Archive for the ‘Parenting’ Category

When has Worry Helped You?

I spoke with a mom who wanted to know when she should start worrying about her daughter’s writing skills. This daughter is in 7th grade.

I chuckled kindly (promise—it was a kind chuckle). I recognize the question. I’ve lived it, just like you have.

I said to her, “When has worrying helped you?”

I followed with, “If I tell you ‘not to worry’ until 10th grade, won’t you start worrying as soon as we hang up? Won’t you worry now about how to get your daughter to write well enough so you won’t have to worry in 10th grade? Aren’t you already worrying, about worrying?”

Worry has a way of expanding to fill all the spaces, like an oozing purple amoeba.

Ask yourself: how does it feel when someone is worried about you? I freeze and resist. I don’t like being the object of someone’s worry. I feel obligated to release them, but often their worries are “justified” in that I am not performing the way they wish I would. So now I’m not only disappointing myself and them, but I’m creating worry in a person I love which ricochets back to me and makes me feel small and deficient.

Worry is not helpful when it becomes the emotional context for your relationship with your child. If your kid can walk through the front door and feel your anxiety leap off of you onto her chest, I guarantee that your worry is not experienced as productive. Worse, it can feel like a loss of respect and a shriveling of love. We must rise above worry!

So is worry ever useful?

The most important thing to do with worry is to use it for research. Recognize that worry tells you: You are not omnipotent. You have no control. You are limited in how much you can help.

However, worry can alert you to this one truth: I need more information. I need help.

The goal shouldn’t be to fix the other person (to get the child to love writing or see it as fun or to progress to high school level). Rather, alleviate the worry through self-education. Become a student of all the ways you can enhance the context for your relationship—how to invest faith and hope, rather than worry and fear. Don’t stop your research until you have discovered the tools and steps that will give you solid ground to stand on. Sometimes the research leads to a “pause” – a respite, a letting go, a “not-doing” and that’s good too!

I applaud the mom who called me. She took action when her worry spiked—she sought another perspective, found a new way to see her daughter and writing, did the research to help her rise above the oozing purple amoeba-like worry.

The bottom line: you are not in control.

Man, that’s hard to swallow.

On the flip side: what a relief!

Let go of worry and foster a supportive, creative, resource-seeking relationship with your children. That’s the best any of us can do.

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Look for the good

The Great Flour FiascoImage by GoodNCrazy

Not in a pretend way. Not in a fake, pollyanna, unrelated-to-reality way.

Don’t look for the good at the expense of stock-taking or facing the truth.

There are moments that call for the courage to be clear-eyed about your life: its deficits, its ongoing flaws and the shrinking space for peace and growth. Those moments come after a long season of “trying hard” and “believing the best.” The willingness to admit, “This is not working,” is a brave admission and can lead to a different kind of good—the costly kind, that requires change and overhaul, but leads to a new season of opportunity and tranquility.

The kind of “looking for good” that I mean in today’s message is not the kind explained above.

It’s a different kind. Look for the good beyond the obvious interpretation of events.

Look for the good—in the intention behind the action.

Your child who got glue on the new table to make you a card. The intention is right; the action is unnerving.

The phone call from the teen stranded on the roadside to tell you about a near miss with the family car—the accident avoided, the honesty to tell you the truth, the willingness to risk being “in trouble” with you is the good.

Look for the good—as if you were holding a camera.

Your toddler pours the spaghetti on her head in the new Hanna Andersson outfit—it’s a moment to capture for future memory-savoring.

You feel anxious about bills unpaid and see, across the room, four children building a tower of blocks in perfect harmony. The good.

Look for the good—in progress.

Your child is not reading yet, but he’s more interested in books than he was two months ago.

Your teen is not sharing her feelings with you today, but she smiled at you spontaneously.

Look for the good—in the big picture.

This week might have been hurried and harried, but the overall pace of your life in the last year is calmer, less hurried. You can get back to that.

Your 10-year-old is struggling with division, but your 13-year-old isn’t and that gives you hope for the 10-year-old.

Look for the good—in your home.

Its coziness, not its dust bunnies.

Its family-friendly messes, its corners that house your memories, the taken-for-granted nature of the space you call home, the funds to pay for the roof over all your heads—fabulous good.

Look for the good—in yourself.

You’re trying, every day.

Trying to be kind, trying to trust the process, trying to add new methods to your work, trying to laugh and love, trying to hold back your temper or exasperation, and succeeding sometimes.

You have shining moments of success where you know your children are happily bonded to you. You know that when you are not connected, there is a path back because you’ve taken it before.

Look for the good—it’s there, underneath the muddy shoes, next to the hidden math book that you can never find, behind the eyes of your tired emotional teen, inside where you can be gentle with yourself.

Keep going. <3

Cross-posted on facebook.

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How to have a “together-style homeschool” if your kids bicker

Bickering_siblings

The following entry is a response to an email asking about how to help siblings get along in the “together-time” of homeschool. My replies are interspersed with her situations.

Below are ideas for some common issues.

Caveat: It’s much much easier to give guidance now that my children are mostly out of the house! My memories are telescoped and not as present-to-me as your current very-alive-to-you frustrations. Just know this: some days just suck. Sometimes everything you try doesn’t work. Sometimes you need breaks from each other, from homeschool, from your house.

Sometimes you try all the “right approaches” and they feel like stiff shoes – not natural to you or how you are as a group. You know your family! The “together-style” homeschool is an option, not a requirement.

With that said, here are some things that worked for us when we faced some of these challenges:

My turn/no your turn: Two options—1) Have more “whatever” available so no turns need to be taken; 2) Don’t use this item/process/book during family homeschool time.

Examples—If your kids are fighting over Legos, you need more Legos. If they are wanting to look at the same book, you may need a second copy or you need another book of comparable interest. This option often requires extra cash and effort. If you don’t have either, go on to suggestion two.

If there is no way to expand the number of items (2-3 sets of binoculars, knitting needles for all, several cameras, a variety of writing implements, many clipboards, several iPads or Tablets, more than one computer), then save the individual item task for NOT family time. That’s not a time to do the activity as a group. Save it for independent time. If you have lots of kids, create a sign up sheet with time slots so that the kids can have a neutral third party hold them accountable—the sheet of paper.

Our biggest fights were over TV and computer time. We could not afford to have more computers or TVs. That meant we had to have “turns.” I refused to police these turns or even solve the “…but you started at 12:02 so that means…” arguments. For a long time, we had a sign up sheet and we agreed on a specific clock. Eventually, they were done with the sheet and used “time slots.” That didn’t eliminate all of the fighting, but by and large it did afford uninterrupted play time. We did discover after several months that 30 minutes was “too short” a turn. We changed it to 2 hour time slots so that it was possible to get immersed in a game.

Another predicament: 9-year-old gets annoyed with youngers who don’t know what he knows ( working on patience with him).

This one will be frustrating while it lasts but it will change. Maybe rather than annoyance you can feature his growth to him. You might acknowledge his diligence to learn or ask him to teach one of the younger ones. Find out if he’s needing a playmate who is of comparable skill (find one – if none are available then you are that playmate) or if he is frustrated because their lack of knowledge is thwarting his progress in some way. Fix THAT and his impatience will dissipate (usually).

Next: littlest interrupts which frustrates other two, everyone talks at once then gets upset.

Interruptions are frustrating to everyone! Hold a family meeting to discuss how interruptions may take place and how to all talk at once. Start with, “Have you ever noticed how when we all talk at once, we all get frustrated?” or “Have you ever noticed that when two kids are playing and a third joins, the first two get mad?” Then ask, “What can we do about that?” or “If it were up to you, how would you solve that problem?”

Get them involved in the process. They may have a good idea—like talking only when you have the stuffed bear in your hand and if you want to talk, picking it up first. Or maybe if the older two are busy and the younger one wants to interrupt, help the older two to know how to talk to an interrupter. Can they hold up a hand like a “stop” sign for a moment, and then turn and make eye contact and say, “What did you want?”

Sometimes a hand sign is much better than escalating voices.

Here’s the thing: these issues you are talking about? They are actually the most important lessons you can teach. Ignoring the tension or expecting a cure all–both unrealistic. It takes years of negotiating for peace before your kids learn to be peaceful with each other. You facilitate peace by hearing the real feelings of each participant and solving for a meaningful solution for each person. It takes time and work—and is worth skipping all home education for the day or week to get it right.

I hope that helps! Please “push back” if you have follow ups about how none of this has worked for you. We can keep solving here, too.

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Rage

It's a difficult topic, but let's talk about it: Raging at children.

It’s a difficult topic, but let’s talk about it: Raging at children.

I sat with a cluster of women, each one sharing about her struggle with anger and control. One spoke of rage—how it came over her like a flash flood, and the next thing she knew, she’d be screaming bloody murder at her small children. All she could feel was the complete out of controlness of the moment, the thwarting of her much-better-plan, the awareness that how it should go was not at all how it was going. The fact that small children were cowering didn’t slow the lava flow of verbal assault. She’d give in to it until she had exhausted herself…and wounded her kids.

It took years before she could appreciate that her kids really had been harmed by the yelling, the screaming, the cursing.

The next one spoke of holes she’d punched in walls, “things” she’d hurled in anger that shattered menacingly in front of her trespassing offspring. This mild-mannered friend listed the ways she dressed down her kids when they got in her way—took my breath away. I would never have known.

Another mother talked about the obsessive nature of her need to know that her adult daughter was taking her medications. She found herself nagging and manipulating and finally yelling down the telephone line.

Rage.

I was used to hearing about rage in marriages—usually men toward women. Or if in families, fathers toward kids. It was startling to listen to mothers, and painful, too.

The rager rarely notices the impact of the rages. The rager feels out of control and justified in venting it. When the children comply out of fear, the rager may even feel reinforced in the strategy. “If I yell and scream, stuff gets done and relieves my anxiety.”

The secret of many families is that volatile anger is a constitutive part of their family culture but no one talks about it. It’s as though we’ve all cooperated in this huge silent secret—we show smiling photos of our assembled families at holiday meals, and yet behind the smiles is the memory of screaming and yelling with insults and character evisceration five minutes before the camera shutter clicked.

I honestly don’t know how to cure rage. It must come from within the rager, it seems. Conversations don’t work. Some awareness of how damaging it is to the victims needs to get across the transom from wounded to wound creator. Then steps need to take place that help the rager reign it in and heal whatever pain in her causes the outbursts.

What I do know, however, is the devastating impact of cumulative experiences with rage. The victims carry that shattering experience inside—it’s as though they can come apart at the hint of criticism or raised voice. They take that pain into their adult relationships.

It’s bad enough when adults hurl insults at each other. They are peers, even when it doesn’t feel that way.

What is not talked about enough, however, is verbal abuse that is unleashed by parents on children. If a grown adult woman can feel as though she’s been beaten by the loud booming accusing voice of a peer (her husband/partner), how much more must small children feel fractured by the assault of anger and control, rage and cursing from a parent they love and want to trust?

When your home is the daily full-time residence of your children (they don’t go to daycare or school), preserving that space as the sacred, safe place to live is even more paramount. Everyone loses their cool occasionally, but a habit of using anger, rage, and shows of violence to control children is a step way beyond frustration or momentary anger. It’s our job as parents to protect our children from demonstrations of rage.

I know this is a more somber post than I usually write. I know that it veers uncomfortably into territory that is far afield from writing and language arts, or even run of the mill homeschooling issues.

Yet I can’t ignore it because it keeps coming up (in emails from customers, in phone calls, in in-person conversations). To thrive in learning, a child needs to trust the educator. Risks, missteps, failures, and childishness must be permitted and welcomed for homeschooling to thrive. Raging against children undermines everything. According to some experts (Stephen Stosny is one), a full recovery from being on the receiving end of a rage is a full year (12 months!). The victim carries the “anxiety” of the rage in their bodies and can’t let go of the need to “protect self” through fight, flight, or freezing for an entire rage-free year.

If a child is on the receiving end of rage several times a year, you are creating a condition for the child that is ongoing and doesn’t heal, even if they don’t tell you and appear “okay” on the outside. They live with rage-created anxiety.

My hope is that this little PSA will give you a moment to pause and reflect, to find support, to grow…if this is you.

It’s good to remember how vulnerable our little charges are and how much they do depend on us…for everything.

Image © Sergiyn | Dreamstime.com

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The right kind of pressure

Gymnastics Clinic Red DeerImage by Rick McCharles

There’s a strange mix of expectation and freedom that yields the highest quality learning. It’s not enough to simply give freedom to your kids. Sometimes they drown in it.

“Mom, I can’t think of anything to do.”

“But how does this game work? I just want to understand the rules.”

“I can’t hit the ball. What am I doing wrong?”

“Where do I start? There’s too much to read and too many ideas to think about.”

“How can I grow up to be an actress?”

Kids want answers to these kinds of questions. A coach will help a baseball player to know what is going on with that swing. It’s not interference to give feedback and help. It’s too much freedom to simply say, “Keep swinging. It’s up to you!”

An aspiring actress needs to test her stage presence. She needs opportunities. These don’t come by singing in the living room alone.

Kids (all of us) want some structure. They want some hand holds or guard rails. They want scaffolding. The far extreme of this “freedom” continuum is the distorted view of unschooling where parental involvement looks like parental interference. Parents are so hands-off, sometimes kids don’t even know their options!

On the other end of the continuum, though, are parents who are so involved and invested, they withhold dinner and scream at their son until he finally masters two-handed piano playing…and winds up in Carnegie Hall at age 16.

We wonder: Is that the right route? After all, Carnegie Hall is a good gig if you can get it!

I often find the word “balance” an irritant (please quit telling me to live a balanced life—I just want to live a life and not have to “balance” it all the time). So I am not going there. But, I don’t want us to one day scream bloody murder at our kids and on the other day, abandon them to their own devices, unwilling to help them out of a boredom jam.

What I want to say is this:

Expectation can be either an enormous motivator and support when becoming all you are meant to be, or it can defeat and tear down the fledgling aspirant. The amount and the type of pressure determine whether or not your child will flourish and thrive, or shrivel and withdraw.

Just because a child achieves a goal with or without undue pressure is not a validation of either extreme methodology either. Underneath is a relationship to you—and to the self—that is being daily created behind the achievements.

What we want is bold and big:

Personal accomplishment combined with healthy self confidence and relaxed, trusting relationship with the parents.

How do we get there?

We feel most connected to each other when we are in a relationship that creates emotional safety. A child’s performance or lack of achievement doesn’t determine whether your kids feel loved or safe, whether a parent smiles or hugs, whether a parent shows pride and admiration.

To that end, parents have to pay attention to their kids. They supply resources, answer questions, provide imagined scenarios, and create possibilities.

Parents know how to find what is “out there” and how to bring that to children. Parents can help match a child to the information, opportunities, instructors, tools, and environments that facilitate growth in a child’s chosen interest.

For example, when my kids got fascinated with vintage dance because of the BBC/A&E Pride and Prejudice series, I hunted for a dance studio in Cincinnati that taught vintage dance. Found one. Couldn’t afford it. Figured out how to get my kids in for free (we spent Monday afternoons stuffing mailboxes with dance flyers, come wind, rain, hail and snow!). They danced.

It was not enough to know they wanted to dance. Nor was it enough to leave them to it on our back deck. They needed my help to find lessons so they really were learning to dance! That’s the right kind of support.

When they didn’t want to go to class, I still took them because of the commitment and the need to not get behind for the big ball at the end! I helped them fulfill their commitment. We stuffed those mailboxes every week, even when no one felt like it. That’s the right kind of pressure.

I didn’t, however, expect them to go on to be competitive vintage dancers. That kind of pressure would have been my agenda, and not theirs.

My job was to support a vision, and an enthusiasm, and a commitment.

Their job was to show up, to participate, to “pay” for the opportunity and privilege, and to enjoy it. They could determine if one season sated the curiosity or led to new aspirations.

As you work with your children, keep in mind these two aspects of parenting:

1) Freedom to dream big, to have desires, to explore unusual interests, to find ways to bring those dreams to life.

2) Involvement that provides resources, gentle accountability (within reason—if the experience turns out to be one that is crushing the child’s spirt, dump it!), and helpful support (payment, driving, attending events, providing the right supplies…).

The only pressure a child should feel is the pressure to live up to his or her potential and to realize his or her dreams. That comes from within. You can’t create it or induce it in the child.

You must not put on pressure that comes from your agenda. That’s when you cross the line.

Your job is to match your child’s enthusiasm—don’t do more for the child than the child is willing to do for self, but don’t limit your child by ignoring how you can help, since you are the adult with connections, money, and resources.

The right kind of freedom and expectation.

The right kind of pressure.

Cross-posted on facebook.

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