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September 2011
Four years ago Clifford Levy was transferred to Moscow. Most Americans working overseas send their children to “international” schools where the instruction is in English. However, he and his wife wanted their children to go to school with “real Russians” and become part of the culture. “Children pick up language quickly,” he admitted in a recent New York Times Magazine article. This would be the experience of a lifetime.
An experience it was. Two hours into the first day of school his third-grader called from the phone crying, “Daddy, I want to go home.” She didn’t understand a single word anyone said. Every word was in Russian. There was no translation, no hand-holding. Those first couple of months there was lots of crying. The fifth-grader, who stoically handled things at school, had worry-induced insomnia. The kindergartner complained that he was never getting called on in class – convinced it was because he was an American. His wife once left a teacher’s meeting crying because she couldn’t understand enough Russian to help her own children.
They began to feel they had made a mistake and looked into other options. Their parental inclination was to intervene to protect their children. But in between the crying and insomnia and worry, the children were developing survival skills, winning small battles and building confidence that comes with conquering big challenges. Vasiliy Bogin, the school’s founder, often said, “Life is the best teacher.”
By the time they had to return to the US all three children were at the top of their classes. On their last morning in Moscow, the school held an assembly to wish them good-bye. “How did our American friends enrich our school?” Bogin asked, and as words were shouted across the auditorium shared laughter became shared tears. Levy had been asked to offer some words from the family, but he became too choked up to speak. So his former third-grader, now a graduating sixth-grader, in confident and flawless Russian thanked the school on behalf of the family.
The parental urge to protect our children can also rob them of conquering great challenges and the confidence that comes with true accomplishment. Allowing our children to struggle, to fall and get back up on their own can sometimes be the most loving gift a parent can give – and also the hardest.
July 2011
Recently, an editorial in the Charlotte Observer bemoaned the lack of standards in American parents. I found myself agreeing with his lament, but couldn’t help but notice his lack of ideas. As usual description is easier than prescription.
Often times the decay of American families is cast as a political issue in the media, but there is little evidence that one political party has better families than the other. George Barna, an evangelical pollster, actually found divorce to be less likely among Unitarians, Jews & Episcopalians, but there was no research into why this was so. Families, marriages and children fair about as well in Democratic households as with Republican households, in conservative Utah as well as in liberal Massachusetts. Poor urban children face as many disadvantages as poor rural children.
There are certainly many challenges for today’s families – two income households, single parenting, stagnant wages for two decades. But these challenges shouldn’t be used as excuses. Farming families always had both parents working and the Great Depression separated a lot of families as husbands went off to find work and send money back home.
For too many children and families, however, things are too easy. The way to growth in human nature has always been through overcoming struggles. The toddler who screams if someone tries to help him out understands human nature as well as anyone. But at some point that toddler independence gets co-opted by American luxuries. If we took lessons from toddlers we might all be doing a bit better.
The return to health for American families is through home-cooked meals instead of the drive-thru window. It’s through outdoor games instead of video games. It’s through household chores instead of watching TV. It’s community service with pizza instead of a pizza party with games. It’s saving up for a special item rather than putting it on credit cards. It’s living within your means rather than keeping up with the neighbors.
A fast-food lifestyle is as bad for your psyche and spirit as for your health. A diet of fresh air, a little sweat and a balance of work and entertainment would do wonders for us all.
March 2011
I’ll never forget the first graded test I received in physics at college. When my professor handed my paper to me there was a red “52” on the front, my heart sank to my stomach. I barely got half the questions right. There was no way I was passing this class. Flunk physics and I’d be heading back home for good by May. Before my professor was finished passing out all the exams, I was already contemplating a gloom and doom future. Then, he went to the chalkboard and began writing some numbers.
65 – 100 = A 45-64 = B 35-44 = C 25-34 = D Below 25 = F
Suddenly my “52” was a solid “B.” There were two “A’s” in the class. Some guy near me got a “67,” and then there was genius who had a “91.” He really blew the curve for everyone.
Several folks complained about the test and the scores. My professor said, “If six of you get a 100, I do not know how much you really know. If no one can score a 100, then I can easily tell what you know and what you do not know.” Later in the year, when I was discouraged about my grades in class, he said to me, “Why do you worry about grades? Good grades do not mean you have a good education. All that matters is that you grasp the material. Grades are irrelevant when it comes to that.” In this era of school testing it is good for students and parents to remember this.
Grades are a quick and easy measuring stick to evaluate what a student is learning. But grades do not equal education. In our drive for accountability tools we are in the danger of making grades the end of analysis, not the beginning. Students are far too often more driven to get good grades than to master the material. Many students perceive the material as simply a tool to get a grade, instead of understanding a grade is a tool to determine if you master the material. Madeline Levine in The Price of Privilege wrote, “Being passionate about grades is not the same as being passionate about Faulkner, calculus, or the periodic table of the elements.”
What we want to encourage in our children is a thirst for knowledge, not simply academic success. Celebrate discoveries, engage in conversations about the history, science, theology, and experience learning by being in nature. And let the grades take care of themselves.
October 2010
Every parent wishes to give her children a better life than she had. Every generation wants to make the world better for the next generation.
For decades we have judged this hope by educational opportunity, financial achievement, and material possessions. A growing national economy provided these accomplishments with relative ease for many families during the 20th century. Farmers and factory workers sent their children to college to jumpstart white-collar careers. Those college graduates then used their prosperity to give their children the opportunity to attend the most prestigious colleges, or pursue advanced degrees. Every generation has offered the next more gadgets and technology than the previous generation ever imagined. The size of our homes has quadrupled over the last 70 years, though the size of our families has shrunk. One-car families became two-car families, which became three-car families.
But is this the best indication of parental and generational legacy?
What if every parent who wished to give his children a better life gave them…
· Unconditional love – constantly reminding them his love and acceptance never waver;
· A chore list – so they will learn responsibility and realize mom and dad are parents, not servants;
· Opportunities for achievement – nothing builds self-worth like a conquered challenge;
· Lessons for handling failure – nothing builds resolve like getting back up after a painful fall;
· Real live examples of trustworthiness – a parent who keeps promises, whose word is his bond;
· A sense of duty to community & country – giving back out of gratitude for what you’ve been given;
· A faith that points them beyond themselves – the focus of the universe is not self.
If every parent that wished to give her children a better life than she had gave them those gifts not only would they become better people, but the world would become a better place. If we worried more about giving the next generation a better character than giving them a better life, maybe the latter would take care of itself.
March 2009
I’ve been reading Madeline Levine’s The Price of Privilege the past couple of weeks and still have a couple more weeks of leisurely reading to finish it. This child psychologist has been working with adolescents for 25 years. Even before finishing it, I recommend it to parents and grandparents.
One of her comments stopped me with countless childhood memories. She mentioned that many of her affluent teenage patients have made it clear that they prefer organized sports to spontaneous play. When she asks them if they’ve ever just gone over to the school-yard or park to play a pick-up game, they look at her sincerely puzzled and typically respond, “Who would referee?”
For most of my childhood I lived next door to the high school. It had a huge front lawn, where neighborhood kids played football and baseball. Much of my childhood was spent playing pick-up games on that lawn. There were never any adults around to supervise, certainly not to referee. Probably a third of the time was spent choosing sides, making the rules, arguing about the rules, and disputing touchdowns. But that was an important part of the game – in terms of lifelong affects probably more important than the game.
We thought we were just playing two-hand touch football. What we were learning was relationship skills, conflict management and diplomacy. If you wanted to keep the game going you had to pick sides that were basically even, and compromise enough on the rules and disputes to keep everybody playing. Of course, there were the kids who often got mad and threatened to quit; the peacemakers who tried to work out solutions, and kids who just pleaded, “Come on guys, let’s play!”
James, who was one of the kids who often quit, had the football. He usually got what he wanted, because if he quit, he took the ball. One Christmas Franklin got a great, new football. After that we didn’t let James win an argument for months and we didn’t care if he quit because we were so mad he held us hostage for so long.
If adults do not step back and let kids make up their own games, let them work out their disputes, they never learn those necessary skills in life. Parental referees may keep the pick-up games more peaceful, but they come at a heavy price. The 10-year-old who learns to compromise in two-hand touch will be the 30-year-old who gets a management promotion or the 45-year-old who artfully helps her church through a sensitive decision.
January 2009
Several years ago I bought a mobile for Magay. The brightly colored mass of circles and ovals hangs in our playroom above the stairs heading down to the first floor.
It is always in perfect balance. Move one of the brightly colored circles and all the rest of the circles and their black metal branches, held together by clear fishing line, move in a counterbalance. When air is blowing from the heating and cooling system, the mobile slowly bobs and weaves in a circular pattern, then it reverses course as it unwinds.
Every movement of one piece triggers a movement in another piece and so on and so forth till each of the individual pieces move to keep everything in balance. It is continually in motion.
Most of life is like that mobile. Global warming is teaching us that the earth is one great mobile hanging in space. Change one thing and a cascade of events follow. Mobiles are a visual example of the systems that make up our lives – family, work, church, etc. Connections profoundly affect our lives.
Change in one member of the family causes change in all the members of the family, because everyone compensates for the change in the one member. In Family Ties that Bind, Ron Richardson cites a typical family going through the death of a grandmother. The mother of the household transferred her close relationship with her mother to her oldest daughter, age 13. But the added attention to one daughter created jealousy with the other children. The oldest daughter grieving for grandmother felt a closeness to her mom, but at 13, she also wanted more independence. And Dad felt completely out of the loop. Grandmother’s death had changed everything in the family – and she didn’t even live in the household!
The mistake we often make when trying to solve family problems, office tensions, or church matters is that we isolate “the problem” on one person or situation, when usually the whole “mobile” or system has created the issue. To move one circle on a mobile to where you want it will mean moving all the other circles and ovals. As you approach New Year’s resolutions remember that your life is like a mobile and moving one piece moves all the pieces – and some of them may not want to be moved! Planning change systemically will increase the chances of its success.
December 2008
Dog love. It’ll drive you mad.
Came home the other night to an empty house. Magay’s car was gone; the kids were gone; the dogs were gone. So, I called Magay’s cell phone and a few seconds later it begins ringing not ten feet from me. Something was wrong.
A few minutes later I hear the car and in seconds a rush of voices comes crashing through the door, “The dogs are gone!” The drama of fear, anger, guilt (who forgot to put on the “zapper” collar) and sadness filled the air with a combustible mix of adrenaline for the search.
Thankfully, dogs, like humans, are creatures of habit. So, we found them fairly quickly – on the same street they were last found.
Tears of joy and relief were quickly followed by bursts of anger. Our kids didn’t know whether to hug them with kisses or beat them for scaring everyone to death. And to top it off, those rascals didn’t have an ounce of remorse in them! They didn’t feel guilty at all! After having a great romp through the neighborhood, they were happily wagging their tails and glad for a ride back home.
“How could they leave us?” was the questioning cry. Of course, Ella & Lily love us the best way dogs know how. In their minds they weren’t leaving us, they were just chasing a neighboring cat. Nothing personal; that’s just what dogs do. The question is: could we love them for being what dogs are?
Reminds me of some people I know. They can do the most maddening things to you (at least it feels “to you”) and they don’t feel an ounce of remorse. It just doesn’t register with them. Or maybe it does register but they seem incapable of changing. Can I love them for being who they are?
We’re not expecting our little escape artists to change. Instead, we’ll work on keeping realistic expectations and proper precautions, while loving them for what they are. Maybe I should transfer that with some people I know.
Dog love. It’ll drive you mad. And it can bring you lots of joy.
November 2008
The current financial and economic crisis makes me think of the old story of Joseph interpreting Pharaoh’s dreams. He tells the Egyptian ruler that his dreams have foreseen seven years of plenty to be followed by seven years of famine. In the dreams, the years of famine swallow the years of plenty. This is the fear that many have been worrying about recently – that the current financial crisis and the gloomy economic forecasts will wipe away retirement savings, college funds, and to put it bluntly our “way of living.”
This 3,000 year old story says the way you keep bad economic times from destroying everything you made in good economic times is to save. Twenty percent was the word from Joseph. [Genesis 41:25-36] Even today, saving 20% and giving 10% is a smart way to manage the years of plenty. That may sound like a lot today, though I believe pre-credit card generations will recognize its wisdom.
Saving 20% and giving 10% forces you to do two very important things. First, it causes you to live well beneath your means. This means you have to really work to identify your needs from your wants, which causes you to delay gratification – nearly always a good thing. If you are only living on 70% of your income, when a crisis comes your lifestyle is already prepared. If you are spending nearly 100% of your income during the good times, however, there’s no room for economic downturn, a health crisis or job layoffs.
Second, giving 10% frees your heart and soul in good times and bad. Generous people are the happiest people around. The person who cultivates generosity remembers there are others worse off and counts her blessings. The person who practices giving rarely feels trapped by bills or the lack of possessions because that’s not the focus of his life.
If you are spending nearly everything you make, saving 20% and giving 10% may sound like a dream. Don’t beat yourself up. Start from where you are and each year work at being more thrifty and more generous. If you saved 3% and gave 1% this year, work towards 4% and 2% next. If you make $40,000, that’s basically saving $1 more a day and giving $1 more a day. The change from your pocket will cover a chunk of that.
This financial crisis and economic downturn may be painful for awhile, but it may also get us out of some bad spending habits. If that happens we’ll come out better in the long run.
August 2008
I’ve been thinking about Adam and Eve lately. In that ancient tale the first humans get caught breaking God’s one household rule. When asked, “Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” they were quick with excuses.
“The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me [the] fruit…,” is Adam’s defense. Then Eve followed suit, “The serpent [that you created] tricked me….” The first couple was quicker at abdicating any personal responsibility than they were at eating the forbidden fruit. The one constant between the two is that they suggested it was God’s fault.
In these days of economic fallout from the mortgage crisis I wonder what happened to personal responsibility. It has seemed to have been abdicated all the way up the food chain – from the people taking out loans who didn’t understand what they were getting into, and the mortgage lenders who were more concerned with personal bonuses than their company’s fiscal risk, to the risk managers taking in six figure salaries who simply weren’t doing their jobs and the equally well paid bankers at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae who were asleep at the wheel. And Congress’ bailouts only perpetuate the problem.
This isn’t the case of just a few bad apples spoiling the bunch. This was a nation-wide breakdown of a moral ethic. Everyone, of course, believes in personal responsibility. I have never met a person who honestly advised personal irresponsibility. But this is not something that can be learned intellectually. It must be practiced experientially – beginning with childhood.
There is no better teacher in life than experiencing the consequences of your actions. We love the rewards of success. But parents are loath to allow their darling children to experience the consequences of failure. Except for the extremely rare traumatic failure, children need to experience the brunt of their actions. Without it they do not develop the moral compass of responsibility.
When parents find the lost shoes, or rush forgotten homework to class, or use their own money make amends for what is broken, or do for their children whatever the children can and should do for themselves they delay their child’s development of personal responsibility.
Let your child fall and get herself back up. And if enough of us do it, we may save our nation from another crisis thirty years from now.
August 2008
At one time my dad was a superb golfer. It was my great-aunt Thelma who took him out and taught him the game, and she had been the West Virginia Amateur Champion in her heyday. Before I was born he was on a golf course several times a week.
I didn’t know any of this until my twenty-something cousin visited us one summer day. He’d gotten the golfing bug and decided he was good enough to challenge Daddy to a match. My dad took up the challenge with the only caveat being that I could go along with them and he’d show me the basics on how to play.
When he sent me down into the cellar to get his clubs I had to clean off the cobwebs, empty the bag and dust everything off. He hadn’t golfed in ten years and his bag had sat in dark corner next to the canned apple butter and applesauce my mom put up every fall after we’d picked clean the Red & Golden Delicious trees we had in the yard.
He picked a little par-3 course that he knew wouldn’t be crowded on a summer afternoon. That way we could take our time while I hacked away at the golf ball and they had their challenge match.
My cousin never had a prayer. And he couldn’t believe he’d gotten beat by someone that hadn’t picked up a club in a decade. My dad jumped up several notches in my sports-crazed junior high school mind.
“Daddy, why don’t you play all the time?” I asked him that night. “You’re really good. Why did you stop playing?”
He began to tell me how much he enjoyed the game and about Great-aunt Thelma and his golfing buddies. And then he said, “But after I married your mother I cut back and then after you were born I just stopped playing altogether. I wanted to spend my life chasing after you and your brothers than after a little white ball. You are more important to me than anything else.”
It was one of the most important days of my life.
Tell your children and grandchildren, nieces and nephews, the stories behind your life. You just might wind up changing theirs.
May 2008
My grandparent’s cabin was like a trip into another world. Located in the backwoods of West Virginia, it was a retreat from regular life. Some forty minutes from their house in the city, the cabin was built by the family the year I was born.
The cabin didn’t have a telephone for years and never had a TV. There was no air conditioning. The only heat came from a wood-burning stove in the middle of the great room and if you were visiting in the late fall or early spring, you left your bedroom door open. But the thing I remember most was the outhouse. That was truly stepping back in time!
In the spring my grandparents would lead us on hunts for delicate lady slippers in the woods. In the summer we’d play down by the creek. In the fall my grandfather would plow up the potato field and we’d dig up buckets full of potatoes with our bare hands. There were green beans to string and apples to pick. As well as tractors and pumps to fix year-round.
At big family gatherings there was always homemade ice cream. The kids got to crank the canister first. Nothing was more deflating than using every muscle in your body to get one more revolution before handing the job over to your dad or uncle – thinking that the ice cream was close to being ready – only to watch a grown man whip that crank like he was turning air. Thankfully, the taste of ice cream made us feel much better.
The cabin holds fond memories for me because it was there that I got to spend time with my grandparents on their terms. The importance of that connection in my life was brought back to me in reading Leonard Sax’s Boys Adrift. In it he spoke of the importance of intergenerational experiences for children in general and boys in particular. This connection with the wisdom and confidence of age has a profound effect on boys who are trying to figure out what it means to be a man.
Grandparents have an important job to do, that busy middle-aged parents cannot do. And that wisdom doesn’t have to come from biological grandparents. One of the blessings of my children’s lives has been their relationship with Magay’s parents and those with their many grandparent figures in our congregation. The more connections we make between senior adults and children the better both will be.
March 2008
Several weeks ago the triplets and I were playing around the house. Michael, using a silly voice, was treating his sisters like strangers, asking, “Are you my friend?” That night as I was tucking him into bed, he asked me with that voice, “Are you my friend?” “No,” I replied.
His surprised face was followed by his regular voice, “No, Daddy, for real, are you my friend?”
“No,” I told him, “I am not your friend. I’m your dad. I’ll be friendly with you, but I won’t be your friend. You’ll have hundreds of friends in your life, but you’re only going to get one dad – that’s me. If I become one of your friends, then who is going to be your dad? So, don’t treat me like one of your friends, because I’m not. Treat me like your one and only dad. I’m going to treat you like my one and only son.”
The biggest change in parenting over the past few decades is parental authority. Many parents try so hard to be friends with their children that they for all intents and purposes cease to be parents. Friends have no authority. Friends ask, suggest, persuade, tempt, plead. Parents tell.
Friends join their friends for milkshakes after burgers and fries. Parents insist on steamed broccoli first. Friends dribble the basketball over, banging on the door with an invitation for some hoops. Parents say, “Homework first.” Friends want you to enjoy the moment. Parents plan for you to enjoy a lifetime.
And the only way to enjoy a lifetime is to learn the discipline that it takes to make it in this world. Friends really can’t help friends learn that discipline. Parents can.
The truth is that we’d all like to eat ice cream and donuts, sleep in late, never clean up and lay around with the remote control in our hands. Give a teenager the choice, chances are he would never do a chore, or finish her homework, or eat vegetables, or go to church, or read a book, or try again after failing. Given a choice few of us would ever do things that weren’t pleasant, or popular, or took great effort. That’s why we need parents – parents who will endure the tantrums, the cold shoulders, and the angry words – to make us do those things until finally they become our habits and we have grown up.
January 2008
Adopted children have one advantage over most of their peers – they are not stuck with their parents DNA!
The problem many of us have in relating to our children or relating to our parents is that we are so much like each other. (Adopted children really don’t escape this either due to years of learned family behavior.) In some of the oldest sections of the Old Testament, it is said that the sins of the parents are passed on to the next generation (or two or three). Of course, you really don’t need divine revelation to point this out. Observing a teenager with her mother should convince you of that.
Years ago I did an exercise with the teens at my church. You answered a number of questions about you and your family. At the end, depending on how you scored, it would give you a brief description of you. Most of the youth were still working on their survey, when one high school student screamed, “Oh no! I’m just like my mother!”
This teen’s agony is many times a parent’s realization – my son’s just like me! This can be both gift and curse. It can provide shared opportunities and important insights. However, if a parent had difficulty fitting in at junior high, or struggled with bullies, or with her body image, walking through those days with a son or daughter may take a parent reluctantly back to painful days that she’d rather keep safe in the past.
We often think that those with experience are the best teachers. But what if the experience was bad? Maybe it is then that an outsider – someone without my and my child’s experience – may be the best teacher.
Or maybe the old rituals of confession and forgiveness could keep parents from passing along the “sins” of one generation onto the next.
Rather than run from an awkward moment, or ridicule a past self, or hide from personal weakness, what if you went back in your mind and looked at that pimply-faced kid behind the smile of braces and forgave her for all those silly mistakes you now regret and love him for all his flaws (after all that pimpled kid did get you to where you are now)? If you can go back and love the awkward person you were when you were 13, maybe the awkward 13 year-old in your house will more easily sense your love as well.
October 2007
The other day as I was entering a restaurant I saw a family sitting together at a table: two parents, two grandparents and a 5-year-old child sitting between two of the adults. The child had one of those portable DVD players a foot from his face wired with head phones so that all he would hear would be the show he was watching. I thought it was sad.
The parents and grandparents were talking with each other. The child was not interacting with any of them. He was sitting at the table surrounded by them, but he was a million miles away. Here were two grandparents, who (I’ll jump to a conclusion) don’t get to visit with their grandson everyday, and two parents, of whom (I’ll jump to another conclusion) at least one of them miss him all day while at work, but rather than interact as a whole family with him, they plug him to the DVD and he becomes more appendage less person. I’m sure they just wanted him to behave and not be bored. That’s why it seemed so sad to me. They settled for convenient.
Once when the disciples were disturbed by children hanging around Jesus, they tried to shoo them away, but Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me.” [Mark 10:14] Plugging them into DVD’s is probably not what he meant.
What would have been better would have been a few crayons and some blank paper and encouragement to draw some pictures for his grandparents, or something from his imagination with the chance to describe it for everyone. Then he could have interacted with his family, while having something to do with his busy hands and mind.
I sympathize with parents taking their children out for dinner. I remember getting placed in the far back corner when the hostess got a good look at three preschoolers. But the only way to teach good behavior is to practice it. It is only around the table with family that children learn to keep their voices down and to wait their turn to talk and not to interrupt. It’s where they learn to listen to others and express their ideas and gain the confidence that comes when others listen to them. It is also the place where parents learn to listen to their children and to appreciate their ideas. The boy I saw wasn’t learning anything. He’d been checked out to his DVD.
Children do not grow into good behavior. It has to be nurtured and taught to them. Delaying those lessons won’t help. It’s a lot easier teaching manners to a 4-year-old than to a 9-year-old.
September 2007
People treat us the way we teach them to treat us.
I think it is easier to see this in action with children, because they are more transparent and their “acting out” isn’t so managed and neatly pruned. My children tell me when I’ve been more lenient and less true to my word. Suddenly it seems I’m listening to a lot more begging and pleading.
Parents often think that by “giving in” and changing their minds about a previously held position (the position doesn’t really matter, could be “We’re not buying candy,” to “You have to be in by midnight,” the process works the same) that the matter will go away. The kids are happy; they give mom or dad a hug and say something like, “You’re the best mom/dad ever.” There is silence again or at least talking at normal decibel levels; which make mom and dad happy. Everyone wins, right? Well, at least for the moment.
The trouble is that you may have bought yourself a few moments of peace, but the price is hours of future commotion. Because what you have done is to train your children on how to get what they want. You’ve just bought yourself a heaping dose of future begging and pleading. (Side note: If you are going to “give in,” make it easy on yourself, give in quickly. If you hold out a long time and then fold, you’ll never have a moment’s peace because you’ve trained them to never give up. Of course on the bright side you may be training them for a successful career in sales.)
Edwin Friedman spoke of how this effect still works in adults in A Failure of Nerve. He was on a panel with several other speakers for a Q & A period to conclude a conference session. Folks were politely waiting in line at the microphones in the audience. Then, a woman, irate over the response of one panelist’s answer, ran to a microphone, grabbed it and proceeded to dress down speaker. The moderator, embarrassed by the whole scene, tried to placate her and for the next 15 minutes the Q & A was focused on her agenda. He should have said, “Ma’am, I can see this is important to you, but we have others waiting in line, would you please wait your turn and then we will be glad to address your comments.” But that wouldn’t have been “nice.” That’s why we usually give in to bad behavior. We don’t want to cause a “scene.” But of course we’re just setting ourselves up for two more down the road.
Often times we settle for short-term peace, rather than work through the tensions and conflicts necessary for healthy, long-term relationships.
June 2007
Mothers and fathers are given an almost impossible job. Without any on-the-job training, parents have to learn as they go. Just as they’ve learned how to do the job, their product (child) changes, and they have to learn an updated method of parenting. And the updates never stop coming. From age to age of a child’s life, parents adapt -- to the point that they are supposed to work themselves out of a job. Of course they are often retained as consultants long after retiring from active, day-to-day parenting.
The hours are long. Overtime is the norm. There are no promotions. There are no guarantees. But the pay is priceless. The rewards are irreplaceable. And the benefits last a lifetime.
If you listed parenting in the want ads, it wouldn’t get many responses, especially when an applicant realized the priceless pay comes in non-negotiable tender. But parenting isn’t a job. It is a calling. And there is no other work like it in the world. And though it changes, it really never ends.
One day a child stops being a child, but a parent never stops being a parent. My good friend and mentor, R.F. Smith Jr., pictured this beautifully in a scene from his life. He was standing next to his grandmother at a funeral home when she illustrated the old adage.
“The wife of one of her seven sons had died. She looked at him, then reached out her arms to embrace him. For a few tender moments mother and son cried in each other's arms. Then she moved back, looked him tenderly but firmly in the eyes and said, ‘Son, come home with me. You can’t live alone.’
“That scene may not appear unusual except for the circumstances. You see, she was in her 90’s, living in a nursing home, nearly blind and deaf, and only the steady hand of her son kept her from falling when she lifted both arms to embrace him, forgetting her man-made walker that was her constant companion.”
Of course he couldn’t live in the nursing home with his aging mother, but to have her say such a thing at that moment allowed him to be a child protected by his mother again -- if only for a moment – which is what even children-turned-adults momentarily need once in awhile. Parenting must change as children grow, if they are to grow, but it never ends.
May 2007
Fifty-four inches.
A milestone was crossed in our household this past Sunday. After having Mother’s Day lunch with Magay’s parents we stopped by Carowinds on the way home for a brief stop at the amusement park. Michael had been hoping all winter that this year he’d be tall enough to go on all the roller coasters. Fifty-four inches is what he needed to be to get on the last three coasters in the park.
Once through the turnstiles we headed straight for the ‘Borg,’ the tallest, strangest coaster at Carowinds. The attendant greeted Michael with the standard measuring pole – already marked off with the key heights for various rides throughout the park. The top band – 54” – was coated in orange, above it dark green. She held the pole to his back, asked him to stand up straight. When she put her hand on his head her fingers touched green on the pole. He’d made it! Fifty-four inches with a good half-inch to spare (albeit in shoes).
Three minutes later he and I were getting buckled in to ride the ‘Borg.’ (Late in the afternoon on Mother’s Day, there are no lines at Carowinds.) My mild fear of heights was wondering how this was going to go. You lay down in the ‘seats’ on the ride and then after the first hill it rolls you over so that you are suspended in air by the restraints. It’s like you are flying as a bird – and going 60-miles-an-hour! But there was no time to psyche myself up. We’d hit fifty-four inches and there was no line and there was no question that we would ride right then.
That’s the cycle of parenting. Just when you get used to one stage in your child’s life another milestone changes everything and you’re a rookie all over again. I think of God’s hard question to Jeremiah, when the prophet was discouraged, “If you have raced with foot-runners and they have wearied you, how will you compete with horses?” [Jeremiah 12:5] The challenges get greater. It’s no time to buckle under. You’ve got to stay ahead of the curve, prepare for the next stage before your child is even conscious of the thoughts and behaviors that await her in a couple of years.
You’ve got to be ready to ride the ‘Borg’ long before you cross from the orange to green zones at 54”. Do that and flying like a bird might even be loads of fun.
April 2007
“I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty.” [Phil. 4:12] The apostle Paul wrote those words to Christians at the Philippian Church in order to explain his perspective on life. Paul’s experience, both the times of plenty and the times of want, helped him “to be content with whatever” he had.
If we could reproduce that experience of times of plenty and times of want, that might be a good thing for many of us. Unfortunately, life in America these days separates those experiences for far too many of us. Either we live and struggle in poverty, or we never know what it is to be in want. Not enough of us live in between or cross over from one to the next.
I am indebted to my Great Depression parents for passing along a work ethic that has provided endless dividends for me. Born in the midst of the Depression they grew up doing family chores just to help the family survive. Everyone had jobs to do from gardening, sewing, mending, cooking and cleaning. Every item was used; then reused, recycled, restored. Nothing was thrown away until every ounce of usefulness was wringed out of it. If someone had a paying job for you to do, you showed up early and didn’t leave until the task was complete and everything was cleaned up.
Those were hard days, but they helped my parents to become striving, responsible people who placed more emphasis on the people in their lives than the things (which they didn’t have much of) in their lives.
The comforts of prosperity are too numerous to mention. Yet, those comforts have a dampening affect on our work ethic. Insatiable appetites, laziness, entitlement, idleness, lack of empathy for the poor, ignorance of how things work, materialism, consumerism. Prosperity is a drug that our country is addicted to. The good news is that we can break those addictions without going broke.
More homecooked meals, less restaurants. More gardens planted, less canned food. More outdoor play, less video games. More books and board games, less television. More conversation, less internet. More chores, less “free time.” More finished tasks on your own, less help from mom and dad. More fixing things, less tossing and buying new. More saving before buying, less credit card debt. Try a couple of these for a month and see if your quality of life improves (along with your bank account).
March 2007
A handful of years ago a couple of studies suggested that a few simple matters can make the difference between making it in America today and falling behind. Having dinner together as a family on a regular basis was one major corollary. Others were graduating from high school and doing so without being married and/or having children. I’ve been wondering if there are other “simple matters” that can make the difference in “making it” in America for the next generation of young people. I’m going to suggest three, based on nothing more than my observations.
I believe that children that do household chores, that spend more time in imaginative play than with TV, video or computer games, and that learn critical thinking skills will find it relatively easy to achieve their goals while living in America during the bulk of the 21st century.
Ask an employer about the work ethic of her employees today and you’ll realize that any young person who is willing to arrive for work everyday, on time, respectfully listen to instruction and complete tasks will quickly standout from his peers. If he is able to imaginatively solve problems and work well with others, he will quickly rise above them.
These are skills that children are losing because they do not have enough responsibilities around the house and their play time is usually structured by programs or by modern gadgets.
Regular chores train children to understand they have a part and a place in the household. It teaches them that everything you want comes with a price, every right has a responsibility. It teaches them to complete tasks and to do them on time (otherwise chores stack up and significant play time is lost).
Imaginative play time, preferably outside and with other children, allows them to use their minds, to explore, to create and build, to pitch ideas to others, to work out conflict, to collaborate. Critical thinking is learned by exploring, testing, checking realities and thinking for yourself – all of which occurs in age appropriate ways when children play made up games.
So turn off the television, the DVD player, the MP3 player and even the computer outside of school work and go outside (or stay inside and finish your chores). Chances are that a bright future is in store for the child that does.
January 2007
Not too long ago as I was tucking one of my children into bed, she said, “Daddy, I’ve had a great day!” Her statement was not so unusual, except that we really didn’t do anything that day. It was a day when both Magay and I were home and the kids out of school. There were no ball games, practices, appointments or errands. We had some chores around the house, but we didn’t have any big tasks to accomplish at home – the kind that take a whole Saturday. There were a couple loads of laundry to be folded and disbursed. We planted some pansies in pots for the winter. Magay had some soup slowly simmering on the stove most of the afternoon so that our senses were swimming in soup long before we had dinner.
For the most part, it was simply a lazy day. The kind of day where you wear pajamas till you start thinking about lunch. The kind of day where you wipe the dust off your bicycle and ride down to the park. The kind of day where the children have time to use their imaginations for hours and play made-up games without supervision. The kind of day where you read a good book on the couch and it doesn’t matter if you fall asleep with the book in your lap. The kind of day you finish with a card game around the kitchen table while the remains of root beer floats soak in the sink.
It was a great day! And we didn’t go to Carowinds or Discovery Place. We didn’t go out for dinner or spend lots of money. We simply spent the day together, mostly in unstructured time.
Which begs the question – why do we fill our calendars up so tightly and our houses with so much stuff?
There are so many fun activities in this city and so many exciting gadgets our incomes can buy that often we suffocate on our own schedules and stuff. Sometimes the best we can do is say, “No,” to those activities or gadgets in order to preserve some “down time” on our calendars and space to pull out the low tech, high imagination things from the closet.
Maybe one gift you could give yourself or your family this year would be to cross out one day a month for a lazy day – no schedules, no TV, video games or computer, no home improvements except for shorter, fun group experiences. Try it out and see if it doesn’t turn out to be a great day!
December 2006
Bill Reynold’s death came as a shock not only to me, but to my children. When the news was passed onto them, they were immediately overwhelmed with grief. The next morning his death dominated the breakfast conversation as they tried to make sense of this sad news and to articulate what Mr. Reynold’s had meant to them.
Their response prompted a new insight for me into the importance of our congregation upon the lives of the children in our church. One of the great benefits of being a part of Sardis is the intergenerational quality of our congregation. Our size and fellowship make it natural for children and teenagers to interact with parent and grandparent-aged persons in our church. There is an access that children have with persons of all ages at Sardis that is lacking in the age-boxed way of life in America these days. It is a gift of which we should take full advantage.
Bill’s last gift to my children was the grief of losing someone they thought of as a friend. That’s a part of life, you see, and it’s probably best learned bit by bit, rather than in one big bite. Grasping a sense of our mortality and accepting that with faith, hope and a thanksgiving for life is one of the most difficult journeys we face as human beings created in God’s image. But it is an essential journey if we are going to have a healthy and full outlook on life.
Although an unwilling volunteer, I’m sure, Bill’s death coupled with his kindness to the children in our congregation will take the young people in our church further down this faith awareness of life and death in ways that will temper the blow when death’s door opens up closer to home for them. The day will come when my children will bury the grandparents they love, and one day Magay and me, too, and sometime later the person they will join in marriage “till death do us part.” It is then that Bill’s gift will be most important. The lessons of the birth and death, the love and grief, the sacredness and shortness of life, first taught to them by people like Bill and Page Odom and Bestelle Hill will begin to prepare them for the closer losses they will one day face.
That’s part of the gift of being in a community of faith and it is so profoundly available to all the generations in the congregation called Sardis Baptist Church. We are blessed.
January 2006
Children are gamblers. That’s why anything less than consistent discipline won’t mold behavior. Gamblers think a good payoff is worth long odds.
The living room was off limits when I was growing up. No playing, no running, and especially no balls. But the living room was big and always free of clutter (leaving toys in the living room was circumstantial evidence). It was the perfect place to play except that the house rule prohibited it.
This meant, of course, that when you played in the living room you had to be extra careful. This was always our plan whenever we tossed a ball in the living room. Under no circumstances did you want to hit the chandelier. Of course every now and then the ball would hit the chandelier and a crystal would fall to the floor. My brothers and I would gasp. Freeze. Thoughts of severe punishment simultaneously flashed through our minds. Then, one of us would walk over to the crystal and pick it up. If the crystal was fine, we’d breathe a sigh of relief, get a chair and hook the crystal back up. Then, we’d promise each other to play extra, extra, extra careful.
Of course, why didn’t we just stop? Why did we continue to tempt fate and test the law of averages?
Because children are gamblers. Chances are the ball won’t hit the chandelier. The drink won’t spill on the couch. A car won’t be in the road. There’ll be time to finish homework, later. There’ll be no punishment when mom or dad says, “Stop that,” until it’s said the fourth or fifth time. And many times they are right. That’s why they keep taking chances.
It’s also why consistent discipline and appropriate consequences are necessary and important to curb the gamblers’ taste for winning. Because later on the stakes become higher. Chances are “I won’t become addicted.” Or “I won’t get pregnant.” And unfortunately, “I’ve only had a couple of drinks: I can drive home just fine.”
Consistent consequences from choices and actions do not punish children. They teach them not to gamble their lives away.
The chipped crystal chandelier that now hangs in my dining room reminds me that my children are just like me – so I’d better be diligent.
June 2005
I finally broke down and did it. I had been delaying this for some time, but finally, the hospital forced me. So I had my picture taken for a new clergy badge at Carolinas Medical Center.
When I walked into the Chaplain’s office, the assistant said, “Oh, you have an ‘Antiques Road Show’ badge.” It was an old badge. So old that Carolinas Medical Center was Charlotte Memorial Hospital. So old that the parking lot card readers weren’t computerized, so if you forgot your clergy badge, a credit card, driver’s license or butter knife would work (though no one was supposed to know that). So old that Don Hill once said, “Tim, I believe I could pass with that badge as well as you can.” So old that Mary Ann Kelly likened it to a high school yearbook picture.
I’d worn it to hospitals for 19 years, from when Shamrock Drive Baptist Church first called me to their pastoral staff. I was 24 years-old. And part of me still feels 24, so in some sense I guess I figured I still resembled the young man on that badge. (This was thoroughly refuted by the new picture.)
Life is constant change. Sometimes we change out of our own initiative. Sometimes change happens to us. But change we do.
From one day to the next, change is so subtle that we do not, nor those closest to us, notice it. It takes a visit from an out-of-town relative or friend to exclaim, “My, how you’ve grown,” or a whisper to a sibling, “Dad’s really looking older,” or even a new identification badge, to help us see the changes that have been accumulating day upon day, year after year.
Sometimes we treat people like my old clergy badge. We think we have them all figured out and keep them frozen in time like a picture. But they are emotionally and spiritually changing day by day as well, for God is constantly working within all of us. In relationships we have to constantly renew “our pictures,” continually work at understanding our friends and relatives. If we still relate to them as we once knew them, we’ll miss identify them every time and misunderstandings will soon become heated conflicts.
Take some time this week to renew your picture of those closest to you – spouse, children, parents, friends, neighbors – work at understanding each other… again. Don’t wait for 19 years to pass.
May 2005
Memories are created by your company, not by the setting.
Vacation time is fast approaching and families are busy laying out or finishing up plans for the summer. And vacation advertisers are busier than ever trying to fill up remaining space.
We are tempted to believe that to give our children great memories, we’ve got to take them to a great place – particularly one with lots of toys, rides, and packaged fun.
My own memories challenge that marketing ploy.
Most of my vacation memories were spent traveling in a converted motorhome. I say converted because my parents bought a camper when I was young, but decided within a year that they didn’t like pulling a trailer. My dad, being the frugal soul he was, decided to buy a truck chassis, cut a hole in the back of the truck cab as well as the front of the camper and mount the camper on the chassis frame. It functioned like a motorhome; it looked, well, unusual would be the kind word for it. And of course it had a proud West Virginia license plate on it, probably confirming most people’s stereotypes about West Virginians as we traveled around the country each summer.
Of course my brothers and I were oblivious to how strange our “hillbilly” motorhome looked and my parents didn’t care – function before form in our house. People would come up to my dad at overnight stops in campgrounds to ask about it. We just knew they were asking, “HOW did you do that?” Now, we figure they were thinking, “WHY would you do that?”
Today, my brothers and I laugh about our “hillbilly” motorhome. But we do so because we have such fond and great memories from our childhood on trips in it. My parents penny-pinched our way across this country. Though we rarely went to fancy places, we saw many of the historical sites and natural wonders of this great nation, but the memories were created by being together in that “hillbilly” motorhome for hours on end.
Who is going is far more important than where you are going when it comes to vacations and creatin
