Family Matters

Posts Tagged ‘home’

As hard as it is for parents to imagine, one day, their baby is going to sign their own declaration, leave home and be independent. Kids strive for independence from the age of 1½ to 2 years old, when you try to dress them and they say, “No, no, me”, and keep trying to do things themselves.

Much like many countries around the world, kids can get their independence after war and “bloodshed” or after signing a “peace treaty” with the society around them. And much like the independence of countries is mainly the result of what their leaders do, with kids, it is a mainly the result of what their parents do.

Do you feel it is a heavy responsibility? Well, it is! But if you think deeply about it, you will find that power goes hand in hand with responsibility. Parents have lots of power in leading their kids to design their declaration of independence and sign it.

If you talk to most parents (when they are calm), they will tell you that independence is very important. Yet when I ask them how if they teach independence, they talk about chores. My mom did the same. She said, “If you do the dishes from the age of 10, when you live in your own home, you will be able to do the dishes”. We told her, “No, Mom. If I wash the dishes from the age of 10, by the time I am grown up, I will hate and resent it so much I will avoid washing the dishes”.

Even though my mom did not think that fun and motivation had anything to do with the kind of grownups we would become, she still wanted us to be independent. I think that much like many other parents, she confused doing chores with independence.

Unless you are raising celebrities that wear underwear once and make money from selling them to the highest bidder and unless you have a maid that allows your kids to put their clothes in the laundry basket and find it all ironed in the closet, you are a normal parent who must do the dirty job of washing the laundry. Luckily for us, we do not have to do it by hand and we have washers, dryers and chemicals that make life easier, although I may not appreciate the luxury of it because I hate washing or, I should say, I hate the thought of washing.

I do not know why, but for years, I hated doing the laundry. When Eden was born, I was amazed how many clothes a tiny baby could change. When the kids started going to school, with the need to have their uniform clean for school, I hated it even more. I think I always had this feeling that I was constantly washing clothes. No, I did not have to do it by hand or spin the washing machine by hand, but it sure felt like it. If you hate laundry too, this tip is for you.

When I took a course in journalism, one of the tips in the course was to have a writing pad everywhere. Since I am a very good student, I did whatever they said. I had a writing pad in the car, in all my bags and even next to my bed. It is funny that only after you use a handy tip for a while, you realize how much you need it. Originally, this tip was meant to help me with my work, and it did, but I never thought it would be so beneficial for us as a family until I realized that the note pads I had put in so many places around the house were being used by all the members of my family.

With the very hectic and full lifestyle that we have today, remembering everything that needs to be done occupies a very important and limited space in our memory. If you ask parents to sit down and write the entire to-do list for the week, most of them could do it for 3 hours straight.

Of course, the more kids you have at home, the more memory space you need for your timetable and tasks. You need to remember the dates of rehearsals, what to bring to school, when to pay for the dance class, to call your sister, say happy birthday to your friend, coordinate an outing with your partner, get a babysitter, have enough money in your wallet/purse when you go to the market, to buy a gift for the party your daughter is invited to on the weekend, go over the spelling with your child before the exam, send the right uniform on the excursion day, change the pickup time, dentist appointment, add turmeric to the shopping list for the Moroccan dish planned for Friday and … the list is endless.

We have a good friend that says, “The opposite of forgetting is writing down”, but what happens when you need to remember something while you are driving or when you are in bed, ready to go to sleep?

I had my first business at the age of 25. I finished my Special Education studies and opened an Early Childhood Center that became a very successful business within a short time. I was a mother and a wife and had a mortgage, a car and a personal loan for my business.

If you hear parents tell you that kids are an obstacle for them, I can tell you that having kids is a bad excuse for not doing business. When the kids grow up and leave the house, they will be left with their excuses. So when they have to explain why they have never done what they have always wanted to do, they will start saying, “It’s too late now”, which is just another excuse.

If you are thinking of starting a business and will need to juggle business and family, it is a good idea to discover what you will have to do to succeed at it. Some people are not cut out to own and operate a business. Others do not know how to balance a home and a business. Managing your business, your home and your parenting well requires some skills and attitudes that will determine the success of your business, the quality of your family life and even your health.

Unlike people who do not have kids, business parents risk a lot more than their own time and money. They risk their relationships with their partners and with their kids, as well as the quality of preparation their kids get for life. You go into business because you want a better life for your kids, not to destroy your relationship with your kids, so do it right!

We live in a society with many stereotypes regarding boys and girls, men and women. Unfortunately, I believe that these stereotypes are not good for our society and that they are a big obstacle to social justice.

I was a discriminated as a girl. I was one of four girls in a family with one son who was considered “the prince”. As funny as it may seem, he was considered the prince by my mom and not by my dad. The boys in the neighborhood did not want me to play soccer with them, until I took a group of girls with me to challenge them in a soccer match and we won. Once, when I wanted to learn ballet, my mom said no dance school would accept me because I was bruised all over from playing soccer and fighting with the boys on the street. I certainly did not live in a place with a lot of gender equity. There were things that boys did and things that girls did and I did not like it one bit.

When I designed my parenting bible, after studying about the psychological development of babies and our social gender trap, I made a decision (I think a brave decision) to raise my kids to respect the other gender and to think they are free to be whatever they want to be without being confined to what boys or girls are expected to do. Acceptance and freethinking starts from a very early age and I am very happy that my kids never talked about “boy germs” or “girl germs” and they are all proud and happy with their gender.

I have to say that I have learned from my dad many of my gender-related bible commandments. He was an awesome role model for social justice and gender equity. He cooked, cleaned, took care of us as babies and later on as kids, when my mom left home very early in the morning. My dad helped us with homework and was (still is) a very arty-crafty man who enjoyed doing woodwork, jewelry, cross-stitching and silk paintings and scarves. Whenever my mom gave my brother exemptions from cleaning, dishwashing or doing laundry, my dad always said my brother must do his fair share.

When I had time to think about gender equity, I used my dad as a role model and decided to add to my bible some do’s and don’ts that will help me raise kids who think their gender was not a way to be superior or inferior.

The world today is a rich, technologically advanced, ever-changing, interesting, exciting, confusing, demanding, fast-paced, interconnected, stressful, cold, impersonal and sometimes abusive place. We live a different life from any other period. What does this mean?

To many of us, it means we feel trapped. We often hear or read the term “rat race” as a description for the way we live – like rats in somebody’s lab, running around, trying to find a way out or get to the reward at the end of a confusing and frightening maze. Trouble is we do not even know whose lab we are in and we feel helpless and out of control.

In his excellent book, The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell describes some fascinating events and research about how our environment affects our behavior and the behavior of those around us. Sometimes, it can drive a man to kill, but when managed well, it can lower the crime rate and improve the lives of many people. He calls this “The power of context”.

The book highlights some things that we can all use to regain control of our lives, improve the quality of our time on Earth and make the world a better place for our children and even for other people around us.

Many parents have issues with kids and food. I have to say that running a family and making sure they stay healthy is not easy, especially when your kids are babies and your heart aches with them whenever they are sick.

I added the connection between food and health to my bible after a huge pain of trying very hard to get rid of Eden’s pneumonia when she was just an 18-month-old baby. By the time she was 2 years old, Eden had been sick with pneumonia 3 times already and had been constantly on antibiotics and inhalers. Before those scary 6 months, I had never thought about what I ate and had just gone to the supermarket and bought the same things my parents and Gal’s parents had.

One of my friends, who was trying to help me, told me Eden should eat certain things and avoid eating others to improve her health. I thought she was not normal (which was true, but in a good sense) and that food had nothing to do with germs and health problems. It was only later, when we discovered Eden was sensitive to dairy food, that I realized just how tight the relationship between food and health was.

Food, and only food, was the difference between having a very sick girl (with pneumonia that 6 months of antibiotics could not fix) and having a healthy girl that went to see the doctor only once in the following 20 years. Food, and only food, was the difference between being anemic and having a healthy iron level. During my second, third, fourth and fifth pregnancies, while every other woman had to take iron tablets, my iron level was strong and stable, even the doctor was shocked. Food, and only food, was the difference between Gal having sinus surgery to unblock his nose and not needing that surgery until today.

In the last chapter, I wrote about my decision to write my personal “parenting bible” to make it easier for parents to design their own parenting rulebook, fine tune their parenting style and build confidence in raising their kids.

I would like to encourage you to listen to many other parents and their parenting tips, because you will learn from them a lot, not only because they have great rules but because they have some really bad ones. As you listen, look for a correlation between what they do and what happens to them and their children as a result.

I have designed my bible by looking at my own parents, Gal’s parents, my extended family and my friends and by studying special education and life coaching. I have made connections and said, “This tip goes into my bible and this one stays out”.

For example, I had friends who were in continuous negotiation with their kids. Whenever I was around them, I felt like I was in a war zone. Everyone was in a position of lack and bargained all the time. So I made a choice to enter negotiating with my kids to my bible on the “Don’t” side. To make it even stronger, I found an alternative commandment. Instead of, “Don’t bargain with your kids, because you are not equal”, I entered, “You are the captain of your family ship, with all the privileges and responsibilities. Act like one!” This obviously does not mean the kids do not try to bargain (oh, they do!), but whenever the bargaining begins, I remind myself that I need to act like a captain and that my rule is law.

Last month, I delivered many parenting workshops. One of the participants (let’s call her Jane) asked me if I had ever written my “parenting bible”.

At first, I smiled and said, “No, not really”, because I do not believe there is such a thing as a parenting rulebook for everyone. But as we talked more, I realized I actually had. With nearly 800 blog posts over the past 4 years, Family Matters is kind of my parenting bible – my personal rules for parenting.

When I asked Jane, “Why would you like to have my parenting bible?” she said something that surprised me. She said, “After a whole day in a workshop with you, I realized that when you talk about your beliefs, you talk about them with such conviction, no wonder you are happy with your parenting. I learned from you today that I needed to write my own bible and I need some ideas and some help with the format”.

I have to say I was very relieved when Jane said she was going to write her own version. You see, reading about someone else’s rules is not enough to make you adopt them. It is not enough to know the “commandments”, you need to accept or reject them to make them your own. You need to go through the process of adopting them and making them part of your life philosophy and that takes time and effort. A parenting rulebook becomes your bible only after you have convinced yourself that it works for you.

I told Jane she could read all the articles on the site, but as I said that, I realized it might take her a long time, so when I came home, I made the decision to write a “parenting bible” – things that I believe make my parenting a happy experience for me and my children.

Our highly commercialized world pumps us with the idea that being rich and famous is a good thing. Even things “mere mortals” find difficult to deal with, like going on a diet or breaking up with a partner, are leveraged to create more fame and more fortune for the celebrities. Scandals are just useful ways to sell the next movie or the new album. So useful, in fact, that some of them are manufactured.

In their song Lifestyle of the Rich and the Famous, Good Charlotte sing about how celebrities complain all the time and say their life is hard, even though they have money, mansions and other things money can buy. By contrasting fame and fortune with living on the streets, this song reflects general public sentiment very well.

But it is not true.

If you have been anywhere near a TV set in the past few weeks, read any newspaper or even glanced at a magazine at the checkout line, you have seen them – Prince William and Kate Middleton. Their lives and upcoming wedding were covered from every angle and then, their wedding was covered in even more detail. Anyone who had anything to do with them at any time was interviewed ad nauseam and every bit was replayed over and over again.