Ronit’s Parenting Bible: Love

This entry is part 2 of 10 in the series Ronit's Parenting Bible

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.

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Ronit’s Parenting Bible: Who’s in Charge?

This entry is part 1 of 10 in the series Ronit's Parenting Bible

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.

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Lifestyle of the rich and the famous

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.

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Topsy Turvy World (3)

US gun ownership vs. gun deaths by state

This entry is part 3 of 4 in the series Topsy Turvy World

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?

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Workplace Bullying (2)

This entry is part 11 of 35 in the series Bullying

If you look at the forms of workplace bullying listed in Bullying (10): Workplace Bullying, you know that almost everyone who works for others has been somehow bullied at work. The expectation to stay at work late has increased in the last 20 years so much that when you talk to people about getting home on time to be with their kids, they are 100% convinced that leaving work at 5pm (as they should do) will threaten their job, their career and their financial situation.

17 years ago, when we lived in California, all my women friends said their husbands returned home at 8pm, barely had a chance to kiss the kids goodnight and only spent weekends with the family. For everyone – the wives, the kids and the workers – that was part of life and they felt they had to accept it.

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Workplace Bullying

This entry is part 10 of 35 in the series Bullying

When we talk about bullying, we mainly think of children and the perceived increase in acts of bullying at schools. However, as we discovered in Home of the Bully, it is very likely that the parents or older siblings who are raising child bullies have been bullied by their parents or are being bullied at work themselves. Therefore, they are merely trapped in a cycle of bullying.

In Australia, it is estimated that 1 of 6 people are bullied at work. A research done by Duncan and Riley on the staff of a school cluster found that 97% of staff thought they had been or were still being bullied by another person at work.

In 2002, it was estimated that workplace bullying cost the Australian economy 36 billion dollars a year, not including stress leave people took due to bullying.

But the implications of this phenomenon are far more devastating than the financial toll society pays for bullying. People who are bullied and made to feel weak at work have a higher chance of finding someone weaker to pick on to regain their power. If they have kids, those kids might become their victims at home.

Besides the “obvious” workplace bullies – employers and managers (“the boss”) – anyone may act like a bully: subordinates, colleagues, clients, suppliers, individually or in groups. Anyone who feels weak may use bullying to regain their power by putting another down.

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Home of the bully (2)

This entry is part 9 of 35 in the series Bullying

In my work for Together for Humanity, I must have read hundreds of articles while looking for solutions to specific forms of bullying and there was very limited mention of parents. I can easily understand why there was so little focus on parents’ role in eliminating bullying. It seems there is a fear of addressing the issue, as if pointing a finger at the parents will only make things worse.

Although I believe blaming is not a good strategy in solving any problem, I do think that shutting our eyes to the importance of the parenting style in creating the problem is not going to get us any closer to the solution.

Parents are the most important role models for their kids and the most valuable socializing agent. When their parenting style supports bullying behavior, they do not do it because they are mean and abusive. They do it because they do not know any other way or are not aware of the effects of their parenting on their kids and on society.

I think that avoidance and fear of discussing the parenting side is not doing parents any favors. By drawing attention to the importance of parenting, we can actually give parents back the power they need in order to run their family life in a productive, supportive and positive way. As a result (almost a side effect), we will also be reversing the bullying trend.

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Handy Family Tips: Electric toothbrush

This entry is part 12 of 24 in the series Handy Family Tips

Yes, the toothbrush does a great job.

Yes, the ability to change brush heads is a great idea.

Yes, the family pack is a great idea.

Yes, a single charger for two motors is excellent.

Yes, having 4 little compartments to hold 4 brush heads is awesome.

But…

What is that silly idea with the colorful rings at the bottom? When the heads are inside the container, how can you tell if this is your brush or belongs to your partner or child?

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Home of the bully

This entry is part 8 of 35 in the series Bullying

Bullying is not something we like to talk about. There are big groups and organizations out there trying to convince us to start talking about it, because life is getting worse and bullying is on the rise. I think they paint this picture of society for two reasons:

* To create awareness of something that many have bravely decided to stop tolerating and a sense of urgency in finding a solution for it

* To ease our guilt feelings about having accepted it as part of life until recently

As you might suspect, the first reason is closer to my heart and to my educational and social agenda, but I am not happy with the second reason, because I believe bullying is a fundamental part of our society (just think about bosses, kings and other people in power) and without acknowledging that, we will keep dealing with superficial issues and never really eliminate it.

I remember myself living in a bullying environment. I was bullied for my height (I am still short), I was bullied for my financial status (we lived on the poor side of town in a house and believed those living in a flat in a buildings were superior to us), I was bullied for my low academic achievements by my siblings (yes, it is hard to admit, but school was not my best experience), I was bullied for my bad health and using threats to get what we wanted was our way of life.

In the past, when a husband was a bully towards his wife and children, it was very acceptable. If any parent physically hurt their child, it was called “education” or “discipline”. Authorities did not even consider it a problem. I think that even today, many parents do not recognize their role in raising a bully in their home.

It is time to wake up and take responsibility.

Research about bullies discovered there were certain types of homes that raised bullies.

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Handy Family Tips: Glass jars

This entry is part 9 of 24 in the series Handy Family Tips

In the last few years, I discovered that glass containers were cheaper than plastic or metal ones. If I buy tomato paste in a glass jar, it costs almost half the price of buying it in tubes, sachets or sealed plastic tubs, so I decided to start recycling glass the way I had recycled plastic. It is even easier to remove the labels from glass containers, because they can stand heat and I they are dishwasher safe.

So I wash them, take the label off and use them to store things in my cupboards. One clear advantage of glass containers is that you can easily see what is inside them.

If you buy the same product regularly, after a short time, you can have a whole set of glass jars. For example, we use one kind of mayonnaise, so now our cupboard jars look like a set.

Basically, everything I buy in a large quantity, I transfer to a glass jar, because it is easier to manage. When I buy a bag of something, as soon as I open it, I transfer it to a glass container – I like to see in the container and it saves me having to deal with many bags and clips.

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