embarrassment, being put down, or being exposed in our own mistakes keeps adults functioning in isolation from one another. Make that phone call, and say something like, “I’m concerned about Johnny. Is now good time to talk about it?”

4. Be gracious. When someone calls to complain about your children, it is not easy to say, “thank you.” But the information that that person has given you will help your child really learn and grow. It is a message to your child that they are not invisible, and that they therefore must be ready to account for (and repair, when necessary) what they say and do.

5. Always try to get more than one side of a story, especially before jumping into White Knight mode. When mediating among teens, or between teens and their parents, look for solutions that meet the need for justice while preserving dignity all around. It is especially important not to shame parents in front of their children.

6. Get involved in multi-generational activities. Teens need to interact with adults, elders, and younger children in order to best develop their own character.

7. Stand for character and honesty in the adult world of business, government, community service and relationships. Think, and talk, about the values that inform your voting, purchasing, livelihood, and friendships. Be a good role model.

a woman holding a baby

Caregiving: Surviving and Thriving.

Caregiving: Surviving and Thriving.

This article was first published in the Island Word in 2005. 

A few months ago we were invited to give a workshop for the family care givers of elderly patients. Ever since then, we have been reflecting, reading, and listening to people who look after family members. What we are learning is that “care giving” is an extremely complicated, and varied experience. What we are certain about is that there is no single face of “the caregiver” in our society, nor is there one set of needs or one set of experiences shared by all.

Care giving is paid or unpaid, formal or informal, home-based or institutional, family-provided or other-provided. The people who receive care are disabled or able-bodied (and in-between), young or old (and in-between), pleasant or unpleasant (and in-between). Those who give care do so for so many reasons: for love, for meaning, for enjoyment, for a living wage, for interest and stimulation, for praise, for paying back debts of gratitude, for paying forward to make the world better.

We are also learning what an ordinary part of life care is. Needing care is not some special or new problem to be solved, although our society has many problems around providing care at the moment. Everyone needs care at many points in their lives, and in many forms.

We are learning that those who give care have many skills. Some of these skills come from formal education. Some are learned through an informal education that occurs in our homes and neighborhoods–not long ago mothers, aunts and neighbors gave most girls a very long and complex training for care giving that was entirely separate from formal schooling. Other skills we teach ourselves, on the job. A husband taking care of his ailing wife, a mother taking care of a tiny baby, a daughter taking care of her mother, and a nurse in a hospital emergency room have very different people to care for, and different situations to care in, for but they also have more in common than shows on the surface.

To give care means working with other care givers. These alliances can be quite difficult to set up and to maintain. For instance, a child who is “in care” of the government may have foster parents, biological parents, step parents, grandparents, a social worker, some aunts and uncles, a teacher and a set of siblings. Each of these people wants to help, and each may have particular gifts that the child needs. At the same time, it may be quite difficult for each to set aside misgivings about some of the others and build trusting alliances for the child’s sake.

Another skill that comes with care-giving is that of accepting and adjusting to pain. With all of our advanced medicine, nearly one in four people will still experience chronic pain in their lives, and this will be easier to deal with it isn’t compounded with fear, or with the idea that pain is some unnatural, tragic event visited upon only us. The strategies for coping with pain include adjusting how we do things, ignoring what we can get by with ignoring, distracting ourselves, practicing relaxation or meditation, taking medications, taking baths, and even finding meaning in suffering.

Most care givers take great pride in their work, even if that work sometimes seems invisible to others. Almost all who do this work, paid or unpaid, feel that it is important and has value. But it is hard to see the value of care in a society that thinks of “independence”, not interdependence, as its primary virtue. When society doesn’t value care, it fails to create good conditions for it to thrive. Regaining the emotional energy needed when “the cup runs empty” can be a challenge in these times, when so much of political and social thinking seems bent on denying the need for, and the work of, care between people.

It has been said many times that it takes a village to raise a child. One might also say that it takes a village to get any of us through our lives, from cradle to grave. We are never free from our need for care, and we are never free from our need to care. Nor is care a private thing, behind family walls and separate from the “real world” of business.

If we are paying attention, we may see that our days are full of small acts of care. There is the person who left the shower clean and fresh before us in the morning, or who makes our lunch, or who sends us a funny thing on the internet, or who calls out to us as they take their evening walk, checking the neighborhood over one more time. Care flows along the lines of a big, invisible web of ties that can support us, challenge us, pull us down, or hold us steady. It is in this web of care that we experience our sweetest, and our stickiest, moments.

Needing one another, whether we are young, old or in-between, is natural and right. Care givers have skills and knowledge that everyone is going to need at some point in their lives. The life meaning and the richness that people find in the giving and receiving of care makes the fact of human suffering easier to live with, if not always counting as a blessing. A community that nourishes the flow of care in our lives will see alliances forming, warmth and pride in work growing, burn-out averted, and people thriving despite the hardships of facing illness and disability. .

Book your appointment

connect with us
About

Grünberg Patterson Centre for Counselling & Assessment has been providing services in counselling, psychotherapy, and education since 2004.

It is an honour and privilege to live and work in the traditional territory of the K’ómoks First Nation.

Contact

112-2100 Guthrie Rd, Comox, BC V9M 3P6

Phone:  (250) 941-1555
Fax: (250) 941-1553
Email: admin@grunbergpatterson.ca


Copyright 2019 Grünberg Patterson Centre for Counselling & Assessment. All rights reserved.