Me Too

Kids go through many periods as they grow up, including the “What?” period, the “Why?” period and the “No!” period. Each one of them serves a purpose and, if the parents go through it well, the children develops another healthy part of their character and understand the world a bit better. But the “Me too” period seems to last all the way through childhood, adolescence and sometimes never ends…

From the parents’ perspective, “Me too” can be very annoying, because kids sometimes ask for really inappropriate things, but for children learn about the world by observing and mimicking others, so there is nothing more natural and healthy than wanting what the others have or trying to do what the others are doing.

In our family, 10-year-old Noff is much younger than Tsoof (16) and Eden (23), so when she wants something they have, they used to get upset, until they got used to it.

When she was little, we often tried to respect her choice of food, so we asked her what she wanted to eat, gave her some options and helped her prepare the food she liked. But often, when she sat at the table, she saw that Eden had something else to eat and seemed to be enjoying it very much. Noff would promptly forget she ever wanted anything else and ask Eden to share.

“Eden, can I have some mango too”, she would say.

“But you said you wanted cereal”, Eden would complain, “I brought enough mango for me, because you wanted something else”.

“Yes, but now I want mango too”, Noff explained, as if that was the most obvious an innocent thing in the world. And for her, it was.

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Cancer Girl: Lesson in Acceptance

There is something natural and inspiring about the way young children handle diversity before they are corrupted by media and the heartaches of life. I think there is much we can learn from them about acceptance.

I have been heavily involved in diversity education for years, helping teachers, parents and students learn to accept the differences among people rather than being afraid of those who are different from them. I write programs, run activities and deliver presentations to help them recognize that even behind a person who seems very different there is a human being just like them.

Last month, I saw with my own eyes how this lesson could be taught without lesson plans, without intention, just by letting circumstances unfold and allowing kids to observe.

It was Sunday and our Diversity Tent at the Queensland Multicultural Festival was full of children doing arts and crafts. My daughter Eden (22) came to help me set up early in the morning. When the volunteer who promised to come and help did not show up, my 10-year-old daughter Noff also spent the day with us, helping kids her age and younger draw and paint. We wrote the kids’ names in different languages and they were all very happy and excited to see their names written differently.

About half way through the day, a 12-year-old boy came and sat at one of the tables. A gorgeous little girl, who was about 4 years old, wandered over to him and climbed onto one of the seats. The little girl was teeny tiny and did not have any hair. She had a tube taped to her nose with a band-aid. She wrote her name, Joelle, on one of the bookmarks. She was beautiful and it was obvious she was sick and had come straight from hospital for a day of fun at the festival. Everyone looked at her with sadness, feeling a bit uncomfortable. Her brother, who sat next to her, looked up from his coloring and said, “I’m Ashton and this is my sister. She has cancer”.

Bam!

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Good Friends

From time to time, 10-year-old Noff makes me so proud I just have to write about it. This girl inspires me so much I want other parents and kids to be inspired too. To me, these are the things that make the world a better place. This time, Noff showed how to be a good friend.

Noff’s school has a special unit for children with various disabilities. These kids spend much of their time in “normal” classrooms and go to the special unit for additional support, specific exercise and maybe a little bit to get out of classroom competition.

At the same time, the school includes these special students in every extracurricular activity – choirs, school plays, instrumentals bands and even dance troupes. We are amazed and moved to tears watching the little brave souls get up on stage with walking frames or in electric wheelchairs during concerts and performances and pour their heart out, their faces beaming with joy.

Some time ago, I picked Noff up from school and she said that one of the special education teachers had approached her and a few other girls for a secret mission. She said, “She wanted us to help one of the girls without telling anyone about it. She said the girl needed someone to help her get from the special unit to class and back and someone else to protect her in the playground from bullies”.

“Wow”, I said, “Are you proud she picked you?”

“Yeah!” she beamed at me, “And straight away, I asked her if it was Kelly [not her real name] and she looked surprised, but I know it’s hard for her to walk all the way to the special unit and back with all her stuff and I know some kids are picking on her”.

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Secret Demons

Kids’ mind is a puzzle. Working with kids for so many years (and with grownups who used to be kids), I am amazed by what demons they carry with them and how they use naive conclusions to navigate their life. The more I see clients, the more I am convinced there is never a way to predict how kids will interpret their young life and what they will make of it later in life. The kid’s mind puzzle becomes an adult’s mind puzzle that is even harder to solve. Trish’s story is a wonderful way to get some insight into how this happens.

Trish came to my life coaching deck with her partner. Ben, her partner and the father of their child, had said she needed help but he had no idea how to get it. Trish had not contacted me, had not completed the session preparations and had not even talked to me before coming, so this was an unusual session.

Trish was a beautiful young woman. Her hair was tied back and she looked tired, as if she had spent weeks crying. She was 27 years old and was preparing for her wedding. She had a one-year-old boy, a great job and … a demon.

“Hi, Trish. Thank you for coming. What brings you here?” I asked.

She looked at Ben and started crying. I gave her the tissue box and waited. She tried very hard to stop. Every time she started saying something, tears started again and she choked. Ben held her hand and whispered, “You can do it”. She looked at him and looked at me for a while before she finally started telling me her story.

After her son was born, memories of a childhood trauma had come to life. In-between sobs, she said, “At first, I thought it was a dream, but then I realized I see the same scene over and over again even when I’m awake”.

“Can you please tell me what you see?” I asked.

“It is very vague… I think it had something to do with my dad… I can see myself at the age of 6 or 7 playing with another girl… She was my neighbor and we played a lot together. I think someone did something to both of us… I can see my dad screaming and having a fight with her dad… I think my dad raped both of us”, she managed to say.

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Discipline in Question

The topic of disciplining kids is going to be forever hot for every parent. It is a hot topic because it bothers many parents and it is hot because too many parents find themselves in a huge conflict over it. Here is a question I got about discipline from a reader.

“Hi Ronit,

My husband and I do not agree on the right way to raise the kids. I spend most of the time with them and he works until late and on the weekends he needs to rest and goes out with his friends.

This week, he said to me that his job is to be the provider and my job is to discipline the kids and that I was failing as a parent. He said that if he was my boss, he would fire me. He thinks I am not objective towards my kids and I do not prepare them for real life.

What is your opinion about discipline?

Gina”

Dear Gina,

How to discipline kids, what is discipline and related issues are a source of friction almost in every home. I think your husband has expectations from you and your children that are probably based on his definition of good parenting and discipline, which I am not sure are healthy, although they were very typical 20 to 30 years ago when he was a child.

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Parental Troubleshooting

I am sure you will agree that nobody is perfect and that kids, being people-in-the-making, cannot be expected to be perfect. So when your child struggles with some difficulty, it can be just part of being a child or it can be something else. It is often hard to tell.

Community nurses will tell you that the phrase “Mama knows best” is true and when a parent feels their child is suffering some kind of problem, they should be taken seriously and the child should be thoroughly checked until the problem is found and fixed. Ronit helps identify kids’ problems regularly and is amazed at how many times parents arrive in desperation, having been dismissed and ignored by “the professionals”.

So whether you are Mama or Papa, if you suspect your child might be having some sort of a problem, you know best. Do not let anyone put you down or discourage you. Your child is your responsibility and if you say he or she needs help, that is good enough. Keep on searching and doing the best for your child until you succeed.

What’s the problem with my child?

Excuse me if I use a computer metaphor, but in the IT world, there are 3 kinds of people: hardware engineers, software developers and implementers. Hardware engineers know how to combine electronic components and build computers. Software developers enable the hardware to do a lot of wonderful things. Implementers (business analysts) choose the best hardware, software, settings and methods to use in a particular context.

Parents, unfortunately, have to be all of them.

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Ronit’s Parenting Bible: School

Kids’ schooling is one of the biggest parts of every parent’s bible. Out of their life at home, about 70% is associated with school in some way – homework assignments, report cards, extracurricular activities, meetings with teachers and more.

My schooling was a nightmare for my parents. I was not a good student (to put it mildly) and my parents really suffered for it. I was not very good in my academic studies, I had social problems, I had behavior problems and the whole school experience was very painful for me.

However, after being kicked out of school after 10th grade for failing too many subjects, I became a good student and won a scholarship for excellence. I then realized that my parents could not have made life easier for me, because they had no rules about school to guide them. They wanted me (and my siblings) to go to school because this is what everyone did and because in their mind, not having education pre-destined you to a life of sweeping streets and collecting garbage.

My personal experience contributed much to my parenting bible. As I went through college, the rules and commandments about school and studies became much clearer.
I am particularly proud of my school commandments and of having kids whose schooling is one continuous ecstasy. Yes, their schooling was not a regular one, because they lived in different places around the world, learned in special programs (some of which I ran myself), skipped grades and did other extraordinary things. But this is what schooling is for me and I am happy and proud that my schooling commandments brought my kids to think of their schooling as the best thing that has ever happened to them.

I have over 1,000 rules related to school and studying. I will share 10 commandments with you today and I hope they will give you inspiration.

Read Ronit’s Parenting Bible: School »

How to Stop Parental Bullying (2)

The previous post of the bullying series talked about stopping bully parents with awareness, because awareness is the first step towards any change. The following posts will show how we can stop bully parents by introducing personal development.

I believe that happy parents raise happy kids and that parents with good emotional skills raise children with good emotional skills, so this will also stop many kids from being bullies and others from being victims.

In the next 10 anti-bullying posts, I will list more than 50 bullying items and expand on some personal development technique to overcome some bullying behavior or help your kids stop being bullies or victims. Consider this your free parent coaching course to recognize, avoid and eliminate bullying from their life.

Some bullying behaviors are much more severe than others, but this activity is not meant to judge you or any other parent. It is there to give you tools to overcome snappy, fearful, aggressive or manipulative behaviors that arise from feeling powerless.

It will help you regain personal power so you do not try to get this power from abusing your kids, your partner or your employees (remember, every bully is also a victim and even if you are feeling like a victim, you may be bullying others).

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How to Stop Parental Bullying

Teen girl holding her hand out to stop bullying

In the last chapter of the bullying series, I wrote about bully parents (some people call them toxic parents) and although I think there is sometimes a fine line between carrying out our parenting responsibility and bullying, there is no doubt that bullying is a cycle that will never end unless we help parents stop it.

Yes, we have law enforcement officers whose job is making sure it does not continue, but if parents stop bullying their kids from fear of the police or the authorities, it will only increase their sense of disempowerment. Their focus will be again on gaining power without the authorities’ knowledge, which will create another cycle of making kids afraid of reporting and worse, hiding their physical injuries and hurts from others. This reduces the support structure available to bullied children and the chances of stopping the bullying or recovering from it.

Parents must stop the bullying cycle not because of the fear of being caught, but because they have gained power and understanding through developing their emotional intelligence. This way, the parents will be happy too.

We must stop the cycle of bullying so that in 10 years, we will talk about it as history and say, “This is what people did in the past, but we are more civilized and in control and we are better parents for our children”. We need to be proud of making a difference.

In this post, I want to help parents discover if they were bullied themselves when they were young and if there is a form of bullying in their home towards their own children.

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Have Faith in Your Children

Ronit always says, “What you focus on grows, so to have more good things in life, we need to focus on the good things we already have and they will grow”. When it comes to parenting, Ronit says we should ignore problems (because there is no such thing as bad attention), wait patiently for our kids to do something good and then jump all over the place and praise them for it.

I am a fixer. I have been a fixer all my life. This means I see problems and things that could work better all the time and immediately come up with clever solutions for them. Waiting patiently for things to work and then praising them does not come naturally for me.

If you are a fixer like me, or if your kids “never do anything good/right” or always “give you a hard time”, this post may really help you.

“Always look on the bright side of life”
– Monty Python in Life of Brian

Our 9-year-old daughter Noff spends way too much time watching TV, watching video clips on YouTube and playing computer games. Every day, we practically drag her from one of these activities, not kicking, but sometimes crying. Being busy with other things and having other kids in the house, we do not always pay close attention to what she does. As soon as our backs are turned, she sneaks back to watching or playing on the computer.

Our philosophy is that movies portray distorted views of life to kids. Being kids, they might accept these views as reality and adopt some very limiting beliefs about how people should behave. We also think that when you play against the computer, nobody really gets hurt when you win, so most computer games encourage competition, selfish focus, strict result orientation and disregard for others.

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