Family Matters

Posts Tagged ‘happiness’

As parents, we are supposed to do what is best for our kids. One of the biggest choices we all need to make is how to develop our kids when they too young to choose for themselves. Obviously, without being able to see into their future, this could be a case of the blind leading the blind.

But maybe it does not have to be.

In the past few days, I have been reading an excellent book called Predictably Irrational by Professor Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist at MIT. In one of the chapters, he describes experiments that show humans are so sensitive to loss they do everything they can to avoid losing even things they could have, but do not actually have. One of these things, he says, is options.

In his description, he give parents’ decision-making about their children’s development as an example of how irrationally expensive it is to keep our kids’ options open. If you do the math, he says, you see that spreading the family resources over 4 different activities each week, say ballet, piano, art and karate, means your child makes 1 unit of progress in each of them every week, as opposed to choosing just one activity, say piano, which would allow the child to make 4 units of progress every week and become really good at it.

I was tempted to agree, and this post was almost about how much his point made sense, but then Eden and I went for our morning walk (it is so great she starts late on Wednesdays) and reviewed her life, the lives of Tsoof and Noff and those of other kids we know, and my view of this issue changed completely.

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift. The rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift”
- Albert Einstein

Happiness depends a lot on which side of the brain we use. If you feel under pressure, your brain is telling you that you have been using your left brain to its maximum capacity.

85% of the time, we function using our left brain. We make sense of things, think of sequences, analyze language and meaning, interpret information and communication and absorb new facts from all around us. Although these functions are necessary to our life, the left side of our brain has its limits and uses pressure to signal that we need to let go and switch to using our right brain.

The left hemisphere of our brain functions like a sequential receiver and processor, while the right hemisphere is in charge of our imagination, sleep (dreams), memory, intuition and all of our creative functions. We absorb with the left side and create with our right side. The brain is like battery – the right side charges it and the left side uses the energy and empties it. Our goal is always keep our mental battery charged.

In our fast-moving world with way too much information, our brain reaches this point of pressure very often. This is when the brain pushes the “red alert” button and says “Enough! No more information. No more analyzing. No more thinking and no more talking!” If we ignore this signal, the sounds of the red alert and danger increase until we collapse or fall asleep from exhaustion.

Sometimes, the Universe seems to conspire to make us do something. In this case, I think it wants me to write about how important fathers are in the life of their children. We keep focusing on parenting in this blog, but there is a difference between mothering and fathering, which we have not discussed much.

I have a friend who goes on a men’s camp every year. When his boys were young, he went by himself and felt very supported there. As soon as his boys turned 13 and were allowed to go with him, away they went together and spent a great time bonding – singing, dancing, doing physical exercise and watching performances. He has been nagging me to come with him on that camp for a few years now, saying there is something special about the freedom and “safe space” it provides.

So far, I have not gone.

In the past few months, Ronit worked with several boys whose father had died or spent a lot of time away from home. Whenever we talked about them, I kept having the feeling that although they were young (5 to 8 years old), they felt like little men. I felt they saw themselves as somewhat responsible for the wellbeing of their family and had to fill the very large shoes of their absent father.

That was not enough either.

Gail asked for a relationship coaching session, but said she would come by herself. “My husband won’t come”, she said. No matter what I asked her, her answer was related to the fact her husband was depressed and was unwilling to help himself. He had lost his job years before and that had sucked the life out of him. For 5 years, he had been sucking the life out of Gail and her two wonderful boys.

Having a depressed family member is not easy to handle. Most of the time, the depressed person cannot admit he or she needs help and rejects any help attempt. Those around them feel helpless and drained.

Gail was very creative in her attempts to help her husband. She went to the doctor and talked to him. She tried to make him go to the doctor, without success. She got him some vitamins and he refused to take them. She arranged holidays to make him happy, but he stayed depress.

Eventually, after 5 years of trying, Gail left home.

People are social creatures. They live in groups, they need the groups and they rely on the groups to survive. This creates some dependency that no one likes. Yes, some people need friends more than others do, but living on our own, not seeing or being in contact with the outside world, would bring an end to human kind.

Friends and friendships are very important to all people, even to those who find it hard to admit, and what social skills we do not have naturally, we can develop.

In the past year, I have had many opportunities to talk and write about my successes. When I examined each of them, I realized that being a very social creature, loving people, understanding the way they function and using my good social skills were real assets to me.

Social skills – Nature or Nurture?
I have not always been a very friendly person. Not that I did not like company, but until the age of 16, I did not really understand the social rules I needed to live by. I had no friends, I got into frequent conflicts with the ones I did hang around with and I was lonely and miserable. My parents had no friends either, so I could not learn from them the right things to say and do around other people.

Then, I stopped reacting without thinking about the impact it has on my relationships and I learned that friendly people are happy people and that social skills can be learned.

There are many parents out there who spend much of their time with their children trying to get them to do certain things, like homework or chores, or to teach them how to do things “right”, like spelling words correct or spreading peanut butter without making a big mess. If you ever see these parents in action, there is one thing that jumps at you – they are stressed and almost everything their kids do makes them jump.

And that is no way to live. It is not good for the parents and it is not good for the kids.

What happens in these situations is that the parents try to control their children. In fact, they try to control the fine details of what their children do, say and sometimes even feel. They tell themselves and anyone else who will listen how important it is to get all the answers on every assignment correctly. That is how they justify the hours of grilling their kids over homework. They explain the long-term impact of passing a basketball using the scientifically proven motion on their kids’ sporting future. That is how they justify the yelling from the sidelines and the intensive drilling at home.

But how important are these things really?

Who are they really important to?

And what are the effects of this controlling behavior on the children, the parents and their relationships for the rest of their lives?

2012 is approaching and we would like to wish you a happy new year. There are so many cooking shows on TV and we have decided to write out wishes for you as a recipe for a great and happy new year.

May your next year be very tasty!

For the record, I am not gay, I have no gay relatives and this matter has no direct connection to me at the moment, other than gay marriage has become a major subject of public debate in Australia and seems to be involving very strong emotions on both sides.

In fact, this post was Tsoof’s idea. He came in a couple of days ago and said, “Dad, maybe you should write about the gay marriage thing. It’s all over the news”. So here goes.

Fundamentally, gay people’s sexual preferences are in conflict with Christianity, Judaism and Islam. In democratic countries, although the law may not be directly religious, a religious majority may be able to pass laws to the same effect. That is just the way things are in the world.

But this is not a legal blog.

This is a parenting blog. This is a personal development blog for parents.

If your baby boy posed nude with fireman gear on, would you leave him out in the cold and walk away?

Would you tell your little toddler girl to go and live somewhere else because she wore a boy’s hat?

What if you knew right from the start your cute newborn baby was gay?

Kids are little philosophers practicing the theories of the great philosopher of all times in real life. They live in the simplest stage show that is their life, without much sophistication and with no budget. This is ability smart, knowledgeable and experienced grownups need to learn from their children.

Kids do not have tomorrows. The younger they are, the more limited their understanding of time and the harder it is to explain to them what they will gain tomorrow if they just try a bit harder or wait a little bit longer today. One of parents’ biggest frustrations is their inability to explain why to try harder today for some imaginary tomorrow. Kids, on the other hand, do not understand why they should try harder, because from their point of view, fun is the best way to navigate through life and “hard” and “fun” do not go together.

Kids’ attitude to fun as a compass is perceived by grownups as a limitation, a lack of perspective and experience. I wonder sometimes who is missing perspective. Kids, the artists of living in the now, whose present is full of fun, or their parents, the champions of living in the future, whose present is an endless cycle of anxiety?

Children invest all their energy in what they will achieve in the short term. Adults, convinced they need to delay their gratifications, exaggerate this and without meaning to, they have invented the opposite of enjoinment and fun and have turned their life into a dress rehearsal for the “real thing”.

Last week, Ronit and I saw a movie that made me think there are some people with no love in their heart. Then, we attended a wedding ceremony that was all about love, and that got me thinking about parents’ role in making the world a more loving place for their children. Since Christmas is coming and we will have a lot more time with our kids, the timing is perfect.

The film we saw was called The Whistleblower. It is a story of an American police officer who works for the United Nations’ peacekeeping forces in Bosnia and uncovers a women trafficking operation. We sat on big, soft cushions on the grass at a park by the Brisbane River, the weather was perfect, the atmosphere was magical, we were happy for the chance to get away for a bit in each other’s company.

Then, the movie started.

The level of brutality shown on the screen by the traffickers towards the women, the complete disregard for the law and the strong violation of every moral system I could think of disturbed me to the core. I had to struggle to keep watching some scenes and felt terrible for poor Ronit who is generally more sensitive than I am.

When we talked about the movie in the car on the way home, we both wondered what would compel anyone to abuse another person in such a way. Our conclusion was that these people had no love in their hearts. Not romantic love. Kindness, compassion, empathy, tenderness, comradery, friendship and understanding towards another human being.