Topic: Parenting

Have you hugged your kid today?

Hugs can NEVER be overrated.

Hugs are powerful…oxytocin is released during a hug…it connects people, it calms the soul, and soothes troubled emotions. Hugs help children settle, it “slows down a racing engine”, it reduces pain. Hugging is part of spending time, showing you care, nurturing and loving another.

The benefits of hugs are well docoumented. In a recent article in the New York Times Sunday Review entitled, “A Poverty Solution that Starts with a Hug” talked about a study where hugging was an important component:

This organization sends nurses to visit poor, vulnerable women who are pregnant for the first time. The nurse warns against smoking and alcohol and drug abuse, and later encourages breast-feeding and good nutrition, while coaxing mothers to cuddle their children and read to them. This program continues until the child is 2.
At age 6, studies have found, these children are only one-third as likely to have behavioral or intellectual problems as others who weren’t enrolled. At age 15, the children are less than half as likely to have been arrested.

 

That’s powerful stuff. It’s helping moms make good choices. It’s providing caring support to women who may themselves not been nurtured, and having them learn and experience nurture.

It’s recognizing how important it is to help vulnerable women without a lot of resources to understand and practice a style of parenting that helps children feel secure, feel loved, and be able to experience regulation with a parents assistance.

Children who experience love and caring and calming can develop skills in being able to soothe themselves, in being able to self regulate, and ability to make good choices based on long term goals and not immediate gratification.

Hugs are powerful. Hugs improve relationships. Hugs change people.

Go…hug your kid today!

CBC turned 75 years old this week. They’ve been playing bits of archival material, and because its one of the stations I listen to when I’m in the car, I’ve been catching bits of them…like pieces of “As it Happens” interviewing a hostage taker in the middle of Washington’s hostage crisis years ago, or the “Dead Dog Café” with Jasper Friendly Bear and Edna Heavy Hand, or of Peter Gzoski on Morningside. Loving the nostalgia.

But one bit of it caught me and took me away like none other. I was watching Dragon’s Den to see Winnipegger Carolyne Braid face the Dragons as she was seeking funding to expand her pole dancing business (real guts, that woman had, to so confidently face their questions)…and during a commercial, as I was fiddling with email in a vain effort to clean out my inbox…suddenly I was shook by a familiar voice. I didn't have my eye on the screen, but I'd know that voice anywhere! Some vintage footage of Mr. Dressup came on, and we got to see him draw a ladybug as if she was a real lady…with a fancy hat. And there were voice overs of people probably similar to me in age talk about their fascination with Mr. Dressup and how he empowered them in cool ways.


And the sound of his voice took me baaaaack, way back. And I remembered:

• How respectfully and kindly he spoke to puppets and children, taking their concerns seriously, and working through the situations that troubled them respectfully.
  
• How he loved to play with children doing what children would like to do, asking what they wanted to do, and following them in their play in a way that made the children be important. They would co-create stories to act out, and played out adventures the children wanted to explore.
  
• The soothing sound of his voice as he would sing a song, or comfort Casey when Casey was upset about something. It was something to spend time in the same space as this calm, soothing presence.
  
• How, even as a grown man, he would wake up “Wise Old Owl” in the picture on the wall, and ask him questions and be open to his wisdom. I loved it that a grown-up man admitted he could learn things and asked questions.
  
• How he engaged the puppets and children at their level, involving himself in what they expressed an interest in, without ever becoming a child himself. He stayed a grownup, he stayed himself, but he was intensely interested in engaging with a child in a way that created a solid connection.
  
• How well he drew simple things, that encouraged me to try to draw too. I could never draw as well as he could, but somehow I knew, that if he saw my drawing, he would still like it.
  
• How exactly the right costume was always there and neatly folded at the very top of the “Tickle Trunk”, ready for whatever play he and the children or puppets were about to engage in. Never ceased to amaze me.
  

But most of all, I remember his kind gentleness…the way he stayed calm even when a child or puppet was upset, his gentle giggle about something, the way he was patient with a puppet who could worry about things, the way he petted Finnegan the dog puppet kindly and consistently. Mr. Dressup meant a lot to me…it was hard for me to go to Grade 1, because it meant that I wasn’t home at 10:30 in the morning when Mr. Dressup was on TV at my house.

I remember watching Mr. Dressup well into junior high…not because I was terribly interested in his stories (and by then Casey and Finnegan weren’t around anymore), and I’d long figured out the mystery of the right costumes being in the Tickle Trunk, even that he was actor who had a real name, Ernie Coombs. In many ways I was past the show, it wasn't age appropriate, the was targeted towards young children...but I wasn't past Mr. Dressup. The person of who he was stayed very important to me, long after an age when you'd think I'd be past "baby shows".

I watched Mr. Dressup into junior high in the summer or on days when I was at home sick from school, because Mr. Dressup made me feel good inside as I watched…and knowing I would get to watch him…well, the anticipation was good, too.

I felt calm and soothed…Mr. Dressup didn’t get angry, he was consistent and reliable (well, I didn’t like it when Casey and Finnegan left, and thought the show was never the same)…he cared about children and puppets, and enjoyed them. I liked that.

Perhaps that’s it…an adult who enjoyed being with the little ones…and I got to spend time with him.

Thanx CBC, for all the shows I’ve enjoyed of yours over the years…but most especially, thanx for Mr. Dressup.

Sometimes it doesn’t take a lot for it to mean a lot.

I was talking to a friend the other day…a friend who has had it “up to here” with adolescent sons…you know, the normal kind that burp (loud!) without apology, needs rides hither and yon, and just generally think they are the center of the universe. They are good boys, and she loves’em like crazy, but it’s not always easy.

So the other day, she picked up a teen aged boy from a sporting event, and he asked to stop home for a shower before going to watch the other teenaged son at a sporting event. Time was tight, but she agreed (this may have been self serving, she admits, to have a fresh smelling boy in the vehicle with her).

Time was tight, and in addition to the shower, he spent some time fiddling with some electronic device to get it working again. A teenaged boy kinda thing to do…sneak in something important to him, but not necessarily well timed given the whole situation from an adult perspective.

They were about to leave with not time to spare, when he asked if they could stop at the “Apple store” at the mall on the way…because he didn’t have the little thingamajiggy that would open the device as part of restoring its function.

Gritted teeth. A sharp retort and scolding on the tip of her tongue. Deep breath.

Another deep breath…and from a place she couldn’t quite identify inside of herself, she said, “Sure”. Grateful she said this from the other room, so he couldn’t see her face when she said it….and hoping her voice sounded sincere.

They could go to the store and the Apple geniuses would quickly open the device…but they would be late for certain.

As they walked to the car, the boy said, “This is a ‘mom moment’. I know that.”

My friend asked what he meant by that…and he went on to explain…”This is a moment when you’re choosing to do something for my sake, even though it’s not what you want. Like when you took the long way around to Auntie B’s house after I complained that all the good songs only start on the radio when we’re almost there.” He knew he was asking a lot in that moment...and he knew his mom was choosing to be patient and giving in that moment...and it mattered.

Hmmmm…my friend wracked her brains for what he was referring to for several hours in the last part of his comment…and over time, the vague memory gradually emerged of the incident he was referring to. She had long forgotten the silly moment when she had gone several blocks out of her way to ensure that the boy got to listen to the whole tune on his favorite station before they arrived at his cousin’s house.

She had forgotten the tiny indulgence that took a deep breath, but really no more than that.

He hadn’t.

Made her realize how important it is to show love in little ways to her kids, when it would be easy to bark out a mini-lecture. In the big scheme of things, the little extras don’t take much…but somehow “in the moment”…they're not easy...but they can matter.

It reminded me of a parenting adage that said, “Parents have to say, ‘no’ to their children a lot…where possible say, ‘yes’. Say ‘yes’ whenever you can.” I sometimes forget this line, but have been inspired by it.

They were a little late to the game, but the boy got the machine open with the thingamajig, and could put the sim card in.

More importantly, he had another ‘mom moment’ to add to his mental collection.

It put a smile on that mother's face to know that.

All over this country, mothers and fathers are having “anticipatory grief”…knowing we are in the latter half of August. Soon kindergartners will leave their mothers for school…some can hardly wait to use their new knapsacks and tuck into school. Soon, new high school graduates will be packing up their suitcases and going off to college.

The confusion of these “sending offs” is immense for parents, as parents celebrate the milestone that has been reached, and mourn at the decreasing role and contact in the child’s life. It’s hard and wonderful all at the same time.

I read this in the latest edition of the Psychotherapy Networker, about a father looking forward to going to a baseball game with his daughter…the one soon to leave for college, and she lets him know she’s prefer to go with her friends on her own:

“Is that OK?” she asked, her head tilting, birdlike, watching me intently, as she’s always done. How does one answer such a question? By this stage of life, every parent knows that there isn’t one answer, but two. The first is the one that you reveal to her, the one that’s short and kind and clean: “Of course it’s OK. Have a great time. I hope the Orioles win.” The second answer is the longer one; the one that’s more accurate, but more devastating: “It’s certainly not OK. It’s not OK for you to grow up and leave me behind. It’s not OK for you to hurt me, even if you don’t mean to, even if you must—and I know you must. It’s not OK for you to shove me out of the bright center of your life and into the twilight of insignificance. It’s not OK for you to remind me that time doesn’t stand still, that there’s a distant drumbeat of mortality that begins to pound ever so slightly louder with each child that departs. The Orioles may win; but, tonight, all I feel is loss. No, no, no; it’s not OK!” In every love relationship, there are the words we choose to speak to our beloved and the words that must remain unspoken out of love. We keep these words to ourselves, smile gamely as our children voyage forth into the world—just as we asked them to do, just as we taught them to do, just as we want them to do. And as they go, our hearts break a little, and our souls sink a little as we wave good-bye…

Brad Sachs

I so get the struggle about wanting to be authentic with those that I love…what do I do with the thoughts that I think and feel but aren’t helpful for the other? I like the line that I bolded…to be real and vulnerable with loved ones, but recognizing there are times when there needs to be some careful editing as part of that “realness”. In the above example, it is a very real act of authentic love to say, “Of course, it’s OK”…because, really, IT IS. There are layers…and there are times when sharing those layers isn’t authentic to what you really want the other to feel and to know about you.

The real cradle that holds the baby is the emotional climate between new parents.  Many significant social problems [like violence]  in our society can be traced back to this negative emotional climate in families.

John Gottman

Parenting demands more love, more patience, more endurance that I would have thought possible.  Mothering involves sleepless nights and cleaning up puke, restlessly trying to break a little one's fever, talking to a teacher that has hurt a little one, phoning a doctor's office to advocate for month's sooner appointment even after they said it was impossible...countless challenging tasks.  Ones I wasn't sure I could measure up to...except when it involved a member of my tribe, suddenly it stopped being "if" I could do it, and only became a "how" I would do it.

Parenting has changed me.  The junior members of my tribe have taught me to be thankful for holes in the wall, have reminded me of simple pleasures like a freezee on a hot summer day, challenge me to slow down to enjoy the pictures of a book, and had me ponder answers to questions I never even thought to ask. My tribe has shown me love when I don't deserve it, and have extended grace when I have blown it...and I have blown it...big time.  They forgive me and each other ways that remind me to forgive others...and myself.

In the process of raising my children, I myself have grown up and met challenges, pondered and worked through questions, matured and persevered.

I think differently because of their child like wisdom.

I see beauty in the world where I didn't see it before.

I have a greater sense of what is important and what can slide because ultimately, in the big picture, it really doesn't matter.

I'm a better mother than I was than when I began because of how my children have raised me. 

I have watched my children experience some of the challenges I remember facing when I was their age...and with different characters and resources, it has been different for them.  There's something hugely redemptive about that...and it changes my perception of the world in good ways.


In anticipation of Mothering Day, I was thinking these sorts of things, and came across these thoughts from a writer, Ann Voskamp, who speaks the same ideas...only much more effectively...

The son births first and he grows, the woman still an infant mother.

And all the raising of the boy, this is her long labor, and she has to remember to breathe.

And it’s only after a whole score of years that she delivers into true motherhood, when her son leans down and kisses her forehead gentle. This is her full-term day. She only wishes it came sooner, at the beginning, when he first came.

It takes all the years of making a boy into a man —  to teach a woman how to be a mother.

Do you know how wild this makes me?

It is hard and I have cried hard. And how I’d give anything for the woman I am now to be the girl who ran her trembling finger along that whorl of you. To birth mother-wisdom is a twenty-year gestation, and it’s the child who patiently raises the girl into a real woman and why is life always lived best backwards?

On Mothering Day, for those of you blessed to be moms...think on how your little, and maybe not so little ones, have, just by their living and breathing, their giggles and messes, their farts and fancies, their questions and curiosities have inspired growth in you.

I had a choice the other day when one of the junior members of my tribe asked me to join him for a bowl of popcorn and a show we both enjoy.  My temptation was to say that it didn't work...we were moving our office.  That meant that I was doing a bunch of things during the day for the move, leaving things normally done during the day for the evening.  I had things to do. The pressure was on.  And the invitation...on a first knee jerk reaction...felt like it was annoying...one more pressure on a busy day.

But before I answered, I took a deep breath.

And reminded myself what a privilege it is to be asked to come hang out by a family member.  How there will come a day when I will pine for the days of snuggling up on the couch with a junior one...and all I will have to draw on will be the memories.  How much I truly do love to hang out with junior tribe members.

And then I was reminded of a little poster I have in the house:
     

“A hundred years from now it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove...but the world may be different because I was important in the life of a child.”

Stumbled across a video the other day, which reminded me of the value of instilling a sense of thankfulness in our children.

I remember talking with a junior member of my tribe years ago when they were at the stage where they could utter only single words or short sentences...and in speech only a mother could understand.  At bedtime, we had this ritual of reviewing the day by looking at 3 things he was thankful for, 1 way in which he was sorry he messed up during the day, and 1 thing he wished were different.  Then we'd have prayer about what was just discussed...it was a warm and wonderful way to understand his little heart, and hear what was going on inside, and then to process in light of that which is bigger than us all.

For a long while, when I would ask him what he was thankful for, he would, as we lay curled up on his bed, point to this little divot in the wall, where the drywaller hadn't quite covered up the nail to perfection.  The head of the nail was outlined in the paint. And I would ask him, "You're thankful for that nail?"  And he would nod.  And I would say, "Are you thankful for the nails that hold our house together?" And he would nod again.  And we would express gratitude for our house and all the components that worked together to create it.

I'm not sure I'd ever been grateful for nails before...but I find myself thinking back to that moment, and realizing, through the eyes of a child, how many things are silently wonderful in my life that I don't notice as I'm quite aware of and able to complain about the toilet that leaks, the tea that is cold, and the dirty cup that someone didn't put in the dishwasher.  How many more things have gone right in my day than wrong, and yet the default position it to notice that which is difficult.  I overlook that which can be celebrated...the nails in the wall, the pretty cup the tea is in, the milk that was in the cup and now has nourished one of the tribe...which he was able to fill up because he has legs and arms that work, a cold fridge with a jug of milk, and he has the experience of safety enough to cut corners and not put it away. 

I often find myself looking at the nail divot in my mind's eye, and remembering the significance of it...and then consciously making a choice to look around me in the present moment to aknowledge all that is good, the big stuff, the little stuff, and the miniscule stuff.  Thinking thankful thoughts doesn't replace the thinking about the stresses and challenges of the day...but it does modify my perspective in ways that help me handle the day. (I wish I could say that I'm as good at this as the paragraph implies...I'm not :)

Research is powerful that grateful people are changed people.
We do well to raise our children with a sense of gratitude.  Research from Thanks! How the New Science of Gratitude can Make You Happier!, says that children who practice grateful thinking:

• have better relationships with their families and school
  
• better achieve personal goals
• have closer relationships and greater happiness
• better grades
• greater energy, attentiveness and enthusiasm
• and had greater sensitivity to others...more empathic, generous, and compassionate

Gratitude helps make the world go round.  There are lots of practices that we can incorporate with our children to help them think appreciatively about their world...but habits like gratitude are "better caught than taught". 

How grateful a person do the people around you see you to be?

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day...a day celebrating love.  Often we think of it as only celebrating romantic love within a couple...I've had a number of conversations that have me celebrating the love parents have for their children.

This week, in various ways, I have been reminded of an important truth...that the love parents have for their child shapes the child in powerful and significant ways, preparing them to love well as adults.  When parents are able to provide a secure, loving, stable base where the child feels safe and loved and accepted, the child is better prepared to be able to thrive in an adult love relationship.  Heck, a child  that has a warm, safe, loving home environment where s/he knows that venturing out is OK because a retreat into warm and safe arms is possible, makes a child generally more resilient to ALL life offers.

I was reading in The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, that:

Our group (a renowned therapy/research clinic) had observed that the nature of a child's relationships--both before and after trauma--seemed to play a critical role in shaping their response to it.  If safe, familiar and capable caregivers were available to children, they tended to recover more easily, often showing no enduring negative effects of the traumatic event...the "trauma-buffering" effect of relationships...

Perry and Szalavitz

I blew it the other day.  I was frustrated, tired, angry, and hungry...and when one of the junior members of my tribe made a mistake, I didn't handle it well.

He did something that indicated he was a normal adolescent who forgets that there are other members of the household...he looked after himself.  That's what teenagers do.  One of the normal developmental tasks of adolescence is to become more aware of those around, and develop empathy and care--and then translate that into action.  In other words, mature.  Heck, most of us adults are still working on that.

So, it is completely normal that he neglected to include the others in the tribe in his preparations.  Normal--but not appropriate...so as a mother I should gently instruct and encourage allowing the slow dawn of enlightenment to begin to burn brighter and brighter in his mind as he understands his error.  The facilitation of this discovery would pave the way for greater compassion and care of others the next time (read these last 2 sentences with great maternal melodrama).

Yeah, right.  Not so much.  I'd had a crazy day where I hadn't had time to sit down.  The advance planning for supper, the extra phone call home to make sure it was started did not turn into the leisurely 20 minutes of family time that I had planned when I arrived home.  There was supper for one.  And that wasn't me.

I was hurt...and then I got mad, keenly aware of a sense of injustice...not at all acting like a mom needing to raise a child carefully, but as a human being that was worn out, frazzled, and disappointed.  I said some things that weren't at all instructional or inspiring to better behavior.  And when the tribe member got mad in response, I argued back.  Like arguing with an adolescent when they are upset actually gets you somewhere.  Like I was in a place to be making effective communication. Not so much.

At some point, I figured out that I best stop digging the hole deeper...and so I got silent.

Later that evening, I apologized.  I blew it.  I still felt bad, though...
and the next morning, for some reason...I googled one of my favorite parenting gurus that I have found really helpful and saw this:

I'm gonna send the tribe member a link to this blog.  He needs to know how sorry I am.  He needs to know how I'm gonna push "restart" on my parenting and give it a good go...and then be prepared to hear another apology when I will, despite my efforts, inevitably blow it again.  He needs to witness real apologies to see what it is like to "own it and fix it"...I need to change my behavior and strategies, so he can see an apology in action.

I can hope that my apology will inspire apologies of his own in his life to the others that he will wrong in his life, despite his best efforts.  That he will know what it looks and feels like to own it and fix it...to be able to take responsibility, to not become defensive or hostile or blaming.

Good thing he'll have more opportunities to witness and learn from apologies of "owning it and fixing it"--his mother is human, eh?  His mother is me--and I will mess up again.