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Parenting/Children
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My grandson breaks things in our home….
22 Jul 2010 by Rod Smith / 1 Comment
“My grandson (7) has broken numerous electrical and other items whilst visiting at our home. My daughter and son-in-law think it is okay not to offer to compensate or repair the items. When I ask them what they intend to do about my damaged goods they are silent. I believe the father needs to set the example by attempting to repair the items. That way the boy learns by example. He learns that if we break other people’s item, then we are responsible for fixing them or making good.”
Clarify what you expect in your own home
1. Supervise the child – this matter is about the adults, not the child. You, the grandparent, are empowered to make his visits a joy.
2. Gather old irons and toasters for the boy to work on while at your home.
3. Get him a set of tools to keep at your home.
4. Sit with the boy and request he teach you how things work as he dismantles used electrical items you have collected and set aside for him.
5. Place his usual targets, your valued items, out of his sight for a short time.
6. Pack everything already broken in a box and ask the family (as a group) what it intends to do to repair the damages.
7. Be prepared for some conflict as you articulate your expectations for what occurs in your home. Your intent appears to include “fixing” something about your son-in-law. Quit it. Focus on creating a fabulous (real, forthright, fun, flexible, and fascinating) experience for your grandchild every time he walks through your door. -
Teenagers are constantly in conflict…..
14 Jul 2010 by Rod Smith / No Comments
“My children, a daughter who is 17 and a son who is 19, are fiercely competitive and hardly anything either says goes unchallenged by the other. They verbally attack each other at every opportunity. Please comment?”
Try to stay out of their conflicts. I am aware of just how difficult this is but it is important that they learn to cope with each other without the services of a go-between to assist, or someone who short-circuits their unfortunate, but necessary process. The minute you “jump in” or are pulled in, is the minute you help them avoid responsibility for a conflict of their making – and become responsible for the monitoring of its outcome.
Talking it through in a public place.....
Being piggy in the middle is ALWAYS a very draining, anxiety-producing experience for piggy, especially when piggy in the middle is mom or dad.
Your son and daughter are going to be siblings for many years, perhaps for even longer than they will each know you! The sooner they learn to accommodate and love each other the better off each will be. Learning to love and accept each other will do all of their other relationships a whole lot of good.
Discerning your level of intervention will always be your call. I believe your intervention is necessary if blows are exchanged or if unabashed cruelty occurs.
Call a meeting. Have “dinner with a purpose”. Meet them in a crowded restaurant where it is unlikely that tempers will flair and where they will be unlikely to become loud or aggressive. Let them know the degree of grief you experience when they are continually at each other’s throats. Let them know how a parent feels when his or her children seem unable to get along.
Heart-to-heart conversations can go a long way to building bridges that will be necessary to one day walk cross. I do it with my own children (12 and 9) and I am always surprised at how much it means to them, and how much they take our “dinners with a purpose” to heart*. I know, I know: my children are younger and it is probably much easier when dinner with dad is something exciting. But, this is your opportunity to parent with a purpose – and I challenge you to make it happen.
* We even have “meeting chairs” in our home and we only really sit in them for “serious” or “important” conversations.
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Whose shoulders have YOU ridden on?
11 Jul 2010 by Rod Smith / No Comments
Last evening my boys and I were kicking a ball on the school field near our home and taking turns to be the goalie. The second I stepped between the posts I was back at Kingsmead, field 4, 1965. Northlands Primary was playing Southlands Primary at the end of hard soccer season.
Childhood: just under the surface
In the crowd was the Mayor of Durban, The Honorable Trevor Warman, in support of his son, Anthony Warman. I knew this because from where I stood urgently protecting the goals, I could see “NDC 1”, the black Rolls Royce parked at the far end of the field.
Minutes from the end of the game Southland’s formidable wing, Johnny McGregor, dribbled the ball from Mark Tovey, only to also outpace defenders Michael Quinn and Malcolm Mercer and come sprinting down center field to send the ball right through my legs and into the goal.
Forty-five years later I can feel the embarrassment of that moment. But more important than my moment of humiliation, once the whistle sounded the end of the game, the mayor himself came onto the field, hoisted me onto his shoulders and carried me off the field as if I had indeed won, and not lost, the game at all.
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Flying with children – 10 ways to make it to cloud 9!
09 Jul 2010 by Rod Smith / 1 Comment
Flying with children? It’s a pleasure – usually. Long hauls, short hauls – bring it on. I accessed our multiple frequent flyer accounts, having just gotten home to the Midwest (USA) from Sydney, Australia, to see my sons (8 and 12) and I have up racked up well over a million miles – and most of it as a family. My elder son had Premier Executive status with United Airlines by age 2.
If you and your children are flying anywhere this summer here are some ways to make flying with children a delight:
1. Anxiety is contagious – so relax. Get your focus off your children. Quit worrying about how they will behave, whether the baby will cry or not, and all the things that so easily get a parent going. Worrying upsets children. The calmer you are, the calmer your children will be.
Ohare and my boys....
2. Trust your children. By age seven each of my sons could find his way around several terminals, check himself into a flight, handle his passport, and respond to questions from customs and immigration officials. My sons have not had to do any unaccompanied flying, but I have used endless hours in airports, often during unexpected layovers around the world to teach them everything they need to know about being international travelers.
3. Trust most of your fellow passengers. You’re sitting in airports and on planes with parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts – people who don’t know your children but who know children. Recruit help when you need it. As a single dad I had to regularly ask someone to hold the baby while I ushered my toddler to the restroom.
4. Trust the flight crew. I am yet to encounter an unfriendly flight attendant when it comes to my children. Flight attendants have taken my children on walks, entertained them in the galley, and yes, even quite recently have taken them into the cockpit!
5. Regard flying as an exciting slice of real life – not something tedious and overwhelming. It’s a joyous adventure, not a life-sentence! It’s only as big a deal as you make it.
Nathanael seated across the aisle
6. Get over the uptight, sighing, dirty-stare passenger who feels above flying near a baby or with children. Your children have as much right to fly as any other ticketed passengers. If Mr. Grumpy World Traveler is bemoaning your child’s presence on a plane, imagine what he’s like at home with his children.
7. Don’t medicate children for your convenience – on or off the plane. Doing so will probably work against you one day.
8. Teach you children cabin etiquette and how things work – just as you teach good hygiene and table manners. Overhead lights, window shades, upright seatbacks, fold-down tables, using call-lights, seat belts, and the uses and rules associated with each are very interesting to young children – the sooner the children know cabin etiquette the better.
9. Let your children speak for themselves. My children regularly ask to switch their kid’s meal option for an adult meal – and usually end up with both! They repeatedly ask how many hours are left in the flight, or what city is immediately below us, and personal questions about the captain. Don’t get in the middle or run interference. Flight crews, often also parents, can handle your children and a whole lot more. Trust them.
They've seen the world, but LOVE Indy!
10. As far as it is possible, only use carry-on baggage. This speeds progress though airports and increases flexibility when there are flight changes or cancellations. Efficiency means less time and opportunity for moodiness! From as young as possible (I chose 6), let each child be fully responsible for his or her own possessions. Each of my boys packs his own bag, monitors its whereabouts at all times, and is fully responsible for getting it on and off the plane. I don’t allow my children to pack their things in my bags and nor do I put my stuff in their bags. I do not allow them to help each other out with their luggage. Such “helping” is not helpful as it only adds to confusion and finger-pointing when things go missing or, if for any reason, stress levels increase.”You pack it, you care for it, you carry it” – is one of our many mottoes.
(Rod Smith, a single parent to two boys each adopted at birth, teaches internationally for Youth With a Mission in the summers, and at St. Richard’s School in Indianapolis during the academic year. Rod is a Family Therapist, writer, and teacher.)
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A challenge to young girls……
23 Apr 2010 by Rod Smith / 2 Comments
Begin now, today, to be the kind of woman you want to become in the future:
1. Stand up for yourself without pushing anyone else over. Speak your mind. Say what you want to say. See what you see. Say what you see you see.
2. Be your own “virus protection” program by keeping the “bad” out and let the good in. Bad: gossip, unfriendliness, rudeness, lies, unnecessarily excluding others. Good: standing up for what is right, good, and just, being “open” and not “closed” to others, being welcoming and friendly to more than just your closest friends.
3. Decide to be a kind and good person even when you see people being mean to others.
4. Choose to be an agent of healing when others are hurt.
5. Don’t surrender your power to anyone – it is always yours to foster, protect, and use, first for your own good, then for the good of others.
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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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