You is Important

In today’s strange world, not many movies make it into my favorites list. There are even fewer movies with meaningful parenting content. But this week, Ronit and I watched “The Help” and it moved me deeply with its mix of race, gender, marriage, friendship, parenting and social status messages, its great characters and its deliberate plot that included a twist on the very last word.

On the face of it, The Help is set in Jackson Mississippi, but the social and financial pressures and the ways in which different people handle them are timeless. In fact, it is a lot easier first to analyze the characters in the film and THEN quietly admit that we behave in a similar way towards our friends, partner or children, at least sometimes.

I have chosen to focus on a few of the topics that have come up in my mind.

Who is raising your children?

The movie starts and ends with the mention that the colored maids raised the white women’s children and there are many scenes that drive this point home. Caring for children was considered a chore, feeding little kids and changing diapers were messy and unpleasant and white women had to look presentable at all times. They could not afford to sweat or have smudges on their dresses.

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Lost in Translation

Motivation seems like a very tricky thing for many people, parents included. Motivational speakers make a great living out of presenting it as a mysterious art, mastered by the few, that will bring you endless prosperity if you “get it”.

One main challenge with motivation is that it is mostly subconscious. We find ourselves wanting to do or to achieve something, but when the time comes to actual do it or take steps towards achieving it, we snooze. This is frustrating and reinforces a negative identity of being incapable, undisciplined losers. We punish ourselves, blame our parents or circumstances, and try the next thing, but…

Motivating other people is further complicated by the involvement of more than one subconscious mind. We want someone else to do or to achieve something, so we try to communicate that to them. What happens all too often is that our message gets distorted – lost in translation – and they end up doing or achieving something else. This, in turn, creates frustration and bad vibes on both sides.

Many hierarchies rely on a “chain of command”. This includes schools, government departments, armies, religious organizations and corporations. Each person in the organization has an official title, an official job description and a set of official authorities, which they use as the main method of motivating other people. If you have ever worked in a hierarchical system, you know this does not always produce the desired outcome and that very often, what happens in the organization is very different from the organization’s stated vision and mission.

Regrettably, many families also function in a top-down manner, sort of like an army unit. One parent is the General or Admiral, the other is the Second-in-Command (the ranks may change for different circumstances) and they children rank anywhere from Foot Soldier to Sergeant, depending on their position in the family and their level of responsibility.

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Video Games Violence (3): Parenting

While Tsoof was doing his assignment on video game violence, I was shocked with the level of violence the kids were exposed to and it really got me scared. By the end of it, he also showed me some statistics about parents and that got me even more scared.

Parents and video games

Here is a list of figures from a US research into parents’ involvement and attitude towards playing video games:

– 50% of parents play computer and video games with their children

– 93% of computer and video games are purchased or rented while the parents are present

– 88% of games are purchased by adults

– 72% of parents believe video games are “fun for the entire family”

– 71% of parents are asked to play by their kids

– 66% of parents believe computer and video games provide good opportunities for them to socialize with their kids

– 63% of parents believe computer games are a positive part of their kids’ life

– 50% of parents claim that playing computer and video games with their children provides good opportunities to monitor the game content
10% of parents never check the official rating of the computer and video games their kids use
Now, I ask you, would you not feel like there must be someone to blame? Do not feel devastated after reading these figures?

Did you know when reading such things, people use a defense mechanism that says “It won’t happen to me”. I did the same. I said to myself, “I’m OK. My kids are not exposed to video games. We have never purchased any computer game in our life. We don’t have a game console at home”. But this mechanism only gives us a false illusion that we are safe, because we are not.

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Video Games Violence (2): Video-game-inspired real violence

This entry is part 2 of 2 in the series Video Game Violence

In the first chapter of the series, I wrote some facts about the gaming industry and some research regarding video games and violence. Here is a list of real life killings and acts of violence inspired by video games. You may even recognize some of them.

April 20, 1999: 18-year-old Eric Harris and 17-year-old Dylan Klebold killed 12 students and a teacher in the Columbine High School massacre. The two were allegedly obsessed with the video game Doom.

1 April 2000: 16-year-old Spanish teenager José Rabadán Pardo murdered his father, his mother and his sister as an “avenging mission” given to him by the main character of the video game Final Fantasy.

20 November 2001: 21-year-old American Shawn Woolley committed suicide after what his mother claimed was an addiction to EverQuest.

February 2003: 16-year-old American Dustin Lynch was charged with aggravated murder and used an insanity defense that he was “obsessed” with Grand Theft Auto III.

7 June, 2003: 18-year-old American Devin Moore shot and killed two policemen, inspired by the video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.

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Video Games Violence (1): Shock and Awe

This entry is part 1 of 2 in the series Video Game Violence

This year, my 15-year-old son Tsoof had to do a school assignments in drama class. If you think Drama studies are all about playing, make belief or acting, they are not. He had to research a topic and present it in a special style and he worked really hard on this project. Gal and I felt happy and privileged to watch the whole process of this assignment and the way he grew from doing it.

Our kids do not play computer or video games that often (they are too busy ice skating, singing, playing music, dancing, playing sport and reading to have much time left for video games), so we did not expect this to make any difference to Tsoof, but it did big time.

We were shocked by how easy it was to find information on video games and violence. It is all there – all the proof for the negative and devastating effects of violent video games on our society. Yet, the spread of violent video games is increasing and things are getting worse.

I was not sure how to present Tsoof’s findings to you. I was debating whether to tell you my opinion or maybe there was no need. I think maybe just giving you some of the facts about it will be enough for you to understand the severity of the problem. As I believe that as parents, we have lots of power to change this horrible phenomenon. So sit back and be horrified!

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Parents Doing Business

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!

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Wisdom from the School of Life

In the “old days”, the elders had a special role in people’s life. Because knowledge back then was not the highest currency, what the elders could give their community was wisdom. Unlike knowledge, wisdom is applied knowledge, achieved after personal experience, experiments, trials and errors and often summed up as rules of living.

Much of our life today is dedicated to acquiring knowledge. School, where you spend about 13 years of your life, is a place that gives you knowledge. If you study a profession, you spend another 3 to 10 years of your life in a school of knowledge.

As an educator, I find most of this to be a total waste of energy. When I did my degree in Special Education, I took an amazing course named “Who needs school anyway?” You would think that the main idea is to teach us that school is the best thing and that everyone needs school, but our amazing lecturer allowed us to explore this topic from many angles. We all had to go and research what school is all about and in my research, I discovered that School was an institute that provided knowledge, but failed to give kids wisdom. School had forgotten its purpose.

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Teen Trouble?

Teenagers are typically portrayed by the media as feisty, obnoxious, disobedient and wild. Teens are often shown doing stupid things, generally in groups. Although the things reported may be close to the truth, those reports are selective and contribute to a negative image of teenagers in the general public.

To a great extent, this also affects parents of teenagers, who are being encouraged to consider every little friction and identity-building exercise on the teen’s part as part of their overall negative attitude to adults and authority.

Yesterday evening, however, Channel Ten in Australia showed a piece titled “Teen Trouble?” in which a mother and her 3 wonderful teenagers were interviewed, having gone through Ronit’s coaching programs. Ronit was also interviewed as a parenting expert with some tips on how to get along well with teenage children and build strong relationships with them.

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Competition, Perfection or Happiness

This week, Ronit and I had a discussion on the difference between competition and perfection, or rather between being competitive and being a perfectionist. We were talking about how happy we were that our children we neither of those now, although they had been when they were younger.

This got me thinking that many parents raise their kids to be competitive or to strive for perfection, not realizing there was a third alternative, which helps the kids build their self-esteem and lead a relaxed and happy life. So I wanted to share with you my take on all 3 options and what you can do for your kids through your parenting and personal example.

Competitive people compare themselves with others all the time. Am I as pretty as Betty? Am I as strong as Josh? Am I as smart as Clarissa? Can I draw as well as Billy?

Perfectionists compare themselves against imaginary standards. While some rules are written clearly and are the same for everyone, perfection is a personal matter and a perfectionist’s rules of how things should be are typically not written anywhere or accepted by anyone else.

Do you do either of these? If so, what can you do instead?

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Teenage Problems

I have heard a lot about angry teenagers (some even call them troubled teenagers). People talk about teenagers being angry as some natural phenomenon, but I often find there is nothing natural about it and teenage problems are caused by things that can be changed.

One of my clients had an angry teenager at home until recently. Olivia was only 12 years old and very, very, very angry. Her mom, Nancy, who was trapped by the “teenage problems” belief, did nothing for a while. All her friends said it was normal (“You know, teens these days…”), so she just waited for the teenage years to pass and prepared herself for when her two younger kids would go through it too.

But then Nancy met another client of mine who told her, “It doesn’t have to be like that. You should go and see Ronit”. So she came to one of my parenting workshops. After the workshop, she had some hope that maybe it was not normal for “teenagers these days” to be so angry and that maybe she could help her daughter relax.

Shortly after, Nancy told me, “There was something you said to me during the parenting workshop that made a huge shift with my daughter. I was convinced all teenagers were the same, but I realized that I could help my daughter if I only changed some of the things I was doing myself. It really worked!”

Olivia had been seeing a psychologist for a while, trying to make a big decision, but without any results. After the parenting workshop, Nancy went to the psychologist and asked her to try one of my strategies. It took only one session for Olivia to make her mind up and Nancy came to see me, hoping she could make more changes in her teen daughter’s attitude and life.

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