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Adolescence
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Valuable lessons to teach your child…
11 Mar 2009 by Rod Smith / No Comments
1. To work hard in groups and to work hard alone.
2. To identify the correlation between work and achievement.
3. To freely and regularly express gratitude.
4. To connect behavior and choices with consequences.
5. To save.
6. To find his or her voice and to use it appropriately.
7. To use his or her imagination.
8. To respect elders, teachers, and persons in authority.
9. To be able to apologize and to forgive.
10. To take full responsibility for his or her own future.
11. To value the past as a springboard to the future.
12. To know that fulfillment is an “inside job.” -
Dad wants to start up visits again…
09 Sep 2008 by Rod Smith / 2 Comments
For three years my son (12) and I have been alone. Now his dad wants to start weekend visits again. He is a very nice man even though he has been unreliable in the past. This new thing about visiting comes because now my son is getting older. I don’t want him to let my son down and it just seems like we are in a pattern that he will now start to disrupt after all these years. My son is very excited to know his father wants to see him again. Please help. (Letter revised)
I suggest you support any attempt the father makes to be with his son. Be a consistent listening ear to your boy and help him to navigate his relationship with his father. If the dad becomes unreliable, then your son will quickly learn this about his father – and your son will learn to trust and love his father while keeping this in mind. No one is perfect, and your son will benefit from knowing his father despite his father’s imperfections.
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Sleeping dogs? Do I talk to my son about his father?
03 Jun 2008 by Rod Smith / 1 Comment
“My son’s father and I broke up before I found out that I was pregnant. There were minimal monetary contributions for 3 months after my son, now 13, was born. He wanted me to abort but I refused. My son has never asked me about his father and so I have never told him anything. I wonder if I should bring up the subject or let sleeping dogs lie. I’m
afraid that if I bring it up, then he might want to find him and his father might say he doesn’t want to meet him, which might make things worse. He is married and has other children. My phone number has not changed so he has no excuse for not getting in touch. I wonder if my son ever wonders about him but as far as I know, he never says a word even to his friends. Do I bring it up or wait until he is ready to ask questions?”
Email me, I am listening.
Sleeping dogs usually wake up hungry! What you avoid will be more powerful than what you face. Talk to your son. Tell him everything you have told me – but for the suggestion of abortion. He doesn’t need to know this.
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My son is ungrateful……
31 Mar 2008 by Rod Smith / No Comments
My son (11) is quite ungrateful for all I do for him. I don’t want him to go around being unkind to women and he’s not getting any good lessons from his father who is a miserable woman-hater who I am glad I divorced. What can I do to make him appreciate all I do and honor and respect me. I am a single mother. Please help.
Taking care of some of your anger might be a good place to start. The tone of your letter hardly suggests you are roaming around life with your arms and voice lifted in praise and thankfulness.
May I remind you the father of your son is the man you once loved enough to marry?
Attitudes are quite contagious. Get yours right and you might see a little shift in the manner in which your son sees life.
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Husbands expect their wives to serve them and reader suggests why…
15 Sep 2007 by Rod Smith / 2 Comments
A reader writes…
“Many wives complain that their husbands expect them to be servants. The cause is, in my opinion, quite clear. Many mothers, including those in marriages not destroyed by divorce, run around their children (more so in the case of boys) to meet every request at the drop of a hat: picking up dirty clothes, running errands and being at their beck and call. This extends to mothers putting their own living standards aside so as not to upset their kids. I know this from many of my relationships (I’ve been divorced twice) and from comments from divorced friends. I have seen how the mothers place their kids on pedestals and the kids take full advantage. When ‘little Johnny’ marries he expects his wife to do the same. The sad part is once kids move the mother’s life has a huge hole and she feels shortchanged. I am pleased my son (19) is in the USA and has to sort his own life out.” (Minimally edited)
I’d suggest this dad is on the ball with his insight! Everyone benefits when children assume helpful roles in their families and develop healthy work ethics. Making “Johnny” clean his room at 12 may help him better love his wife at 40!
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Verbal log-jam
When I was a boy I’d endlessly practice the fluent delivery of my name but it seldom flowed easily from my lips. As if it was new news to me, adults pointed out my stutter. Perhaps they thought I was beginning, at that precise moment, for the first time in my life to spit from the mouth, twist at the neck, jig my head back and forth trying to expel some inane statement log-jammed between my gut and my throat.
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Life in our beloved 122
If the inside of a house (outside, too, I suppose) is a metaphor of the lives of the people who live in it – which is something I once read somewhere – gosh, are we in trouble. Our house is a mess.
I consistently clean it room by room, thinking often of the legend that the Golden Gate Bridge that says there’s some guy constantly painting it. I feel for him. While I am sure the view is wonderful I must believe that the poor guy whose doing it daily from one end to the other must find the wind and the weather quite a challenge.
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Being a white South African can come with complications
Being a white South African reared under Apartheid is no simple matter. It permeated everything for me. While I do not pretend to have been a political activist, I was always cognizant that my privileges, simply a result of being born white, were unmerited, and most unfair especially when enjoyed at the expense of others who were not. I think this unsettling truth (for I took advantage of my station in life) was somewhat of a companion to me from the age of about six or seven.
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Location, location – remembering winter in August
We live very close to our school and church, so close we can hear the school bell from our kitchen and the church bells in my bedroom.
Sometimes we walk to both and we don’t see the car for days.
I like it. I like not having to get in and out of the car. I like not having to negotiate traffic, something as synonymous with life in the USA as Disney, Fast Food, and the Fourth of July.
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Ready to adopt?
If you wait until you are ready to adopt a child you never will because you will never be ready. The baby, and only the baby, will make you ready. Reading the right books will be helpful, but “ready” magically comes upon you when a real baby is sleeping in your arms or crying in the middle of the night. If you are not ready to change diapers – and I always am amused at the big deal about this non-issue – being unprepared will last only as long as a clean diaper.
Life inside the Smith household
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