Good ol' fashioned fun

At home there are two scooters; not enough to go around. So the kids came up with the idea of taking turns at being the traffic light. One of the boys decides who and when must stop and/or go. Nothing beats good ol' fashioned fun!

If a child lives in tolerance, he learns to be patient.

A dear friend recently asked me how to deal with the difference in demands that one child has in relation to the other and how to promote well spirited positive attitudes. Here is what I answered :

Since there's no recipe, I'll simply pass on my experience. I must say that I'll be speaking as a parent and teacher, though I'm not sure there's a difference.

A recent story:

Early this week  I pulled a student into my to my office. I had told him that what he was wearing wasn't part of our school uniform. He answered something back in a very aggressive, confrontational tone.  So, I let him have an earful about respect and bla, bla, bla. Half way through my speech he began to cry. He told me his parents are never around and that his teachers always nag him because he doesn't bring this and that to school (the latest item was a mouth guard for rugby, which his parents, who were on a cruise, had failed to buy for him, just like the school sweater he wasn't wearing). So I listened and let him open up. He wasn't really being disrespectful, he was behaving the way he had been allowed to behave whenever or if ever his parents were around. We agreed to always respect each other and I gave him a school sweater from the lost and found and offered to have a brand new mouth guard for him the following day. Boy how he smiled! We shook on it and he now smiles and waves at me whenever he sees me.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that behind each behaviour there is a reason. Our job is to find out what that is and take necessary action. That boy needed an authority to talk to him about respect and also feel respected. He also needed a dad to talk to. He also needed help to solve a problem. He had learned that one solution was to be aggressive and perhaps he'd be left alone.

If your kid is demanding a lot from you, find the source. It's probably something simple, like sleep habits, and isn't some syndrome with a fancy name. (I say this because today a doctor told my nanny that her daughter had acute diarrheic syndrome.  She got scared, of course. It's just diarrhoea. My nanny was relieved when the prescription said the same thing my wife had told her  before going the the paediatrician). I've written a few things about sleep before, hope it helps.

In relation to being well spirited and positive, one thing I'll say is this;

Kindness begets kindness, so fight anxiety and noise with tenderness and soft, quiet, loving care. I didn't get that till later as a teacher. So I used to raise my voice. Now I lower my voice and kids react.

Alejandro Jodorowsky is a Chilean-French filmmaker who (roughly translated) says this:

If a child lives in criticism, he learns to condemn.

If a child lives in hostility, he learns to fight.

If a child lives in ridicule, he learns to be ashamed.

If a child lives in suspicion, he learns to feel guilty.

If a child lives in tolerance, he learns to be patient.

If a child lives in recognition, he learns to value.

If a child lives in loyalty, he learns about justice.

If a child lives in approval, he learns to love himself.

If a child lives in friendship, he learns to see love in the world

If your kids drive you up the wall, they most probably perceive that. I went through years of sending the wrong message and hurt my eldest a lot. I had to go through a rough/tough process to reprogram myself. It was hard work. It was painful. I had to learn to forgive myself and recognise my faults (but also my strengths). Today my eldest is a healthy, caring 12-year-old. He and I have a stretch of road to go still, but the light at the end of the tunnel is not only visible, it's blinding.

If you have doubts, keep asking, maybe write and keep a journal. Thinking and reflecting is a good tool ( I used to think it was for touchy-feely people only). In the process you might hear yourself or others or read something that might make sense.

My wife says divide and conquer is also necessary.  Each child deserves to be an individual with each parent. You can switch regularly between kids amongst yourselves and get to know them as individuals. The one who cries less and is more mellow also has needs and wants.

The quiet child, in my experience, may live a life of quiet desperation and end up resenting the attention that siblings receive.

Lessons in serenity

Yesterday I went to the supermarket with two of the boys; number two and number four. Strangely enough this particular combination of boys ended up being perfect for a trip to the supermarket. They were helpful; hardly any whining! When we were in the detergent isle suddenly, out of nowhere, a small boy of no more than two years old, leaped on top of my five-year-old and began to try to bite him. In what seemed like tenth's of a second, he managed to bring my son to the ground and started knawing at him like mad. The child's mom grabbed him and I pulled my boy behind me in one Jacky Chan movement. What happened next was what really got to me. Of course, the mom apologised. She was visibly quite embarrassed and upset. While I was checking my son for any marks, he went up to the mom and tried to calm her down. He said he was ok, that he wasn't hurt and that she shouldn't worry. After the mom told us that she's had a lot of trouble with her son, my son explained to her that he understood and that it was all in the past. So proud of my little guy!

Muestras de serenidad

Cada vez que voy al supermercado con más de uno de mis hijos temo y tiemblo por el nivel de estrés que ello implica. No es que mis hijos tengan un comportamiento particularmente malo. Es simplemente que ellos son niños y su tarea no es verdaderamente la de ayudarme. No me malinterpreten, sí creo que me deben ayudar, y de hecho lo hacen. Es sólo que lo hacen a su modo, a su ritmo y no el mío. Eso me logra poner tenso.
Pero ayer mis hijos me dieron una lección en paciencia y serenidad. Fui con dos de ellos al supermercado; con el segundo, de nueve años, y el menor, de cinco años de edad. De alguna manera resultó que esa combinación de niños fue muy provechosa para los efectos de salir a realizar compras. Ellos fueron de gran ayuda, casi no pidieron que les comprase algo y reclamaron muy poco.
Cuando ya terminabamos nuestro recorrido por el supermercado, llegamos a la fila de los detergentes. De pronto, como sacado de una escena de una película de zombies, un niño pequeño (no pudo haber tenido más de dos años) se abalanzó sobre mi hijo menor, lo tumbó y comenzó a intentar morderle repetidas veces. La madre del niño y yo reaccionamos inmediatamente. La madre agarró a su hijo y yo puse al mío a salvo con un movimiento digno de Jacky Chan.
Me extrañó no escuchar llanto alguno por parte de mi hijo. En vez de llorar, mientras la madre del otro niño pedía disculpas y daba explicaciones acerca de la conducta de su hijo y yo revisaba al mío para ver si tenía alguna herida, mi hijo se aseguró de calmar a la señora. Él le decía que él estaba bien. Que no estaba herido y que no le dolía. Luego la señora nos contó que ha tenido muchos problemas con su niño. Mi hijo le mencionó que él entendía y que ella no debía preocuparse.
Al concluir el incidente mis hijos comenzaron a conversar acerca de otras cosas; lo importante de realizar una un otra maniobra en un juego de la consola de videojuegos que ellos tienen, la temperatura que ellos creen que va a tener la piscina el día siguiente y el recuerdo de como las hormigas se llevaban un grillo por partes a su nido.
Creo que yo todavía no me repongo de la escena en que mi hijo era atacado por otro. Ellos en cambio, ya dieron vuelta la página.

A handbrake is no substitute for an exhaust

Teaching teens about how to curb their inherent impetuousness is perhaps the most complex task a teacher can face inside the classroom. When my eldest was younger, counting to three used to do the trick. Once they hit their tweens and teens, boys and girls need dialogue and reasons. Their exacerbated sense of justice and heightened ability to see the speck in some else's eye rather than the log in theirs, impairs teens from reflecting upon their actions and the necessary consequences. So, teens will sneak out, drink, smoke, have sex, shoplift and do anything that implies running risks.
I've often given parents the advice to make sure the rules of the road are clear. There is a tendency for teens to adhere to norms that are clearly set, based on the notion that when expectations are high, there's an also high probability of those standards being met. When expectations are low or very few standards are set, the tendency of teens is to believe that the sky's the limit and that there are no holds bared.
Now that it's my turn to be parent to a teen, I simply have to admit that all my advice is easier said than done. Keeping my cool, making sure I'm available for a discussion rather than a lecture, honestly expecting the best when I'm really dreading the worst, are all painstaking tasks. I have to constantly remind myself that it doesn't really matter how I was at that age, this is a different human being.
My eldest son is trying to find his place in the universe. One way he's found to try himself on for size is through music. At school he was given the chance to try out playing bass. He stuck with the bass for longer than we expected, so we bought him his own bass. He's been fiddling with it all vacation long and has shown amazing determination. Of course, his impulsivity gets the best of him after a while, but it has become a great outlet.
Teens need the space to be alone or with peers, away from the scrutiny of adults and younger siblings. The bass seems to be that space for our eldest son. It's his own world and nobody else's. Yesterday he and I had a major disagreement. He immediately resorted to trying to be alone, but also to playing his bass. Much better than storming out of the house to god knows where and to do god knows what! That basic need to find a vehicle to channel our frustrations that we adults value so much is no less important to a teen. It's perhaps even more important for a teen. It's the difference between being lost or attempting to achieve a valuable goal. It's the difference between taking any risk or taking a calculated one.
When talking to audiences in his series for university students, "Sessions", Billy Joel often refers to his high school classmates who "peaked too early" in life. Comparing them to caved in ashtrays, he makes the comment about the effects of looking for and finding notoriety and not knowing what to do with it or not knowing how to move on within that notoriety. At times, for teens and pre-teens the spotlight is too difficult a place to move away from and they will sometimes neglect their values in order to step into it. When self-control is not available, parents need to be their children's handbrake. Nevertheless, sometimes teens will surprise us by undertaking a task as a means for self-control and maybe, just maybe they'll achieve something great as a result.