January 4, 2011
by Rod Smith
“My wife does our son’s homework. Our son (14) gives her his few ideas and she takes them and puts them into complete answers. Since everything is typed I don’t think the schoolteachers are aware. Our daughters also did this until they themselves saw that it was not helpful and weaned their mother off their homework. Our son is less motivated and is unlikely to follow his older siblings. He chastises his mother if he doesn’t get a perfect score. If I try to intervene I am told I do not understand. She says she is ‘modeling’ something and that he is learning by watching her. I say she is enabling his laziness. Please help.”
They will ultimately untangle
presenting his mother’s work as his own – I must believe that your wife has been suckered into doing more than she perhaps at first anticipated. While I know you have not said as such, I am aware of how these “help” sessions grow and how the pressure from a child to a parent can steadily increase. Your beliefs are well known. Try to stay out of it and your wife and son will ultimately untangle. If you intervene you will be polarized. Let them dance until one of them drops.
Posted in Children, Communication, Difficult Relationships, Education, Family, Triangles |
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January 1, 2011
by Rod Smith
I watch my two-year-old son bending at the hip, one foot raised and turning until he falls gloriously to the floor in convulsive laughter. A momentary pain lights somewhere so deep inside me I can hardly tell in which of my internal galaxies it sits. It is swift and pointed, like the touch of a darting and determined fly set loose in my emotional innards.
Then the pain is forgotten, swamped in the exceeding happiness of watching him attack life’s toddler challenges. He’s hungrily learning a language now, having conquered walking and running, and expressing his brand new heart sweetly in partial, ill-formed words and sentences which tumble, jumbled and joyed up all over the house.
Sometimes he runs, singing at the top of his voice like an emergency vehicle out of control. With siren blaring, he sprawls across the floor and careens into a heap of toddler chaos. Recovering, he mounts the coffee table against my flagging will and “hee haas” astride his horse, a precocious knowing smile flashing from his distant meadow.
In all of this activity and fun he eases his way further into my being, a steel pylon thrust securely into waiting, willing ground.
Rod’s road-post from DROID.
Posted in Boundaries, Children, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Education, Family, Living together, Parenting/Children, Single parenting |
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December 28, 2010
by Rod Smith
Fully live (women, too!)
do not “allow” women to have a voice, make choices, speak up to husbands – having regularly addressed men and women from such cultures for years. I remain convinced that this robs said cultures of half of its creative capital.
Keeping women “down” must be consistently challenged. Thus my suggestion the woman in yesterday’s column (12-28-2010) define herself to her husband. Of course it flies in the face of many cultures – but if she is to give of her best to herself, her husband, to anyone, speaking up to all in her context is the place to start.
What can be so threatening for some men that some are terrified if women (whom they love) makes their full contribution?
Yes. It will more than ruffle the marriage. Rather a ruffled marriage than a life-time of control, submission, manipulation, leading to intimidation, then domination – not that all men in said cultures are this way at all.
If he really “treats her like a queen” he will also grow. If not, he will reject her; even leave her. At least she’d have expressed herself as a woman and be able to achieve, albeit at great cost, her selfhood as a woman and will have discovered she requires permission from no one to BE.
PS: I have delivered lectures in several Asian countries where it seems women are strongly discouraged from expressing their voices. While trying to be as culturally sensitive as possible, I did not water down my message at all and called on all men and all women to encourage all men and all women to find, express, and use their voices. While I have had some strong kick-backs (some rejection and exclusion) I have always been invited back. I’ve even asked leaders and organizers the reasons I am invited back despite my contrary message. I am told, “Yes. Your message is dangerous for us but we still need to hear it.”
Posted in Boundaries, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Domination, Family, Forgiveness, Grace, High maintenance relationships, Leadership, Listening, Love, Manipulation, Meditation, Re-marriage, Responsive people, Schnarch, Space, Spousal abuse, Therapeutic Process, Triangles, Victims, Voice, Womanhood, Young Love |
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December 6, 2010
by Rod Smith
He or she:
1. cleans his or her room
2. voluntarily gets a haircut
3. saves money
4. stops blaming everyone for anything
5. takes full responsibility for his or her decisions
6. greets you with kindness
7. stands up for himself or herself without compromising others
8. demonstrates healthy boundaries by choosing friends who are good for him or her
9. has plans for her life that stretch beyond the next few days
10. reads books and newspapers by choice
11. can engage in a meaningful discussion about world events
12. is assertive without being pushy and demanding
Posted in Boundaries, Children, Communication, Difficult Relationships, Education, Family, Leadership, Listening, Step parenting, Stepfather, Stepmother, Teenagers |
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November 17, 2010
by Rod Smith
It's the journey, remember...
A healthy family – and I will remind you that no person or family is healthy all of the time (that’s unhealthy!) – sets itself on broad and healthy goals that include being:
1. Unpredictable, spontaneous, flexible; allowing each person and each generation, to be different from the former generations.
2. Forgiving (reflective, gracious) – allowing little or no time for the gathering of injustices.
3. Funny – often self-deprecating.
4. Hospitable – welcoming of strangers and guests.
5. Generous – eager to share with persons in need.
6. Open – willing and able to embrace difficult issues.
7. Diverse – welcoming of persons of all shades, creeds, and ages.
8. Free – creative, honest, displaying growing integrity.
Posted in Attraction, Blended families, Boundaries, Children, Differentiation, Education, Family, Forgiveness, Friendship, Grace, Listening, Responsive people, Therapeutic Process, Trust, Young Love |
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November 7, 2010
by Rod Smith
Friends give you room to be right, wrong, late, or to be early. They allow you the “space” to be forgetful, sad, happy, angry, frustrated, when such space is necessary. In return you are careful with the liberty authentic friendships afford you. You don’t presume upon it. You remain respectful and you do not regard your friendships with a sense of entitlement.
Friends listen. They listen not only to the words you say but also for your soul to speak. They wait for your soul to trust, emerge, share, knowing it might take decades for it to say anything at all. They listen in order to love, not in order to advise, modify, or to assess, judge or condemn – but in order to love. They want to understand, hear, see, value and appreciate. In return you have become a skilled listener.
Friends live fully. While being committed to listening to you, while committed to waiting for your soul to speak, while being invested in building community with you and sharing life with you, they are first and foremost committed to finding and developing their own skills, developing their own dreams, and living their own ambitions. Friends know that among the greatest acts of friendship is the act of living one’s own life completely.
Posted in Attraction, Boundaries, Differentiation, Faith, Family, Forgiveness, Friendship, Grace, Leadership |
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October 21, 2010
by Rod Smith
Lake Geneva, Switzerland
“Thank you on behalf all my many single mother friends for the article published yesterday. Thank you for acknowledging our bravery and struggles. Thank you understanding the many roles we play and the many difficulties we overcome because of our love for our children. Thank you for noting it is near impossible to have a romantic social life as solo parents. Thank you for listing and understanding what women do not need in a potential partner or in friendly advice. I am 50 and the mother of two sons whose fathers disappeared when the going got tough.
“I have been a single mom for 32 years, and despite the challenges, long hours, and little thanks associated with the job of single mom, I have been blessed to have my sons and love them dearly. I am also proud of having still managed to forge a career, own my home, a car, and travel the world. I have recently studied to become a Life Coach. I just sit with the thought that my children did not chose to be born and hence, are entitled to the best Mom and woman I can be. One thing I know is that my son’s will make wonderful Fathers.”
Posted in Blended families, Boundaries, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Divorce, Faith, Family, Leadership, Listening, Love, Marriage, Parenting/Children, Past relationships, Schnarch, Single parenting, Step parenting, Teenagers, Trust, Victims, Voice, Womanhood |
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October 18, 2010
by Rod Smith
Honor courage when you meet it
the bravest people I have ever met. Not only are many fighting financial battles with a former spouse, they are at the same time negotiating with schools, coordinating visits to doctors, ferrying children to and from sports events, strategizing visits for the children with the other parent, and trying to placate a boss and colleagues at work. Simultaneously, many are trying to maintain some form of sanity though attempting to develop the semblance of a social life while having to face a stigma (thankfully it is diminishing in some cultures) about being divorced at all.
What divorced mothers do not need is:
1. Romantic involvement with a needy man – especially one who is in search of a mother but doesn’t know it.
2. Judgment about her parenting, her discipline, or her children’s behavior.
3. Questions about what went wrong in her marriage, or the suggestion (overt or covert) that had she “given” her marriage to God, or been more obedient or submissive, or prayed more, fasted more, tithed more faithfully, her marriage would have survived.
4. To be thought of as an easy target for sex as if it is the one thing she must surely be missing now that her marriage is over.
Posted in Attraction, Betrayal, Blended families, Boundaries, Children, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Divorce, Domination, Family |
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September 1, 2010
by Rod Smith
1. Refusing to lie for you.
2. Allowing the consequences of your actions to hold you accountable.
3. Allowing you to fail.
4. Getting out of your way when you are angry so you may deal with whatever is upsetting you.
5. Refusing to rescue you from your moodiness.
6. Telling you the truth as I see it.
7. Resisting the urge to let your self-made issues pull me down.
8. Keeping my phone, Email, messages private, unless I choose to share.
9. Allowing myself to be happy and fulfilled even if you are not.
10. Supporting, loving you, while allowing my uniqueness (and your uniqueness) to blossom.
Posted in Attraction, Boundaries, Communication, Differentiation, Education, Faith, Family, Friendship, Grace, Leadership, Listening, Love, Marriage, Meditation, Responsive people, Sexual compatibility, Therapeutic Process, Triangles, Trust, Womanhood |
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August 24, 2010
by Rod Smith
Open yourself to growth
about the degree of conflict experienced with their children, who then, during the conversation, will openly confess they have no time for a mother or father-in-law, their own parent, or are out of sorts with an adult sibling. When I gently point out that these conflicts are possibly connected, fueling each other, I am met with disbelief.
“You’re saying that my fights with my son over his homework (or irresponsibility, or drinking) are connected to the fact that my father-in-law is an impossible man to whom I have refused to talk for the past five years?”
Indeed.
“You’re saying that my ridiculously controlling mother who walks in here like a movie director telling us all where to stand and what to say is connected to my 12-year-old daughter mouthing off to me however she likes.”
Indeed.
When the adult takes the challenge of embracing the “impossible” father-in-law, or standing up to the “controlling” mother, the adult is taking personal responsibility for his or her pivotal relationships.
A parent who takes full responsibility for himself or herself when it comes to relating to members of their preceding generation, will see less anxious, less reactive, less rebellious behavior in the generation that follows.
Yes. It is all indeed connected.
Posted in Communication, Differentiation, Education, Family, In-laws, Leadership |
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