Where “I am sorry,” means, “Well, I know I did something not quite right and I don’t REALLY FEEL sorry, but my mom told me to say this whenever I did something so I am just saying it.”

Where “Please” and “Thank you” are used so profusely that it mostly does not REALLY mean anything. However, it’s almost a sin if you forget to say those words after the end of each sentence and question you pose.

Where “Can you forgive me?” is used like a doormat in defense of your actions and you don’t REALLY care whether the other person forgives you or not, because you will continue to behave just the same and do not plan to adjust your future actions.

Where everybody SEEMS to care, but then nobody REALLY cares.

Where everybody talks all the time, but nobody has anything REAL to say about anything.

Where everybody is called a friend and wants to be your friend but then nobody is your REAL friend.

Where freedom of speech is highly valued and is considered a hallmark of the American culture, but it REALLY is not the case, because:

Where praising and positive compliments have become so much the norm that anyone won’t dare utter a REAL ‘negative’ remark for fear of offending someone.

Where being politically correct has taken over REAL words.

Where words have lost their true meaning in REAL life.

Where the underlying emotions accompanying words have been stripped away preventing REAL interaction with others.

Where people robotically go from home to work, from work to home (the religious folk also try to go to church and then there are the devout football fans who live for the football games).

Where life is an endless cycle of Christmases-Valentine’s Days-Easters-4^th of Julys-Halloweens-Thanksgivings-Christmases, etc.

Where people with deep emotional issues may find momentary relief, because all the above provide excellent escape/remedy from dealing with the REAL problems at hand.

Where relationships have become artificial, superficial, and superfluous.

A part of me loves it and another part of me hates it.

Welcome to my world.

Now here is the punchline: Guess with which group of people this book is popular? Christian home-schoolers!!!

Here is the irony of the system in this country. The teachers at schools are under EXTREME pressure from the parents. They are being watched like a hawk and God help them if they so as much as lay a finger on a kid. They will probably lose their job… [I met a male kindergarten teacher once, who said he had to quit, because it was not appropriate for him to even touch the kids in his class—let alone give a hug—even though it was considered normal for female kindergarten teachers to be affectionate with their students.]

Okay, I admit, maybe some teachers are out of line and we have to protect our kids, but come on, we will never ever hear of a teacher using corporal punishment. Not in the United States of America. There would be a big upheaval and the teacher in question would be sued big time.

And then there is the occasional kid who is abused at home and the teacher can step in and call the authorities, then the parents can be sued of child abuse/neglect.

But how do we protect the home-schooled kids who have to live under the tyranny of parents who believe in corporal punishment and who actually carry it out??? Does it make corporal punishment okay when it is done in the name of God Almighty and Jesus Christ?

The Pearls, along with many conservative Christians, say the Bible calls for corporal punishment. “To give up the use of the rod is to give up our views of human nature, God, eternity,” they write in the book.

Three kids have already died, but the Pearls (the authors of the book) are not being charged. Fine, there is freedom of speech and you can write anything you want. But, how come they can ban Harry Potter in some states and not this book? Something just does not add up.

Links:

• Pastor’s corporal punishment advice scrutinized after child deaths

Disclosure: I am a strong advocate of attachment parenting and do not believe and have never exercised any form of physical punishment with my children. I believe there are a myriad of ways to get through to a child instead of reverting to aggressive behavior. 

Surely I am not the only one with this predicament, so I fish around for books. There are so many! Which one to read in my precious little time? How to Hug a Porcupine by Julie A. Ross was the winner of my jackpot.

She has some great advice in her book. The book is easy to read, her suggestions are easy to understand and practical, and she has great examples.

She describes the middle schoolers as hormonal, disorganized, and defiant. I totally agree. As if the sheer effect of hormones wreaking havoc on this age group is not enough, they have to deal with constant change in their physical bodies (as well as watching their friends transform physically into something else). On top of this, they have to learn to deal with their expanding mental abilities AND keep up with schoolwork AND keep up with increasing responsibilities around the house AND keep up with the growing expectations of people for them to start behaving like an adult. Wow! Typing it out like this already makes me feel nauseous! In short, it is very natural for a middle schooler to be hormonal, disorganized, and defiant. Who wouldn’t be?

Julie says, “Anticipate earthquakes. Say to yourself: ‘This is normal and to be expected.’” (p. 3)

Thus, it becomes crucial to be respectful towards our middle schoolers. It is just not the parents who are in uncharted territory: the kids themselves are there right alongside us. The kids are going through this period where they have to break out of their cocoons and transform into butterflies. They were caterpillars under our wings and now they have to learn to spread their own wings. No small feat…

Sometimes, it can be hard for a parent to be a bystander as their kids struggle to find their way. This is the predicament of most overprotective parents. We have to give our children the time and space they need to learn to fly. If you help a butterfly out of its chrysalis, it won’t be able to fly. It is the battle to break free that makes the butterfly fly.

Listening and understanding must accompany respectful communication with our children. They need to know we are there for them, but we have to be careful not to step on their shoes. It takes a lot of skill to find the middle way between being overprotective and being overly permissive. For example, some parents take it personally upon themselves to make sure their child turns in a perfect homework, but is that homework for the parent (this is what a friend of mine asked me when I was extending too much help on homework to curb the whining of my 5^th grader!!!)? An example for the overly permissive parent would be that parent who gave $600 pocket money to a 5^th grader going on a school field trip … What would a 5^th grader do with that much money on a school field trip???

Having said all that, Julie emphasizes that, “Understanding our middle schooler does NOT mean we are condoning misbehavior or rudeness” (p. 84).

In her book, Julie has excellent discussions on how to communicate with our kids. She gives examples about ‘communication blocks’. My personal two favorites are ‘advising’ and ‘placating’ communication blocks.

1. An advising parent would sound something like, “Next time, you should…” or “Well, what you need to do is go back to her and explain that…” Apparently when middle schoolers hear this kind of talk, what they think is along these lines: “I never do anything right.” Or “What happens is all my fault.”
2. A placating parent would sound something like, “Oh, honey. You’re beautiful/talented/smart no matter what she/he said about you.” And the middle schooler would be thinking, “Mom/Dad doesn’t understand me.” Or “Mom/Dad is lying.” (p. 84)

My best take from her book is the idea of family meetings. “They comprise a short amount of distraction-free time that you set aside weekly to be together as a family. They give you the opportunity to discuss values and other relevant issues, to make decisions, to problem solve, and to reinforce a sense of ‘family community’ in an emotion-neutral zone” (p. 69).

We are getting on with these meets every other week now. We have done 2 meetings so far. When I first put the idea on the table, my daughter resisted big time. (What would we talk about anyway?) My husband and I decided to give it a festive flair and to keep it simple to wear down resistance. After all, it was important that the children understood that these gatherings were not about preaching them, but hearing them out and discussing issues related to our family and values. Thus, our first meet had non-alcoholic champagne and 3 different types of cookies and we talked about why we were thankful to have each and every one of us in our family. During the second one, we extended our discussion to include the best and the worst moments we had during our week. I am planning to build it up eventually. The kids are taking it really well )

Thank you Julie for the great idea!

Related posts:

• How to establish healthy relationships?
• Listening to our children
• About this emotional life: Happiness/Intimacy

Note: This article is my personal opinion. I have no monetary gain of any kind from promoting this book nor do I have any kind of personal affiliation with Julie A. Ross.

A cage with duct tape around it that says, “Caution” – as if it’s a crime scene…

And on top of the cage is the sign that says: “Banned Books Week”.

Where are we? What year?

Gainesville, Florida, United States of America and the date is September 28, 2011.

And the books in the cage: (the infamous) Harry Potter, The Upstairs Room (a Newberry Honor Book), In the Night Kitchen (a Caldecott Honor Book), and more…

I was so baffled that I sought a librarian and asked what was going on.

She said, “These are the books that have been banned elsewhere in the U.S… – not in Gainesville.”

How much longer before they are also banned here?

How did they get banned? The librarian says, “Well, some person reads the book and finds something in there that s/he finds offensive and finds a court that will listen and then the book is banned.”

Is it that easy? What happened to freedom of speech? In the land of the free?

I get offended in this land all the time. I don’t go around complaining to a court of law about how I got offended by what someone else said – or wrote.

Or should I? [I need a court to listen to me! I got offended! My FEELINGS got hurt…] Uh oh…

Hello! We are not a bunch of 5-year-olds running around tattletaling!!!

I have a problem with people who think they can use their own ‘rights to be offended’ to limit other people’s rights.  What happened to the melting pot of different cultures and religions that made this country such a great place to live in?

Who is right and who is wrong? What gives a person the ‘RIGHT’ to judge another for what they ‘WRITE’? And what kind of a court of law gets involved in such PETTY quibbles???

And what happens to MY right to read a book that I might find very interesting and inspiring???

Harry Potter has become my all time favorite. And I hate to see it bashed as a book that promotes witchcraft and wizardry. It is a story of courage, inspiration, and friendship. EVERYONE is entitled to his or her own opinion. If you don’t like it, fine, but please don’t try to stop me from reading it, thinking you are ‘saving’ me or thinking you know ‘better’. [If anything, I think all the negative hype should be geared towards the paraphernalia that has cluttered the toy stores, the bookstores and the minds of our kids -- it is all those gadgets that do a great injustice to J. K. Rowling and give a bad name to her life's brilliant work...]

And please don’t go around criticizing other populations on the planet who go and burn books. Because banning them is not much different.

How can we ever dream of a world of peace if we cannot even tolerate what some of us choose to write?

How can we ever think of reconciling the deep chasm between Palestinians and the Israelis if we can’t stand our own differences?

The blame game of why what THEY did hurt MY feelings will never stop, unless we stop playing the game. Stop blaming somebody else for your own feelings.

Talk it out. Deal with it.

Or just zip it!

Coexist.

Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape. He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as:

• Knowing when to come in out of the rain;
• Why the early bird gets the worm;
• Life isn’t always fair;
• And maybe it was my fault.

Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies:

• Don’t spend more than you can earn;
• Adults–not children–are in charge.

His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place:

• Reports of a 6-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate;
• Teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch;
• A teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student.

Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children. It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or an aspirin to a student, but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.

Common Sense lost the will to live as the churches became businesses and criminals received better treatment than their victims.

Common Sense took a beating when you couldn’t defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault.

Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman failed to realize that a good cup of steaming coffee is hot (and should be!). She spilled the coffee in her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement.

Common Sense was preceded in death by his parents Truth and Trust, his wife Discretion, his daughter Responsibility, and his son Reason. His 4 stepbrothers still survive healthier than ever:

• Mr. I Know My Rights
• Ms. I Want It Now
• Mr. Someone Else Is To Blame
• Ms. I’m A Victim.

Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone…

Misinformation, disinformation, information…

And how do we tell one from the other? Who is telling the truth?

Movies, television series, scientific studies, bloggers, elders, government officials, our friends… We are being bombarded by mixed messages from everywhere, which leaves us confused and indecisive.

My three-year-old daughter was sick for the last two weeks. Last week, she was bad: fever for 6 consecutive days, coughing, runny nose, tired, no appetite. I was worried, of course, even though it looked like she had a bad cold or the flu. A part of me was telling me it was not a big deal and it would pass; yet another part of me was waging war against my better judgment. What if I was wrong? What if there was something horribly wrong with her? What would I do if something happened to her because I delayed seeing a doctor? When I could not stand my own internal battle anymore, I called the doctor’s office. I told them the story and naturally the nurse confirmed my worst fear: she had to be seen. So we took a little trip to the doctor’s office 15 minutes after the phone conversation.

DD was examined from head to toe, complete with an oxygen count. She demonstrated “flu-like” symptoms (that much I knew, thank you very much—I wish he would tell me something I did not know!). She needed no further testing, no medication, nothing. I was relieved and upset at the same time. Relieved: there did not seem something horribly wrong with her. Upset: DD still had a fever and the doctor did not provide any other advice than what I was already doing.

He did hand me some papers and told me to read them. One was about how to manage fever and the other one was about the swine flu. I understand why I may need more information on how to manage fever, but swine flu? Did he think DD had swine flu? If so, why did he not advise further testing? If not, why was I being handed information on swine flu? Was I in med-school?

Anyways, that was not the big deal, the big deal was this: when I called the doctor’s office, the nurse asked whether DD was up to date with her vaccinations. Why in the world would that matter? I had called them because I had a sick child on my hands and here they were questioning her vaccine schedule. Was I missing something here? What was the main concern? And that was not the end of it. When we actually went to see the doctor, I got hit by the same exact question BEFORE the nurse started asking me what was wrong with her!  Then it was the doctor who came in to examine DD, who gave me a small lecture on vaccinations. And the next day, I got a follow-up call from another nurse, which was nice, but then she questioned me even more about DD’s missing vaccinations. She advised me to come in and talk to the doctor about it. I was exasperated. I had a sick kid on my hands and here were these doctors and nurses obsessed with the missing vaccines. What was wrong with these people? Who is right? The good doctors?

What is right and what is wrong? I don’t want to be wrong. I want to verify that what I think is right is indeed right. My child is sick, but I have a hunch it’s going to pass. So I need verification from the doctor, because if I am not right, then I don’t even want to start to think about the consequences. I get the verification: I am relieved.

But this vaccinations business…

I have been reading on vaccines and the vaccination schedule for a while now. The more I read, the more opposed I have become to vaccinations. I have a hunch that all this vaccination business is not in the best interest of my child. I need verification from our doctor. Oops! Our pediatrician will not verify my hunch. Not in a million years. In fact, she wants to keep lecturing me on statistical probabilities. [Well, I have to do justice to some other doctors who do verify my concerns (e.g., Dr. Robert S. Mendelsohn author of How to Raise a Healthy Child in Spite of your Doctor; Dr. Stephanie Cave author of What your Doctor may NOT tell you About Children’s Vaccinations).]

The medical community is divided on this issue—just like it is divided on many other issues. So nothing new, there :) But who is telling the truth? The information out there is overwhelming. I am confused. Don’t get me wrong: I am not against vaccinations all together. I see the merit of vaccinating children and how the availability of vaccines has largely reduced pretty nasty childhood diseases. Yet there is always the other side of the coin that is left in the dark. Some pharmaceutical companies are making incredible amounts of money through the mandatory vaccination schedule and new vaccines are being added every year. I took a look at the preschool entry requirements here in the U.S. and I was devastated to see the increase in vaccines over the last 10 years. Has anything dramatic happened over the last 10 years to increase the number of mandatory vaccinations? And why here in the U.S.? Other countries in Europe do not have such a rigorous vaccination propaganda. Are conditions in the U.S. so much worse for our children than the conditions in Europe that we have to vaccinate them almost twice if not more than they do?

I am confused. And when the doctor and the nurses start questioning me like I am doing the wrong thing, and attempting to discount everything else I have read and lived through, I start getting mad.

I feel like I have to chart a more ‘sensible’ vaccination schedule for DD. But hey! that’s not allowed by the medical community. Well, maybe it is elsewhere, but where we live, the only way to go around that is to declare that we are religious zealots! So it boils down to: are we with the religious folk or the scientific folk? Because there is no middle way… We’re either with them or against them…

May the Lord help us all. Amen.

Dad: “Is that how it should be? Is that the right approach to raising children? Does it send the right message?”

What is right and what is wrong when we are raising our children?

Is there a right or wrong?

When an artist is painting, she uses certain colors. Did she make the right choice of colors?

Criticizing is easy. Looking at a finished product of art and firing away judgments… But there is no right or wrong. The picture is the way it is. Maybe the trees weren’t the ‘right’ color, but then whose ‘right’ color? The artist’s or the critic’s? Only the producer of the artwork can be a true judge of her painting. She looks at what she has done and knows what’s ‘right’ or ‘wrong’—instinctively. The next time she draws, she will not make the same mistakes.

True, sometimes we need a teacher, but again only WE can be the judge of that—not some other critic. Even if somebody says, “Man, you gotta go take an art class, that painting of yours needs some major improvement,” it’s up to the artist to decide. Had Van Gogh followed his era’s taste and style, would he ever have been considered to be one of the founders of modern art? He learned from others, yet he chose to draw differently and for that he was never recognized when he was alive. It was only after his death, but that is the case with all true geniuses… Take Mozart, for example…

One of my dearest friends, an artist, once all got fired up in an argument and said, “Nobody can teach me how to draw.” Seeming to be a highly obnoxious and egotistical statement taken at face value; her statement cannot get any closer to the truth…

And parenting is an art. We make decisions based on apparent whims, or so it seems to the outside observer. The observer/critic does not even know a fraction of what the parent knows about his kid. The observer/critic can only speak from personal experience and observations, which rarely coincides with the parent-in-observation’s reality. Everything is different: the parent, the kid, the times, the place, the circumstances… How can there be a true overlap? A considerable overlap in experiences can exist only between two parents parenting the same children, but even then the overlap is not more than 50%.

Where is this 50% coming from? Just a hunch… And my brain wants to make sure that this number is, in fact, correct immediately. First of all, each parent shares exactly 50% of their own genetic structure with their kids of which there is little or no overlap with the other parent. If we accept that nature and nurture are equally influential in shaping a child’s development, given that there is 0% overlap genetically, then the overlap between the two parents’ shared understanding of their own child drops automatically down to 50% maximum on the nurture side—which can only be reached if they both spend exactly the same amount of time—at the same time!—in the child’s environment (and the mothers naturally get a head start of 9 months, so theoretically, it’s even less than 50%…).

If the maximum overlap between mom and dad is 50%, what is the maximum overlap between a mom and an outsider? Say this outsider is a close family member: a grandparent. My best guess would be not more than 5% realistically, but theoretically it could be anywhere up to 25% (following the same logic in the previous paragraph, given that the grandparent and mom spend equal amounts of time at the same time with the child). What does this tell you? Take others’ grain of advice on how to raise your own kids with salt.

So, long story cut short: yes, kids have priority in our household (as long as I can tolerate it!..)

Failure is a relative term. I have secretly feared failure. Now is the time when I face my fears.

Failing a project that I–myself–set up, is demoralizing. I wrestled with feelings of guilt over why I was not writing. Well, I was not writing to make myself fail so that I could finally come to terms with this ‘fear of failure.’ Pretty twisted, huh?

I was not doing it consciously. It just worked out this way. Every time I wanted to write, I sabotaged myself – my hands and arms hurt, my neck ached … And my project failed.

It’s not a big deal because there are no ‘real’ consequences to failing this project – I won’t lose any loved ones, job, money, possessions, etc. So it’s ‘safe’ to fail.

Yet I agonized over failing and not delivering my promise. In my own eyes, I was a failure and I did not like that – well, a part of me did not like it, whereas another part of me kept saying, ‘what the heck!’

My project may have failed, but I have succeeded in the sense that I lived through my fear of failure and am back to writing about it. I am sorry for not delivering the promise I made. I am happy to find out that it’s okay.

Every failure harbors a hidden success.

The horse-shoe shaped canals that run through the city have been a source of wonder to me since the day I set foot here. It is astounding to think about how they were built one after another as the inhabitants ran out of space. It is no wonder that the world’s top engineers who deal with water are Dutch, because their ancestors have been commanding it for little less than a thousand years—hanging on to their precious little corner on the planet by keeping the ocean at bay.

I was told during one of the canal cruises that there are more than 1,200 bridges and 165 canals in Amsterdam. Now those may not be huge numbers by themselves, but when you take into consideration the fact that Amsterdam is only 219 km² including land and water, then that means roughly 5 bridges per square kilometer… Somebody want to tell me this isn’t a city built on water?

Okay, I have to admit I have never been to Venice and I would really love to one day, but until that day Amsterdam will be the top floating city on my list:)

When I first came to Amsterdam, there was an occasion when somebody asked me if I would be interested in tickets to Artis, the zoo in town. Having come from Florida, I could not be less interested. I had been to Disney’s Animal Kingdom, the Sea World, the Busch Gardens, and the Butterfly Museum. Heck, I had seen alligators roaming wild and free on the streets. Going to a zoo in Amsterdam? Ha ha ha! They must have been kidding me…! I thought I knew better. Well, I could not have been more off in my thinking

Then there is also the fact that I have never liked going to zoos. The locked up animals make me sad. Would I like it if a more intelligent species put me behind bars as a source of entertainment for their kids? No, but then, I could try to look at it from the bright side: I would be so interesting that the members of this more intelligent species would be willing to pay money just to take a look at me.

Thus, I like to think about zoos more like an educational ground for my kids and I suffer along

As you can imagine, one day, the inevitable happened. I ran out of options to entertain my then 7-year-old daughter and a friend of mine offered free entrance tickets to Artis. I was sold.

Artis is yet another place where precious space has been ingeniously utilized. The zoo contains an aquarium built in 1881, a butterfly pavilion, a kinderboerderij (= petting zoo), and a movie theater among other things. More than a zoo, it looks like a nicely trimmed, ever-blooming garden. There is hardly any smell despite the fact that it houses more than 900 different species of animals.

They are continuously busy with renovating the zoo, which has opened its doors in 1838. Even though there are some animals still behind old-fashioned cages, most others have been enclosed in a more friendly way and some even left to roam for free—like the peacocks.

For children, it’s a paradise with countless animals and several different playgrounds. It’s also an interesting place for artists and photographers.  The annual membership has proven invaluable. Being situated right in the center of the city with easy access, it has become our top destination for daily leisure. Some of our favorites are: the sea lion feedings at 11:45, the tiny mammals section, the butterflies, the penguins, the giant tortoises, and the anteaters

And Artis has the best free toilets in Amsterdam!

Are you sold?