Building bonds through rituals

Our third son has been complaining about mosquito bites. "Why do they always bite me and never my brothers?" he asked. We told him that mosquitos choose the sweetest kids. He gave us a look of skepticism, exclaimed, "I don't believe you!" and left. A few minutes later he returned and asked, "Really?". Something well ingrained in his head reminded him that mom and dad are meant to be trusted.

My wife has been reading The Little Prince to the boys as a bed-time story. For me it has been an interesting journey. We've always read to the boys, but this has been a new experience for me. I've had to hear The Little Prince told with a voice that is not my own internal voice. I'm listening to this particular reading of The Little Prince through my wife's vision. We both read it as children and when we were older. Now I've been allowed to interpret the text from the perspective of parenthood. I had always contemplated it in relation to building bonds of friendship.

Building bonds with our kids is an interesting byproduct of creating a relationship with trust at its core. I say it's a byproduct, because I don't see my role as a parent as primarily having to build a bond with my children, but mostly as having to provide a safe environment for them to grow in so they can find their own internal voice. By creating a relationship with trust at its center two things happen; the child feels acknowledged as an individual and he feels respected as a person. This I learned only recently as part of my job as an educator.

To create a bond, The Little Prince's fox offers a simple yet daunting solution: "One must observe the proper rites . . ." Rites and rituals give parents and children alike the opportunity to bond and create memories together. The phrase "Remember when...", needs content, and the rituals we create for our families are exactly that, the content for memories. The summertime, vacations, going downtown with mom or dad, going for a walk, watering the garden, setting the table and then dining together, or reading together can all be opportunities to create memories that children will cherish and be grateful for. These rites are the substance that will make up the experiences of our children, as opposed to living vicariously through a television program. Rites have every possibility of being the essential ingredient to raising children. Children learn through experience and it's our job to provide, if not the experiences themselves, at least the backdrop for them.

The logic behind this reasoning is centered around contol and safety. If we don't control what shapes the child, we can't provide safety. If we can't provide safety, then we've done little as parents, no matter what endevours we've undertaken. Choose a ritual, give it a name, a shape and a time. As a result you will have bonded with you child and, best of all, you will have added yet another strand to your child's safety net.

Añoranzas

Mientras conducíamos a una exposición de ciencia ficción (con entrenamiento Jedi incluido) mis hijos sostuvieron una conversación que tanto a mi como a mí esposa nos parece haber escuchado antes. La habíamos escuchado porque ambos habíamos participado de la misma conversación cuando teníamos la edad de nuestros hijos. Los cuatro niños debatían acerca de cuál es la sección más tenebrosa de la casa del terror de un cierto parque de diversiones. Cada uno postulaba que un muñeco u otro era el más tenebroso y ofrecían argumentos y, a veces, coincidían y alababan la elección que había hecho uno de sus hermanos. Discutían acerca de cuán realista era un muñeco o cuán falso se veía. Más de uno de los niños no había ingresado nunca a la casa del terror, pero ofrecía igualmente su opinión, asentía con la cabeza y se reía, viviendo vicariamente la experiencia de su hermano.

Mientras el auto avanzaba hacia la exposición que visitamos, moviéndose con el vaivén propio de un auto cargado de niños que agitadamente conversan acerca de algo tan verdaderamente cardinal como las características de un juego de parque de diversión, no pude dejar de añorar el tiempo en el cual las cosas eran así de claras para mí. Ya sea si están conversando acerca de una figura de acción, del capítulo de un programa de televisión o de un juego, estos cuatro niños tienen manifiesta convicción de que las cosas son de una manera y no de otra. No tienen dudas; viven en un mundo de certezas. Quizás ése es uno de los mayores logros de mis propios padres. Durante nuestra infancia, ellos crearon, para mis hermanos y para mí, un mundo en el cual había certezas y seguridad. Sin esconder la realidad, se preocuparon de que tuviésemos niñez. Ya habría tiempo para ser adulto y poner las convicciones a prueba.

Garantizar un ambiente de confianza es posiblemente la tarea más compleja y exigente de todas las proezas parentales. Es así pues, si bien es equiparable a un espacio amurallado, la confianza se puede desmoronar en un santiamén y, a veces, para siempre. Sólo basta bajar la guardia un poco, decir algo equivocado o dejar de cumplir la palabra empeñada. Yo hago todas estas cosas con frecuencia, por lo que se hace necesario equilibrar la balanza.

Ello se puede lograr con cosas tan simples como los ritos. Un rito no requiere ser muy complejo ni pomposo; sólo se necesita que sea constante y que busque fortalecer los vínculos y la confianza (Ver "Dulce sueños"). No sirve ir todos los fines de semana a ver a los abuelos y los tíos. Algunos ejemplos: mi padre nos leía periódicamente todos los cuentos de Asterix, mi madre nos cantaba y tocaba la guitarra para nosotros, mi señora le lee a los niños El Principito (ya hablaba con tanta elocuencia el zorro en El Principito acerca de los ritos y de su relevancia). Los niños crecen felices y con confianza en la medida en que saben que cuentan con una red de seguridad preparada especialmente y en forma única para ellos. Algo de eso se deja entrever en un reciente artículo de The Economist, si uno lee entre líneas.

Hace muy bien añorar los tiempos en los que la vida era simple, si no para volver a sentir esas dulces experiencias, entonces para aprender acerca de cómo replicarlas para los propios hijos. Ir a un parque, salir de paseo por el día, dar una vuelta a la manzana, subir un cerro o arreglar una bicicleta juntos pueden ser las experiencias que nuestros hijos necesitan para sentirse seguros y crear sus propios recuerdos. Ellos luego  agradecerán haberlos vivido y los rememorarán con nostalgia.

Recipe for disaster

Spring has sprung and so has the urge for boys to get in touch with their hormonal urges. Yep, you heard it, this week I've had to deal with boys not being able to control themselves. I won't say a thing about the girls who'll participate in the lack of control of their peers just yet.
The tween years are such a challenge for kids that they seem to be more of a cruel joke that nature thrusts upon them than an attempt at allowing them to grow. Here's a list of challenges off the top of my head, only based on what I've had to work with this week with boys (I'll discuss girls next):
Deciding on loyalty vs doing the 'right' thing.
Deciding if doing the right thing will have any effect.
Deciding to solve problems on their own, to ask a friend for help or to ask an adult.
Am I interested in romance?
We used to be such good friends... What happened? Why can't things be like they used to? What am I going to do about it?
If I think that girl is pretty, does it mean I like her? And if I do, should I try to spend more time with her? What if she doesn't feel the same way? What will my friends think?
If I watch porn does that make abnormal, a pervert or is it ok?
I can't keep my hands to myself.

Boys are so confused at age 10 - 12 that they wish there was a magic wand adults could wave to make everything perfect. By age 13 they come to the painful realization that there's no such thing as a magic wand and that the solution to their problems will only come out of hard work. Also by age 13 they understand that the paranoia they felt about everyone being aware of their problems is silly and that most boys their age are experiencing similar things.
During the tween years one of the most complex problems is adjusting to physical and emotional change. Wet dreams, sudden erections in public, daydreaming about girls, shyness, comparisons and mockery in the lockerroom, among others, are all part of what boys experience. Unfortunatelly, the adaptation to physical change is not accompanied, yet, with tools for hypothesizing about those changes. Until the brain has not really become an adult brain (way into your 20's), the frontal lobes are not connected yet and the advanced functions of the brain are not fully functional. There's less myelin in the tween's and teen's brain, so nerve signals don't flow as freely. By contrast, in the mid-30's people have the highest concentration of myelin, so parents that age end up understanding less about how their kids simply can't control themselves.
The basic premise in the tween years should be this: kids aren't capable of seeing the effects of their actions or the consequences for others. They have a deminished capacity to predict outcomes. So they simply act and end up being seen as self-centered. So, when this week a boy brought his laptop to school (with broadband) and opened some really violent videos and showed them to unsuspecting passers by, he wasn't thinking. Adults might think, "How daft", but really, what did anybody expect? A boy, age 10, with unlimited Internet connection is just simply a ticking time-bomb. If not he, a classmate would have made the same torpid mistake. Another boy this week took a younger boy's keyboard away while at the library and typed a search term that would yield erotic images. He also typed swear words into another boy's word processor. When speaking to these boys, they pretty easily understand the silliness of their actions, but, of course, after the fact. The same thing happened to the boys I had to call in for lifting the skirts of their classmates and of girls in other classes. The boys who started a game that involved bumping into girls also understood how inappropriate the game was once we had a chat.
Parents and educators can help kids a lot by helping them see that they need to be more aware of the consequences. They can do this by pointing out that children need to use their mistakes to shed light on new experiences and by making it clear, in words that kids can understand, that acting on impulse is a problem, but not a moral/ethical problem. Issues related to sexual education should not be shrouded in guilt. That model has been used before with poor results; guilt doesn't work. Children need to understand. "That's bad" only confuses kids more and opens a gateway to two other problems; closing off communication and hiding away to try new things.
Full, unlimited access, at whatever hour, to do anything can be remedied by correcting the disastrous recipe with the following: setting limits and providing an honest indication that lack of control is damaging (examples about driving are useful here), discussing about what we do affects others' feelings and health, talking about how learning about self-control helps us to really be in control when we need it, communicating that sexuality is a good thing and that it needs to be treated with respect and affection for the good of our own self-respect and sense of self-worth and for the good of the ones we love.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, rules are necessary and desirable. Children and teens need to understand the driving force behind rules so as to make sense of them and put them to good use.