Inception

This afternoon we were in the car. On the radio a song with the lyrics "You saved me from myself" was playing.

Josh asked, "How could someone be saved from themselves?"

I replied, "Well one way could be if they had really negative self-thought, like 'I'm bad, I'm terrible, I'm worthless.' and someone helped them to realize that negative thinking wasn't true."

"So, like, their therapist?" Josh asked.

"Therapists definitely could help their clients eliminate negative self-thinking, but people who love and care about the person could help them realize it too, like friends and family."

"I see."

"The funny thing about negative self-thought, though, is usually it comes from someone else saying those negative things about you first. 'You're bad. You're terrible. You're worthless.' After so long hearing those things your mind changes it to 'I'm bad.' etc."

"So it's just like Inception," Josh said. "Inception /is/ possible."

And there I sat slack-jawed and mind-blown.

But seriously, I love how movies and music and other forms of media help give us launching pads and aids for contemplating abstract ideas.

My Kids are Awesome

Anyone who thinks raising a child without spanking, without chores, without rules, without school, without coercion, without manipulation CAN'T produce a person who is kind, thoughtful, self-disciplined, productive, inquisitive, motivated, and ethical, I wish you could meet my children.

I woke up to this on my bedside table. Josh, 10, got up, took care of the pets, made me coffee, and is now practicing piano. I'm so often overwhelmed by their Inherent goodness.

Interruptions

Interruptions are one of my triggers.

We're driving home from the store. I'm getting hangry. Bug asks me a question. I'm answering, and Josh interrupts me.

I fume, "I was just in the middle of answering Bug's question. I don't like being interrupted."

"Oh, sorry", said Josh.

In my head I'm running through what else to say. " So rude! " "Every time!" "Seriously?!" "How many times do I have to tell you?" I'm really huffing and puffing up there, stomping my foot and everything.

We turn a corner and Bug's book falls to the floor. "Ugh! I can't reach my book!" he grumbles.

"Where is it?" Josh kindly asks. Bug points and Josh gets it for him.

We've all seen the quote "We can't make kids behave better by making them feel worse." (Paraphrased) These 4 years working on parenting peacefully and I just now really understand that phrase.

Josh is a kind, considerate, helpful person. One interruption doesn't change that. My berating him for one interruption certainly doesn't set an example of kindness for him to follow.

Trust and Consequences

I was listening to TED Radio Hour- Trust and Consequences and this part of the interview hit home SO HARD.

Interview with Simon Sinek. He's speaking in reference to companies, but think of it in terms of family leadership.

"What's the connection between feeling safe and trust?

They're inextricably linked. The sense of feeling safe comes first, so when we feel safe trust will emerge, and this is what the foundations of leadership really are. The reason we call someone leader is because they choose to go first. They choose to extend trust first, even before, maybe, any signs have been offered that they should. It's the willingness to express empathy before anyone else.

And presumably that feeling changes behavior?

Absolutely. And when we assess that someone would do that and we see that they have that integrity, they would willingly sacrifice their interests for our lives, we cannot help ourselves. The natural human response is trust. And this is the point, which is, as human beings if those in, especially, leadership positions express empathy for our well being, we reward them with our trust and our loyalty and our love to see that their vision of the company [family] is advanced."

Our kids need this type of leadership.

http://www.npr.org/…/ted-r…/406238794/trust-and-consequences

Reflecting on My Scrapbook

Healing from our own childhoods can be so hard. Making parenting choices vastly different than those our parents made is really, really, difficult if we haven't prepared ourselves in advance.

I'm thinking about this lately because over the weekend I cleaned out a ton of photo albums from my closet. One of the albums was a childhood scrapbook my mom gave me when I turned 19. Each year had a bullet point list of memorable moments from the year. Papa and I were reading through it and laughing hysterically because things like "Had teeth cleaned" and "Drank lots of water" made the lists of highlights. It was really funny. At first.

As I continued reading through (I started at age 18 and worked my way backward) I got progressively more sad. The trend of non-events continued to be the highlights of my scrapbook, with sprinklings of outright negativity thrown in. My parents' divorce, being suspended from school for swearing in a note to a friend, being forced to go to counseling for suspected drug use (suspected by my parents, I wasn't using drugs though).

It hurt to see how vastly differently my mom experienced my childhood from the way I did. None of my cherished memories were in that book. None of my ambitions or interests were recorded. It drove home that my mom didn't, and still doesn't, really know *ME*. My heart aches for that relationship which I don't have.

But the beauty of it is the reminder to stop some of the things I'm doing and go sit with my children, to just *be* with them. To ask them what they think about the world and really listen. To be involved with their interests. To cherish the joy the feel in their accomplishments. To heal my hurt by nourishing my relationship with them. To do all I can to create a legacy of love and connection.

Gardeners Don't Tell Flowers To Grow

I saw this yesterday and it made me think of the idea that a gardener doesn't tell a flower how to grow, or even to grow, they just provide the environment needed for the flower to flourish.

We humans are biologically evolved to be social creatures. Like a flower doesn't need to be forced to grow, our children don't need to be forced to learn social cues. It is in their biology. They are made to get along with their group, to read people, to empathize, to make amends. We simply need to provide the right environment for them to flourish, then watch the beauty of it all unfold.

Making Positive Changes

All of our children's behavior is a direct result of our behavior. They are a reflection of our actions, and they cannot, repeat CANNOT- are completely incapable of- making any positive changes until WE change our behavior and outlook. Maybe that means we do some reading and self-reflection, maybe that means we go to see a counselor, but whatever it is, the focus needs to be on changing ourselves instead of changing our children.

Yes, as parents we do have a responsibility to help our kids become the best adults they can be, but we do that by being a living example to them. Not by trying to manipulate them into being something we're not. (Example, we can't reasonably expect a child to learn patience and respect if we're not modeling that for them every day.)

Inevitably, when we start making positive changes in ourselves there comes the time when we will think, "I've been so positive and worked so hard for so long; why is my child still behaving the way they did before?"

To understand that we need to understand the parent-child relationship is involuntary on the child's part. They are completely trapped in this relationship with us. If they feels unhappy, neglected, abused, etc, they are helpless to leave and too immature to know how to effectively change the dynamic of the relationship. It makes trust a very delicate thing. Try to put ourselves in their shoes. If we were literally trapped in a bad marriage, how would you feel if our partner treated us the way we treat our children and we had no autonomy? For our entire lives this is all we've known.

Now imagine our partner became more respectful, patient, loving, etc. How long would it take to rebuild that trust? How long would they have to continue to act that way before we really believed it was permanent? That is why when we make positive changes to our behavior it will always take much longer for our children to follow suit.

Josh's Morning

A typical morning for Josh (10y) looks like this-

Wake up around 8:30am. Let the dogs out. Feed the dogs breakfast. Do one lesson each in math and grammar workbooks (this is not something he's forced to do). Make coffee for me.

I never asked him to do any of these things. This is how he's self regulated and self organized his morning. He loves his dogs, so he loves caring for them. He likes getting his work done early so he's got the rest of the day to play. And my personal favorite, he knows I'm a happier camper when coffee hits my system as soon as I shuffle out of bed.

EGG-citing EGG-speriments!

In anticipation of Spring Equinox this Friday, we decided to do some egg themed experiments.

The first focused on osmosis, with a bit of chemistry as well.

Materials:
1 egg (fresh, not hard boiled)
clear container
white vinegar
corn syrup
scale

Osmosis is the movement of materials in a solution across a membrane, typically from areas of high concentration to areas of low concentration. An egg has a membrane we can use to see this, but first we have to get rid of the shell.

Before we began we found the weight of our egg on a simple kitchen scale. Ours was 2.25 ounces. We then placed our egg in a glass and covered it with vinegar. The acetic acid in the vinegar reacts with the calcium carbonate in the egg shell to make calcium acetate and carbon dioxide. The bubbles were visible almost immediately.

We left the egg in the vinegar for 48 hours and got this- 

Since the vinegar had a higher concentration of water than the inside of the egg, some water moved into the egg by osmosis. At this point the egg weighed in at 3 ounces. We put it back in the glass and covered it with water to see if it would take on even more water.

After just 30 minutes in water the egg looked like this. The lighting accounts for some of the color change, but not all. At this point the egg weighed 3.25 ounces. 

We then poured out the water and covered the egg in corn syrup. The corn syrup has a lower concentration of water than the inside of the egg, so we're expecting to water to now move out of the egg into the corn syrup.

At this point the egg had been in the corn syrup for about 4 hours. You can clearly see the less dense layer of water which has come out of the egg floating on top of the more dense corn syrup. We left the egg overnight in the corn syrup.

We woke up to this. The egg weighed 1.25 ounces, losing a total of 2 ounces from when it was placed in the corn syrup. 

We had so much fun with this experiment! The boys especially loved touching the egg without it's shell and showing everyone who would look at it in the various stages. 

Peeling Oranges is Tough

Last night I let Bug have some ice cream after dinner, fully knowing he would be a sugar crashing mess afterward. At bedtime he was acting as expected, and wanted an orange. I calmly told him no, and he ended up trying to peel the orange himself. When he couldn't get it, he got frustrated and slapped the orange.

I said, "Peeling oranges is tough, huh."
And he responded, "Yeah. And shirts." (He had struggled getting his pajama shirt on earlier.)

"And pants" (He's just learning about the tag going in the back of pants and often has to take them off to turn them around.)

"And socks" (I've not noticed him struggle with socks, but it does take him time to get them on just right.)

I was suddenly overwhelmed with how many obstacles he faces every day, and he handles it really well considering his emotional immaturity. If I felt half the frustration he does in a given day, I'd be a mess and need to be held while I cried too, which is how we spent the next 30 minutes or so before he calmed down and fell asleep.

Being a kid is tough work. What are your children working through lately?

Praising Hard Work

There's plenty of research now showing that praising your child's hard work instead of their being "smart" sets them up for future success.

I did not follow this advice with Josh (10y). Instead I doted on him throughout his younger years, telling him how smart, special, talented, etc I thought he was. This has set us both up for a lot of frustration. He has trouble handling situations in which he struggles and feels like a failure if he doesn't achieve perfection on his first try at something.

Which leads to one of my worse parenting moments, or perhaps on of my better ones.

Josh was struggling with piano drills. He shut down, threw things, yelled, and told me to leave. I refused. He didn't need to be alone with those emotions. I needed to help him find a healthier way to express himself. But after so much yelling AT me, I snapped as well. I said some harsh things, things that negated all the doting I'd done for years.

It was a sobering moment for us both.

We came up with a mantra- "I will work hard and figure this out." He said it, yelled it, and tackled his piano drills. Practice ended on a positive note. wink emoticon

Later at bedtime we were doing our Best, Worst, and Looking Forward To (where we reflect on our day), and I told Josh my worst was yelling at him. His response was, "That's okay, I needed to hear it."