Arguing in front of your children…

I regularly follow a number of blogs and one of them has had a thread recently on “Arguing in front of your children”, a sort of pro or con discussion. When Marcy and I were first discussing getting married, because we had no idea what a loving relationship between the two  of us would look like, we discussed the type of relationship we DIDN’T want to have. And one of the major points of agreement was that we didn’t want a relationship that was marked by a lot of arguing and loud disagreement. It never occurred to either of us to state that we didn’t want a relationship where hitting each other was OK, I guess because we both grew up in households where the idea of Mom and Dad taking swings at each other or throwing objects at each other simply never, ever occurred.
I would be less than forthright if I told you that there was never a loud word in our home, but I remembered how terrified I could be as a child of my father’s rage on those occasions when he gave voice to it and we both tried to parent with a great deal of empathy. But what I’ve become aware of is how very differently people feel about these things, and I’ve copied a post from another blog (which I responded to on that site) and have inserted my editorial comments for the sake of this posting in BOLD.

“I believe that to express anger in front of you kids is okay.” IT’S POSSIBLE TO FEEL MORE THAN ONE WAY ABOUT THIS…PLEASE PROCEED “As with so many human interactions, it is the way in which we go about dealing with the anger and disagreements that make the difference.” AH, I SENSE AN ENLIGHTENED MOMENT COMING ON…
“If my wife and I felt differently about something or one did something to upset the other, I would only openly discuss it with the kids around if we were able to do it as more of a debate, rather than a yelling match. We need to keep ourselves in check, even when angry, and perhaps doing so will teach our kids how to correctly express anger and disagreements.” WELL PUT, FULLY AGREED…

“At times, as naturally happens, when we will be throwing plates through the wall and swinging back hands at each other, we would avoid doing that in front of the kids.” WTF!!! “NATURALLY THROWING PLATES THROUGH THE WALL AND SWINGING BACKHANDS AT EACH OTHER”??!! “we would avoid doing that in front of the kids.” SO WHERE WOULD YOU DO IT, IF YOU COULDN’T “AVOID DOING THAT IN FRONT OF THE KIDS” ??? OUTBACK STEAKHOUSE? STARBUCKS? THE CHINA DEPARTMENT AT TARGETS?

I’ll drop the bolding now, but that was the end of this guy’s post and it just floored me!!! Marcy and I went through some extraordinarily stressful times, including a catastrophic business loss while our sons were young, and I can honestly tell this guy that the sorts of things he’s describing so casually here are tremendously terrifying and harmful for children to witness, for anyone for that matter. And the assumption that “as naturally happens, when we will be throwing plates through the wall and swinging back hands at each other, we would avoid doing that in front of the kids” is such a ready indication of a vast cultural difference that it’s almost insurmountable. It seems to contain the very seed of family violence…”my Dad beat my Mom so I’ll beat my wife and no one can stop me…or I’ll hit my kids if I feel like it.” Or it teaches that this sort of violence is OK in any situation, because that’s how Mom and Dad did it. So expect it in the school yard, on the playing field, in the office and on the job.
We wanted something different for our kids and the family mantra that Marcy developed in our most stressful times, “Kind, Gentle, Loving, Calm” helped focus us on our core values as a family. Marcy spent a good deal of time showing and teaching our sons appropriate ways to express anger, as she realized that this is a parent’s responsibility and that no one had ever instructed me in that matter. I continue to be amazed by things I read out there in the ether and I often wonder if I’m alone in this or not?

A brilliant post by another writer that we wanted to share with you…

I follow a number of blogs and have been following Lesbian Dad for some time now. I “borrowed” a picture from Baba called “Bee Girl at Rest” and posted it here earlier. I called Baba my friend, although I’ve never met her, but I love her photography and her writing and the following post is one of the best things I’ve ever read online. Baba, I want you and your family to know that Marcy and I and our family believe that we are in the midst of the last, great civil rights battle in our country and our thoughts and efforts are with you and your family now and always in the future.

I’ve posted the intro here with a link to the rest of the post below. Respect

The worst are full of passionate intensity…

THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

~ William Butler Yeats, 1919

Yeats wrote “The Second Coming” in the aftermath of the first World War (and the Russian Revolution), but it’s hard not to think of the events of the past two weeks — the murder of Dr. Tiller, the shooting at the Holocaust Memorial Museum — when one reads his words.  Violence, specifically hate violence, meant not just to injure or murder one person but to frighten — or to be more precise, to terrorize – a whole group of people into submission, has dominated the news.

The balance of Baba’s great post here

“Millions of people raise great kids.”

I have frequent reminders of this fact and had one just the other night when I met my friend David and his family for pizza at Comet Ping Pong, just up Connecticut Avenue from where Marcy and I live.

David and I have know each other from way back in the day when he was a disc jockey at Georgetown University’s student radio station WGTB (and arguably the best radio station ever in DC), as well as a local concert promoter. David in fact, with our friend, Bob Boilen, promoted the now legendary Urban Verbs/Cramps “Hall of Nations” show in 1979, which has been sited by Bob, Dave Grohl, Henry Rollins and Ian and Alec Mac Kaye as being inspirational to their decision to become musicians.

So David and I go way back, but I’d never met his family before. His wife Denise is lovely and had been around the early music scene, although I was meeting her for the first time over dinner.

But it was their 14 year old daughter, Emma, who struck me as being amazing in a nearly unique way. In fact, she reminded me of our sons Max and Charlie when they were that age. She is both poised and comfortable with her parents and their friend (me) and engaging in conversation, unafraid to speak her mind about anything being discussed and just remarkably well balanced for a 14 year old person.

I’d given Denise a copy of The Yes Child and later told her that there was probably nothing in it that they weren’t already doing in their relationship with Emma. So our book isn’t for people like David and Denise, who have done an exceptional job raising Emma to be the lovely, confidant young woman she is.

I think our book is more for people like Rebecca, who’s been going back and forth with her partner about starting a family and told me that until she’d read the Yes Child she “had no idea you could raise kids in the manner you describe. Both of us thought it would mean an awful ordeal, like we’d gone through as kids growing up.” Or like Sarah in Sydney, Australia, who told us she read her copy in one sitting and then passed it on to her friend who had just had her first child because she knew her friend had some reservations about her ability to raise a child intelligently and well.

Or Jo Ann, a single mother of two children who we met at a speaking event and who told us, “I don’t have time to read some tome written by a doctor about child raising, but I have time to read a book by parents, for parents.” In a follow up conversation, I asked Jo Ann if she’d read anything of value in the Yes Child and she told me no, most of what she’d read she’d already known and then proceeded to list 4 or 5 things that she planned on implementing in her parenting. Chief among those was the story we tell about not having formal, announced “sit down, family meetings” where everyone gathers around a table or in the living room at an appointed hour to discuss “family matters.”

Rather, we would talk to our children about those things by introducing them into our conversations in the car or over board games or before bed. As a child, I for one always hated the “family meeting” scenarios and if given the choice between attending a family meeting or poking my eye out with a dull stick would have headed for the woods at a dead run.

Millions of people raise great kids and I have no doubt that many of our readers could and would do so without reading the Yes Child. But I’m glad that people like Rebecca can use it to frame a new vision for raising a child, and that people like Sarah feel it has value to be shared with others and that a single mother like Jo Ann can read our brief book and take away 4 or 5 ideas that will help her with her parenting.

If you would like to share your thinking about parenting or the Yes Child, please contact us at infoATtheyeschildDOTCOM and we will be happy to engage with you that way.

Addendum- As I thought about this after posting, it seemed to me that there’s a larger issue here, at least for me. Meeting kids like Emma, Kirstin and Liam and living with Max and Charlie for so many years has given me great hope for the future. And it is both our and ,more importantly, their future and the qualities so many young people today manifest make me optimistic in a way that nothing else does.

Bread and Puppet Circus

Charlie called the other day and asked us to send some family pictures for his apartment and it got me thinking how few we have on this site. Actually, there aren’t any and I want to work on resolving this.
So here is a picture that’s in the boy’s room that I dearly love. At one point in our lives we lived in Northern Vermont in a small towm called Lyndonville. Charlie was born in the St. Johnsbury Regional Hospital just south of there. One of our neighbors to the north, in Glover, VT was the fabulous Bread and Puppet Circus and this picture was taken at their annual summer pageant called Our Domestic Resurrection Circus. That’s Max on the left and Charlie in my lap. Those were magical times for all of us and the Bread and Puppet Theater  was and is a breath-takingly amazing performance.
What I didn’t know then and only found out years later was that the giant puppets used by Bread and Puppet Circus completely terrified Charlie, who was too young to realize that they were manipulated by puppeteers!!!

Cool money saving sites + great meals for 5 bucks

So I’m taking the train down to Judiciary Square this morning at Oh-Dark-Thirty to sign in for jury duty and the guy who hands out The Express, which is a free, mini-Washington Post, hands one to me and I discovered an article in the Money Section that I’d like to share with you, Dear Reader.

The article, Fraternity of Frugality, by ANNE D’INNOCENZIO, hasn’t been posted to their site yet, so here goes.  D’Inncenzio reports on the growing clout of Mommy Bloggers and how one in particular, Melissa Garcia of Consumerqueen.com has interneticized the whole coupon thing (which I admit Marcy and I were never on top of).

D’Inncenzio goes on to list a number of other money $aving blogs that we wanted to share with you. They are
Couponmo.com
Dealseekingmom.com
Couponcravings.com
Beingfrugal.com
Moneysavingmom.com
And this way cool site by Erin Chase, 5dollardinners.com has a complete listing of meal plans and recipes for $5 and under. 5dollardinners.com has also been cited as the number 5 blog on Top 100 Blogs for the Frugal Gourmet (so this ain’t chopped liver!). Her recipes look so cool I even sent them to our sons. These represent a grab bag of offerings so please let us know what you think of these sites and if you know of others we should share openly and freely.

Thanks,

Rod

Denying comfort to our children…or what I’m still learning…

Recently Marcy and I went with our son Max and his friend Susan to see “UP”, which is just fabulous, far and away one of the best Pixar stories ever. But during the previews we watched Eddie Murphy as the father of a four or five year old little girl, saying to her on her first day of pre-school, “Do you remember how we talked about how one day you’d have to go somewhere without your blankey? Well, this is that day.” And as he took her blankey and turned away from his child on her first day of school (no stress there), she did what the writers had written for her to do. She let out a piercing scream that was a big laugh generator in the theater.

Admittedly I’m a little down on Eddie; although he was brilliant in Bowfinger this looked like another Eddie Murphy picture where he might have just phoned it in. But the thought that stuck with me and that Marcy and I began to discuss afterward was why do we always seem to have such a great urgency to deny our children the things that comfort them when they’re small?

I think this is a fairly important question and Marcy will readily attest that Rod doesn’t jump on his high horse, he fairly flies onto it and you won’t even see his feet leave the ground. This tendency has diminished considerably over time (time will do that to you) but it can still be triggered by something that I feel is inherently wrong or dishonest. In this case, it was Eddie Murphy’s character taking away his daughter’s blankey on the first day of pre-school.

Much of this denial of comfort seems to be parental concern over appearing what…inept? Raising a child who’s not well adjusted? But as Marcy pointed out, there may have been a school regulation against kids bringing these things with them in whatever form they take…stuffed animals, their mother’s satin pajama top, their blanket or lambie…who knows?

This trigger followed another trigger that I discovered in an email list serve that I belong to where one mother of a 12 month old child was telling about how she had taken away her sons pacifier at bedtime and felt guilty about this despite the fact that he now lay in bed gurgling to himself for an hour before then falling asleep. Most of the writing I’ve found on the subject seems to suggest that pacifier use tapers off between the ages of 2 and 4, but that pacifier use and thumb sucking after the age of 6 can definitely cause dental problems later. Web MD .

But as another mother stated on that same list serve, parenting styles are very personal and should not be criticized lightly or readily. We always felt that our children’s ability to comfort themselves was a good thing, but now we feel like we should have paid more attention to teaching our children positive coping methods for times of stress. The folks at the Brain Works Project offer this article and advice and the University of District of Columbia Extension Services offers Teaching Children Coping Skills for our present, often stressful times.

We’d love to hear from others about their experiences teaching their kids coping skills and I for one suspect that stress starts at an even younger age, especially if there are medical conditions present that are differentiators and are dealt with on a daily basis. Please let us know about your experiences and any coping skills teaching wisdom that you care to share.

Bee Girl at Rest

I find so much good photography online and I just loved this shot. I used to go into my son’s rooms at night and watch them sleep. Now I wish I’d taken photos of them at rest, but I did write poems for each of them about my observations when they were sleeping.

This is from my friend Baba at Lesbian Dad

“Do not try this at home”

From our friends at momlogic.com … this is a great site!

Real Life Twitter

This video came to us courtesy of GirlGetStrong

(click headline for video)

Leave your snarky attitudes at the door…

I was listening to an NPR interview in our car the other day and the woman being interviewed was an author of a best selling book on her mothering experience. I liked much of what she was saying as she had written and blogged in a very straightforward manner about her experiences, saying things that many mothers must feel but haven’t the outlet or confidence to say openly.

But then it happened and she triggered what’s become one of my worst bugaboos, she began talking about her teenagers in a very snarky, negative manner, when in fact her kids sounded pretty OK. Marcy and I write about the importance of parents understanding developmental stages in our book and common misunderstandings about how children develop, the “terrible twos” being one hugely misunderstood stage and the ages from about 12-18 being another hugely misunderstood or little understood time in your child’s life.

If you obsess about and declare that the “twos” will be terrible then they undoubtedly will be terrible and you have a successful, self made, self fulfilling prophecy on your hands. We never experienced the “terrible twos” in our family because we were both aware of our child’s developmental stage then and that knowledge allowed us to help or sons through these periods with very little stress. In fact, we greatly enjoyed our sons’ teenage years, having already established trust, communication, mutual respect, and our expectations for them. Many of their friends had a much harder time, but the point is that if you determine that your child’s teenage experience within your family is going to be awful for everyone, it most likely will be awful for everyone. If it has become awful for everyone, quite possibly because of a lack of knowledge, empathy and a snarky attitude on the parents part, it will remain toxic for a far longer time unless you proactively address the situation and try to turn it around with honest, open, and respectful communication.