Celebrating first birthdays

My kids had their one year old birthday years ago. Eden, my eldest, had her first birthday 20 years ago. She was our first and it was a fun party.

Some friends said to us, “It’s silly to have a party for a 1-year-old, because they don’t understand what’s going on and will never remember”.

Recently, my two sisters had their sons’ first birthdays. People around them said that it was not worth the effort, because the kids would not understand it was their birthday and would never remember it anyway. That brought back all my memories about my kids’ first birthdays.

I am not sure what people mean when they say kids do not “understand”. What is there to understand? And what do they mean when they say this kids will not “remember”? Do they mean the food?

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Top Parenting Bloggers Discuss (11): Government Policy Suggestions

Parenting and families are important parts of our society. However, many decisions made by governments recognize the role of parents in building the future only partly. Unfortunately, ignoring the important role parents play in building our society has a direct impact on every section of our life.

When parents cannot support themselves, it is hard to expect them to support their children. Many of the skills required to be a good parent cannot be developed from feeling enormous love towards the kids. I used to say that “love is the answer”, but although love is the foundation of parenting, it is not enough in order to raise healthy, happy, good, smart, social, successful and contributing citizens.

Governments can support parents by investing in the right places to prevent greater expenses in the future. For example, if parents could support their kids’ health and wellbeing, the health system could be smaller. If parents could support their kids’ relationships or to manage their finances, the welfare system could shrink and the government could invest more in development, infrastructure and economic growth.

This week, I asked the top parenting bloggers for suggestions we could give government policy makers to support parents and improve parenting and here is what they thought about it. It is interesting to read what they think. Enjoy!

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People Change

When you read the title “people change”, you might be thinking, “Well, of course they do”, but very often, when you are very close to another person for a long time, these changes are difficult to notice. On the other hand, sometimes it is not the other person who changes, but us, and that just changes the way we see them.

When we start a long-term relationship, we are so intent on making it work that we overlook things we would prefer to be different “as long as we’re happy together”, but the discomfort caused by those overlooked things grows over time to the point where we suddenly notice them. One day, we are surprised to discover for the first time something our partner has been doing or saying for years. All that time, we dismissed it in different ways (“bad mood”, “something at work”, “didn’t really understand”, “only joking”, etc), but now, we look at “this thing” head on and think our partner has changed.

In a strange sort of way, the things that attracted us to that special person in the first place can become annoying over time, until we determine that the person has changed. We also get used to good things (annoying, but natural), which makes us take the good side of any character trait or behavior for granted, while getting more and more upset with the bad side.

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Who’s Your Favorite Grandparent? (Poll)

For the 21 years of our oldest daughters’ life, we have been contemplating the issue of our kids’ relationship with their grandparents. You see, our kids have grown up far away from their grandparents most of their life, but their relationships with one side of the family is stronger that with the other side.

To my surprise, the relationship to grandparents has nothing to do with how nice the grandparents are or what culture they are from, how nice you are, how nice your kids are or where you choose to live around the world. It is linked more closely to evolution – that survival mechanism of humanity to keep the dynasty and strengthen it. Grandparents invest in the grandchildren they are convinced are theirs.

In 1998, a researcher named DeKay came up with a theory to explain findings from researches conducted two years previously (Euler & Weitzel, 1996 and Boon & Brassoni, 1996) who claimed that grandmothers on the mother’s side invested in their grandkids the most. DeKay came up with a theory linking the relationship between grandparents and their grandchildren to certainty. His theory was that grandparents invest in the grandchildren they are certain are their offspring. In other words, the grandparent who has less doubt of being genetically related to the child and therefore to the grandchild, is more likely to invest in this relationship to support his or her “breed”.

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Birthday Fairies

It was 5am and our 8-year-old daughter Noff came into our room. It was so dark I thought I was dreaming it.

It was early and dark and I sooooo wanted to go back to sleep, but when Gal came back from his search, I realized I had done it to myself.

“Do you know where Tsoof is?” she asked.

Tsoof is our 14-year-old son and shares a room with Noff. He never comes to our room so early in the morning.

I jumped out of bed with my heart pumping. Where on Earth could he be?

For a second, I imagined scenes from movies.

“Maybe he’s downstairs”, Gal said after searching every room upstairs and went down with Noff to solve the case of missing child.

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Like a Dog

Dogs are really simple creatures. Whatever they do, they give it EVERYTHING.

If you have ever seen a dog happy, you know they are happy with their whole body – they wag their tail like crazy, they jump around, the breath excitedly, lick every part of you they can reach and even yelp with joy. If you have a dog, just take its leash and stand by the door and you will see what I mean.

People, on the other hand, think too much. Particularly, people care about what others will think of them. So instead of being true to what goes on inside them and expressing it to the best of their ability, they aim for a response out of the people around them and behave in a way that will get them this response.

But that is being manipulative, really.

It is also far less likely to succeed than being honest.

Kids start out like dogs – they get all excited when Mommy pulls a breast out of her bra. They wag their little arms and legs, their face lights up with excited anticipation and they cling and suck with everything they have. When Mommy goes out of their room, on the other hand, they start crying bitterly, twitching their arms and legs in a futile attempt to chase her.

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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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What do You Want for Your Kids?

I have written about what is important to parents many times and I know that for some readers, it is not enough to read me saying that for hundreds of parents going through the parenting workshops, happiness and all forms of happiness are more important than what they spend most of their energy on (academic success).

Do not get me wrong. I do not know any parents who care about their kids that would say, “I want my kids to be failures at school”. We all want our kids to be academically successful. After all, whether we like it or not, we think their level of success says something about us…

Unfortunately, many parents think academic success is the entry ticket to “real life”, but although I believe it is very important, I think it cannot stand by itself and we need a balance between academic success and happiness.

What do you think?

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How to Have More Intimacy in Your Relationship

Intimacy: couple lying face-to-face on the floor

Let’s start with some big words. According to Wikipedia, “Intimacy generally refers to the feeling of being in a close personal association and belonging together. Genuine intimacy in human relationships requires dialogue, transparency, vulnerability and reciprocity”.

When I mention intimacy to people, many of them immediately think of romance and physical closeness, particularly in the context of fear of intimacy. But this is only a borrowed meaning.

In fact, many sexual relationships have little or no intimacy in them, while other relationships are based on deep spiritual bonding without any physical contact whatsoever.

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