March 27, 2018
by Rod Smith
Prayers and desires for our children, young and older….
- That they may find useful, positive passions, and spend their energies on things they really love.
- That they may make their livings from using their talents.
- That they may find and enjoy deep and lasting reciprocal friendships.
- That they may have mutual and equal and respectful relationships with everyone they love and know.
- That they may neither be intimidated nor intimidate others no matter who they are.
- That they may know they are deeply loved and respected by their immediate and extended families to whom they owe nothing but the return of healthy love and respect.
- That they may be enduring students despite their academic achievements and patient teachers when others are trying to learn from them.
- That they may love powerfully and be loved powerfully in relationships that are free and open and devoid of jealously and pettiness.
- That they may grow into generous and kind people who are trusted for their integrity and goodness.
- That they may have each other’s backs while risking the natural urge to rescue each other from self-made difficulties.
- That they may develop goals and ambitions that far surpass making a good living but that include serving others and enhancing the lives of people whom they don’t know and may never meet.
Posted in Blended families, Boundaries, Children, Communication, Differentiation, Education, Faith, Family, Forgiveness, Friendship, Leadership, Listening |
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February 21, 2018
by Rod Smith
It’s easy to knock so-called helicopter parents – the ever-present, ever-serving, ever advocating parents who are perpetually running interference with schools and coaches, often in ways that can be stifling, even damaging the very children around whom they hover.
All behavior has meaning. Parents “helicopter” their children (I’m amused that I used “helicopter” as a verb) for deep, powerful and hidden reasons, reasons often vastly beyond simple formulae or fixes.
What I do know is that it has nothing to do with the child. I’d motivate for understanding, empathy, awareness, and acceptance for the helicopter parent. Perhaps it is fear driven. Perhaps there’s a lack of trust with that lack originating long before the child was born. Perhaps the child is regarded as a lifeline to something saner, something more tolerable than the parent has ever known. Perhaps the parent has been used and discarded in the past and is dead set on safeguarding the child so history will not be repeated. Perhaps the marriage is perched precariously on hopes of the child’s success.
There are reasons to fear, lack trust, to want a life more powerful and meaningful than the parent may have known.
Empathy, awareness, acceptance, and understanding may go a long way to secure the helicopter’s safe landing rather than the humor or rejection used to shoot it down.
Posted in Adolescence, Anxiety, Blended families, Boundaries, Children, Parenting/Children, Responsive people, Step parenting, Stepfather, Stepmother, Teenagers, Therapeutic Process |
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February 15, 2018
by Rod Smith
Each of us brings to every relationships a backdrop of how we view the world, understand commitment, view, and value people, join groups, terminate friendships, love, and leave home, nurture babies, pack the dishwasher, engage in or avoid conflict, and many things too numerous to mention.
Everything about our relationships is influenced by who, where, and how we were reared – among countless other variables, including natural endowment, and deeply held dreams and desires.
From these countless sources, experiences, and codes, both known and unknown, each of us was handed a Tribal Code or our truth about how life ought to work. How life was done, how relationships were conducted, talked or not talked about, became the folklore, the “correct” or the “right” way to live.
Your formative years did what they were supposed to do: they formed (and informed) you.
They taught you what, and how, to see, think and feel. They showed you what “normal” is to your family, and your experience became your measure of how life is supposed to work.
Then, when entering relationships, be it in marriage or if you are talking with your child’s teacher – the person opposite you has his/her own, and different, tribal code. He/she has his/her own lenses through which to see the world.
No wonder we can have a tough time getting along!
Posted in Blended families, Boundaries, Children, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Education, Faith, Family, Family Systems Theory, Friendship, High maintenance relationships, Leadership, Listening, Living together, Love, Parenting/Children, Sex education, Sexual compatibility, Single parenting, Step parenting, Teenagers, Therapeutic Process, Triangles, Trust |
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January 18, 2018
by Rod Smith
Teaching children “yes” and “no” is, in my mind, as important as teaching a child how to read, write, and to count.
I want my sons, according to their respective ages, to…
- Say YES to opportunities even if they involve risk or if they involve venturing into the unknown, learning new things, and breaking unhelpful habits.
- I want them to say YES especially if the opportunities involve meeting new people and people other than those with whom they’d usually mix.
- Say YES to opportunities to travel, to serve, and to build and to assist in mending broken places.
- Say YES to reading new ideas and to writing responses to them.
- Say YES when they encounter opportunities to offer hospitality.
- Say NO to toxic secrets, to behavior that judges or excludes others.
- Say NO to religious teachings that limit their capacities for generosity and for freedom.
- Say NO to anything that will potentially delay their formal education no matter how appealing or adventurous the idea may be.
- Say NO to those who disrespect them or encourage them to treat the adults around them with anything less than utmost respect and close-to-perfectly good manners.
- Say NO to those who dismiss their ideas and who treat them as a means toward their disclosed or undisclosed ends.
Posted in Blended families, Boundaries, Children, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Education, Faith, Family Systems Theory, Friendship, Grace |
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January 10, 2018
by Rod Smith
- You may not be able to think about anything because such news can be like a powerful anesthetic. Do not be surprised if you feel dizzy and your thoughts and feelings jump around inside you. This may last for a while. You will settle into the new truth about your life and new routines.
- Your parents will probably tell you they still love you and each other. Try to believe it. This can be very confusing. Parents can often forget they are finishing something they started as adults. They’ve had lives without each other before you came along. It can feel like you are losing everything because you’ve never known life to be any other way. For you love, security, and feeling safe are all wrapped in one package. The package always included both parents. Their change shifts everything about your life.
- Now that you’ve been told, don’t be surprised if you think you are the only one who did not know it was coming. Your world is the only one you know. This was how you thought life was supposed to be.
- Many young people create successful lives even though their parents divorced. Decide to do the same.
*Written to 13 and 14 year old
Posted in Betrayal, Blended families, Boundaries, Children, Communication, Difficult Relationships, Divorce |
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December 26, 2017
by Rod Smith
I call these few days between Christmas and New Year the doldrums. They’re a breather: a time to drift between calendar high points. I get nostalgic. I experience strong elements of necessary regret as I wait for the promise of the new calendar year to kick in.
I am always reminded:
- Integrity, honesty, kindness, forgiveness, and reconciliation – all captured by the word holiness, is local. By “local” I mean immediate and with the people with whom I share every day life.
- If it (idea, principle, program) doesn’t work right here, now and with this family member, neighbor, colleague, it’s worthless.
- All worthwhile positive change is first internal – the outward follows the inward. It may be convenient to switch this – thinking the inward follows the outward – but doing so is a waste of time.
- It is possible for people to regard each other with deep, authentic respect but it is impossible without commitment to profound listening. All love begins and is demonstrated with listening and listening takes commitment and time.
- Things are not fair or reasonable or kind while one party is gaining or advancing at the expense of another.
Please, let me know the things you think about as you prepare for your year ahead. I know we can learn from each other – it just takes a commitment to listening.
Posted in Blended families, Boundaries, Children, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Education, Faith, Family, Family Systems Theory, Forgiveness, Friendship, Grace, Leadership, Listening, Love, Meditation, Recovery, Responsive people, Therapeutic Process, Triangles, Trust, Victims, Womanhood |
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December 13, 2017
by Rod Smith
When my first born was a few days old a woman whom I had known for a few years, and was really well-meaning, arrived at my house and suggested I give the baby to a real family.
Her understanding of the context and reason my son’s birth mother choose me to be his (solo) parent was very limited. While the immediate (minimal) shock and pain of that encounter has long worn off (and healed), the exchange – which happened to be the first of many strange or unexpected encounters – did give me what I believe to be a greater acuteness or awareness of what it is that makes a group of people family.
I’d really like to hear your views. Here are a few of mine. A family:
- Is a place where people are most often related by marriage or blood but often they are not.
- Is a place where people, who usually share space (but not always), are enduringly committed to each others highest good even if and when the highest good is painful and costly.
- Is a platform where people can express their differences without being alienated or made to feel bad or wrong for expressing or embodying differences.
- Is a place where members feel safe (mostly) and when they don’t (feel safe) they can say so and someone in the family will listen and hear and try to understand.
- It’s a place where, if someone doesn’t feel safe and says so, the person who listens and hears will be able to help discern if feeling unsafe or unsure is appropriate. The process of growing and learning can be very unsettling and feeling unsettled can lead to increasing feelings of vulnerability.
Posted in Blended families, Boundaries, Children, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Faith, Family, Forgiveness, Friendship, Grace |
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December 3, 2017
by Rod Smith
You’ve heard about an adrenalin rush. I’ve seen ego rush. I see it in in groups, teams, and in classrooms. I detect it rumbling in me. Perhaps it’s natural and part of survival.
Symptoms of an ego rush occurring:
- Authentic conversation – the give and take and the sharing and building on ideas of others – seems impossible. It’s verbal arm-wrestling or nothing.
- Perceived insults, rebuffs, refusals, or dismissals are stored. They lurk in awareness, crouched for attack when the timing is right.
- What a person knows must be known and he or she will nudge and provoke until you share his or her belief in his or her superiority.
- The ego will win by winning or it will win by losing but humility and backing down are not options.
- Actual loss, perceived as humiliation, is temporary – a matter of perception. The “loser” will circle around and get even.
- Everything spins around hierarchy and real engagement, the wrangling, is delayed until the hierarchy is figured out.
- Conversations are calculated and are a means to advance an undisclosed agenda.
- The presence of authentic humility escapes or confuses those caught up in the ego rush as much as witnessing or trying to engage in a conversation using a totally foreign language.
Posted in Anxiety, Blended families, Boundaries, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Divorce, Domination, Family, Family Systems Theory, Forgiveness, High maintenance relationships, Leadership, Long distance relationships, Manipulation, Reactivity, Recovery, Responsive people, Shame, Therapeutic Process, Triangles, Victims, Violence, Voice |
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November 30, 2017
by Rod Smith
When referring to my brother’s generosity I wrote that I believe generosity is among several of the most powerful human abilities. I’ve seen it time and again do its fabulous work.
Here are more of what I believe to be innate human capacities.
Exercised, they make us “more human.” Neglected or ignored, I believe they render us rather cold, even inhuman:
- The capacity to forgive even the most grievous offenses – yes, of course it’s hard, but NOT doing so may be even harder.
- The capacity for empathy – to see and understand, but of course, not necessarily agree with, the perspective of another, even that of an enemy.
- The capacity to influence for good (and, to influence for ill is bundled within the same set of human strengths). We have the power to influence – let’s hope it is used for good.
- The capacity to learn from mistakes and errors, and to learn that it is possible to not repeat them.
- The capacity to move up the brain and therefore allow ones self to think more objectively, engage in better long-term planning, and form the habit of responding rather than reacting.
- The capacity to listen more than to speak. If we listen we may actually learn something – when we speak we are usually repeating what we think we already know.
- The capacity to calm the ego rush – or the ability to see and understand that being right or recognized or winning doesn’t come close to the joy of learning to be loving.
Posted in Addictions, Anger, Blended families, Boundaries, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Family Systems Theory, Forgiveness, Friendship, Grace, Grief |
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November 16, 2017
by Rod Smith
What is the year teaching you? Please, reflect and let me know. Here are a few things I am learning afresh and re-learning:
- Trust broken is hard to restore. My experience is that forgiveness can restore broken trust but the ability to trust again can take a long time to restore. This is especially so with close friendships and infidelity in marriage.
- No one is more important than anyone else. To be intimidated by another is a waste of opportunity and energy. Yes, we all have different roles. We are afforded a variety of degrees of power and responsibility that come with our varying roles, but using that power to lord it over another is the surest indication that the power is in the wrong hands.
- Some individuals are so significantly hurt that the real person has disappeared behind shame, regret, and pretense. The defense has become the identity. The vulnerable person inside died a very long time ago and, sadly, will probably never be known.
- Ignored conflicts and family issues that are unaddressed will remain and usually grow. The issues may change shape, may go into hiding, may remain latent for decades – but they will surface and get necessary attention.
Posted in Anxiety, Attraction, Blended families, Boundaries, Children, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Education, Leadership, Love, Manipulation, Parenting/Children, Past relationships, Therapeutic Process, Triangles, Triggers, Trust, Womanhood |
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