Someone close to me once said, “we hurt the ones we love the most.”  Those were words iterated by my ex-husband to a very frustrated recipient, me.  Many moons had to pass before I finally got a chance to arrive at an understanding of my own.  Opportunity in the guise of pain forces me to see the truth of that statement.  It is not to excuse potentially hurtful behavior, but it is to become fully aware that I too have been participating in the behavior that I hate in others: the behaviors that caused me great pain.  Too many times.

I automatically rejected his words when my son accused me of being mean to him at times.  I waved it off.  I knew that he was just being dramatic, or just simply wrong.  I could not acknowledge what could never be true.  Of course not.  He was wrong.  I am not a mean person!

One morning recently, I woke up with a broken heart.  I woke recalling a scene from the day before and I was overcome by deep sadness I didn’t know what to do with myself.

I was standing by a kitchen table, busily putting together plates for the guests on their way soon, while Enzo, a large Rottweiler sat patiently waiting to see if he could earn any scraps .  I had not seen my son for months almost, and wanted this day to be special one for us.  I had wanted to reassure him of how important and special he is to me.

While I was busily cooking for other guests, my son offered Enzo a piece of beef, just the way we used to do with our own dog.  I quickly snapped: “Don’t feed him!  He’s on a diet and could have Diarrhea!!!”

It isn’t so much the words that I said to him that broke my heart. It is the tone in which I said it and how I may have made him feel, even if he was not clearly aware.

My son was right about me all along.  I had been mean to him at times.   Too many times.  I am at times mean to my loved one.  I love him more than anything in this world.  I have been hurting the ones that I love the most.  I have been hurting my son (and others that I love as well, I am sure of this).  I have behaved in that hurtful way to my precious one too many times in the past.

I called my son and spoke to him about my misbehavior and he in his wonderful fashion simply thanked me for sharing my feelings with him and my acknowledgment of his grievances that I had made mistakes in the past.

If “knowing is half the battle,” then I may have just arrived at the half-way mark on the journey to not hurting my son.  I am not advocating for editing every criticism, nor am I saying that criticisms themselves are to be all together banned from our communications.  But a regular practice of pausing to check on the intention behind one’s reactions (verbal and other wise) might be invaluable to becoming a genuinely loving parent and a genuinely loving human being.

Related Posts

• Modeling
• In defense of youth...

…

What does it mean to be a good parent?

A good parent is someone who is of course there for his or her children… which means authentically listening while being curious about who they truly are and being available for them when they need us to be.  To be able to fully do those things a parent must be at their best/happiest because, it is very difficult to be there for anyone while at an emotional state lower than that.

If that is the case, what does one do when one is at his or her weakest/unhappiest?  How does one continue to be a good parent if they are not at their best?  It seems to be true that when feeling happy seems out of reach and one’s self esteem is at its lowest, it is not easy being there for another person.  A parent in this situation might neglect their child’s needs and thus be less than a good parent.

Every parent wants to be the best parent they can.  But even the most knowledgable and informed parent can, from time to time, falter in his or her parenthood.

So how do we do it?  How do we get ourselves out of funks and states of low self esteem to get to our happiest so that we can be good parents even during emotionally tough times?

I am proposing that this time is both an opportunity and a gift of being a parent.  In order to be a good parent to our children, we must be at our happiest, to be at our happiest, especially during emotionally challenging periods of our lives, we have to resolve whatever it is that may be causing us that challenge and placing us in an emotional state and making us feel less than our best.  To get out of that state of being unhappy or emotioanlly compromised, we need to take steps to heal the wounds; we must take positive steps to learn how to take quality care of our own selves.

This in turn makes parenting a catalyst that pushes a parent to become one’s best human and to be in a way the happiest one can be because.  It appears that to be the best parent one can be one has to be as happy as one can be.

Related Posts

• Geoffrey Canada's 'Harlem Children's Zone
• Home school, anyone?

I am curious as to why, when there are studies that show the need for a focus on establishment of a strong lexicon base, the educators have not jumped on it.  I would love to know what has been the cause of this disconnect and how we can improve this practice or the lack there of.

I agree with the authors that vocabulary building should not rely solely on impromptu, spontaneous learning opportunities.  I also agree that structured planning must go into providing a quality English learning experience.  I have personally found, both as a teacher and as a student in a learning mode, that a guided learning of new vocabulary words is immensely helpful and an enjoyable way to learn new words.

The more in depth the learning is for the learner and the more layered the experiences are that take place, the better the overall retention of the information would take place.  It makes logical sense to me that wide reading of various genres and becoming self-aware of one’s own learning methods can be a powerful asset to the learner.

The point is to equip our children so that they will be ready to succeed in the higher learning environments.  Doing this will help them succeed in school and offer them a leg up, or at the least allow them an even playing field with others as they move ahead in higher learning environments and afterwards, in the career fields of their choice.

Here is one of the many great talks by Kate Kinsella :

Click here to view the embedded video.

Related Posts

• Geoffrey Canada's 'Harlem Children's Zone
• Amazing, hopeful and inspiring talk by Patrick Awuah on TED.com
• A Vindication Of The Rights Of Female Identity
• No child left behind, and other assessment tools…
• In defense of youth...

It seems apparent to me that children, our offspring, learn too well the negative habits that are ours… what is more interesting to me is that they learn behaviors that they sometimes hate from us.  I know this because not only has my son picked up and continued to practice my ex-husband’s destructive and less-than-profitable behaviors that he himself  hates, but also many of my own.

My mantra has been this: “do my best to behave in ways that I want my son to behave.” Of course I have by my own blind vision, or simple neglect and laziness, allowed my weaknesses to continue… I now see this in him.

As much as I regret and do not like seeing my own misbehaviors in him, but that makes sense to many degrees, since he likes me and feels connected to me.  There are behaviors of my ex-husband’s that he has hated all of his life, and now he is expressing them, whether he is aware or not…

One might assume that children would not copy behaviors that they abhor… but I am concluding that perhaps we human beings cannot help but learn behaviors if we are around them, even if we hate them…

I don’t really have a complete answer to this issue, except to suggest that we as parents do the best we can to nurture our own self growth and genuinely work on being our best human beings… and if we do that, our children might learn just that in itself, the self-growth, and be equipped with tools to work on their own human selves and be the best that they can be just as they have seen us, their parents, be the best of ourselves.

Related Posts

• The Importance of the word “NO.”
• Sometimes we hurt the ones we love the most.
• In defense of teaching good writing
• Barbie's plastic surgery
• In defense of youth...

Habits, paradigms, and a sense of self-validation are so important for each of us.  Those things are established most strongly into our own personal foundations as children.

If a child is brought up to value himself, or herself, to value his or her thoughts and senses and to learn solid self-preservation and have clear boundries for their bodies and spirit, that child as an adult would be less likely to put up with someone doing something wrong to them, at least for any length of time.

Children must learn to say no when things are not right for them.  They must learn that when someone touches them inappropriately, when their stomach goes into a knot, no matter how the person who is doing it explains it away or who that person is, that they must trust their own feelings, never go near that person, and to let those who care about them know.

I say all this because as a knowing adult I allowed someone to sexually harrass me for a some months until it became too obvious for me to ignore.  I am not dumb … but I had such a misplaced need not to hurt feelings, that when he began to act hurt at my keeping away, I ended up feeling guilty for hurting his feelings.  It took this weekend, talking with a few women friends, and remembering everying, to make me realize how things really were, and I felt an incredible anger.

I was not taught to say no as a child.  I was strongly coded to be polite, smile, and not cause trouble.

I say there is time to be rude, to yell NO, to cause trouble if one has to.  There is a time to stop the violation of your right to safety, to staying whole, to not allowing anyone to touch you in ways that you do not want to be touched!

Related Posts

• Modeling
• Barbie's plastic surgery
• In defense of teaching good writing

Click here to view the embedded video.

Random Posts

• Welcome!
• In defense of youth...
• The good, the bad and the perplexed.
• The Importance of the word “NO.”
• Anthony Robbins talks about Tiny Changes Making Big Differences

Click here to view the embedded video.

Random Posts

• Welcome!
• Michael Merzenich on re-wiring the brain
• A good beating anyone?
• No child left behind, and other assessment tools…
• One way to bring up responsible kids...

The content of that first part of his comedy did not find me laughing.  I know I can lack a sense of humor surrounding the topic of hitting children since I am adamantly against it, but the next part of what this comedian said did get me laughing, and whether I was laughing at him for his exact intended meaning, I am uncertain, but I was laughing nevertheless.

After many iterations of “children need a good beating,” he then paused for a second and said, “some parents need a good beating sometimes too”   I thought this morning about why I laughed at that when I am not an advocate of violence.  Here are my thoughts on it.

I don’t understand why adults cannot honestly think through an issue so simple as this one.  It is as if they want to believe in something solely because it justifies their current behavior.  Let’s face it, and look at what spanking really comes down to if you really and honestly look at it.  It is a big person getting angry or frustrated at not knowing how to control a little tiny person with their intellect, and thus resorting to a physical act.  It is really just that!  If you disagree, it is because you don’t want to face the truth!

I’ll return to why I laughed so hard when the comic mentioned that some parents need good-beatings.

There is something so deeply immoral and uncivilized about adults who beat or even just spank and use physical force to teach a lesson.   I am entertained by the notion of physical force being used against those who would use physical force on children.

What if those parents who choose to use physical punishments to answer the misdeeds that their own children commit got the same response to their misbehaviors.  If we can be honest about it, we should clearly realize that we adults make mistakes and do things wrong every day.  What if we got physically punished for every one of our own mistakes… what would that feel like?  Don’t we want to be corrected kindly, with intelligent and thought through guidance?  And we’re adults!  Why can’t we return the same favor to our own children?  Why can’t we treat their mistakes the way we would want to be treated.

I am not trying to claim that this is an easy thing of which to be mindful.  We don’t give this kind of grace to other adults all the time; it’s a challenge for me to do it.

The ability to stop think and reflect should be of the utmost importance to us in dealing with our own children.

The reason for my laughter when the comic said that some parents need good beatings was that I was picturing the parents who beat their children getting their good beatings from someone proportionately larger by the same ratio as they are to their own children.

Using verbal communication to guide our children has many wonderful effects on our children’s lives and the lives of us as parents.  The positive side effects of the act of talking and connecting is that you grow even closer with your children, and instead of fostering fear, you foster trust.  The children who grow up this way have very little need to lie to their parents, which then provides for them a secure and safe place to be themselves and feel comfortable.  A comfortable child has less chances of taking dangerous actions that place them at risk… Those children have more self-confidence to jump into life and realize their dreams with more ease.  And we all want that for our children, don’t we?

Random Posts

• Welcome!
• The Importance of the word “NO.”
• Home school, anyone?
• Barbie's plastic surgery
• Good parenting

Click here to view the embedded video.

Random Posts

• The value of hard work
• Patricia Ryan: Don't insist on English!
• Slow down
• I used to love Leo Buscaglia as a teen... I am finding that I still love him just as much!
• The good, the bad and the perplexed.

Schools appear to have been forced into a position of becoming less focused on authentically educating their students and become focused on, instead, getting them ready for the standardized exams. Schools do this by creating cramming sessions, taking time away from the students’ real education so that they can score better, so that the schools do not lose funding, which would cause them to cut classes, lay off teachers, etc. NCLB was supposed to cause the schools to become better educational institutions that could offer a better quality education to the young, instead, it placed the focus of the educational institutions on the wrong goal.

We’ve had enough time to see that NCLB not only does not work, but is also making our education worse, we really ought to try our effort at something else, better yet, this time we should really think through in a more organic and intelligent manner and do something that really will work. The answers are not that hard to figure out!

A smarter program might be one that provides coaching and more intuitive/better quality teaching methods for the teachers to become better educators by working with them on class interactions; teachers can be taught constructive ways to help difficult students and healthy ways to encourage a love for learning.

Another intelligent thing to do would be to find a way to pay our teachers wages that they deserve. Teachers are some of the most important people since they help to grow and nurture the minds and hearts of our future generation, our future world. As we treat our teachers as if they are less important, their work can flounder, which in turn causes all of the students under them to flounder in school, and usually in life. Those are just a few ideas that could be powerfully helpful and should produce real positive results!

Instead of punishing schools for not producing students who can pass standardized tests by taking away funding from schools, which causes those schools to become worse educational institutions, why not copy programs that are working, programs such as Jeffery Canada’s and others throughout the country?

Related Posts

• Amazing, hopeful and inspiring talk by Patrick Awuah on TED.com
• Geoffrey Canada's 'Harlem Children's Zone
• Home school, anyone?
• Barbie's plastic surgery
• The importance of education