March 30, 2023
by Rod Smith
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.
Posted in Adolescence, Blended families, Boundaries, Children, Communication, Difficult Relationships, Education, Faith, Family, Friendship, Grace, Leadership, Parenting/Children, Single parenting, Step parenting, Stepfather, Stepmother, Teenagers, Voice |
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March 18, 2023
by Rod Smith
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.
[The Mercury—Monday]
Posted in Adolescence, Attraction, Blended families, Boundaries, Children, Communication, Education, Family, Family Systems Theory, In-laws, Leadership, Parenting/Children, Past relationships, Re-marriage, Single parenting, Stepfather, Stepmother, Teenagers, Triangles, Trust, Voice |
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May 11, 2020
by Rod Smith
The divine parent/adolescent exchange:
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.
Posted in Adolescence, Blended families, Boundaries, Children, Difficult Relationships, Education, Family Systems Theory, Love, Parenting/Children, Single parenting, Step parenting, Stepfather, Stepmother, Teenagers |
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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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November 7, 2017
by Rod Smith
If you find yourself identifying with the chronic list I would strongly urge professional help. Please, if you use my list at all, use it for yourself, and not to identify others.
Two kinds of anxiety: chronic and situational
Chronic:
- You worry and you don’t know why – it’s generic and floating; it’s not connected to anything specific.
- You worry even when things are going well – there are times when you worry about having nothing to worry about.
- You worry as a way of life – when people tell you they are not in a state of constant concern you think they are surely in denial.
- You worry about everyone you love and regard the amount of worry as proportional to the depth of your love.
- The rumbling feeling of anxiety feels like it is deep inside you and has lived in you for as long as you can remember – it’s as if you were born with it or it came from another life.
Situational:
- You are facing an examination, a tough conversation, or an important interview. You know the tension will ease once you get started or once the trial is over. Your worry is attached to something real and when that is dealt with the worry will ease and then be gone.
Posted in Addictions, Anger, Anxiety, Attraction, Blended families, Boundaries, Difficult Relationships, Education, Family, Family Systems Theory, Shame, Single parenting, Therapeutic Process, Triangles, Triggers, Victims |
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October 17, 2017
by Rod Smith
I am very aware that people don’t analyze their connections in the manner I’ve described below. We’d have healthier communities and families if we did!
- Will you search with me when I am searching, stand with me when I am standing, and drop to your knees with me in prayer if and when I need it? I will try to do the same for you.
- Will you stand up to me with firmness and kindness when my many blind spots are blocking my thinking? I will try to do the same for you.
- Will you join me and examine our connection (as casual acquaintances, colleagues, neighbors, partners, or spouses) so that we remain mutual and equal and respectful no matter the degree or significance of our connection?
- Will you take time to listen to me? I will try to take time to listen to you?
- Will you allow me my quirks and eccentricities and try to regard them as interesting rather than regard them as things you wish were different about me?
- Will you seek my highest good as far as you are able given the knowledge we have about each other? I will try to do the same for you.
- Will you try to be as unafraid of me as I try to be unafraid of you?
Posted in Addictions, Attraction, Blended families, Boundaries, Children, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Education, Faith, Family, Family Systems Theory, Forgiveness, Friendship, Grace, Grief, Leadership, Listening, Love, Manipulation, Marriage, Past relationships, Re-marriage, Reactivity, Recovery, Responsive people, Schnarch, Sex education, Sex matters, Sexual compatibility, Single parenting, Triangles, Voice, Womanhood, Young Love |
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September 24, 2017
by Rod Smith
The Mercury / Monday 9/25/2017 / I have witnessed many fine acts of parenting:
- The mother who sends her adult sons and daughters Mother’s Day cards with handwritten lists of joyous memories about what it has been like to be their mother. She has done this for so long that it was some years before the children (when they were children) even knew they were the ones who were supposed to send her cards.
- The dad who traded in his own car and settled for a used car so he could give his son the sports car his son wanted.
- The parents who each worked two jobs so the two sons did not have to assume significant debt to attend university.
- The single mother who has the wherewithal to leave her daughter’s academic struggles up to her and who encourages her daughter to speak up about what she needs to her teachers.
- The dad who packs his son’s lunch each day for school and who adds an extra pack for his son’s friend who once expressed to the boy that he wished that he too had a dad.
- The dad who taught his son to share without ever saying it but by showing it at every turn.
- The parents who never let drinking distort or shape the way they reared their children.
Posted in Addictions, Adolescence, Anger, Blended families, Boundaries, Children, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Education, Faith, Family, Family Systems Theory, Forgiveness, Friendship, Grace, Leadership, Listening, Love, Manipulation, Parenting/Children, Responsive people, Single parenting, Step parenting, Teenagers, Therapeutic Process, Triangles, Trust, Voice |
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April 30, 2017
by Rod Smith
“My sister changes plans on me all the time because of her son (4). We will make a plan to meet and then it gets cancelled because the child had a tantrum. I wouldn’t think this was an issue but it has been repeated many times. This is really testing my patience. If we do meet she brings him with her when we have lunch but we cannot talk because he takes so much of her attention. It’s so bad my boyfriend won’t come with anymore. I just want one time when we can talk like it used to be. Is this too much to ask?”
It’s not too much to ask but you may never get what you are looking for.
Your sister’s relationship with her son will probably always trump her relationship with you. She’s his mother; she’s your sister. If she really is too caught up in mothering then that is not news she will probably be open to hearing from you.
Declare your wants. Do it kindly. Do it clearly. Then, understand that your sister will place what she determines as the needs of her child above the needs of her sister.
Join her; love your nephew, rather than attempt to compete with him.
Posted in Adolescence, Blended families, Boundaries, Children, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Family, Friendship, Grace, High maintenance relationships, Parenting/Children, Single parenting, Space, Womanhood |
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March 14, 2017
by Rod Smith
I ask a woman how her life is going and she tells me about her children. She’s very forthcoming. I hear about their failures and successes and their disappointments and their accomplishments in sports.
So I ask again how she is enjoying her life and she tells me about her children’s teachers and how dedicated they are and how they go the extra mile for her sons and how much she appreciates it and how happy her sons are at school.
I persist and ask her if she has any close friends and how much time she spends with her peers and she tells me how her sons’ friendships are a little disappointing to her and that sometimes they get left off birthday party lists and how much it hurts her when that happens and how she wishes adults were more sensitive to her children.
I ask the same woman who happens to also be a wife how she is enjoying her husband and she tells me they “work together” as parents and they are almost always on the “same page.”
I press in and ask the woman if she has a life outside of being a mom and she gives me that blank look as if I have no idea what I am talking about.
Posted in Adolescence, Blended families, Boundaries, Children, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Family, Family Systems Theory, Forgiveness, Grace, Grief, Parenting/Children, Single parenting, Step parenting, Stepfather, Stepmother, Teenagers |
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July 17, 2012
by Rod Smith
Is found in our connection with others (a connection sufficiently powerful so that we are not alone) and can therefore give and receive strength to and from each other. It is yet separate enough so that we not drain each other of the adventure of being unique and distinct beings. This is one of the greatest blessings accompanying our humanity and, when it fails, it becomes the source of exceedingly powerful pain.
Posted in Adolescence, Anxiety, Blended families, Children, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Faith, Family, Forgiveness, Friendship, Grace, Leadership, Living together, Parenting/Children, Responsive people, Single parenting, Space, Therapeutic Process, Trust, Violence, Voice, Womanhood |
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