Family Matters

Posts Tagged ‘social’

As with the other posts in this series, the points below show that in life, there is no gain without a loss and no loss without a gain. Life is just wonderful that way.

Some of the points were inspired by Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, a high recommended book Ronit and I have been reading and discussing lately. Other points were just inspired by life.

Should police be armed better or will this lead to more violence?

Should possible offenders be chased down and captured or will this lead to unnecessary damage?

Do you really know why? What would happen if you had to explain yourself?

Is it better to be safe or does being safe sometimes make you sorry?

Do social media sites help us make friends or lose the ones we already have?

This site is about parenting and most of our posts are about how to be great parents, but today, I want to tell you more about why to be great parents and why to keep good relationships with family and friends in general.

Following heavy rains, many places in Queensland were flooded in the past couple of weeks. Floodwater rose higher than roof height in some places, inundating businesses, farms and many homes. As you can see from the photo, main streets became rushing rivers, carrying cars, parts of homes and various other things with them, uprooting trees and soaking property beyond repair.

We live on a hill about 10km from the Brisbane River. We have had heavy rains for a few weeks now and our yard is very wet, but as we hardly follow the news, our first indication of trouble in our own city was when our friends and family members started emailing and calling us to ask if we were OK.

Family Matters is taking some time off from researching, coaching and writing and heading off on a family vacation. After all, this is why we do what we do – to help ourselves have a better family time together.

It has been an awesome year for us. We were very proud and happy that our daughter Eden, our happy thought, joined us in writing this year. We have had many personal achievements at work, in our relationships and with our kids. The only wish we have for ourselves is that next year will be even better. Better is a good formula for a happy life.

We want to thank all of the 150,000 readers we have had this year and give special thanks to all those who have posted comments, shared their opinions and contributed to the community of parents and educators around this blog. Whatever your personal views, we love to read them and engage in a discussion on the important aspects of parenting with you.

This week, I was at a conference and I had a talk about my book for teenagers with a woman named Jill. As often happens, our conversation turned into a “bitching session” about teenagers.

“Last night, I picked up my 15-year-old daughter from a party. I’m one of the rare parents who still come to pick their kids up. The rest takes a taxi”, she complained, “When I arrived, there were lots of police cars around”.

“Did anything bad happen?” I asked, worried.

“Oh, no, that’s usual. Every time she goes to a party, someone does silly things and the police arrive”.

My 20-year-old daughter and my 14-year-old son had never participated in a party where the police arrived, so I asked her, “What do you mean by ‘silly things’?”

Jim, the neighbor sharing our back fence, rang this week to ask if we would share the cost of replacing the fence that separates our back yards. He was very polite and patient, but made it clear he wanted to put up a “good fence”.

So let me tell you exactly what I think about fences and what I think about how they separate people.

Let’s start with some big words. According to Wikipedia, “Intimacy generally refers to the feeling of being in a close personal association and belonging together. Genuine intimacy in human relationships requires dialogue, transparency, vulnerability and reciprocity”.

When I mention intimacy to people, many of them immediately think of romance and physical closeness, but this is only a borrowed meaning. In fact, many sexual relationships have little or no intimacy in them, while other relationships are based on deep spiritual bonding without any physical contact whatsoever.

In a family, some relationships are chosen for us (parents, siblings and extended family), while we get to choose the others (spouse and kids). Either way, the degree of intimacy in a relationship determines its quality and importance for us, not the kind of relationship. In a sense, when we rate a relationship as “good”, it is because there is enough intimacy in it for us.

In our modern life, one of the things we have the least of is time. A common expression I hear from people every day is “I’m very busy” and even “No time. Too busy”. We go to work, we work under pressure all day, we come back, we hurry our meals, we resent having to drive our kids to their various activities, we sleep less than we should, we have less quality time than we want to have and we finish every week completely exhausted from trying to do more than we can, only to start another week that feels exactly the same, if not worse.

But maybe that is only what we think. Maybe it is this tendency to rush into and out of things as quickly as we can that makes us waste more time than we would by relaxing and “taking our time”.

Yesterday, when I picked my daughter up from school, she told me what kids said about her late birthday party and I said to myself “Yes, yes, yes! I did it again!” I was so happy and proud I decided I would share this with you as soon as I could.

Most kids develop some kind of a hobby as they grow up – dancing, basketball, music, art and so on. Nowadays, this usually means their parents have to shuttle them to and from practice, games, concerts and other events. Whenever the parents see their kids perform or display their results, they are pleased, but treat the whole affair as something the kids will eventually grow out of.

In the process of motivating your kids, you will find that your kids are also influenced by others. If that influence is positive – great! But sometimes, others’ behavior and words might be de-motivating for your kids.