Help

Imagine you are faced with a problem, things are hectic and you are under a lot of pressure. Do you ask for help? Do you look around you and see kind people you can lean on in your time of need or do you see people you should be careful of, who might start perceiving you as weak and incapable?

Everyone starts life totally and utterly helpless. Excuse the French, but we cannot even wipe our own bum. We just lie there, wiggle out arms and legs and pray that someone will be kind to us and feed us when we are hungry, hold us when we need a cuddle and clean us when we feel uncomfortable for some strange reason.

Later on, we spend our life becoming more and more independent and developing more and more skills, but for the most part, we are told precisely what to do by people who think they know everything (and we think so too). Often, we try to do things on our own, but then those great people tell us off and instruct us in the “right” way of doing them.

So we build a sense of inadequacy into our identity during our first years of life and it is a serious challenge getting rid of it and starting to believe in our own power and abilities. It is tough to feel we are worthy, capable, responsible, “good enough” individuals.

When we face a difficult situation, our stress is often not a result of the level of technical or physical difficulty. It is a result of having a little identity crisis.

“Oh, my God, I have no idea how to do this, but I expect myself to be able to. What is the boss/Mom/my partner going to think of me now? I’m so useless and incompetent”.

This, in turn, causes our brain’s memory and creativity areas to be inhibited to the point of dysfunction, which makes matters even worse. It also causes us to fear the people around us, even those who can help us with our problem.

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Couples to Parents

OK, parents, hand on your heart, how often do you do something romantic with your partner? Come on, don’t be shy, it’s all right. How often do you have a romantic dinner, go out dancing together or take time off just the two of you?

I bet your mind just filled with thoughts of “the children”, “my work commitments”, “that project I have to finish”, “how hard it is to get a babysitter nowadays” and various other seemingly-appropriate reasons for your romantic situation being what it is and why you should not be feeling too horrible about it. Besides, is this not what everyone experiences when they turn from a couple into parents?

Yes, they do, and yes, they all feel just as horrible as you do about it, but does that make it better?

Nope.

The natural progression of our life seems to be that we get really excited about finding a partner that turns us on and can be out friend at the same time. We dedicate much of our time and nearly all of our brainpower to finding that person. We embark on a journey of mutual exploration, during which we are typically so fascinated with the other person, they need to do something truly awful to turn us off.

Once we have found our body-and-soul mate, we go through what is commonly known as “settling down” (is this an ugly expression or what?), which includes some or all of the following: moving in together, getting married, joining finances, buying a home, getting a very large debt together (the mortgage) and, of course, having children. These steps seem to extract the interest and variety out of our life and replace them with certainty to the point of routine and with responsibility to the point of stress.

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A Question of Identity

Relationship friction is as common as relationships. There is just no way to keep everything smooth all the time. Whether you interact with your partner, your boss, your colleagues, your kids or (ahem) your parents, there is bound to be some points when things feel a bit rough, faces turn redder, voices become sharper and all involved wonder what went wrong.

This happens very often between parents and teenagers. Considering what you are about to read, this is not too surprising, actually.

You see, every conversation we have takes place in the words we say, in the feelings we feel and in how we relate facts and feelings to the way we see ourselves. We all have a sense of identity and sometimes, when we feel our identity is being threatened, we go to “battle stations”, batten down the hatches and defend ourselves with all our might.

The teenage years are all about forming our independent identity, which means our identity is still very new and fragile and every possible comment could have a shattering effect on it and then what?

Luckily, there are just 3 common self-beliefs that can be threatened and if we avoid them, much of the friction in our communication with others, particularly with teens, can be eliminated. In fact, we can do a lot of good as parents, partners and friends by saying and doing things to strengthen others’ positive beliefs about who they are.

The best way to experience what others may be going through when you talk to them is to look at it from the receiving end. This will also allow you to deal better with potential threats to your identity that would result in your retaliatory action against others. Relationships, after all, are as much about us as they are about them.

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Kids Speaking a Second Language

At university this year, I started studying a “second” language. In actual fact, this is my third language, because I already speak two – one at home and one with everyone else.

The language I chose to study is Spanish. The reason I picked it was probably that when I was in primary school, I studied with a wonderful teacher we called “Señor Carlos”, who made it so much fun that I will forever associate Spanish with fun times. One day, I am determined to visit Spain or some Latin American country so I can show off my amazing Spanish skills.

Actually, the more I study, the more I realize there are quite a few languages I would like to learn, none of which are anything like any of the languages I already speak. I am particularly captivated by Arabic and Russian and my latest addition is AUSLAN (AUstralian Sign LANguage).

What I want to talk to you about is the benefit of speaking a second and even a third language. Being the devil’s advocate that I am, I want to share with you a few things that may not be so great. Then, I want you to tell me what you think. If you spoke (or if you already speak) a different language (other than English, that is), would you teach it to your kids?

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Good Parenting is Easy

Go online any day, open your email inbox, read the papers or turn on the television and you are sure to find heaps of parenting advice, all claiming to teach you good parenting. Since you are here, even this blog is full of ideas, stories and tips on how to be the best parent you can be for your kids.

The downside of having so much information and possibly conflicting views on the same issues is that it can quickly become confusing and give you the impression that being a good parent is really hard. In fact, maybe it is so hard you are never going to be good at parenting.

Nonsense.

Good parenting is easy.

It is as easy as … 1, 2. Not even 3, just 1, 2. In parenting, the most important things are love and consistency.

Yes, really.

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Perspective for Kids

One of our main challenges in life is that we don’t know what we don’t know. To overcome this challenge, we must actively question our own point of view and make conscious choices, instead of accepting what we have grown into as the only possibility.

A few weeks ago, Ronit had a few sessions with a lovely little boy called Lenny (not really). He was very intelligent and very curious and bombarded Ronit with “unfiltered” questions, which got me thinking about perspective.

While he was working away on one of his assignments, Lenny asked Ronit, “Do you know that you sometimes talk to me in a different language?”

She explained to him that because we talk to our kids in a different language, she sometimes confused the languages.

He asked, “So they don’t understand what you’re saying too?”

Ronit explained that our kids understand her when she speaks the other language, because they know two languages.

Lenny said, “I don’t know any language”.

Ronit said, “You know English”.

He looked at her surprised and then said in excitement, “Yes!”

Being only 6 years old, Lenny accepts everything in his life as the only thing possible, so sometimes, he does not even need to call it by name. It is just “the thing that is” for him. The language he speaks is so obvious to him, he had never counted it as such. It was just part of life. And it never occurred to him that other kids might know other languages, simply because he doesn’t.

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Top Parenting Bloggers Discuss (6): Education

Whether we pay for it through taxes or fees, the education system is a service to us parents. Most parents, even if they can afford to stay home and be their kids’ teacher, would rather go to work and do something else. Although parents are the most important educators of their own kids, being a teacher is a whole different skill that would be unfair to expect every parent to master.

When we send our kids to school, we share an important part of parenting with others. Our kids spend 12 to 13 years of their life in the education system with other people who pass on their knowledge, values and attitudes to them. Sometimes, we can afford to choose these people directly, but often, we are bound by financial or geographical circumstances and we do not have much of a choice.

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Top Parenting Bloggers Discuss (1): Introduction

Have you ever wondered who inspires me?

Well, I thought about this and realized there were parents’ bloggers whose writing I love to read and they inspire me to be the best I can be, because this is their motto too – to be the best parents they can be.

I think these top parenting bloggers are at peace with what they believe, while they appreciate other philosophies. I think they are passionate about what they do and all of them strive to help others make the parenting journey a happy, healthy and joyous adventure, which makes them the top parenting bloggers by my definition.

So for the next 14 weeks, the top parenting bloggers will be discussing different aspects of parenting right here on Family Matters.

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Love, Actually

Loving another person is one thing, but making the other person feel your love is another matter altogether. Differences in communication styles may get in the way, love languages may not match and other circumstances may interfere.

So what you need to do is make your declaration of love stand out so big it simply cannot be ignored or overlooked.

And what better teachers do we have for this but our very own kids?

One day, our 8-year-old daughter Noff came back from school with a bookmark she had made at school. She brought it home with the utmost care, showed it to everyone and told us it was a special bookmark she had made for us and offered it to us to use for our books.

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When Partners Differ

Parents argue while girl blocks her ears

Parenting kids is a challenge for most people. There are many things that make parenting such a challenge, but one of the big ones is that a couple of parents is made up of two different individuals, each with their own upbringing, values, beliefs and preferences.

If life was just smooth sailing, this would not be such a big problem, except life is bumpy sometimes and when tensions are high, things can get silly and weaken the parents’ position of authority.

Even when things are pretty quiet, the ever-so-sensitive kids can detect notes of disagreement between their parents and immediately try to use them to their advantage (little buggers). Parents who are too preoccupied to notice end up facing the “But Mom/Dad said” and looking pretty stupid being caught unprepared.

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