Dear 21st Century Dad, how’s this for irony? We used to be political activists in the 70’s. We adopted a First Nations boy rather than have a child of our own. Our son must have picked up our genes by osmosis. He’s using all the same tactics we used against the powerful oppressors we considered were responsible for the evil things of the world.
Fifteen years ago, we adopted our son as a two year old. Lately, whenever we have a family crisis, that is, when we have to set down discipline and some consequences, he goes political on us, and raises our differences in culture, history and skin colour, and rails that our guidelines are unfair, and get this, oppressive.
He’s right about the skin colour. We are white as the driven snow. About everything else, he is wrong. We have always tried to introduce him to his native background, his culture and his history. We tried to get him to go to a 3 day Vision Quest but he thought that was a stupid idea. When we take him to Aboriginal Day holidays, he says he won’t go with white parents.
We love our boy. We have always encouraged his uniqueness. Now he holds it against us. What can we do?
Dear Racially Oppressed Boomer, we have to be able to discern the differences between racial/cultural differences and the frictions caused by the teenage process of growing up? Our son is experiencing a coming of age crisis, an awakening. If our conflict is truly racial/cultural, let’s turn the tables on our boy and offer him every hand we can to help him discover and explore his uniqueness.
We need to find mentors, leaders, people who can support him in his identity quest. We have to be careful about full immersion weekends in which he can explore his genetic/cultural connections. Teens can have a hard enough time meeting strangers. If he is shy, meeting a room full of strangers can be like being thrown into very deep and cold lake without a lifebelt.
Here’s a clear cut case for using the Internet to find similar concerned individuals. Support groups exist for both parents of different race children, and children who have parents of a different race. Whether we perceive our difference as a separation or our difference as a diversity, a support group exists for every condition imaginable. Let’s use the Internet to our advantage.
We need to minimize the differences between our son’s genetic community and our own, not only for our son but for ourselves. We can explore the rich offerings our son’s culture presents to us for our own education and pleasure. Hungry? Do salmon burgers, pemmican, moose steak, wild blueberries, wapiti chili, smoked trout, Caribou blood soup, nettle tea, buffalo jerky, birch syrup, wild rice, hominy, batter fried dandelion blossoms, pickled morels, nut butter or bannock, grace our table tops weekly? Feeling an affinity to the earth? Do we know the significance of the pipe ceremony, the sweat lodge, or the pow wow? Generous? How about a potlatch? Have we ever invited all our friends over and given away everything we have? Sick? Have we sat in on a healing circle? Committed a crime or been a victim of crime? Have we held a talking stick and spoken from our heart? Let’s start exploring native culture locally and then explore native culture specific to our son’s birthplace. Though the intention may be the same, practices can be as different as the geography out of which the practices grew.
We need to change our son’s quest for individuation in a positive direction. Black Elk, could be an inspiration. Many others exist. As a twelve year old, Black Elk took part in the Battle of Little Big Horn in 1876 and later was wounded in the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890. He became a famous medicine man and visionary of the Oglala Sioux. Google him at Wikipedia. He wrote the following poem.
The Sunset
Then I was standing on the highest mountain of them all, and round about beneath me was the whole hoop of the world. And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being.
And I say the sacred hoop of my people was one of the many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father. And I saw that it was holy...
But anywhere is the center of the world.
Google: http://www.adoptivefamilies.com/articles.php?aid=155
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Question 54. gifting step children
Dear 21st Century Dad, between my three children, I’m grandmother to five birth grandchildren. Due to divorce and repartnering, I’m about to become grandmother to three more stepchildren. Eight kids! It’s a wonder I can remember all the new names, let alone the old ones. If they’re all here at the same time, I feel like I’m running a daycare.
You can appreciate how difficult birthdays and holidays can be. I need a calendar just to keep all the dates straight, and with all the birthdays and holidays, and the grandchildren coming over to ask if I can chip in on movies and extra gas money and the special shoes they want to buy, money can be tight.
I’ve decided to set limits. The step grandchildren have their own set of grandparents. I shouldn’t be responsible for them. My daughter says I am mean and unfair.
Dear Name Challenged,
If there are financial limitations, we can suggest to our children an all or none gifting proposal. Every kid gets a present, but we may need some financial support from the parents of the children. If our budget is severely stressed by our new arrivals, and our children cannot afford to subsidize our gifting, we can switch from merchandize to baked goods. Every child loves icing, no matter the age. In twenty years, hot buttered love will be remembered far longer than the latest video game.
Unless we are allergic to children, let’s welcome the new additions. They bless our life with the opportunity to embrace new challenges. They may present us with a doublefold increase in our family happiness quotient. At the very least, the new name recollection should stimulate a few million of our brain synapses.
Our stepchildren have had a hard enough time with parental dispute and disappointment, and they have had no say in the matter. One day they’ve been a family, perhaps a dysfunctional one, and next they are separated from Mom and Dad, and sometimes from brother and sister. New blended families are tough on all members.
Grandmothers can be peacemakers. What an opportunity to step up to the plate! Now is our opportunity to disregard colour of skin, learn a new language, provide space for a different religious practice, offer a loving hug or an appreciative slap on a new shoulder and even provide some wisdom to a daughter who has little experience with the age and gender of a new step child.
Let’s review our limits. What do they really accomplish? Is our daughter’s resentment worth the decision to separate out the blood lines? Does the further entrenchment into isolation benefit either the grandchildren or us? Do we present a model of behaviour that will create love and harmony for our future families?
Do not all these questions melt before the warm smile of a new child at our dinner table?)
Google:
1. Support Urban Ecology
2. The EnviroLink Network - Green Legacies: A Donor's Guide for BC
3. BC Biodiversity - Slugs & Snails of BC
4. Grandmothers Campaign - Quick Group Listing
You can appreciate how difficult birthdays and holidays can be. I need a calendar just to keep all the dates straight, and with all the birthdays and holidays, and the grandchildren coming over to ask if I can chip in on movies and extra gas money and the special shoes they want to buy, money can be tight.
I’ve decided to set limits. The step grandchildren have their own set of grandparents. I shouldn’t be responsible for them. My daughter says I am mean and unfair.
Dear Name Challenged,
If there are financial limitations, we can suggest to our children an all or none gifting proposal. Every kid gets a present, but we may need some financial support from the parents of the children. If our budget is severely stressed by our new arrivals, and our children cannot afford to subsidize our gifting, we can switch from merchandize to baked goods. Every child loves icing, no matter the age. In twenty years, hot buttered love will be remembered far longer than the latest video game.
Unless we are allergic to children, let’s welcome the new additions. They bless our life with the opportunity to embrace new challenges. They may present us with a doublefold increase in our family happiness quotient. At the very least, the new name recollection should stimulate a few million of our brain synapses.
Our stepchildren have had a hard enough time with parental dispute and disappointment, and they have had no say in the matter. One day they’ve been a family, perhaps a dysfunctional one, and next they are separated from Mom and Dad, and sometimes from brother and sister. New blended families are tough on all members.
Grandmothers can be peacemakers. What an opportunity to step up to the plate! Now is our opportunity to disregard colour of skin, learn a new language, provide space for a different religious practice, offer a loving hug or an appreciative slap on a new shoulder and even provide some wisdom to a daughter who has little experience with the age and gender of a new step child.
Let’s review our limits. What do they really accomplish? Is our daughter’s resentment worth the decision to separate out the blood lines? Does the further entrenchment into isolation benefit either the grandchildren or us? Do we present a model of behaviour that will create love and harmony for our future families?
Do not all these questions melt before the warm smile of a new child at our dinner table?)
Google:
1. Support Urban Ecology
2. The EnviroLink Network - Green Legacies: A Donor's Guide for BC
3. BC Biodiversity - Slugs & Snails of BC
4. Grandmothers Campaign - Quick Group Listing
Question 53. Need for unstructured play
Dear 21st Century Dad, our daughter and her mother are at it again. Mom is a type A self improvement machine who signs our daughter up to every athletic, musical and personal development course that our community offers. We live in a small community. If a new dance instructor comes to town, Mom enrolls her. My daughter keeps going to these after school programs because she has my personality, and doesn’t resist her mother. She’s a little more laid back than her Mom.
On top of the afternoon programs, Mom harasses her daughter’s teachers to give the students more homework. Can kids learn too much? I’m afraid I am going to have a burnt out fourteen year old. Her mother says my laisse-faire attitude thwarts my daughter’s development. To me, my daughter looks exhausted. I definitely am. I have to drive her everywhere. Me. I just want to relax. Who’s right?
Dear Under a Motivational Thumb,
Every family is different. The father of the great 20th Century Spanish cellist Pablo Casals insisted his son sing in the church choir at the tender age of five. Casals was still practicing scales a couple of hour per day in his eighties. Pablo partially attributed his musical success to his father teaching him the intricacies of Gregorian music at the age of five. Nickolas Lemann in Slate Magazine suggests the Asian success in educational achievement is part of an assimilation process that prioritizes maniacal studying. J. Paul Getty, one of the richest men of the 20th century, said that the formula for success was to rise early, work hard, and strike oil. Sophocles said success is dependent on effort. Anthony Robbins, motivational guru, says, “The path to success is to take massive, determined action.” Spike Milligan, comedic member of The Goon Show, said his father had a profound influence upon him. He was a lunatic.
Chris Ellsasser, an associate professor of education at Pepperdine University, suggests that our children don’t have time enough in a day to do more than one hour of homework. He adds up the hours required to sleep, exercise, eat, attend school, commute to and from school, do school activities (sports, music), maintain hygiene, and reading. He discovers the allotment left for free time is approximately one hour per day. It’s always nice to symbolically be able to put our feet up for at least an hour a day, whatever the specific activity is that allows us to rest and reflect. Let’s find calculate our daughter’s schedule. Does she have at least one hour’s down time a day?
Do many of our daughter’s unstructured play time involve the computer? If she is at dance, at gymnastics, at cheerleading, the computer may be a welcome break taken away from all her physical activity. If she were at the opposite pole, did little physical exercise, our family might have the reminder that the virtual world of the computer does little to exercise our lung capacity (VO2 Max (the maximum amount of oxygen lungs can process during exercise) and nothing to improve our physical endurance and make our muscles stronger or more elastic.
Fortunately, our daughter does not suffer from the widespread issue that many parents hold about safety and exercise. Mom is encouraging her to cross train and develop expertise in many physical activities. Better that than petitioning the school ground to remove playground equipment and certain sports that a parent deems unsafe. Our children need to exercise their bodies and explore the limits of balance, strength, speed, individual and team challenges.
How much is too much? What’s most important is the question, “does she enjoy all these activities?” Casals, Getty, Robbins...their study pastimes fueled their zest for life. You comment that our daughter looks exhausted. Is this our projection, or is our daughter truly fueled by her extra curricular activities?
Worry not, in a year and a half she will be in a fully enmeshed in a hormonal quest and the boys whom she engages will either be attracted to her lifestyle, or they will pull her away from it. A new set of worries will displace the one we have now.
Free & Easy
By Venerable Lama Gendun Rinpoche
Happiness cannot be found
through great effort and willpower,
but is already present, in open relaxation and letting go.
Don't strain yourself,
there is nothing to do or undo.
Whatever momentarily arises in the body-mind
has no real importance at all,
has little reality whatsoever.
Why identify with, and become attached to it,
passing judgment upon it and ourselves?
Far better to simply
let the entire game happen on its own,
springing up and falling back like waves--
without changing or manipulating anything--
and notice how everything vanishes and
reappears, magically, again and again,
time without end.
Only our searching for happiness
prevents us from seeing it.
It's like a vivid rainbow which you pursue without ever catching,
or a dog chasing its own tail.
Although peace and happiness do not exist
as an actual thing or place,
it is always available
and accompanies you every instant.
Don't believe in the reality
of good and bad experiences;
they are like today's ephemeral weather,
like rainbows in the sky.
Wanting to grasp the ungraspable,
you exhaust yourself in vain.
As soon as you open and relax this tight fist of grasping,
infinite space is there--open, inviting and comfortable.
Make use of the spaciousness, this freedom and natural ease.
Don't search any further.
Don't go into the tangled jungle
looking for the great awakened elephant,
who is already resting quietly at home
in front of your own hearth.
Nothing to do or undo,
nothing to force,
nothing to want,
and nothing missing----
Emaho! Marvelous!
Everything happens by itself.
Google:
1. Stop Homework » Guest Blogger: There’s No Time for High School
2. [PDF] Get Out Get Active + Active After-school
Question 52. The power of peer power
Dear 21st Century Dad, for the last couple of years, when we tell our daughter what she can and cannot do, she flips on a disconnect switch. What we tell her doesn’t register. She’s fifteen now. She’s got a group of boys and girls that she hangs out with. She gets permission for how she lives her life from them, not us. It’s not like they are a gang wearing colours or keeping weapons, a few of them are nice kids. As for our parental connections and authority, I almost think it stops at being a wallet, a fridge and a warm, dry roof. This bunch of kids she hangs out with is her real parent. I feel like I’m just pocket change to her.
Dear Mr. Moneypants
Can you answer these questions? How do the sale’s figures for Gap clothes reflect youth’s disinterest in their product? Who are the last five season finalists on American Idol? Do you know seven friends you can text message to watch ‘Teenage Exorcist’ and ‘Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge’ this Friday night? Can you talk in pictures and symbols to communicate? Would you consider layering a sweater over your suit jacket? Who is Beyonce? Is stopping at your local shopping centre after work so important to you that you’ll die if you don’t? Do you underdress for the cold? Can you sleep thirteen hours straight? Are you listening to music or watching sport tonight?
These questions illuminate a few of the many differences between how our teenagers and we live our lives. We need to upload ourselves into modernity. Our daughter lives in a multimedia culture that pursues individuation, asserts one’s independence and autonomy from not only past models of behaviour (our family’s rules and habits), but even against other peer groups. The one perspective that all peer groups share is their mimicry of celebrity behaviour and product identification. What celebrities wear and do becomes an instant accessible message on YouTube and the television celebrity gossip/entertainment franchises.
Our daughter’s peer group is necessary to her. She can watch others in her group make social mistakes, learn the consequences and adjust her own behaviour. She can intermingle with personality types that are unavailable in our own family structure. She can use her peer group to experience both criticism and praise of her identity without excessive negative fallout. She will change peer groups as she matures. Her peer group is a bridge that leads away from our own expectations of how she should live her life and ultimately, one that she will design herself.
We can comfort ourselves that she will have been thoroughly conditioned, good or bad, by many of our beliefs, now that she is fifteen. The central question we can ask ourselves is how can we foster a family atmosphere that will nurture her continued healthy growth? She needs a format to explore who she wants to be without heaps of our biased judgments.
Can we make friends with beliefs, attitudes and behaviours that are different from our own, and not be fearful? Can we be unconcerned by minor annoyances, pick our points of difference and conflict carefully, and encourage our daughter’s pursuit of her individuality?
We can take some practical steps.
1. Open up our house to the peer group with some preagreements, set in stone, about restricted activities. Get ready. These kids may have been in a restricted noise environment at school all day. Peer groups make noise. We can turn up the volume on our IPOD.
2. We can set aside some food money for treats and load up the eating trough with some healthy inexpensive food snacks, cut carrots and the like.
3. We can blow the activity budget occasionally and take as many as we can afford to the skating rink, the pool, the movies, whatever activity that would make other parents appreciate our generosity, they little knowing that we extend our generosity to corral our daughter without her resistance.
Google:
1. IYD: For Parents - Power of Peers
Key into YouTube:
1. Peer Pressure and Bleached Hair
Dear Mr. Moneypants
Can you answer these questions? How do the sale’s figures for Gap clothes reflect youth’s disinterest in their product? Who are the last five season finalists on American Idol? Do you know seven friends you can text message to watch ‘Teenage Exorcist’ and ‘Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge’ this Friday night? Can you talk in pictures and symbols to communicate? Would you consider layering a sweater over your suit jacket? Who is Beyonce? Is stopping at your local shopping centre after work so important to you that you’ll die if you don’t? Do you underdress for the cold? Can you sleep thirteen hours straight? Are you listening to music or watching sport tonight?
These questions illuminate a few of the many differences between how our teenagers and we live our lives. We need to upload ourselves into modernity. Our daughter lives in a multimedia culture that pursues individuation, asserts one’s independence and autonomy from not only past models of behaviour (our family’s rules and habits), but even against other peer groups. The one perspective that all peer groups share is their mimicry of celebrity behaviour and product identification. What celebrities wear and do becomes an instant accessible message on YouTube and the television celebrity gossip/entertainment franchises.
Our daughter’s peer group is necessary to her. She can watch others in her group make social mistakes, learn the consequences and adjust her own behaviour. She can intermingle with personality types that are unavailable in our own family structure. She can use her peer group to experience both criticism and praise of her identity without excessive negative fallout. She will change peer groups as she matures. Her peer group is a bridge that leads away from our own expectations of how she should live her life and ultimately, one that she will design herself.
We can comfort ourselves that she will have been thoroughly conditioned, good or bad, by many of our beliefs, now that she is fifteen. The central question we can ask ourselves is how can we foster a family atmosphere that will nurture her continued healthy growth? She needs a format to explore who she wants to be without heaps of our biased judgments.
Can we make friends with beliefs, attitudes and behaviours that are different from our own, and not be fearful? Can we be unconcerned by minor annoyances, pick our points of difference and conflict carefully, and encourage our daughter’s pursuit of her individuality?
We can take some practical steps.
1. Open up our house to the peer group with some preagreements, set in stone, about restricted activities. Get ready. These kids may have been in a restricted noise environment at school all day. Peer groups make noise. We can turn up the volume on our IPOD.
2. We can set aside some food money for treats and load up the eating trough with some healthy inexpensive food snacks, cut carrots and the like.
3. We can blow the activity budget occasionally and take as many as we can afford to the skating rink, the pool, the movies, whatever activity that would make other parents appreciate our generosity, they little knowing that we extend our generosity to corral our daughter without her resistance.
Google:
1. IYD: For Parents - Power of Peers
Key into YouTube:
1. Peer Pressure and Bleached Hair
Question 51. gambling
Dear 21st Century Dad, I taught my kid how to play cards four years ago. He’s sixteen now. I figured it would be a good way to tap into his brain before he got too much a teenager and got difficult to talk to.
On the plus side, it kindled a natural ability in math. He’s says he’s even going to study statistics when he graduates from high school. We’ve had a lot of hours together that probably most dads wouldn’t get to enjoy.
The reality shows, all the killer detective programs, literally anything that’s not Texas Holdem or Poker, he calls, ‘pussy’ shows. He says, “The real action is in the cards.” Occasionally he’ll watch the Mixed Martial Arts and the boxing with me. Here’s the down side. I think the kid has become addicted to gambling. He spends a lot of time on the Internet. I had to give him a MasterCard number so he could play.
Last month, his math teacher phoned me to tell me how impressed he is with my son’s marks and then the principle called me to the school to tell me he was organizing bets on the school football games. My kid says he’ll be able to pay his way through school.” I believe him. He has owned a Jeep for a year, even though he couldn’t drive it for six months because he was too young. I don’t know whether to be concerned or not.
Dear Straight Flushed,
Our boy’s proficiency in math and his entrepreneurial schoolyard skills indicate he is already a compulsive gambler.
Internet gambling sites serve up to 50,000 gamblers at a times; that’s a phenomenal number of people throwing down money on virtual card tables. Imagine the numbers when China and other less developed nations go fully on line. American players such as Jason Berkowitz and Justin Bonomo have made or lost thousands of dollars in a day. As an 18 year old high school drop out, Jason Berkowitz won $577,343 in the World Championship of Online Poker. Jason was playing on line under his mother’s name before his 18th birthday.
In a 2003 study, The Nova Scotia Gaming Commission found that boys viewed gambling and betting to be a low risk activity and viewed them as positive activities. No wonder: they see their parents and every other mentor/model in society either buying a weekly Loto, or heading off to the bingo.
Compulsive teen gamblers and teen drug addicts share many of the same social dysfunctions: skipped classes and failed grades. They suffer heightened states of anxiety have poor coping skills. They will change their friends for new ones who support their lifestyle. They can be no fun to live with. If they end up owing money, we will have to watch our money and our possessions like hawks and we may find the police at our door looking for a thief.
Let’s give attention to these figures. 80% of teens in this last year have gambled; 5 to 6% of those are compulsive gamblers and a further 10 to 15% are at risk.
If our son has been organizing schoolyard betting games, we might attempt to find him a reputable professional gambler who can guide him in the gambling game, educate him to the darker side of the gaming world, and keep him out of jail. A professional therapist may enlighten him to the more balanced end of his personality.
Let’s see him as a professional in the making. We can educate him about the importance of keeping in tiptop physical shape. His training schedules should be no different than any other golf, hockey, football, billiards or basketball player. We can teach him the requirements that any professional needs to be at the top of his sport. Let’s share the cost of an RESP and talk about the lifestyle he may have after he gets his stats degree. Perhaps, we can cautiously nurture his mathematical talents and see if an alternative lifestyle goal presents itself to him.
We need to have a straight talk. Our son is addicted to high risk end games. He appears to have an intelligence that matches his passion. Wouldn’t it be wonderful for him to achieve his competitive dreams and remain in top psychological and physical health?
Google:
1. 2003 study, The Nova Scotia Gaming Commission
2. BC's Partnership for Responsible Gambling
Key into YouTube:
1. Texas Holdem – Position
On the plus side, it kindled a natural ability in math. He’s says he’s even going to study statistics when he graduates from high school. We’ve had a lot of hours together that probably most dads wouldn’t get to enjoy.
The reality shows, all the killer detective programs, literally anything that’s not Texas Holdem or Poker, he calls, ‘pussy’ shows. He says, “The real action is in the cards.” Occasionally he’ll watch the Mixed Martial Arts and the boxing with me. Here’s the down side. I think the kid has become addicted to gambling. He spends a lot of time on the Internet. I had to give him a MasterCard number so he could play.
Last month, his math teacher phoned me to tell me how impressed he is with my son’s marks and then the principle called me to the school to tell me he was organizing bets on the school football games. My kid says he’ll be able to pay his way through school.” I believe him. He has owned a Jeep for a year, even though he couldn’t drive it for six months because he was too young. I don’t know whether to be concerned or not.
Dear Straight Flushed,
Our boy’s proficiency in math and his entrepreneurial schoolyard skills indicate he is already a compulsive gambler.
Internet gambling sites serve up to 50,000 gamblers at a times; that’s a phenomenal number of people throwing down money on virtual card tables. Imagine the numbers when China and other less developed nations go fully on line. American players such as Jason Berkowitz and Justin Bonomo have made or lost thousands of dollars in a day. As an 18 year old high school drop out, Jason Berkowitz won $577,343 in the World Championship of Online Poker. Jason was playing on line under his mother’s name before his 18th birthday.
In a 2003 study, The Nova Scotia Gaming Commission found that boys viewed gambling and betting to be a low risk activity and viewed them as positive activities. No wonder: they see their parents and every other mentor/model in society either buying a weekly Loto, or heading off to the bingo.
Compulsive teen gamblers and teen drug addicts share many of the same social dysfunctions: skipped classes and failed grades. They suffer heightened states of anxiety have poor coping skills. They will change their friends for new ones who support their lifestyle. They can be no fun to live with. If they end up owing money, we will have to watch our money and our possessions like hawks and we may find the police at our door looking for a thief.
Let’s give attention to these figures. 80% of teens in this last year have gambled; 5 to 6% of those are compulsive gamblers and a further 10 to 15% are at risk.
If our son has been organizing schoolyard betting games, we might attempt to find him a reputable professional gambler who can guide him in the gambling game, educate him to the darker side of the gaming world, and keep him out of jail. A professional therapist may enlighten him to the more balanced end of his personality.
Let’s see him as a professional in the making. We can educate him about the importance of keeping in tiptop physical shape. His training schedules should be no different than any other golf, hockey, football, billiards or basketball player. We can teach him the requirements that any professional needs to be at the top of his sport. Let’s share the cost of an RESP and talk about the lifestyle he may have after he gets his stats degree. Perhaps, we can cautiously nurture his mathematical talents and see if an alternative lifestyle goal presents itself to him.
We need to have a straight talk. Our son is addicted to high risk end games. He appears to have an intelligence that matches his passion. Wouldn’t it be wonderful for him to achieve his competitive dreams and remain in top psychological and physical health?
Google:
1. 2003 study, The Nova Scotia Gaming Commission
2. BC's Partnership for Responsible Gambling
Key into YouTube:
1. Texas Holdem – Position
Question 50. Father/daughter sexuality
Dear 21st Century Dad, I’m a single dad who is starting to feel a little uneasy. As hard as it is to admit it, my daughter is becoming a young woman. My daughter is making the movement from being an adolescent to being a teenager. Scary!
The adolescent part of her has a dozen cuddly dolls at the head of her bed. She watches what I would call pretty insipid Kids’ Channel family sitcoms, nothing inappropriate for her age, and whines at me if I’m too tired to do the tuck in routine at sleeptime.
The teenager part of her can sing the words to all the songs everyone listens to on pop radio. Although a lot of that stuff is way over her maturity level, it’s on the radio everywhere.
She is turning 13 and she must be ready to have her period. She is growing breasts and she asked for money to buy a training bra. She has started to mix the sitcoms with makeover fashion programs and she is beginning to develop this attractive teenage image.
I don’t know how to express my affection any more. I’m not sure if I should hug her, or pat her on the shoulder.
Dear Tentative Touch,
There’s a time and a place for appropriate touch and it’s probably what you have been doing all along. We hug a child when they hurt themselves. We share appreciation with words and gestures like slapping each other’s palms in a victory accomplishment. We can sit touching each other hip to hip on the same chesterfield because we are father and child, or give a hug through the blankets and a kiss on the forehead during a goodnight sleep routine. (Our daughter will let us know when this nighttime custom will no longer be appreciated.) These forms of touch express an unequivocal pattern of behaviour. The intentions are clear.
To protect our child against any form of sexual harassment she may encounter in the world outside the safe boundaries of our family, we can begin by making the discussion of sexuality a trigger free topic. The discussion need not be different than questions about if there is a God, how the universe works, why the sky is blue, or why math is important. Let’s be open about sex talk. If we are reluctant participants, ask one or two of our trusted women friends to introduce her into the nuances of her gender. Women can be best at exploring these topics with other women; however, we can join the group at least once to emphasize that talk about sex is normal between men and women.
The immanent approach of our daughter’s menarche can cloud and confuse her thinking and her emotions. We can talk to our daughter about the importance of trusting her feelings about other people. How will she know? We can ask her to familiarize herself with the link between emotions and body sensations. What does a change in her breathing rhythm mean? Does she get a lump in the throat? Does she experience weird sensations in her stomach? Does she blush? Does her heart beat faster? Does she sweat or experience temperature changes? These abrupt physiological changes in her body are telling her something is wrong about the person she is with, and that perhaps the onset of these body sensations are warning signs of danger.
Our daughter is the owner of her physical body. Her ownership rights include her permission to be comfortable with saying “No” to relatives, friends, strangers and other people who want to communicate with her by using physical contact. That includes Dads.
In the meantime, give her the usual amount of hugs and appreciative pats on the shoulder. Well nurtured children grow up to be nurturing adults. Our world needs lots of both of them.
Google:
1. Fatherwork
2. Fathering Your Adolescent: Ways to Strengthen Your Relationship ...
3. www.mydad.ca
Key into YouTube:
1. Father And Daughter + Film & Animation
2. Father's Day Video from "Evolution of Dad" -- Part1 of 7
The adolescent part of her has a dozen cuddly dolls at the head of her bed. She watches what I would call pretty insipid Kids’ Channel family sitcoms, nothing inappropriate for her age, and whines at me if I’m too tired to do the tuck in routine at sleeptime.
The teenager part of her can sing the words to all the songs everyone listens to on pop radio. Although a lot of that stuff is way over her maturity level, it’s on the radio everywhere.
She is turning 13 and she must be ready to have her period. She is growing breasts and she asked for money to buy a training bra. She has started to mix the sitcoms with makeover fashion programs and she is beginning to develop this attractive teenage image.
I don’t know how to express my affection any more. I’m not sure if I should hug her, or pat her on the shoulder.
Dear Tentative Touch,
There’s a time and a place for appropriate touch and it’s probably what you have been doing all along. We hug a child when they hurt themselves. We share appreciation with words and gestures like slapping each other’s palms in a victory accomplishment. We can sit touching each other hip to hip on the same chesterfield because we are father and child, or give a hug through the blankets and a kiss on the forehead during a goodnight sleep routine. (Our daughter will let us know when this nighttime custom will no longer be appreciated.) These forms of touch express an unequivocal pattern of behaviour. The intentions are clear.
To protect our child against any form of sexual harassment she may encounter in the world outside the safe boundaries of our family, we can begin by making the discussion of sexuality a trigger free topic. The discussion need not be different than questions about if there is a God, how the universe works, why the sky is blue, or why math is important. Let’s be open about sex talk. If we are reluctant participants, ask one or two of our trusted women friends to introduce her into the nuances of her gender. Women can be best at exploring these topics with other women; however, we can join the group at least once to emphasize that talk about sex is normal between men and women.
The immanent approach of our daughter’s menarche can cloud and confuse her thinking and her emotions. We can talk to our daughter about the importance of trusting her feelings about other people. How will she know? We can ask her to familiarize herself with the link between emotions and body sensations. What does a change in her breathing rhythm mean? Does she get a lump in the throat? Does she experience weird sensations in her stomach? Does she blush? Does her heart beat faster? Does she sweat or experience temperature changes? These abrupt physiological changes in her body are telling her something is wrong about the person she is with, and that perhaps the onset of these body sensations are warning signs of danger.
Our daughter is the owner of her physical body. Her ownership rights include her permission to be comfortable with saying “No” to relatives, friends, strangers and other people who want to communicate with her by using physical contact. That includes Dads.
In the meantime, give her the usual amount of hugs and appreciative pats on the shoulder. Well nurtured children grow up to be nurturing adults. Our world needs lots of both of them.
Google:
1. Fatherwork
2. Fathering Your Adolescent: Ways to Strengthen Your Relationship ...
3. www.mydad.ca
Key into YouTube:
1. Father And Daughter + Film & Animation
2. Father's Day Video from "Evolution of Dad" -- Part1 of 7
Question 49. Holiday Visits …With Boyfriend?
Dear 21st Century Dad, my fifteen year old daughter wants to join her nineteen year old boyfriend for a family get together at his mother’s house in Vancouver, a day’s travel from here, for five days. I like the boy. His parents are separated; he lives with his dad here. I’ve met his dad once and I don’t like him. He doesn’t like my daughter. We are not exactly on speaking terms and I know from talking to the boy that his mother and father don’t communicate at all. No wonder considering his father. I can hardly ask him for a reference about his ex-wife.
My daughter has always been pretty good around curfews and the boy has always been respectful to me. They have been going together for a year and they are really close. I know he’s had STD tests and he is negative. I’ve talked to my daughter about sex and I have put her on the pill but it won’t come into effect for two weeks. My daughter is persistent in asking for what she wants. What do you recommend?
Dear It’s Your Call But,
We never have liked the disparity in ages between our two suitors. However, our daughter and her boyfriend have had a relationship for a year now. Contact the mother and get the low down on the sleeping quarters. Modes of sexual conduct, and permissiveness, vary from family to family and it is the last assumption to be relied upon. What we permit in our family could either be viewed as permissive or outdated. Both comparisons mean little if our daughter crosses the last sexual frontier in a frivolous manner.
Many family get togethers are polite affairs and some are arenas that accommodate the bottle and the break out of drugs. Do we know what happens in the Vancouver home? Our daughter’s suitor has had a year long relationship with our daughter; we should be familiar with his habits of intoxication, if he has any. We would talk to her mother to get a sense of her beliefs around recreational drugs and alcohol.
We would swallow our discomfort with the boy’s father. Let’s talk to him. There probably would be no better character reference than this divorced dad. Anything unsettling to us could easily be ironed out with more questions to mother and son.
We would want to know who is to be the chaperone? And will a chaperone be available all the time, and would the chaperone be the same person? We would want to see a schedule for activities, and know who they will be visiting when they become bored with being in the house after a couple of days.
We would make clear what curfew times our daughter has now, and how stringent we would expect the curfew to be maintained.
We would expect our daughter to phone us morning and evening to check in, just a polite and short “this is what I’m up to”, and while she is on the phone, why not just pass the phone to the mother so we can have a polite, “I hope our daughter is helping you around the house.”
We would give our daughter an emergency fund to be used only to get a taxi and a bus trip home, and/or be prepared to drive or fly to Vancouver to retrieve her if worse ever came to worse, and she needed our support.
Do we trust our daughter? Do we sound anxious and uptight?
It’s worth it. She’s not eighteen, though the same conditions and anxieties could arise.
If our daughter were absent from her boyfriend for five days, would our decision to say yes or no alter what these two teens intend to do with their lifetime together?
Society applauds when it learns of marriages lasting the span of a lifetime. Are we being naive seeing these two together for a lifetime?
Key into YouTube:
1. The Monkees- The Chaperone Clip
2. keyara and friends
My daughter has always been pretty good around curfews and the boy has always been respectful to me. They have been going together for a year and they are really close. I know he’s had STD tests and he is negative. I’ve talked to my daughter about sex and I have put her on the pill but it won’t come into effect for two weeks. My daughter is persistent in asking for what she wants. What do you recommend?
Dear It’s Your Call But,
We never have liked the disparity in ages between our two suitors. However, our daughter and her boyfriend have had a relationship for a year now. Contact the mother and get the low down on the sleeping quarters. Modes of sexual conduct, and permissiveness, vary from family to family and it is the last assumption to be relied upon. What we permit in our family could either be viewed as permissive or outdated. Both comparisons mean little if our daughter crosses the last sexual frontier in a frivolous manner.
Many family get togethers are polite affairs and some are arenas that accommodate the bottle and the break out of drugs. Do we know what happens in the Vancouver home? Our daughter’s suitor has had a year long relationship with our daughter; we should be familiar with his habits of intoxication, if he has any. We would talk to her mother to get a sense of her beliefs around recreational drugs and alcohol.
We would swallow our discomfort with the boy’s father. Let’s talk to him. There probably would be no better character reference than this divorced dad. Anything unsettling to us could easily be ironed out with more questions to mother and son.
We would want to know who is to be the chaperone? And will a chaperone be available all the time, and would the chaperone be the same person? We would want to see a schedule for activities, and know who they will be visiting when they become bored with being in the house after a couple of days.
We would make clear what curfew times our daughter has now, and how stringent we would expect the curfew to be maintained.
We would expect our daughter to phone us morning and evening to check in, just a polite and short “this is what I’m up to”, and while she is on the phone, why not just pass the phone to the mother so we can have a polite, “I hope our daughter is helping you around the house.”
We would give our daughter an emergency fund to be used only to get a taxi and a bus trip home, and/or be prepared to drive or fly to Vancouver to retrieve her if worse ever came to worse, and she needed our support.
Do we trust our daughter? Do we sound anxious and uptight?
It’s worth it. She’s not eighteen, though the same conditions and anxieties could arise.
If our daughter were absent from her boyfriend for five days, would our decision to say yes or no alter what these two teens intend to do with their lifetime together?
Society applauds when it learns of marriages lasting the span of a lifetime. Are we being naive seeing these two together for a lifetime?
Key into YouTube:
1. The Monkees- The Chaperone Clip
2. keyara and friends
Question 48. gender and daughter
Dear 21st Century Dad, part of our family is in denial, part is in the active antagonist mode. I’m not sure what to do about it. My daughter celebrated her 15th year birthday party two weeks ago. Everything should have been golden. She organized the pizza delivery, the birthday card invitations, the treats, even the rides home for three of her friends whose parents couldn’t provide transportation home, and she decorated the cake. So what’s the problem? Her six guests were female and all of them wore matching t-shirts that said, “We’re here. We’re Queer. Get Used to It.” My daughter’s birthday celebration turned out to be a coming out declaration. My wife has buried her face in the bedroom. My 17 year old son refers with derision in his voice to his sister and every other problematic person in his life as being “so gay”. The commentary between my son and daughter is disgusting. I’ve no one to talk to. What can I do?
Dear Gendershocked,
It’s time to do some research before we start the conversation with ourselves. Let’s Google words such as queer, gay, dyke, intersex, lesbian, homo, transgendered, transvestite, bisexual, and the native Two Spirited. Let’s recognize that under all this gender naming are people we may have ignored or marginalized. Our daughter claims to belong to this minority. Canadian law protects gender minority human rights, and has extended their legal rights to same sex marriage, shared pensions, and parental matters.
Our family reflects the reality that many of us are sociologically ahead of what has been passed down as law by the Supreme Court of Canada, while some of us are behind, and prefer to keep it that way. We have a daughter and a sister to love, support and cherish.
Research indicates that homosexuals and lesbians accept their sexual orientation as early as age eleven, and many earlier. If we have not been awakened to signs of our daughter’s sexual orientation before her 15th year coming out celebration, she could be in an experimental stage. She doesn’t know if she is queer or not.
To her, an exploration might be like eating a different kind of food or listening to opera when she’s always had Avril Lavigne in her MP3. A stern opposition may kick her exploration over the line into determination. It’s time we discuss whether she is exploring her gender role or celebrating the confirmation of her gender identity. If she is queer, whatever you and your wife believe, there will be no changing her gender. Queer is queer!
If she is experimenting, ask for a conversation about sexuality with her. This might be a good time to bring in a professional counselor, youth advocate, mediator or therapist: one who is not fearful of gender issues, biased, and not alarmist. Our daughter has ‘come out’ into what she hopes is the most supportive environment other than her queer peers, her family. An expert on gender roles will help to normalize our family’s acceptance of her aspirations or gender identity.
Our son’s derisive name calling commentary borders on being abusive. The relationship he has had with his sister seems to be non cooperative, non supportive and unfriendly. Why wouldn’t he jump upon this opportunity to further deride and isolate her in the family? Include him in the round table discussion as well.
We cannot condone gender oppression in our family. We cannot condone racial, religious or ethnic oppression in our family, or in the wider world. Let’s embrace our new family’s identity. We may have many dear friends and relatives whom will have difficulty dealing with our transition. We can make clear to all, our family has chosen to view this recent development in our daughter’s life as an opportunity to learn and embrace those with unique identities. We can also be patient.
On this small planet of diverse beings, we need to do more than protect minority rights. We need to celebrate our diversity. Regardless of her gender preference, she will always be our daughter and a treasure upon whom we can shower our love and respect.
Google:
1. B.C. human rights coalition +2007
2. Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Teens in B.C. Still Face Health ...
3. Queer British Columbia's Journal
Key into YouTube:
1. Out Of The Shadows - Transgender Children
2. Gay teen suicide
Question 47. Teen begins dating
Dear 21st Century Dad, I found a condom in my son’s drawer. He’s only 14. I had no idea. I didn’t even think he liked girls yet. What should I say to him?
Dear My Head Is In The Cupboard,
How much do we know about his sexual habits? Most children keep their parents in the dark, and a lot of parents prefer it that way. Use some intuition. If the boy has been strutting about in an odd manner and has been macho talking with his buddies, we can guess that he has joined the adult game early.
If our son is contravening our family’s religious agreements or specific family and cultural values, there can be a rupture of trust and worse, the foundations of faith. We can sit down with the boy and explore how his peer social pressures and his physical maturation can lead to difficulties.
Knowledge about sex gives teenagers the power to make informed choices and possibly the ability to say no.
If we feel overwhelmed by the sexual precocity of our children, know that physicians and psychologists are as well. Scientists theorize that variables such as the use of DDT, the leakage of toxic chemicals from plastics, weight gain, the ingestion of hormones and pharmaceuticals in our food, and a hyper sexualized media are changing the onset of sexual maturity in our youth.
Johnny will experience ejaculation earlier than you ever did. In girls, American studies have indicated that the average age of menarche, or first menstruation, had fallen dramatically (from 17 to 13) between the middle of the 19th Century to the middle of the 20th Century. We are 21st Century parents with 21st Century children. While some of our older methods of raising children will remain, we have to face up to the fact that our children are physically a lot different than we were.
We can inform ourselves by calling The Sex Sense Line (in British Columbia
1 800 739 7367).
Google:
1. The Canadian Federation for Sexual Health (for a number near you for information on sexuality, birth control, relationships, AIDS, sexually transmitted infections, pregnancy options and anything to do with sexuality.)
3. Taking The Pledge , Ed Bradley Reports On Abstinence-Only Programs ...
Key into YouTube:
1. How to put on a condom Correctly
2. Abstinence - 100% Protection
Dear My Head Is In The Cupboard,
How much do we know about his sexual habits? Most children keep their parents in the dark, and a lot of parents prefer it that way. Use some intuition. If the boy has been strutting about in an odd manner and has been macho talking with his buddies, we can guess that he has joined the adult game early.
If our son is contravening our family’s religious agreements or specific family and cultural values, there can be a rupture of trust and worse, the foundations of faith. We can sit down with the boy and explore how his peer social pressures and his physical maturation can lead to difficulties.
Knowledge about sex gives teenagers the power to make informed choices and possibly the ability to say no.
If we feel overwhelmed by the sexual precocity of our children, know that physicians and psychologists are as well. Scientists theorize that variables such as the use of DDT, the leakage of toxic chemicals from plastics, weight gain, the ingestion of hormones and pharmaceuticals in our food, and a hyper sexualized media are changing the onset of sexual maturity in our youth.
Johnny will experience ejaculation earlier than you ever did. In girls, American studies have indicated that the average age of menarche, or first menstruation, had fallen dramatically (from 17 to 13) between the middle of the 19th Century to the middle of the 20th Century. We are 21st Century parents with 21st Century children. While some of our older methods of raising children will remain, we have to face up to the fact that our children are physically a lot different than we were.
We can inform ourselves by calling The Sex Sense Line (in British Columbia
1 800 739 7367).
Google:
1. The Canadian Federation for Sexual Health (for a number near you for information on sexuality, birth control, relationships, AIDS, sexually transmitted infections, pregnancy options and anything to do with sexuality.)
3. Taking The Pledge , Ed Bradley Reports On Abstinence-Only Programs ...
Key into YouTube:
1. How to put on a condom Correctly
2. Abstinence - 100% Protection
Question 46. Where Is She Getting Her Money?
Dear 21st Century Dad, my sixteen-year old daughter got expelled from the remainder of the school year. I begged a friend with some pull to get her into an independent learning program. Four hours school per day was too much for her! I used to pay her to do chores. Not any more. I have to redo everything she says she’s done. So maybe she should work for a living? No way. She’s not interested in a job. She says she earns her own money so that form of control is lost too.
Dear Ragged Around The Edges,
Sounds like we need to put the Quality Control issues on the back burner and put the heat on where she gets her money. No money, no job at sixteen? The real issue to explore is her suspicious finances. Do you know where she is getting her money?
If she hasn’t asked for money in a week, don’t worry. Most teenagers will help their destitute friends for at least a week in the form of housing, food and money. Past that, the hosting parents well begin the interrogation and the even Good Samaritan teenager might become a little less supportive when Mom and Dad’s money has stipulations on it.
Sometimes a boyfriend may have a MacFastFood job and take on a supportive role. It’s ok to be inquisitive if our daughter has had a long-term relationship with her boyfriend. We know his last name and we may even be on a first name basis with his mother. Why not explain the scenario to her? Tell her we have no idea how our daughter is supporting herself. We’ll find out soon enough if their Johnny is footing the whole relationship bill. Remember, two sixteen year olds at a movie costs between sixteen to twenty five bucks. Then there’s popcorn. That’s four hours work at the MacFastFood.
Is it time to do a personal and a house inventory? Have our diamond rings have taken a hike? Has money been disappearing from our purse? Do we have the same number of bottles in our liquor supply? Is there still a hint of potatoes in the Vodka or has she replaced it with water? Is there still a chair in the living room to sit down upon? Ragged around the edges, let’s consider the results of our inventory before we have a discussion with our daughter.
Based upon these findings, we may want to do a self-inventory (always a good place to start!). Are we setting our daughter up to fail? If there’s a real problem with theft of house articles, do we continue to stock up the liquor cabinet? Do we keep a lock on the cabinet? Do we inventory the cabinet to stop wrongful incriminations? Do we keep our cash and cards on our body, or in a secure place?
If your daughter is guilty, remember, a thief in our midst is no different from a thief on the other side of the door.
Are we taking all precautions necessary to avoid temptations, to prevent the subsequent accusations, recriminations and sometime mistakes that follow?
Is our daughter doing drugs? Are we aware of any sexual exploitation of teens occurring in your community? Would we be able to recognize if sexual exploitation is concern for her?
How’s this for a 21st Century concern? Friends with benefits are teens whom our daughter consorts with to get money by selling them portions of a bottle of liquor, prescription drugs or to provide sexual favour. Are we calling our daughter a prostitute?
No.
Groups of 21st Century Teens have a different conception of sex than we do. Giving oral sex or offering anal intercourse is not genital sex, so it’s not necessarily having sex.
Here’s the primary discourse we will have with our daughter. Determine that our daughter’s safety and our own self care are top of the list topics. As part of our self care program, we can take a course on how to speak from our heart instead of from our fearful and reactionary guts. Then we can consider how we are going to keep our cool when we explore the notion of sexuality with our daughter.
Google:
1. Amazon.com: How to Deal With Your Acting up Teenager: Practical ...
2. http://home.earthlink.net/~hopefull/i-statem.htm
3. http://changingminds.org/techniques/assertiveness
/standing_up_for_rights.htm
4. Taking The Pledge , Ed Bradley Reports On Abstinence-Only Programs ...
Dear Ragged Around The Edges,
Sounds like we need to put the Quality Control issues on the back burner and put the heat on where she gets her money. No money, no job at sixteen? The real issue to explore is her suspicious finances. Do you know where she is getting her money?
If she hasn’t asked for money in a week, don’t worry. Most teenagers will help their destitute friends for at least a week in the form of housing, food and money. Past that, the hosting parents well begin the interrogation and the even Good Samaritan teenager might become a little less supportive when Mom and Dad’s money has stipulations on it.
Sometimes a boyfriend may have a MacFastFood job and take on a supportive role. It’s ok to be inquisitive if our daughter has had a long-term relationship with her boyfriend. We know his last name and we may even be on a first name basis with his mother. Why not explain the scenario to her? Tell her we have no idea how our daughter is supporting herself. We’ll find out soon enough if their Johnny is footing the whole relationship bill. Remember, two sixteen year olds at a movie costs between sixteen to twenty five bucks. Then there’s popcorn. That’s four hours work at the MacFastFood.
Is it time to do a personal and a house inventory? Have our diamond rings have taken a hike? Has money been disappearing from our purse? Do we have the same number of bottles in our liquor supply? Is there still a hint of potatoes in the Vodka or has she replaced it with water? Is there still a chair in the living room to sit down upon? Ragged around the edges, let’s consider the results of our inventory before we have a discussion with our daughter.
Based upon these findings, we may want to do a self-inventory (always a good place to start!). Are we setting our daughter up to fail? If there’s a real problem with theft of house articles, do we continue to stock up the liquor cabinet? Do we keep a lock on the cabinet? Do we inventory the cabinet to stop wrongful incriminations? Do we keep our cash and cards on our body, or in a secure place?
If your daughter is guilty, remember, a thief in our midst is no different from a thief on the other side of the door.
Are we taking all precautions necessary to avoid temptations, to prevent the subsequent accusations, recriminations and sometime mistakes that follow?
Is our daughter doing drugs? Are we aware of any sexual exploitation of teens occurring in your community? Would we be able to recognize if sexual exploitation is concern for her?
How’s this for a 21st Century concern? Friends with benefits are teens whom our daughter consorts with to get money by selling them portions of a bottle of liquor, prescription drugs or to provide sexual favour. Are we calling our daughter a prostitute?
No.
Groups of 21st Century Teens have a different conception of sex than we do. Giving oral sex or offering anal intercourse is not genital sex, so it’s not necessarily having sex.
Here’s the primary discourse we will have with our daughter. Determine that our daughter’s safety and our own self care are top of the list topics. As part of our self care program, we can take a course on how to speak from our heart instead of from our fearful and reactionary guts. Then we can consider how we are going to keep our cool when we explore the notion of sexuality with our daughter.
Google:
1. Amazon.com: How to Deal With Your Acting up Teenager: Practical ...
2. http://home.earthlink.net/~hopefull/i-statem.htm
3. http://changingminds.org/techniques/assertiveness
/standing_up_for_rights.htm
4. Taking The Pledge , Ed Bradley Reports On Abstinence-Only Programs ...
Question 45. Logger and structured absence
Dear 21st Century Dad, my husband is a supervisor at a logging site. When he is away at camp for a month at a time, he will have no contact with myself or his two teen boys, 13 and 16, and his 8 year old daughter. It’s not because he doesn’t love us or is a bad father; he’s tucked away in a mountain range and even the cell phones don’t work.
When he gets home, our house goes through a re-entry cycle. After 16 years, we have learned to make our individual adjustments. The problem is our older two boys. They’ve charted their own independent course over the last three years, and the fires light up when their dad tries to lay down the law, after being away for two months. Last week, my husband demanded everyone be home for supper at five. No excuses. We were all to eat together. Supper tasted dry and bitter.
It’s impossible. When he’s away, we don’t do that anymore. I cook for four people, and let the boys reheat or cook their own dinner. They’ve become good cooks and thank goodness for it. They have girlfriends, do sports, and work at part time jobs that make them even more independent.
Our little girl was crying the other night because of the arguments. It gets too close to being physical.
Dear Logger Bride,
In a family unit, young children live at the bottom of a top down hierarchical system. We limit our children’s knowledge to the emotional and intellectual world we present them. Our husband’s structured absences can be a normal occurrence, and his return, especially to pre-adolescent children, can be an event marking a time of food fests, gifts, long missed hugs, an extra voice to appeal a consideration, and even a tangible proof to other children that a real father exists.
The glowing scenario of the happy reunited family can disintegrate as our children approach the teenage years. Dad the loving father figure becomes THE other authority figure to whom a teenager must negotiate curfew times, allowances, chores, homework obligations, selection of friends, the type of music listened to in the house, a share of the computer time, the television, and demands by rights of family pecking order the favorite, most comfortable chair. Worse, his demands are either a heavy constraining blanket or a long distance presence that can be ignored. To a teenager, Mom saying no to a request sounds like a single voice in the wilderness compared to both parents present and voicing a loud and simultaneous NO.
Our family needs to come together to do some brainstorming. We are growing up and growing older. Do we need to grow apart? One sure way to get the family together around the dinner table, and in good spirits, is to invite the boy’s girlfriends and a couple of their friends to a back garden barbecue. Let’s remember, good food is family glue.
We can encourage our boys’ independence and self esteem by asking them to select the barbecue menu and maybe we can even pass along a chef’s hat and apron to one or both of them. A well prepared and finely appreciated meal can do wonders for the self esteem department. If our boys weekend work schedule conflicts with getaways to camp sites and swimming sites, we can open up our home to an eating party, a game night or a laugh at the family picture album comedy hour. What other family activities can excite a family diverse in ages? Are there relatives immediate to the neighborhood we can get to know again?
Eating together as a family unit cements the family bonds. Seven nights a week may be an impossibility. Can we work our schedules to include one all-family-members-sit-down, and formalize two or three nights per week when only one of the teens will be present at the table? Sometimes the individual attention we can provide to our teenagers can be more valuable than when we have to split our attention three ways. We can schedule a family sit down dinner at least once a week whether dad is present or not. Rebuild a routine.
If there is any access to a computer, we can start stocking pictures of important events on web sites such as or . Many photo storage sites are free, and others charge $20 to $30/year for a host of add on options. We can password protect our sites or purchase different levels of security that change the site from a public gallery to a private gallery. The photos can illustrate to all members of the family what actually goes on in each person’s schedule. Our appreciation of the digital occasion minimizes our isolation. With digital cameras being so inexpensive and easy to use, how can we pass up the method of communication?
Let’s bring father into the family in a manner in which we have never done before. Grant him a love fest, family style. Traditionally, fathers gift their teenagers on birthdays. Do our teenagers celebrate our father’s birthdays and special days in the same way? Not usually. Father’s birthdays are usually low on the teen totem pole and a lot of children have only a sense of the month when their father’s were born. The teens may hang out for an extra helping of the dinner and a piece of the birthday cake, then it’s off to meet the friends, quick! Who needs a special occasion? Invent one, celebrate, and entice our children to stay after the food runs out.
As husband and wife or family partners, we can realize that that the strength of our commitment reflects the connectedness of our family. Ideally, Dad can support the parental decisions that Mom decides in his absence, and Mom can expect a responsive ear when she discusses parental issues. Have extended and frequent absences made integration into the family difficult? How can we make the return into the family structure smoother? Dad may have to review his own methods of parenting and partnering.
The longer the absence, the expectation of Dad thinking, “Stop what you have been doing in your life, I’m home now to be the centre of attention,” may not work as a model of reintegration into the family after six months. What does he bring to the parenting dynamics that works, and what can he drop that doesn’t? Are there competency issues? Has Mom learned an effective manner of dealing with issues that need not be changed or ‘improved upon’ by Dad? If Dad is used to unquestioned authority at his work site, do resistant teens and a resistant Mom escalate his blood pressure? Can we devise a transfer of authority that all family members agree to before Dad returns? What are his suggestions as to how he can modify the effect of his absences?
We can view our looming parental crisis as a potential crisis or latch onto an opportunity and to dig down and discover the true nature of our commitment to each and every one of us.
Google:
1. Facebook
2. Keeping in Touch- When Distance Keeps You Apart, HYG-5162-96 (for more support tips on absentee parental members.)
3. Oregon Sea Grant - Connecting With Fathers At Sea
When he gets home, our house goes through a re-entry cycle. After 16 years, we have learned to make our individual adjustments. The problem is our older two boys. They’ve charted their own independent course over the last three years, and the fires light up when their dad tries to lay down the law, after being away for two months. Last week, my husband demanded everyone be home for supper at five. No excuses. We were all to eat together. Supper tasted dry and bitter.
It’s impossible. When he’s away, we don’t do that anymore. I cook for four people, and let the boys reheat or cook their own dinner. They’ve become good cooks and thank goodness for it. They have girlfriends, do sports, and work at part time jobs that make them even more independent.
Our little girl was crying the other night because of the arguments. It gets too close to being physical.
Dear Logger Bride,
In a family unit, young children live at the bottom of a top down hierarchical system. We limit our children’s knowledge to the emotional and intellectual world we present them. Our husband’s structured absences can be a normal occurrence, and his return, especially to pre-adolescent children, can be an event marking a time of food fests, gifts, long missed hugs, an extra voice to appeal a consideration, and even a tangible proof to other children that a real father exists.
The glowing scenario of the happy reunited family can disintegrate as our children approach the teenage years. Dad the loving father figure becomes THE other authority figure to whom a teenager must negotiate curfew times, allowances, chores, homework obligations, selection of friends, the type of music listened to in the house, a share of the computer time, the television, and demands by rights of family pecking order the favorite, most comfortable chair. Worse, his demands are either a heavy constraining blanket or a long distance presence that can be ignored. To a teenager, Mom saying no to a request sounds like a single voice in the wilderness compared to both parents present and voicing a loud and simultaneous NO.
Our family needs to come together to do some brainstorming. We are growing up and growing older. Do we need to grow apart? One sure way to get the family together around the dinner table, and in good spirits, is to invite the boy’s girlfriends and a couple of their friends to a back garden barbecue. Let’s remember, good food is family glue.
We can encourage our boys’ independence and self esteem by asking them to select the barbecue menu and maybe we can even pass along a chef’s hat and apron to one or both of them. A well prepared and finely appreciated meal can do wonders for the self esteem department. If our boys weekend work schedule conflicts with getaways to camp sites and swimming sites, we can open up our home to an eating party, a game night or a laugh at the family picture album comedy hour. What other family activities can excite a family diverse in ages? Are there relatives immediate to the neighborhood we can get to know again?
Eating together as a family unit cements the family bonds. Seven nights a week may be an impossibility. Can we work our schedules to include one all-family-members-sit-down, and formalize two or three nights per week when only one of the teens will be present at the table? Sometimes the individual attention we can provide to our teenagers can be more valuable than when we have to split our attention three ways. We can schedule a family sit down dinner at least once a week whether dad is present or not. Rebuild a routine.
If there is any access to a computer, we can start stocking pictures of important events on web sites such as
Let’s bring father into the family in a manner in which we have never done before. Grant him a love fest, family style. Traditionally, fathers gift their teenagers on birthdays. Do our teenagers celebrate our father’s birthdays and special days in the same way? Not usually. Father’s birthdays are usually low on the teen totem pole and a lot of children have only a sense of the month when their father’s were born. The teens may hang out for an extra helping of the dinner and a piece of the birthday cake, then it’s off to meet the friends, quick! Who needs a special occasion? Invent one, celebrate, and entice our children to stay after the food runs out.
As husband and wife or family partners, we can realize that that the strength of our commitment reflects the connectedness of our family. Ideally, Dad can support the parental decisions that Mom decides in his absence, and Mom can expect a responsive ear when she discusses parental issues. Have extended and frequent absences made integration into the family difficult? How can we make the return into the family structure smoother? Dad may have to review his own methods of parenting and partnering.
The longer the absence, the expectation of Dad thinking, “Stop what you have been doing in your life, I’m home now to be the centre of attention,” may not work as a model of reintegration into the family after six months. What does he bring to the parenting dynamics that works, and what can he drop that doesn’t? Are there competency issues? Has Mom learned an effective manner of dealing with issues that need not be changed or ‘improved upon’ by Dad? If Dad is used to unquestioned authority at his work site, do resistant teens and a resistant Mom escalate his blood pressure? Can we devise a transfer of authority that all family members agree to before Dad returns? What are his suggestions as to how he can modify the effect of his absences?
We can view our looming parental crisis as a potential crisis or latch onto an opportunity and to dig down and discover the true nature of our commitment to each and every one of us.
Google:
1. Facebook
2. Keeping in Touch- When Distance Keeps You Apart, HYG-5162-96 (for more support tips on absentee parental members.)
3. Oregon Sea Grant - Connecting With Fathers At Sea
Question 44. Brain injury and desrespect
Dear 21st Century Dad, my wife fell bicycling three years ago and she has a permanent brain injury. We are lucky. A stranger might not even know that she has a dysfunction. She can carry on a conversation and navigate around the house. She’s more or less her normal self, unless she gets stressed. Then her talking slurs, she can’t comprehend logical lineal thinking, she gets flustered, and retreats three years and goes into a silence that can last a couple of days.
Why does she get stressed? Our 16 year old son pushes her buttons. Within a few minutes she is a basket case. I honestly would like to wrap my hands around him and squeeze. Sometimes I know he has just cause for arguing. To her, he’s been a 13 year old for the last three years. He probably will be when he has a family and kids.
I don’t know where to go with this. I love my wife. The whole thing breaks my heart. I wish my son had a little more compassion.
Dear Caregiver, if we are at the point where one of us wishes to strangle the other, even if no physical contact occurs, we are dealing with a diminished capacity to resolve issues.
Initially, we begin to resolve the challenge by focusing attention upon ourselves. We can seek out an anger management course. These courses offer far more than simple strategies with which to contain our wild emotions. We can gain insight into the workings of our personality and learn how we can improve relationships with other people and especially ourselves.
If group processes make us uncomfortable, or the mechanics of getting to a meeting once a week for eight to ten meetings overwhelm our time management, let us consider some of the stress management techniques we can practice by ourselves in our own homes. Depending on our abilities and affinity to follow directions, hundreds of web sites explain simple breathing exercises that promote mental calmness. If we are near an urban centre with a hospital, the Center for Mindfulness (CFM) established in 1995, may offer certified courses. It is outgrowth of the acclaimed Stress Reduction Clinic, founded by Jon Kabat-Zinn in 1979, at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. If a physician or a registered health practitioner is teaching the course, our medical plan may subsidize it. Otherwise, thousands of courses are available, both at cost and free.
Commitment to a practice helps immensely. The mindfulness practices incorporate many lessons we might learn in an anger management course. Our son may leave us when he graduates from high school. Hopefully, his mother will live many happy years with us. Ultimately, we wish to attain the ability to appreciate the richness life offers to us every moment, even in the direst situations. How is it that caregivers such as Mother Theresa could not be depressed and annoyed by the immense challenges put before them? And if they were, how did they overcome the challenges?
We can explore pathways that encourage the emotional and spiritual aspects of the heart. How can we be more empathetic? How can we learn to understand some of the difficulties our son may experience? How can we learn to forgive without so much resistance? How can we develop compassion? Why must it be us who has to sacrifice our time, our identity, our livelihood? We can ask these questions to ourselves as a form of inquiry, or seek out prior or entirely new religious affiliations and ask for spiritual direction.
How can we encourage our son to open up and disclose some of the difficulties he has? Children who are not taught to demand respect for themselves can be very mean to other children. They will often use any form of difference in other children as a malicious target. Is our son embarrassed to present his mother to his friends and his peers?
For a sixteen year old whose sole purpose in life is to separate himself from his parents, being treated as a thirteen year old can be a continual putdown. Has the loss of his mother, as he knew her as a thirteen year old, stunted his emotional maturity? His put down responses to his mother indicate he has a lot of growing to do. As well as ourselves, our son is a caretaker, though perhaps a negligent one. How has he educated himself to evolve into both son and caretaker? Male teenagers are usually resistant to discussion groups, group therapy, therapists, counselors and sometimes even mentors. Helpful professionals are often nuisances who ask them difficult questions that seem to have no relation to whatever they don’t wish to talk about. That’s if they can even vocalize their difficulties.
How can we avoid penalizing our boy, setting limits of engagement about how and how not he can respond to his mother? The key to our pursuit must still involve enticing our son to discuss his concerns with either ourselves or an outside mentor with whom he is willing to talk. Ask his school counselor whom he can recommend.
We can agree to present a unified approach to his mother that is educational, loving, and supports and nurture her whole person. We can both be intelligent. We can present a choice to our son. Soften his approach or face a hardening of alternatives.
Google:
1. www.mettainstitute.org
2. www.ccc-ccan.ca/ the Canadian Caregiver Coalition (CCC-CCAN) is the national body representing and promoting the voice, needs and interests of family caregivers with all levels of government, and the community through policy development and leadership, research and education, information, communication and resource development. The mission of the CCC-CCAN is to join with caregivers, service providers, policy makers and other stakeholders to identify and respond to the needs of caregivers in Canada.
3. Today's Caregiver
4. VON Canada
5. www.familycaregiving101.org
6. http://chaplaindanny.blogspot.com.
7. DHO Gathering
8. Spiritual Caregiving: How Many Ways Can You Open Your Heart? -- Part 4
9. mindfulness, and phone friends and find out which organization or teacher might be the most appropriate venue. Many communities offer both secular and religious teachings.
Why does she get stressed? Our 16 year old son pushes her buttons. Within a few minutes she is a basket case. I honestly would like to wrap my hands around him and squeeze. Sometimes I know he has just cause for arguing. To her, he’s been a 13 year old for the last three years. He probably will be when he has a family and kids.
I don’t know where to go with this. I love my wife. The whole thing breaks my heart. I wish my son had a little more compassion.
Dear Caregiver, if we are at the point where one of us wishes to strangle the other, even if no physical contact occurs, we are dealing with a diminished capacity to resolve issues.
Initially, we begin to resolve the challenge by focusing attention upon ourselves. We can seek out an anger management course. These courses offer far more than simple strategies with which to contain our wild emotions. We can gain insight into the workings of our personality and learn how we can improve relationships with other people and especially ourselves.
If group processes make us uncomfortable, or the mechanics of getting to a meeting once a week for eight to ten meetings overwhelm our time management, let us consider some of the stress management techniques we can practice by ourselves in our own homes. Depending on our abilities and affinity to follow directions, hundreds of web sites explain simple breathing exercises that promote mental calmness. If we are near an urban centre with a hospital, the Center for Mindfulness (CFM) established in 1995, may offer certified courses. It is outgrowth of the acclaimed Stress Reduction Clinic, founded by Jon Kabat-Zinn in 1979, at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. If a physician or a registered health practitioner is teaching the course, our medical plan may subsidize it. Otherwise, thousands of courses are available, both at cost and free.
Commitment to a practice helps immensely. The mindfulness practices incorporate many lessons we might learn in an anger management course. Our son may leave us when he graduates from high school. Hopefully, his mother will live many happy years with us. Ultimately, we wish to attain the ability to appreciate the richness life offers to us every moment, even in the direst situations. How is it that caregivers such as Mother Theresa could not be depressed and annoyed by the immense challenges put before them? And if they were, how did they overcome the challenges?
We can explore pathways that encourage the emotional and spiritual aspects of the heart. How can we be more empathetic? How can we learn to understand some of the difficulties our son may experience? How can we learn to forgive without so much resistance? How can we develop compassion? Why must it be us who has to sacrifice our time, our identity, our livelihood? We can ask these questions to ourselves as a form of inquiry, or seek out prior or entirely new religious affiliations and ask for spiritual direction.
How can we encourage our son to open up and disclose some of the difficulties he has? Children who are not taught to demand respect for themselves can be very mean to other children. They will often use any form of difference in other children as a malicious target. Is our son embarrassed to present his mother to his friends and his peers?
For a sixteen year old whose sole purpose in life is to separate himself from his parents, being treated as a thirteen year old can be a continual putdown. Has the loss of his mother, as he knew her as a thirteen year old, stunted his emotional maturity? His put down responses to his mother indicate he has a lot of growing to do. As well as ourselves, our son is a caretaker, though perhaps a negligent one. How has he educated himself to evolve into both son and caretaker? Male teenagers are usually resistant to discussion groups, group therapy, therapists, counselors and sometimes even mentors. Helpful professionals are often nuisances who ask them difficult questions that seem to have no relation to whatever they don’t wish to talk about. That’s if they can even vocalize their difficulties.
How can we avoid penalizing our boy, setting limits of engagement about how and how not he can respond to his mother? The key to our pursuit must still involve enticing our son to discuss his concerns with either ourselves or an outside mentor with whom he is willing to talk. Ask his school counselor whom he can recommend.
We can agree to present a unified approach to his mother that is educational, loving, and supports and nurture her whole person. We can both be intelligent. We can present a choice to our son. Soften his approach or face a hardening of alternatives.
Google:
1. www.mettainstitute.org
2. www.ccc-ccan.ca/ the Canadian Caregiver Coalition (CCC-CCAN) is the national body representing and promoting the voice, needs and interests of family caregivers with all levels of government, and the community through policy development and leadership, research and education, information, communication and resource development. The mission of the CCC-CCAN is to join with caregivers, service providers, policy makers and other stakeholders to identify and respond to the needs of caregivers in Canada.
3. Today's Caregiver
4. VON Canada
5. www.familycaregiving101.org
6. http://chaplaindanny.blogspot.com.
7. DHO Gathering
8. Spiritual Caregiving: How Many Ways Can You Open Your Heart? -- Part 4
9. mindfulness, and phone friends and find out which organization or teacher might be the most appropriate venue. Many communities offer both secular and religious teachings.
Question 43. Teenage mom moves back in
Dear 21st Century Dad, my 17 almost 18 year old daughter is a new mother as of four months ago. Now that motherhood is supposed to have made her a certified adult, I can look back and reflect that her teenage years presented us with many difficulties. We fought and fought until she moved out a month before her 16th birthday. She shared a raucous house that frequently was the centre of police attention.
She wants to move back into our house. There is no male owning up to be the father. The baby is beautiful and my wife showers as much love upon the child as a grandmother can do.
I’m 52. No way do I want to raise another child. My wife has a physical disability so she cannot do a lot of carting kids around. We’ve missed our daughter, not our daughter’s behaviour. I’ve appreciated the kind of peaceful silence our house has experienced without teenage traumas. My blood pressure dropped to almost normal a week after she moved out.
With a 4 month old baby, I’m prepared to give up silence. What can we do to ensure our house maintains some semblance of peace? I love my daughter. I can’t wait until the boy throws a baseball. What do I do in the meantime?
Dear Buy a Cigar but Don’t Light it Yet,
Congratulations granddad! Our daughter is moving back into our house and she brings with her our future.
A raucous house is no place to raise a child. Beautiful images, peaceful sounds, playful movements and gestures of love should impress a baby’s mind. A loving granddad offers safety and security, and a love that comes freely from deep in the heart.
Our daughter is wise and lucky. She is wise because she has recognized that her teenage lifestyle offered little benefit to her child. She would constantly be dependent upon the state to support her. She would never have time to educate herself and raise her son. Like many teen moms, she would complain about her lack of social life, and she would be singled out from other teens. North American statistics suggest she would probably have a second child as a single mother.
She is lucky because we have decided to welcome her and our grandchild into our house.What will be different than before?
Do we expect our relationship to change overnight just because our daughter is presenting us with a new grandchild? The wisdom of having parented an obstreperous child with much conflict says NO; much will be the same even if everyone’s intentions are clear and magnanimous. We need a behavioural contract.
1. Our daughter must commence an anger management program. We will have wished in retrospect that we had raised our prodigy in a peaceful atmosphere. An angry mother who rages at her baby, rears an angry and violent child who begets an angry and violent adult who begets an angry and violent baby. Intelligence demands that we attend the same anger management course. One person who argues with him or herself is delusional, two people who argue experience the ups and downs of relationship.
2. Our daughter must attend parenting classes. Her new parenting knowledge will hopefully cement a mother/daughter bonding which may mature her personality and offer her deep insight into the process of birthing, and living.
3. Our daughter must attend a life skills course with the intention that she will live by herself as soon as possible, and successfully. Once we considered our daughter’s neglect of household chores to be an annoying but typical teenage behaviour. No more. She will need to be knowledgeable of nutrition, sterilize the baby bottles, clean the dishes, organize the diaper disposal, childproof the house, and those other hundred thousand myriad chores. All our parenting memories should return upon the first baby wail in the middle of the night. Be lucky it is not us who has to get out of bed.
4. Our daughter must be drug free. No ifs, ands, or buts. She’s a new mom. A different being!
5. If we want our daughter to succeed economically in life, she needs to upgrade her skills and education. If we want our daughter to nurture our grandchild, she will have to dedicate many one on one hours to develop a wholesome mother/child relationship. Education and motherhood are mostly mutually time exclusive. Who is going to babysit? Even if grandmother did not have a physical disability, does she want the babysitting chore?
6. Live in grandparents need a break. How can we develop a respite program amongst our friends and relatives? The in-laws, if they can be found, may wish to be a positive influence in the grandchild’s life. We can develop a plan with them that can extend far beyond respite. They may contribute financially with a Registered Educational Savings Plan, birthday and religious holiday gifts, suppertime invitations, weekend stays, and perhaps in a hundred unexpected ways. Let’s remember, it’s their bloodline they are nurturing. We can welcome them into the family.
7. Our daughter needs a break. She is both a mother and a woman. Unless she adopts abstinence with her new boyfriends, we will be worrying every time she goes out. Does a 17 year old single mother have a curfew? Do we have any say over her new partners? (Did we ever?) What’s the plan if she gets pregnant again?
8. We sign a memorandum of agreement that can be initialed by a lawyer that will state in the event of a disagreement severe enough that our daughter must leave our residence, we will have weekly access to our grandchild.
9. What will be the date when she moves into her own dwelling? To be independent? We may need the help of a professional who combines the skills of a career counselor at an employment centre and a life skills coordinator.
We are in for a tough time. We need to plan, talk, explore and negotiate without the added weight of guilt. We need to access every bit of community help we can get, and lots of luck. Piles of it.
We have an adult in our family whom is a child, and a child who is an adult. We have a right to enjoy our senior years.
We also have a child on her way to be a parent, and a new grandchild. Blessings upon us.
Google:
1. Life Skills Training +Baby Steps + Handbook for Teen Moms-To-Be +Alison Stuebe, MD & Tarayn Grizzard
2. FAMILY SERVICE CANADA - Directory of Members
3. Health Protection
She wants to move back into our house. There is no male owning up to be the father. The baby is beautiful and my wife showers as much love upon the child as a grandmother can do.
I’m 52. No way do I want to raise another child. My wife has a physical disability so she cannot do a lot of carting kids around. We’ve missed our daughter, not our daughter’s behaviour. I’ve appreciated the kind of peaceful silence our house has experienced without teenage traumas. My blood pressure dropped to almost normal a week after she moved out.
With a 4 month old baby, I’m prepared to give up silence. What can we do to ensure our house maintains some semblance of peace? I love my daughter. I can’t wait until the boy throws a baseball. What do I do in the meantime?
Dear Buy a Cigar but Don’t Light it Yet,
Congratulations granddad! Our daughter is moving back into our house and she brings with her our future.
A raucous house is no place to raise a child. Beautiful images, peaceful sounds, playful movements and gestures of love should impress a baby’s mind. A loving granddad offers safety and security, and a love that comes freely from deep in the heart.
Our daughter is wise and lucky. She is wise because she has recognized that her teenage lifestyle offered little benefit to her child. She would constantly be dependent upon the state to support her. She would never have time to educate herself and raise her son. Like many teen moms, she would complain about her lack of social life, and she would be singled out from other teens. North American statistics suggest she would probably have a second child as a single mother.
She is lucky because we have decided to welcome her and our grandchild into our house.What will be different than before?
Do we expect our relationship to change overnight just because our daughter is presenting us with a new grandchild? The wisdom of having parented an obstreperous child with much conflict says NO; much will be the same even if everyone’s intentions are clear and magnanimous. We need a behavioural contract.
1. Our daughter must commence an anger management program. We will have wished in retrospect that we had raised our prodigy in a peaceful atmosphere. An angry mother who rages at her baby, rears an angry and violent child who begets an angry and violent adult who begets an angry and violent baby. Intelligence demands that we attend the same anger management course. One person who argues with him or herself is delusional, two people who argue experience the ups and downs of relationship.
2. Our daughter must attend parenting classes. Her new parenting knowledge will hopefully cement a mother/daughter bonding which may mature her personality and offer her deep insight into the process of birthing, and living.
3. Our daughter must attend a life skills course with the intention that she will live by herself as soon as possible, and successfully. Once we considered our daughter’s neglect of household chores to be an annoying but typical teenage behaviour. No more. She will need to be knowledgeable of nutrition, sterilize the baby bottles, clean the dishes, organize the diaper disposal, childproof the house, and those other hundred thousand myriad chores. All our parenting memories should return upon the first baby wail in the middle of the night. Be lucky it is not us who has to get out of bed.
4. Our daughter must be drug free. No ifs, ands, or buts. She’s a new mom. A different being!
5. If we want our daughter to succeed economically in life, she needs to upgrade her skills and education. If we want our daughter to nurture our grandchild, she will have to dedicate many one on one hours to develop a wholesome mother/child relationship. Education and motherhood are mostly mutually time exclusive. Who is going to babysit? Even if grandmother did not have a physical disability, does she want the babysitting chore?
6. Live in grandparents need a break. How can we develop a respite program amongst our friends and relatives? The in-laws, if they can be found, may wish to be a positive influence in the grandchild’s life. We can develop a plan with them that can extend far beyond respite. They may contribute financially with a Registered Educational Savings Plan, birthday and religious holiday gifts, suppertime invitations, weekend stays, and perhaps in a hundred unexpected ways. Let’s remember, it’s their bloodline they are nurturing. We can welcome them into the family.
7. Our daughter needs a break. She is both a mother and a woman. Unless she adopts abstinence with her new boyfriends, we will be worrying every time she goes out. Does a 17 year old single mother have a curfew? Do we have any say over her new partners? (Did we ever?) What’s the plan if she gets pregnant again?
8. We sign a memorandum of agreement that can be initialed by a lawyer that will state in the event of a disagreement severe enough that our daughter must leave our residence, we will have weekly access to our grandchild.
9. What will be the date when she moves into her own dwelling? To be independent? We may need the help of a professional who combines the skills of a career counselor at an employment centre and a life skills coordinator.
We are in for a tough time. We need to plan, talk, explore and negotiate without the added weight of guilt. We need to access every bit of community help we can get, and lots of luck. Piles of it.
We have an adult in our family whom is a child, and a child who is an adult. We have a right to enjoy our senior years.
We also have a child on her way to be a parent, and a new grandchild. Blessings upon us.
Google:
1. Life Skills Training +Baby Steps + Handbook for Teen Moms-To-Be +Alison Stuebe, MD & Tarayn Grizzard
2. FAMILY SERVICE CANADA - Directory of Members
3. Health Protection
Question 42.New stepdad and broken rules
Dear 21st Century Dad, I moved in with my 35 year old girlfriend. It’s been a quick romance. We met each other five months ago. Not a day has the bloom faded between us. I still look into her eyes and go mushy. The problem is her two boys, eleven and fourteen, with whom I’m trying to build a friend/mentor relationship.
Before I embarked on this journey, I read all the books I could about stepdads. Their mother told them in separate meetings that we would all be living together. They both seemed pumped because we were moving into a bigger house, and their mother had been really happy since she and I had met. After his mother talked to them one on one, we had a “family meeting”, me included, and we set up some basic house rules that we all agreed to obey.
Outdoors we have a blast. Both boys and myself are sports nuts: we’ve been playing a non ending game of road hockey, juggling, catch, baseball and I’ve even built them a mini skateboard park out of old plywood and some junk I picked up in garage sales.
It’s indoors that drives me crazy. I open the fridge door and five half eaten apples stare me in the face. Their bedrooms smell like a toxic waste dump. The bathroom is a swamp pit with wet towels behind the door, toothpaste spit in the sink and toilet paper discards piling up around the toilet. I don’t even need to talk about dirty dishes.
What happened to the rules we agreed upon? Last week I yelled at the seven year old for a food indiscretion. I couldn’t stand it anymore. He looked up and told me, “You’re gone in a year and a half.” What’s to be done here?
Dear It Will Get Better in Seven Years,
Congratulations on the new relationship. (Actually, the three new relationships!) We are off to a good start. The lady is still the apple of our eye, and the primary objective in our new family is to keep that loving feeling on the front burner. If we are happy, many of the reality checks (two obstreperous kids!) that have become a part of our lives will have less impact on our stress levels. Buy her flowers, chocolates and occasional “You are my sweetie” cards and obligate ourselves to get a kid respite at least once a week. Well, ok, at least once a month, and if not then, plead to the universal wish machine for once a year.
Doing sports activities with our kids is brilliant. They spend so much time sitting immobile in desks all day, the physical activity is essential to burn off the hyper energy levels they come home with. The movement activities also help to develop the brain by coordinating the transmission of information between the two sides of the brain.
We do have to be careful though. Our sports culture promotes winning at all costs: tough and aggressive attitudes are essential personality traits. Do our boys bring this type of energy back into our household? Aggression and toughness have a place on the sports field, but they can be destructive to family power relationships. Can we practice cooperative activities such as pin point passing to each other? Or develop two person juggling routines. Who knows? Maybe we have the beginnings of a new Flying Karamosov Brothers routine Formal team sports will provide peer and community identities that a driveway shoot and save hockey game won’t.
Let’s not sweat the yelling and the mean commentaries. Put three strangers in a broken hot elevator and the worst of our vocal reactions will surface. Our own included. New families can be as stressful as we allow them to be. We can model respectful conversation when the need arises, and apologize if we blow it. Let’s take heart that in other families, millions of kids are building wet towels sculptures in dark corners, nurturing mould farms under their beds and doing their best to complain there isn’t a clean dish in the cupboard. And we are not alone in our parenting exhaustions.
We can reread the books on stepfamilies. The first time gave us an intellectual overview of the delights and the difficulties. Now, we can zero in on what specifically occurs in our family and discern which methods prescribed are suitable.
The biological parent is usually the best disciplinarian. Our complaint implies that we could first have another parental agreement on what ‘neat and tidy’ means to each of us, and then rebroadcast it in kid language. Then, we state our requests calmly and succinctly, and let us narrow in on one project at a time.
Where to start? Which is more offensive to us? The mould behind the bathroom door, the growth under the beds, the partially demolished fruit bowl, the shoes we trip over at the front door, the doors left open, the lights left on, the disgusting post toothpaste sink, the winter coats thrown on the chesterfield, the ring around the toilet, the over amped teen music, the squabbling over TV programs, food, the mud footprints on the new carpet, the computer, the front seat in the car, the theft of personal items, the physical fights or the constant nat-nat-nattering?
Hey It Will Get Better, isn’t family life fun? Here are three 21st Century Dad hot tips.
1. Buy a couple of movie tickets to a parent’s only sweet Hollywood movie.
2. Know that our boys will most always perceive their new stepdads as mother stealers.
To alleviate this suspicion, we can do our best to be honest and sincere friends and mentors. Seven years should about do it.
3. Teach the boys that real men shower. The rest of us won’t have to hassle them over cleaning the ring around the tub.
Google:
1. cyberparent+blended-family
2. Barry Macdonald + Boy Smarts Mentoring Boys For Success at School
3. Clean Out Your Refrigerator Day +Practically Edible
Key into YouTube:
1. katrina fridge of mystery
Before I embarked on this journey, I read all the books I could about stepdads. Their mother told them in separate meetings that we would all be living together. They both seemed pumped because we were moving into a bigger house, and their mother had been really happy since she and I had met. After his mother talked to them one on one, we had a “family meeting”, me included, and we set up some basic house rules that we all agreed to obey.
Outdoors we have a blast. Both boys and myself are sports nuts: we’ve been playing a non ending game of road hockey, juggling, catch, baseball and I’ve even built them a mini skateboard park out of old plywood and some junk I picked up in garage sales.
It’s indoors that drives me crazy. I open the fridge door and five half eaten apples stare me in the face. Their bedrooms smell like a toxic waste dump. The bathroom is a swamp pit with wet towels behind the door, toothpaste spit in the sink and toilet paper discards piling up around the toilet. I don’t even need to talk about dirty dishes.
What happened to the rules we agreed upon? Last week I yelled at the seven year old for a food indiscretion. I couldn’t stand it anymore. He looked up and told me, “You’re gone in a year and a half.” What’s to be done here?
Dear It Will Get Better in Seven Years,
Congratulations on the new relationship. (Actually, the three new relationships!) We are off to a good start. The lady is still the apple of our eye, and the primary objective in our new family is to keep that loving feeling on the front burner. If we are happy, many of the reality checks (two obstreperous kids!) that have become a part of our lives will have less impact on our stress levels. Buy her flowers, chocolates and occasional “You are my sweetie” cards and obligate ourselves to get a kid respite at least once a week. Well, ok, at least once a month, and if not then, plead to the universal wish machine for once a year.
Doing sports activities with our kids is brilliant. They spend so much time sitting immobile in desks all day, the physical activity is essential to burn off the hyper energy levels they come home with. The movement activities also help to develop the brain by coordinating the transmission of information between the two sides of the brain.
We do have to be careful though. Our sports culture promotes winning at all costs: tough and aggressive attitudes are essential personality traits. Do our boys bring this type of energy back into our household? Aggression and toughness have a place on the sports field, but they can be destructive to family power relationships. Can we practice cooperative activities such as pin point passing to each other? Or develop two person juggling routines. Who knows? Maybe we have the beginnings of a new Flying Karamosov Brothers routine Formal team sports will provide peer and community identities that a driveway shoot and save hockey game won’t.
Let’s not sweat the yelling and the mean commentaries. Put three strangers in a broken hot elevator and the worst of our vocal reactions will surface. Our own included. New families can be as stressful as we allow them to be. We can model respectful conversation when the need arises, and apologize if we blow it. Let’s take heart that in other families, millions of kids are building wet towels sculptures in dark corners, nurturing mould farms under their beds and doing their best to complain there isn’t a clean dish in the cupboard. And we are not alone in our parenting exhaustions.
We can reread the books on stepfamilies. The first time gave us an intellectual overview of the delights and the difficulties. Now, we can zero in on what specifically occurs in our family and discern which methods prescribed are suitable.
The biological parent is usually the best disciplinarian. Our complaint implies that we could first have another parental agreement on what ‘neat and tidy’ means to each of us, and then rebroadcast it in kid language. Then, we state our requests calmly and succinctly, and let us narrow in on one project at a time.
Where to start? Which is more offensive to us? The mould behind the bathroom door, the growth under the beds, the partially demolished fruit bowl, the shoes we trip over at the front door, the doors left open, the lights left on, the disgusting post toothpaste sink, the winter coats thrown on the chesterfield, the ring around the toilet, the over amped teen music, the squabbling over TV programs, food, the mud footprints on the new carpet, the computer, the front seat in the car, the theft of personal items, the physical fights or the constant nat-nat-nattering?
Hey It Will Get Better, isn’t family life fun? Here are three 21st Century Dad hot tips.
1. Buy a couple of movie tickets to a parent’s only sweet Hollywood movie.
2. Know that our boys will most always perceive their new stepdads as mother stealers.
To alleviate this suspicion, we can do our best to be honest and sincere friends and mentors. Seven years should about do it.
3. Teach the boys that real men shower. The rest of us won’t have to hassle them over cleaning the ring around the tub.
Google:
1. cyberparent+blended-family
2. Barry Macdonald + Boy Smarts Mentoring Boys For Success at School
3. Clean Out Your Refrigerator Day +Practically Edible
Key into YouTube:
1. katrina fridge of mystery
Question 41. Sick parents and acting out teen
Dear 21st Century Dad, For several months my husband complained about back pain and digestive problems but refused to see a doctor. Last year his doctor diagnosed him with a herniated disc in his low back. He had an operation but it didn’t work, and he is in more pain now than he ever was. His doctor says he has a chronic pain disorder. I myself suffer from fibromyalgia. We both sit around like a couple of grandparents. Trouble is we have a sixteen year old daughter who has decided to use our handicaps to her advantage. She says it’s not fair she get’s stuck with all the chores. It is difficult to discipline a child when it takes ten minutes to get up out of a chair. She just walks away when she disagrees with something and our yelling doesn’t stop her slamming the door on her way out to another late night party.
Dear Purple Hearts,
When a medical crisis hits a family, often the tried and true methods of dealing with stressful situations fall by the wayside because we don’t have enough energy to manage our solutions to a successful completion.
Chronic pain disorders can change the natural cycles and rhythms of our family. We choose to avoid many physical activities that tire us or bring on an acute pain occurrence. We can discover that our desire to aggressively regain an active lifestyle falls by the wayside and it’s easier to adopt a sedentary and slower lifestyle.
Our daughter is moving in the opposite direction. If we are not very careful, she may look upon us as a drag upon her youthful desires, and us as people who ARE a chronic pain disorder, rather than people who HAVE a chronic pain disorder.
How can we change her attitude toward our requests? One possibility is that we realize discipline and decision making is not dependent upon the function or dysfunction of our ambulatory abilities. The history of the world has experienced great leaders who have had severe physical dysfunctions. It is our obligation to our daughter that we be mentors who can rise above our difficulties. We must guard against the tendency to allow our situation to colour our discourse with our daughter. Uncontrolled emotions may trigger an immune response reaction that will further accentuate the crisis in our family.
Let’s recognize the severity of the crisis and its effect upon our family. What better reason than this to call a family conference and get the entire array of dispute cards on the table? Chronic medical conditions imply permanence. Our family will never be as it used to be. We need to talk. How can we retain the best of what we had and move on into the future? We should consider hiring a mediator or engaging a trusted family member or friend whom will be respected by our daughter. Do we need the advice of an occupational health nurse to organize some of the physical challenges? Three or four extra people around the table can formalize the occasion and reduce the conditioned conflict that always arises between the same set of people.
Here are some critical questions that should determine the broad intentions of our behavioural contract. How can we use this medical crisis to our daughter’s benefit? Can she learn about the development of compassion at such an early age? Can she learn about how vulnerable we all are on this planet, and that still we can set aside our fears and pursue our challenges? Can she learn how obligations invite maturity, and how maturity can offer newfound and unexpected freedoms? Can we frame our short term, day to day requests and obligations within the context of these larger questions?
1. Our behaviour contract can iron out the day to day expectations of each member of the family. The first point would be to develop a short and a long range strategy to handle financial issues. (Is there enough money for an allowance? For school obligations such as bus fare, pizza lunches, music classes and entertainments? Will our daughter need to get a part/time job?)
2. Housekeeping is a flash point. We need to reassess the difference between our required and our desired levels of housekeeping. Our daughter is neither an indentured maid nor a sister of Cinderella. Let’s clarify our expectations and set about a schedule of completion. What needs to be done and how often? Can we shift around monies to hire a paid housekeeper once a week/ once a month?
3. We need to sort out the duration times expected of caretaker activities, housework and homework obligations, and entertainment time.
4. We need to learn how to revisit this family conference method a number of times. Do we need to invite as many participants as at the first one? Will we need an outside person to assist us with our negotiations at every meeting? Would it be to our advantage for one of us to learn communication tips?
Check the local library for books written by Marshall B. Rosenberg, Ph.D., to learn how to resolve disputes. Another approach we could take to improving our communication abilities would be to transform ourselves from the inside out. Read The Fourth Mindfulness Training: Deep Listening and Loving Speech in Appendix B and Guided Meditations For Looking Deeply and Releasing Anger in Appendix C of the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh’s book, Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames.
Google
1. cnvc: Center for Nonviolent Communication
3. CIRPD.org, Canadian Institute for the Relief of Pain and Disability
Key into YouTube:
1. Thich Nhat Hanh
2. Nonviolent Communication Part 1 Marshall Rosenberg
Dear Purple Hearts,
When a medical crisis hits a family, often the tried and true methods of dealing with stressful situations fall by the wayside because we don’t have enough energy to manage our solutions to a successful completion.
Chronic pain disorders can change the natural cycles and rhythms of our family. We choose to avoid many physical activities that tire us or bring on an acute pain occurrence. We can discover that our desire to aggressively regain an active lifestyle falls by the wayside and it’s easier to adopt a sedentary and slower lifestyle.
Our daughter is moving in the opposite direction. If we are not very careful, she may look upon us as a drag upon her youthful desires, and us as people who ARE a chronic pain disorder, rather than people who HAVE a chronic pain disorder.
How can we change her attitude toward our requests? One possibility is that we realize discipline and decision making is not dependent upon the function or dysfunction of our ambulatory abilities. The history of the world has experienced great leaders who have had severe physical dysfunctions. It is our obligation to our daughter that we be mentors who can rise above our difficulties. We must guard against the tendency to allow our situation to colour our discourse with our daughter. Uncontrolled emotions may trigger an immune response reaction that will further accentuate the crisis in our family.
Let’s recognize the severity of the crisis and its effect upon our family. What better reason than this to call a family conference and get the entire array of dispute cards on the table? Chronic medical conditions imply permanence. Our family will never be as it used to be. We need to talk. How can we retain the best of what we had and move on into the future? We should consider hiring a mediator or engaging a trusted family member or friend whom will be respected by our daughter. Do we need the advice of an occupational health nurse to organize some of the physical challenges? Three or four extra people around the table can formalize the occasion and reduce the conditioned conflict that always arises between the same set of people.
Here are some critical questions that should determine the broad intentions of our behavioural contract. How can we use this medical crisis to our daughter’s benefit? Can she learn about the development of compassion at such an early age? Can she learn about how vulnerable we all are on this planet, and that still we can set aside our fears and pursue our challenges? Can she learn how obligations invite maturity, and how maturity can offer newfound and unexpected freedoms? Can we frame our short term, day to day requests and obligations within the context of these larger questions?
1. Our behaviour contract can iron out the day to day expectations of each member of the family. The first point would be to develop a short and a long range strategy to handle financial issues. (Is there enough money for an allowance? For school obligations such as bus fare, pizza lunches, music classes and entertainments? Will our daughter need to get a part/time job?)
2. Housekeeping is a flash point. We need to reassess the difference between our required and our desired levels of housekeeping. Our daughter is neither an indentured maid nor a sister of Cinderella. Let’s clarify our expectations and set about a schedule of completion. What needs to be done and how often? Can we shift around monies to hire a paid housekeeper once a week/ once a month?
3. We need to sort out the duration times expected of caretaker activities, housework and homework obligations, and entertainment time.
4. We need to learn how to revisit this family conference method a number of times. Do we need to invite as many participants as at the first one? Will we need an outside person to assist us with our negotiations at every meeting? Would it be to our advantage for one of us to learn communication tips?
Check the local library for books written by Marshall B. Rosenberg, Ph.D., to learn how to resolve disputes. Another approach we could take to improving our communication abilities would be to transform ourselves from the inside out. Read The Fourth Mindfulness Training: Deep Listening and Loving Speech in Appendix B and Guided Meditations For Looking Deeply and Releasing Anger in Appendix C of the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh’s book, Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames.
1. cnvc: Center for Nonviolent Communication
3. CIRPD.org, Canadian Institute for the Relief of Pain and Disability
Key into YouTube:
1. Thich Nhat Hanh
2. Nonviolent Communication Part 1 Marshall Rosenberg
Question 39. Neighborhood meeting place
Dear 21st Century Dad, I feel like I live inside an on line video game. I have two teenage boys, 16 and 17. Their bedrooms and their play space are in the basement. There is a coterie of five boys that my two sons have over as regular visitors, and they also sleep over a lot.
Several other teens I don’t know will come in and out the back door entrance to the basement. It’s almost a parade. The other evening I stopped a teen I had never met before. He walked in smoking. Into my non smoking house! I told him to lose the cigarette. He treated me like a nuisance and I had to tell him three times to leave. I own the house! What’s going on?
Dear Occupied Territory,
We deserve applause for opening up our house to our teenagers’ friends. To us, the main benefit is obvious. We have more control over our teen’s activities in house, and we get to see them more than most parents. Lucky us. Our teens are safe.
Must the price for defusing parental anxiety be so irritating? Our teenagers are abusing privileges not accessible to their friends. We need to renegotiate the terms for hosting a youth club. Take back our house. Immediately.
And why not use a little pizzazz to make the point?
Notify them that there will be a house meeting at whatever convenient designated time the next day. Tell them a surprise is in order, and they should invite their friends. Keep the curve on our lips pointed upwards and maintain a gleam in our eyes.
Let’s initiate some guerrilla tactics and execute an unexpected surprise strike!
1. Can we afford to hire a house cleaner to sanitize the public area in the basement? Hire the cleaner when the boys are at school. The boys can pay for the cleaner’s wages by accepting partial reductions in their allowances, or they can offer up suggestions on how they will pay us back.
2. Let’s remove the television, the computer, and the game players to a safe place outside the house. Get all the electronics.
3. Buy enough hot pizzas at the designated meeting time to feed the two teenagers, their friends, and the parents of the friends that regularly use our basement. Notify the parents what will be the topic of the meeting, and suggest perhaps they can add to the pizza with a pot luck
With all concerned present, we can establish the ground rules that will be the boy’s new club rules. Let’s start with the easiest accomplishment.
1. How do they intend to limit the number of strange teens coming in and out of the house?
2. How will they schedule visitation nights, curfew times, non smoking and no drug regulations, on or near by the property?
3. How will they keep their hang out clean? Suggest scheduled cleaning times, or, inquire how do they intend to pay for a cleaner?
Between bites of pizza, the boys will have lots to say about their displeasure, and no doubt will want to know the source location of their prized sound machines. At this point with smiles on our faces, we can suggest the boys will get their equipment back after three days of silence, and, if and only do they agree to address our primary concerns. The next question is the topper!
4. How do they deal with 100 uninvited kids showing up at the door? We need a broad plan that may involve calling help from our children’s parents, or even the police. Take suggestions from parents and teens alike.
When the children have solved the issues of who comes to our house, and how do they maintain responsible actions, we must look at our parental obligations. We have to secure our house against teen thieves. Our jewelry, credit cards, cash and other possessions can be too tempting to the morally less inclined teens. We must empty our liquor cabinets. We must make our house extremely unattractive to covetous eyes.
Does that impose difficulties that we, as parents, shouldn’t have to experience?
Yes.
The price of knowing our teens are safe is worth it.
Google:
1. Parents Together Self Help Group of BC
2. Parent Support Services of BC - Parent Support Vancouver BC ...
3. Several excellent sites respond to Family Meeting.
Several other teens I don’t know will come in and out the back door entrance to the basement. It’s almost a parade. The other evening I stopped a teen I had never met before. He walked in smoking. Into my non smoking house! I told him to lose the cigarette. He treated me like a nuisance and I had to tell him three times to leave. I own the house! What’s going on?
Dear Occupied Territory,
We deserve applause for opening up our house to our teenagers’ friends. To us, the main benefit is obvious. We have more control over our teen’s activities in house, and we get to see them more than most parents. Lucky us. Our teens are safe.
Must the price for defusing parental anxiety be so irritating? Our teenagers are abusing privileges not accessible to their friends. We need to renegotiate the terms for hosting a youth club. Take back our house. Immediately.
And why not use a little pizzazz to make the point?
Notify them that there will be a house meeting at whatever convenient designated time the next day. Tell them a surprise is in order, and they should invite their friends. Keep the curve on our lips pointed upwards and maintain a gleam in our eyes.
Let’s initiate some guerrilla tactics and execute an unexpected surprise strike!
1. Can we afford to hire a house cleaner to sanitize the public area in the basement? Hire the cleaner when the boys are at school. The boys can pay for the cleaner’s wages by accepting partial reductions in their allowances, or they can offer up suggestions on how they will pay us back.
2. Let’s remove the television, the computer, and the game players to a safe place outside the house. Get all the electronics.
3. Buy enough hot pizzas at the designated meeting time to feed the two teenagers, their friends, and the parents of the friends that regularly use our basement. Notify the parents what will be the topic of the meeting, and suggest perhaps they can add to the pizza with a pot luck
With all concerned present, we can establish the ground rules that will be the boy’s new club rules. Let’s start with the easiest accomplishment.
1. How do they intend to limit the number of strange teens coming in and out of the house?
2. How will they schedule visitation nights, curfew times, non smoking and no drug regulations, on or near by the property?
3. How will they keep their hang out clean? Suggest scheduled cleaning times, or, inquire how do they intend to pay for a cleaner?
Between bites of pizza, the boys will have lots to say about their displeasure, and no doubt will want to know the source location of their prized sound machines. At this point with smiles on our faces, we can suggest the boys will get their equipment back after three days of silence, and, if and only do they agree to address our primary concerns. The next question is the topper!
4. How do they deal with 100 uninvited kids showing up at the door? We need a broad plan that may involve calling help from our children’s parents, or even the police. Take suggestions from parents and teens alike.
When the children have solved the issues of who comes to our house, and how do they maintain responsible actions, we must look at our parental obligations. We have to secure our house against teen thieves. Our jewelry, credit cards, cash and other possessions can be too tempting to the morally less inclined teens. We must empty our liquor cabinets. We must make our house extremely unattractive to covetous eyes.
Does that impose difficulties that we, as parents, shouldn’t have to experience?
Yes.
The price of knowing our teens are safe is worth it.
Google:
1. Parents Together Self Help Group of BC
2. Parent Support Services of BC - Parent Support Vancouver BC ...
3. Several excellent sites respond to Family Meeting.
Question 38. Manipulation, almost abuse
Dear 21st Century Dad, I don’t know who has it worse. A woman in my wife’s office was talking about her 17 year old teenager. The girl won’t wash. She’s a pungent embarrassment to her mother. The woman buys her daughter expensive clothes but the daughter wears the same ones over and over until well past the stink time. My wife told me the woman is the Executive Assistant to the CEO.
It’s not much different in my family. I’m the principle of a school. When he wishes, my brilliant son can produce failing grades and be a discipline problem to a number of his teachers. Generally, his mischievous acting out occurs when we refuse an outlandish request. When I hear my son’s name come up in staff room, I vacillate between hiding my head in shame and wanting to send him to Afghanistan.
Dear Broken Mirror,
We construct an identity around our jobs that we believe defines the essence of who we are. That identity allows us to enjoy the material fruits of financial security and offers us health, cultural and education options unavailable to many others.
Our attachment to our identities is the weakness that our children can manipulate Do we call these children puppeteers or psychologists? By either name, we know them to be masters at getting what they want. Their interest is a redistribution of power within the family configuration. Abuse can manifests itself financially, physically or emotionally. In this case, our son’s abuse is passive.
What complicates the difficulty of addressing these concerns is that we want our children to succeed in a world that our children may abhor. We assume all members of our family share similar desires and aversions. The opposite may hold true. One person’s perspective may give reason to another’s rebellion. And it may be something as fundamental as one’s disrespect for the type of food another prefers over the other.
Unless there is a traumatic shift in psychology or a shift due to a medical dysfunction, abrupt changes rarely rise out of nothing. Every condition has a cause. If our children have had to submit to some extreme aspects of our personality, they can often rebel by reflecting our extreme natures, but in a negative manner. Who can win this battle? Both suffer.
Better to collaborate to resolve a solution. Discover in conversations with all immediate family members and extended family members, which would include friends and other respected people, what is the underlying issue that’s causing the teen acting out.
We can remember that to a family of heavy metal heads, a teenager who wears a tie and sports jacket to school is a shocking and scary oddity.
We can allow behaviour that is shocking, non compliant, unorthodox, and different to flower. Dysfunctional behaviour that causes harm to self or others, we must draw a line around and contain by keeping strong to our principles, by not giving in, by saying no to abuse.
Google:
1. http://www.mincava.umn.edu/
Key into YouTube:
1. Bad Smell Vs. Good Smell
2. Hypnotist (Smell)
It’s not much different in my family. I’m the principle of a school. When he wishes, my brilliant son can produce failing grades and be a discipline problem to a number of his teachers. Generally, his mischievous acting out occurs when we refuse an outlandish request. When I hear my son’s name come up in staff room, I vacillate between hiding my head in shame and wanting to send him to Afghanistan.
Dear Broken Mirror,
We construct an identity around our jobs that we believe defines the essence of who we are. That identity allows us to enjoy the material fruits of financial security and offers us health, cultural and education options unavailable to many others.
Our attachment to our identities is the weakness that our children can manipulate Do we call these children puppeteers or psychologists? By either name, we know them to be masters at getting what they want. Their interest is a redistribution of power within the family configuration. Abuse can manifests itself financially, physically or emotionally. In this case, our son’s abuse is passive.
What complicates the difficulty of addressing these concerns is that we want our children to succeed in a world that our children may abhor. We assume all members of our family share similar desires and aversions. The opposite may hold true. One person’s perspective may give reason to another’s rebellion. And it may be something as fundamental as one’s disrespect for the type of food another prefers over the other.
Unless there is a traumatic shift in psychology or a shift due to a medical dysfunction, abrupt changes rarely rise out of nothing. Every condition has a cause. If our children have had to submit to some extreme aspects of our personality, they can often rebel by reflecting our extreme natures, but in a negative manner. Who can win this battle? Both suffer.
Better to collaborate to resolve a solution. Discover in conversations with all immediate family members and extended family members, which would include friends and other respected people, what is the underlying issue that’s causing the teen acting out.
We can remember that to a family of heavy metal heads, a teenager who wears a tie and sports jacket to school is a shocking and scary oddity.
We can allow behaviour that is shocking, non compliant, unorthodox, and different to flower. Dysfunctional behaviour that causes harm to self or others, we must draw a line around and contain by keeping strong to our principles, by not giving in, by saying no to abuse.
Google:
1. http://www.mincava.umn.edu/
Key into YouTube:
1. Bad Smell Vs. Good Smell
2. Hypnotist (Smell)
Question 37. Constant interruptions
Dear 21st Century Dad, I am your typical multitasking overworked going crazy self employed single mom with an almost successful business and a thirteen year old that always wants attention when I am on the phone doing business, in the middle of a technical nightmare on the computer, or up on the roof repairing the shingles. “Mom, can you help me with this...” Whatever he wants is a life and death issue, until I stop what I’m doing, and then his problem is not such a big deal. If I don’t stop what I’m doing, he gets angry and I have to stop anyways. I’m getting more and more dragged out and really impatient with my son. He’s always been like this but since his dad left last year, I’m the sole support and attention provider.
Dear Constantly Pulled Apart,
It sounds our son is still not sure which way things are up and which are down. The break up of a family unit can be stress enough upon our conception of the world, much worse occurs when one of the family unit, dad, seems to have disappeared. Our boy feels threatened, and our boy’s immediate urge is to grab a hold of a parent’s hand or leg to feel secure.
Our boy needs assurance that there is some stability in his life. Routines can be very important. Repeating the same routines reinforces the same pathways in the brain and builds dependability into the schedule of the day. If there is change, we need to vocalize the change before it happens and give reason for the change. Ask our son to verbalize his comprehension of what is going on. The process opens up neuronal pathways in his brain that reinforce his conception of safety.
In our own daily schedule, we can insist upon periods of non disturbance. We can ask him how he could be creative during these periods, and ensure that his suggestions encompass his experience. We always have the tendency to rely upon the easy outs such as television or computer games, the perfect baby sitters. We can offer these forms of entertainment as a reward.
If our living space allows us to have a pet such as a dog, our boy will have the perfect companion. If we heap lots of love and attention on the dog, our boy will mimic our care giving behaviour; learn to offer it; and be able to receive it.
If time outs are not feasible, we can take three deep breaths. Begin on a complete exhalation to empty the lungs of the old air. Identify the physiological red alerts and vocalize the observations. “I notice you are clenching your fists. Can you put that anger into your tongue so it can verbalize the anger?” The questioning technique opens up new neuronal pathways. The attention on the specific body part puts the anger into something solid, something that can be observed and changed, rather than some vague anger triggered by an event that may have happened years ago.
We have to look after own life as well. Kids mimic parents. We know the expression, “Do as I say, not as I do,” indicates the knowledge that it is our behaviour that imprints the sponge minds of children, not our spoken demands. If we are running around and seem to be suspended mid air between a dozen separate activities, is it any wonder that are children will reflect our behaviour?
The divorce has put a lot of stress on our family. We have to verbalize to each other how the present is different from the past, not bury it in repressed anger or sadness. We want to express our sense of self and what is going on in the household. Let’s put thoughts and emotions to spoken word. This may not be an easy process, especially for boys to do. Allow him lots of time to come up with answers. If he is stuck, we can give words to describe his experience. If we are wrong, he’ll tell us and we’ll b e able to start the conversation which he couldn’t do before.
Key into YouTube:
1. Alexa's Tips for Multitasking Musician Moms, Part 4
2. i'm blogging
3. Thank You Mom Poem
Dear Constantly Pulled Apart,
It sounds our son is still not sure which way things are up and which are down. The break up of a family unit can be stress enough upon our conception of the world, much worse occurs when one of the family unit, dad, seems to have disappeared. Our boy feels threatened, and our boy’s immediate urge is to grab a hold of a parent’s hand or leg to feel secure.
Our boy needs assurance that there is some stability in his life. Routines can be very important. Repeating the same routines reinforces the same pathways in the brain and builds dependability into the schedule of the day. If there is change, we need to vocalize the change before it happens and give reason for the change. Ask our son to verbalize his comprehension of what is going on. The process opens up neuronal pathways in his brain that reinforce his conception of safety.
In our own daily schedule, we can insist upon periods of non disturbance. We can ask him how he could be creative during these periods, and ensure that his suggestions encompass his experience. We always have the tendency to rely upon the easy outs such as television or computer games, the perfect baby sitters. We can offer these forms of entertainment as a reward.
If our living space allows us to have a pet such as a dog, our boy will have the perfect companion. If we heap lots of love and attention on the dog, our boy will mimic our care giving behaviour; learn to offer it; and be able to receive it.
If time outs are not feasible, we can take three deep breaths. Begin on a complete exhalation to empty the lungs of the old air. Identify the physiological red alerts and vocalize the observations. “I notice you are clenching your fists. Can you put that anger into your tongue so it can verbalize the anger?” The questioning technique opens up new neuronal pathways. The attention on the specific body part puts the anger into something solid, something that can be observed and changed, rather than some vague anger triggered by an event that may have happened years ago.
We have to look after own life as well. Kids mimic parents. We know the expression, “Do as I say, not as I do,” indicates the knowledge that it is our behaviour that imprints the sponge minds of children, not our spoken demands. If we are running around and seem to be suspended mid air between a dozen separate activities, is it any wonder that are children will reflect our behaviour?
The divorce has put a lot of stress on our family. We have to verbalize to each other how the present is different from the past, not bury it in repressed anger or sadness. We want to express our sense of self and what is going on in the household. Let’s put thoughts and emotions to spoken word. This may not be an easy process, especially for boys to do. Allow him lots of time to come up with answers. If he is stuck, we can give words to describe his experience. If we are wrong, he’ll tell us and we’ll b e able to start the conversation which he couldn’t do before.
Key into YouTube:
1. Alexa's Tips for Multitasking Musician Moms, Part 4
2. i'm blogging
3. Thank You Mom Poem
Question 36. Family Reconfiguration
Dear 21st Century Dad, everything seemed so perfect until my eldest son’s girlfriend moved into our house. He is twenty-two; she is nineteen. We’ve known her for two and a half years. She’s a blessing in disguise. She helps with the housework, some of the farm work, contributes financially and seems more mature than either my son or me.
The downside is my son’s partner has no respect for the sixteen-year olds’ new social circle or for her lifestyle, and makes her opinions known frequently and loudly. The sixteen-year old is my wife’s daughter. My partner’s daughter has been difficult to deal with lately: too many boys, a couple of messy introductions to alcohol, and a few broken curfews and broken promises. Everyone is taking sides and the arguing is incessant. She and my son’s new live in are like cats and dogs, no, make that chalk and chalkboard. Our blended household complicates the allegiances. What do we do?
Dear The Crown Only Fits One Head,
A kingly strategist separates the two contenders and banishes the sideliners to non-involvement and quiet. Our 16 year old is a problem with whom we have to deal. We can appreciate our son’s partner for her contributions to the household. We can also limit who doles out rewards and punishment: that is the role of the family head, not the newcomer. You can accept her help without conferring any power upon her.
Let’s call a family meeting. We can identify the contentious issue and separate it from the people who are causing it. Name the problem. How does it affect each person? In this meeting, some rules we may establish for easing the conversation will be to banish the directional pointing finger gesture and the accompanying “You + (accusation)” from the dialogue at the table. Use the personal “I” statement. “When there’s so much yelling in the house, I feel like I want to plug my ears and….”
Let’s establish a priority speaking list and offer everyone the time to say their peace. It’s good to hear how our actions affect others and how other’s actions affect us.
That’s enough for this initial meeting. Let’s ask everyone to keep their opinions and commentary to themselves until the next meeting, which will be the last point of discussion at the first meeting.
Let’s talk to all the sideline people individually. Ask them to cease and desist: in other words, we welcome their contributions to resolve the dispute if they are constructive. Emphasize to each sideliner their supportive quietude is an expected offering.
Our daughter may be getting into trouble. That’s a discussion that must exclude our new house member’s judgmental attitude. The best that she may offer is her support. She can ask how she can help us, if indeed we need her help.
Our eldest son, her partner, is critical in this scenario. New and true love can honour and defend even silly disputes. He has to recognize the difficulties of living with feet in two camps, his primary family and his new one.
Lets have our sixteen-year old daughter and our new daughter in law to be sit down with us and work out some agreements for co habitation. There are two points that are not up for discussion. Our daughter in law is here to stay for at least a year. Second, the responsibility for our daughter’s behaviour is exclusively one to be explored between our daughter and ourselves.
Then, we can commence the conversation how two people who have a distinct chemical dislike for each other can live in the same space.
Key into YouTube:
1. Stepfamilies/ Blended Families
2. William Ury presents The Power of a Positive No
3. Negotiation Skills
The downside is my son’s partner has no respect for the sixteen-year olds’ new social circle or for her lifestyle, and makes her opinions known frequently and loudly. The sixteen-year old is my wife’s daughter. My partner’s daughter has been difficult to deal with lately: too many boys, a couple of messy introductions to alcohol, and a few broken curfews and broken promises. Everyone is taking sides and the arguing is incessant. She and my son’s new live in are like cats and dogs, no, make that chalk and chalkboard. Our blended household complicates the allegiances. What do we do?
Dear The Crown Only Fits One Head,
A kingly strategist separates the two contenders and banishes the sideliners to non-involvement and quiet. Our 16 year old is a problem with whom we have to deal. We can appreciate our son’s partner for her contributions to the household. We can also limit who doles out rewards and punishment: that is the role of the family head, not the newcomer. You can accept her help without conferring any power upon her.
Let’s call a family meeting. We can identify the contentious issue and separate it from the people who are causing it. Name the problem. How does it affect each person? In this meeting, some rules we may establish for easing the conversation will be to banish the directional pointing finger gesture and the accompanying “You + (accusation)” from the dialogue at the table. Use the personal “I” statement. “When there’s so much yelling in the house, I feel like I want to plug my ears and….”
Let’s establish a priority speaking list and offer everyone the time to say their peace. It’s good to hear how our actions affect others and how other’s actions affect us.
That’s enough for this initial meeting. Let’s ask everyone to keep their opinions and commentary to themselves until the next meeting, which will be the last point of discussion at the first meeting.
Let’s talk to all the sideline people individually. Ask them to cease and desist: in other words, we welcome their contributions to resolve the dispute if they are constructive. Emphasize to each sideliner their supportive quietude is an expected offering.
Our daughter may be getting into trouble. That’s a discussion that must exclude our new house member’s judgmental attitude. The best that she may offer is her support. She can ask how she can help us, if indeed we need her help.
Our eldest son, her partner, is critical in this scenario. New and true love can honour and defend even silly disputes. He has to recognize the difficulties of living with feet in two camps, his primary family and his new one.
Lets have our sixteen-year old daughter and our new daughter in law to be sit down with us and work out some agreements for co habitation. There are two points that are not up for discussion. Our daughter in law is here to stay for at least a year. Second, the responsibility for our daughter’s behaviour is exclusively one to be explored between our daughter and ourselves.
Then, we can commence the conversation how two people who have a distinct chemical dislike for each other can live in the same space.
Key into YouTube:
1. Stepfamilies/ Blended Families
2. William Ury presents The Power of a Positive No
3. Negotiation Skills
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Question 34. About the dirty bedroom
Dear 21st Century Dad, I took our advice that her bedroom is her own space, that I would ease my stress levels if I only hassled her about the messy habits in our house’s public spaces, the kitchen etc. Now my daughter’s room smells like a hippo den. There’s more clothes on the floor than in her cupboard. I’d like to stay out of her room but there’s things growing in there. I can see them. I hear moldy beasties that mutter strange sounds in the night that keep me awake and give nightmares to her brothers. Thanks for the previous advice, but what do I do now? There’s something pushing against her bedroom door, and I’m afraid it’s calling my name.
Dear Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,
Oops! It’s so easy for 21st Century Dad to dispense advice when he doesn’t have to suffer the bedroom culinary consequences.
Negotiate cleaning schedules. Clothes on the floor make the choosing of wrinkle free clothing, and finding things more difficult. Her fashion sense is not something that’s worth arguing over. Rotting food is a different matter. Attracting vermin and critters because of messy food habits is non-negotiatable. That’s a family health hazard. Award any incentives only after the room is clean.
Is our child a drug or alcohol abuser? There’s nothing harder than finding a needle in a haystack than perhaps a stash of drugs in a messy oh so messy bedroom. Or perhaps the mess indicates there could be deeper psychological dysfunction at work.
Would a reorganization/renovation project help? We are not talking thousands of dollars here. A shelving unit might do wonders to keep the mess off the floor. Does she feel like the bedroom reflects her own space? Ask her if she would like to paint her room. That will only cost we about thirty bucks. If there is natural light in her room , give her a couple of large plants to care for. Nature is naturally beautiful, and she may absorb some appreciation of beauty by osmosis. Check out the magazine racks. Although Architectural Digest may be too much for her, a number of the cool designer magazines may set off a creative explosion. School children paint amazing murals on bland walls to brighten them up. Why not her bedroom? And let her be the designer. Remember, even punk rooms can be clean.
Hope that she doesn’t Google Punk Shui +Josh Hughes +NPR for any design tips.
Google:
1. Hatch: The Design Public® Blog
2. Decorate teen bedrooms
3. Abstract Dynamics: Faesthetic
4. Anarchist People | Anarchist news dot org
Key into YouTube:
1. Animation--The Self-Cleaning Room
2. How to Clean & Organize the Bedroom: Housekeeping Tips
3. A Clean Bedroom
4. Tips and Tricks to half-assed cleaning of bedroom
Dear Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,
Oops! It’s so easy for 21st Century Dad to dispense advice when he doesn’t have to suffer the bedroom culinary consequences.
Negotiate cleaning schedules. Clothes on the floor make the choosing of wrinkle free clothing, and finding things more difficult. Her fashion sense is not something that’s worth arguing over. Rotting food is a different matter. Attracting vermin and critters because of messy food habits is non-negotiatable. That’s a family health hazard. Award any incentives only after the room is clean.
Is our child a drug or alcohol abuser? There’s nothing harder than finding a needle in a haystack than perhaps a stash of drugs in a messy oh so messy bedroom. Or perhaps the mess indicates there could be deeper psychological dysfunction at work.
Would a reorganization/renovation project help? We are not talking thousands of dollars here. A shelving unit might do wonders to keep the mess off the floor. Does she feel like the bedroom reflects her own space? Ask her if she would like to paint her room. That will only cost we about thirty bucks. If there is natural light in her room , give her a couple of large plants to care for. Nature is naturally beautiful, and she may absorb some appreciation of beauty by osmosis. Check out the magazine racks. Although Architectural Digest may be too much for her, a number of the cool designer magazines may set off a creative explosion. School children paint amazing murals on bland walls to brighten them up. Why not her bedroom? And let her be the designer. Remember, even punk rooms can be clean.
Hope that she doesn’t Google Punk Shui +Josh Hughes +NPR for any design tips.
Google:
1. Hatch: The Design Public® Blog
2. Decorate teen bedrooms
3. Abstract Dynamics: Faesthetic
4. Anarchist People | Anarchist news dot org
Key into YouTube:
1. Animation--The Self-Cleaning Room
2. How to Clean & Organize the Bedroom: Housekeeping Tips
3. A Clean Bedroom
4. Tips and Tricks to half-assed cleaning of bedroom
Question 33. my fat child
Dear 21st Century Dad, my thirteen year old is getting fat. I leave magazine articles in the bathroom about obesity. I turn up the radio louder when the newscaster talks about food addictions. I have the hardest time getting her up off of her butt. The weather is too wet, too cold, too hot or too cloudy.
And her friends, at least the ones she’s picked, are the same way. Don’t kids exercise anymore? What do I do?
Dear Why is Moderation So Boring?
If we divert all the money we blow on weight loss programs into food programs for the starving, we can narrow some bellies and widen a few million needy ones. Don’t we already know this? Do we really need another new diet program? It’s almost like being a teenager never stops. Why do we need parental figures and doctors and epidemiologists and dieticians and government health care and marketing consultants to tell us the bad things that will happen to us if we continue to overfeed? Aren’t we ever going to grow up?
Our governments have produced new food guides and have promised to table more legislation and write more regulations about what we should and what we shouldn’t eat, about how much and how little we eat, and when and where we can eat. (Those finger waggling parents again!)
How’s this for a futuristic healthy food and exercise scenario? Our school children spend triple the amount of school time on physical education. Play therapists out-revenue plastic surgeons. Legislation bans legal suits for schoolyard injuries. Ergonomists miniaturize movement enhanced computer workstations. Direction propelled conveyor sidewalks triple in width, allowing fast trackers an inside speedway. Corporations ban ties. Street games make the Olympics. (Hondurus wins Kick the Can, and for a threepeat, the Inuits take the Blanket Toss.) Lawns are edible, and for lunch, we can’t decide whether to eat lunch at school cafeteria with our kid, or the fast food counter at the local grocer’s vegetable aisle. Every year, we walk to a new country. We think that eating less and moving more is the best medical innovation since hand washing before and after surgery. Government statisticians estimate the tax loss on the illegal hamburger market is 7 Billion dollars.
Google:
1. Inuit Blanket Toss (in both Web and Images)
2. Eating Well with Canada's Food Guide - Main Page
3. Investing in Sport Participation (Education predicts sport involvement. The most significant dividing point is between secondary school graduates and people who did not complete secondary school.)
4. F as in Fat 2006: How Obesity Policies are Failing in America 2006
5. Tackling Child Obesity—First Steps British Parliament recommendations
6. Sportfit Welcome Page> at http://www.sportfitcanada.com
7. BBC NEWS | Magazine | My wartime menu (add more fruits and vegetables)
8. 100 Mile Diet: Local Eating for Global Change
And her friends, at least the ones she’s picked, are the same way. Don’t kids exercise anymore? What do I do?
Dear Why is Moderation So Boring?
If we divert all the money we blow on weight loss programs into food programs for the starving, we can narrow some bellies and widen a few million needy ones. Don’t we already know this? Do we really need another new diet program? It’s almost like being a teenager never stops. Why do we need parental figures and doctors and epidemiologists and dieticians and government health care and marketing consultants to tell us the bad things that will happen to us if we continue to overfeed? Aren’t we ever going to grow up?
Our governments have produced new food guides and have promised to table more legislation and write more regulations about what we should and what we shouldn’t eat, about how much and how little we eat, and when and where we can eat. (Those finger waggling parents again!)
How’s this for a futuristic healthy food and exercise scenario? Our school children spend triple the amount of school time on physical education. Play therapists out-revenue plastic surgeons. Legislation bans legal suits for schoolyard injuries. Ergonomists miniaturize movement enhanced computer workstations. Direction propelled conveyor sidewalks triple in width, allowing fast trackers an inside speedway. Corporations ban ties. Street games make the Olympics. (Hondurus wins Kick the Can, and for a threepeat, the Inuits take the Blanket Toss.) Lawns are edible, and for lunch, we can’t decide whether to eat lunch at school cafeteria with our kid, or the fast food counter at the local grocer’s vegetable aisle. Every year, we walk to a new country. We think that eating less and moving more is the best medical innovation since hand washing before and after surgery. Government statisticians estimate the tax loss on the illegal hamburger market is 7 Billion dollars.
Google:
1. Inuit Blanket Toss (in both Web and Images)
2. Eating Well with Canada's Food Guide - Main Page
3. Investing in Sport Participation (Education predicts sport involvement. The most significant dividing point is between secondary school graduates and people who did not complete secondary school.)
4. F as in Fat 2006: How Obesity Policies are Failing in America 2006
5. Tackling Child Obesity—First Steps British Parliament recommendations
6. Sportfit Welcome Page> at http://www.sportfitcanada.com
7. BBC NEWS | Magazine | My wartime menu (add more fruits and vegetables)
8. 100 Mile Diet: Local Eating for Global Change
Question 32. Independent living and money management
Dear 21st Century Dad, my 16 year old son has dropped out of regular school to attend an independent learning program. He wants to move out and get his own place with two of his friends. Both my husband and I left our families as sixteen year olds and we have done well, though each of us had to go back to school to get educated. He has a good part time job and the manager told me he is a good worker.
He has blown the welcome mat at our house. We have had it up to our necks with the basement smelling like beer farts and marijuana. He is fighting with his dad and we are thinking, why not let him leave? He is always welcome to come back, on our terms, and the fridge will be open when he wants to stop in. We just don’t have enough money to set up his share of a second household.
My only concern is that he has no concept of money management or independent living. He is operating under the belief that money always appears when he puts a card in the ATM. How do we teach him about writing cheques? Balancing the accounts? He spends so much money on fast food, I’m sure he won’t have enough money to buy groceries, let alone know how to cook them. How do I fast prep him for the real world?
Dear Set Free,
Let the boys have their fun.
First and last deposit on the rent?
Dirty undies and a double cheeseburger,
Land line and a hefty deposit, or a
Three year unreadable cell phone contract,
Bus fare and walking in the rain,
Kraft dinner, Kraft dinner, Kraft dinner,
Hair on the toilet,
Ring around the tub,
Wet towels,
No toilet paper,
Grease in the kitchen sink,
Plugged drains,
Wet paper plates,
Garbage pickup was yesterday?
Kraft dinner, Kraft dinner, Kraft dinner,
Kraft dinner, Kraft dinner, Kraft dinner,
Kraft dinner, Kraft dinner, Kraft dinner,
Alarm clocks,
It costs money to buy cheques?
This is a wonderful educational opportunity for our son to learn about the mechanics required for operating in a world devoid of what mommy and daddy’s house and home offer. We will put to rest all those biased parental expressions such as ‘I told you so,’ and ‘these are the consequences’ and ‘life is tough’ and actively support his early search for independence in any way we can help. Life can be a great teacher, and who knows, he may emerge from this first flight from the nest a more mature and appreciative son.
We can write up a behaviour contract that he will sign. The documentation will protect us if he goes to the Ministry of Children and Development and requests support because he is under 19, has no support, and “has been thrown out of the house”. The contract will clearly state the terms by which each party must comply. We do not need to bury this contract in legalese. Items could read like, “We agree to contribute $200 toward Bill’s rental and food costs per month. Bill is only allowed to come to the house by invitation.”
The behavioural contract must reflect the difference between supporting and promoting his independence, and rescuing him. Obligations must be clear on each other’s part. As an example, we can support him by giving him his financial help (if this has been negotiated) on time. And we want no surprises from which we have to rescue him. As an example, we can refuse to suffer his entreaties. “Mom, I had to spend my money on getting food. I just need $75 to cover the rent or I’ll get tossed and we’ll lose the lease.” Or, “Dad, you have to give me a ride to. If I miss this interview, I’m bound not to get the job.” Or, “We got robbed by this guy and all of us have had our ID stolen.” Or, “the moon just fell out of the sky, and…”
We can refer our son to the internet (around five cents a minute in most internet cafes) if he wishes to bone up on how to create a budget, or perhaps set aside ten per cent of his savings to purchase an on line game to learn about money management, play the market, or get good deals on real estate.
We can give him the equivalent of a Welcome Wagon package, clean clothes, laundry and dish detergent (yes, they are different!), cleaning fluids, a new tooth brush and toothpaste, a deodorant stick, a couple of weeks of precooked frozen soups and meals, and fifty bucks to load up on some Salvation army kitchen utensils, a chair and a mattress.
Keep an open line to our boy and enjoy the peace and quiet.
While we can.
Google:
1. Free Financial Advice, Tips & Calculators | Budget Worksheets ...or free budget sheets
2. TEENS WITH PROBLEMS: How to Write a Home Rules Contract
3. Family Contract
4. Geared to Youth -- For Parents
He has blown the welcome mat at our house. We have had it up to our necks with the basement smelling like beer farts and marijuana. He is fighting with his dad and we are thinking, why not let him leave? He is always welcome to come back, on our terms, and the fridge will be open when he wants to stop in. We just don’t have enough money to set up his share of a second household.
My only concern is that he has no concept of money management or independent living. He is operating under the belief that money always appears when he puts a card in the ATM. How do we teach him about writing cheques? Balancing the accounts? He spends so much money on fast food, I’m sure he won’t have enough money to buy groceries, let alone know how to cook them. How do I fast prep him for the real world?
Dear Set Free,
Let the boys have their fun.
First and last deposit on the rent?
Dirty undies and a double cheeseburger,
Land line and a hefty deposit, or a
Three year unreadable cell phone contract,
Bus fare and walking in the rain,
Kraft dinner, Kraft dinner, Kraft dinner,
Hair on the toilet,
Ring around the tub,
Wet towels,
No toilet paper,
Grease in the kitchen sink,
Plugged drains,
Wet paper plates,
Garbage pickup was yesterday?
Kraft dinner, Kraft dinner, Kraft dinner,
Kraft dinner, Kraft dinner, Kraft dinner,
Kraft dinner, Kraft dinner, Kraft dinner,
Alarm clocks,
It costs money to buy cheques?
This is a wonderful educational opportunity for our son to learn about the mechanics required for operating in a world devoid of what mommy and daddy’s house and home offer. We will put to rest all those biased parental expressions such as ‘I told you so,’ and ‘these are the consequences’ and ‘life is tough’ and actively support his early search for independence in any way we can help. Life can be a great teacher, and who knows, he may emerge from this first flight from the nest a more mature and appreciative son.
We can write up a behaviour contract that he will sign. The documentation will protect us if he goes to the Ministry of Children and Development and requests support because he is under 19, has no support, and “has been thrown out of the house”. The contract will clearly state the terms by which each party must comply. We do not need to bury this contract in legalese. Items could read like, “We agree to contribute $200 toward Bill’s rental and food costs per month. Bill is only allowed to come to the house by invitation.”
The behavioural contract must reflect the difference between supporting and promoting his independence, and rescuing him. Obligations must be clear on each other’s part. As an example, we can support him by giving him his financial help (if this has been negotiated) on time. And we want no surprises from which we have to rescue him. As an example, we can refuse to suffer his entreaties. “Mom, I had to spend my money on getting food. I just need $75 to cover the rent or I’ll get tossed and we’ll lose the lease.” Or, “Dad, you have to give me a ride to. If I miss this interview, I’m bound not to get the job.” Or, “We got robbed by this guy and all of us have had our ID stolen.” Or, “the moon just fell out of the sky, and…”
We can refer our son to the internet (around five cents a minute in most internet cafes) if he wishes to bone up on how to create a budget, or perhaps set aside ten per cent of his savings to purchase an on line game to learn about money management, play the market, or get good deals on real estate.
We can give him the equivalent of a Welcome Wagon package, clean clothes, laundry and dish detergent (yes, they are different!), cleaning fluids, a new tooth brush and toothpaste, a deodorant stick, a couple of weeks of precooked frozen soups and meals, and fifty bucks to load up on some Salvation army kitchen utensils, a chair and a mattress.
Keep an open line to our boy and enjoy the peace and quiet.
While we can.
Google:
1. Free Financial Advice, Tips & Calculators | Budget Worksheets ...or free budget sheets
2. TEENS WITH PROBLEMS: How to Write a Home Rules Contract
3. Family Contract
4. Geared to Youth -- For Parents
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