Today, and every day, try to be the adult you hope your children will become. How else will they learn what it means to be an adult? Who else will teach them?
Try to stop blaming the teachers, coaches, or the school for your child’s every challenge, difficulty, or hurdle. Blame restricts maturing, yours and theirs.
Try to stop blaming the government, the economy, or prejudice for every distress or dilemma you face, unless you think blame will be a good tool for your child to take into adulthood. If you want your children to be adults who take responsibility for their lives then show them how it’s done. Your children won’t forget your temper tantrums no matter how young they may be; and they will probably emulate them.
Demonstrate, by your own display of excellent manners, the manner in which you hope your child will navigate life and relationships. It is true, they are going to watch and learn from multiple sources, but you are their primary resource when it comes to how they will respect and treat others. Little eyes are watching.
Respect, visit, and be kind to the elderly so they know exactly how to do it when it’s your turn.
Dismiss no one; look down on no one. Young eyes and ears are absorbing how to be in the world, and we, we parents, are the primary teachers.
We can be authentic with all people, including our parents, treating all others respectfully as equals, despite rank, position or the apparent lack of it.
We respect mutuality and equality, and want both in all of our relationships.
We have acknowledged our hurts, grieved appropriately, and decided to live to the fullest.
We can delay gratification.
We have stopped blaming others for the condition of our lives, especially our parents.
Ambiguity, mystery, and uncertainty are allies, not enemies. We can hold seemingly conflicting thoughts and beliefs without becoming unsettled.
We are able to recognize when and how we were victimized but no longer think, speak, feel, or behave like victims.
We have a small group of people to whom we talk about almost everything, but feel no compulsion to tell anyone everything.
We stop apologizing for things for which we could never be held responsible and efficiently clear up misunderstandings.
We can see that all things are related and are therefore hesitant to apply quick solutions to complex problems. We respect the law of unexpected consequences.
We learn to appreciate and love “the moment” rather than live as if we are perpetually waiting for a day when things will be better.
We can perceive when others do not have our best interests at heart yet remain appropriately engaged with such people.
Blending families, smoothly and successfully, is not easy.
Each family imports its own set of norms and expectations into the new family configuration and these norms and expectations will inevitably clash. Each person, too, brings expectations into the new family quite apart from what the rest of what his or her original family brings to the party. There will also be remaining scars from the sequence of events that made blending two families possible in the first place.
Blending families calls for super-maturity from the marrying or newly married adults.
They are called to lead in such a manner that all the members of the newly constituted family’s voices are heard and opinions are respected, irrespective of age.
The adults will be wise to avoid blaming others like a former spouse or former in-laws for the inevitable difficulties that will arise.
The adults will be wise to avoid disciplining other people’s children, even if he or she is newly married to the children’s mom or dad.
The adults will be wise to avoid believing the children – no matter what they may say when wanting to please the parent – want this new family as much as the newly married adults do.
The adults will be wise to speak well of the parents who are excluded from this new blended family.
I am riding my bike on the gravel entrance to E. W. G. Smith, General Dealer, my dad’s grocery shop as I have done for years.
A car eases alongside me and the driver leans his head out of the open window and asks me directions to Parkhill Soccer Club.
I know where it is but …. but… but everything I know sticks in my head.
Words fail.
Arms twitch.
My neck stretches.
Nothing.
Not a sound will come out of me but for gasps and whelps.
Then, I am choking on words.
Monosyllabic squeaks and squawks shot-gun out of me and I can’t stop.
I turn my bike to look elsewhere and point down the road.
The driver mimics my sounds, movements, and laughs and points. He fake-chokes. He spits, jerks his head, playing to his audience, a car full of adults. They all begin to move their arms, spit, copy my rapid repetitions until at last the driver shifts his gears and the car tires rip the gravel and the merciless mockers are gone.
I retreated into the house and into myself.
Closed all doors.
I am debilitated.
For days I want to hide in shame and resist venturing into daylight.
Yes, I’m 11 and I enter days of dark silence, moodiness, and humiliation.
I can’t shake this stutter. I can’t shake the shame.
The memory of trying to give directions to a place I knew so well plays repeatedly in my head and humiliation washes over me everytime i think of it and even when I don’t.
The problem with difficult childhoods in troubled families (pick your conflicts or addictions or stressors or health concerns – or a combination of several) is that children with difficult childhoods have had to dress for self-protection, and, as a lifestyle, have often had to prepare themselves for enduring domestic tensions or wars and regarded it as normal. This is how everyone lives isn’t it?
Once the child becomes an adult its difficult to shed engrained protection measures and essentials and throw off a guarded and conflictual lifestyle even if it’s no longer needed.
Carefree happy children may become carefree happy adults but it’s unlikely a stressed and anxious child will enter realms of stressfree bliss and trusting vulnerability on coming of age.
Adult survivors of difficult childhoods hear things like, “You’re so difficult to get to know,” and “You’re so difficult to get close to,” and “Why does everything have to be a fight?” and proceed with the hard work of adult life that mirrors the hard work of childhood wondering what on earth people are talking about.
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Unrelated to column: got some new art in our home today: Cameroon artist Patrick Yogo Oumar (see Instagram if interested).
I expect you to tell me the truth to the same degree I have told you the truth. I do not expect you to tell me everything. I know you have parts of your life that has little or even nothing to do with me. I expect and welcome this.
I do expect you to tell me things that reasonably high functioning families consider important. If it, whatever “it” is, impacts you immediately and significantly or is likely to take me by surprise now or in the future, I want to know about it. I want to know about it as soon as possible. Of course, it goes both ways!
I expect you to offer me the same degree of freedom as I have offered you. I do not treat you like room service or 911 and I want the same respect in return.
I expect you will progressively pay your own way beginning around 16. This means you will assume all the costs related to your life as you work and earn more. I hope you will continue to apply the same aptitude to creating your great future as you have to creating your great success at school. While I will always be proud of your successes, they will always be yours, not mine.
I expect you to write well, read well, and communicate well.
It’s never too early to model and teach children about personal responsibility. There are people of all ages who persistently refuse to assume it for their lives, treating it as some heretical or selfish notion:
It is not selfish, unkind, or “unchristian” to expect people of all ages to be responsible for themselves. Of course there are exceptions like the ill and elderly.
It is usually unkind and selfish and “unchristian” to expect others to bail us out of the consequences of our own irresponsible behavior.
Teaching personal responsibility is more modeled than it is taught, but it must also be taught and talked about.
The sooner a person assumes full responsibility for his or her life the better. The evolving plan, beginning at birth, will hopefully have children fully prepared to be responsible for their lives by age 15 or 16.
If we rescue and enable others (especially those whom we love) we deny them the joy of taking responsibility for their lives and endorse a message that they can’t get on without us.
Rescuing, saving, running interference for a sibling, parent, child teaches that person a way of life and sets the rescuer up for a lifetime of rescuing. Avoid behaviors you are unwilling to perpetuate.
Today, and every day, be the adult you hope your children will become. How else will they learn it?
Stop blaming the teachers, coaches, or the school for your child’s every challenge, difficulty, or hurdle. Blame restricts maturing, yours and theirs.
Stop blaming the government, the economy, or prejudice for every distress or dilemma you face, unless you think blame will be a good tool for your child to take into adulthood. If you want your children to be adults who take responsibility for their lives then show them how it’s done.
Your children won’t forget your temper tantrums no matter how young they may be; they will emulate them.
Demonstrate, by your own display of excellent manners, the manner in which you hope your child will navigate life and relationships. It is true, they are going to watch and learn from multiple sources, but you are their primary resource when it comes to how they will respect and treat others. Little eyes are watching.
Respect, visit, and be kind to the elderly so they know exactly how to do it when it’s your turn.
Dismiss no one; look down on no one. Young eyes and ears are absorbing how to be in the world, and you, parents, are the primary teachers.
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.
difficultrelationships.com 