Ronit’s Parenting Bible: Role Model

If you are a regular reader in this site, you probably know that being a role model is one of my strongest commandments. I adopted it while I was a special education student and we learned how strong our actions are as an example to students. I realized it would be even stronger for or own kids.

Accepting this commandment requires courage and a self-reflection strategy. Being a role model does not mean taking the blame for everything your kids do, but it does mean recognizing your ability to change what they do by modeling a different behavior yourself.

When I present this to parents, I get responses like “If my child is sick, does it mean I’ve modeled it?” and “My child swears, but he’s never heard it at home!” Being a role model does not mean your kids do something because of you or because they have seen you do it, but it does mean that as s role model, you can do the opposite and demonstrate good alternatives. If your child is sick, it is not your fault, but if you are a role model for eating junk, abusing your body and pay attention to them when they are sick, do not be surprised they have resort to this coping mechanism.

Here are just some of my role-modeling commandments.

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Escape of the Rats

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.

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Ronit’s Parenting Bible: Babies

I follow many parenting rules, because I believe each rule works well for me. I have adopted some of them from other people in my life, developed some of them by looking at others and created some rules from my own experience. Every rule is there to prevent me from re-inventing the wheel. Life is a process of going forward and choosing which direction to take is a constant battle. Much like the Bible that gives the believers a framework for life, my parenting bible is my framework for raising my kids.

If you are a believer, you do not need convincing or proof. Whether you believe in God or in another set of rules, you do not question the rules. You accept them as commandments and this gives you the confidence and the certainty to keep going forward in your life. The difference between believers and non-believers is in the questioning and the doubt.

I am not saying there is no place for questions in life. On the contrary. They are very important in coming up with the commandments of the bible, but once you have come up with a commandment, it becomes a living guideline. Questioning it makes it (and you) weaker.

Here is the next chapter from Ronit’s Parenting Bible.

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Ronit’s Parenting Bible: Food

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.

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Ronit’s Parenting Bible: Love

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?

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

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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Boiled Frog

From time to time, I get it by email. Now, with social media, I also get it on Facebook and Twitter. It is the story of the frog in hot water. In case you have never read it, here it is for your reading pleasure:

Frogs’ sense of heat actually detects differences in temperature. If you take a frog at room temperature and drop it into hot water, the frog will jump right back out as quickly as it can. However, if you put the frog into a pot of tap water and then gradually heat the water, the frog will just enjoy the nice wet environment and think nothing of it … until it is cooked.

“Eew, gross”, you say, or maybe, “How cruel”. OK, gross or cruel it may be, but it is just a story to illustrate a point. And the point is … drum roll …

When we believe everything is good and we do not need to change, reality eventually bites. No matter how subtle, we still need to pay attention to change in our life and do something about it.

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Optimus Prime: How to help your kids succeed

Compare two kids, one who goes to a beautiful, clean, well-built school that requires excellence and maintains a high level of academic achievement and another who goes to an old, run-down, dirty, crumbling school where students can come and go as they please and learning is not high on the priority list.

Which child has a better chance in life?

Ronit and I are reading a brilliant book called “Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking” by Malcolm Gladwell. In this book, there are many bits of amazing research, which we can all use to avoid trouble and get more goodness out of life.

In one experiment, two groups of black students were given college entry tests. The tests were identical, except for one question. One group was first asked to specify their race.

That group scored 50% lower on average. Fifty percent! When asked why they scored so low, the students said they were apparently not smart enough to be accepted and had no clue what had gone wrong.

In another experiment, two groups of students took a trivia test. Before the test, one group was asked to imagine what it would be like to be a college professor for 5 minutes. The other group was asked to imagine what it would be like to be a soccer hooligan.

The “professor” group scored 23% higher on the test, simply because they had put themselves in a different mindset.

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