Tag Archives: Parenting

hit me with your best shot

February 4, 2014 By in herding (my own) cats Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

along with the “i don’t wanna’s” and the “no’s” (as mentioned in the last post), another way that our twin’s behavior has turned is in the “physical aggression department”…

importantly, this is not the type of behavior that is described in the post titled love bites…this is different…this is intentional and deliberate aggression…

let me tell you about the first time that we saw this type of behavior in one of our kids…

well, it happened a couple of months ago, when the twins were 22 months old…we had just spent an hour visiting with a small group of people (that included family and friends)…we had been hanging out in our living room, having some snacks, and playing…it had been a good time…eventually, a few family members left and we were continuing to visit…

i remember looking across the room, my son and daughter were playing on the couch…at first everything was fine–they were laughing and having fun…my son had a thomas the train engine in his right hand and he was rolling it over one of the cushions…then, it happened…as i watched, i saw my son pull back his right arm, swing it towards my daughter and smash the train engine right into her face–hard…my daughter wailed and wailed…

and, i thought…

cinders and ashes!!! (the thomas the train version of profanity)

at this point, we took the train away from my son, scolded him, and set him in “time out” for 2 minutes…while our son was in “time-out”, we consoled our daughter…and when that was done, we brought my son out and talked to him for a minute (about what not to do) and had him ‘mend fences’ with our daughter…

it was the first time we had to discipline one of our kids for that kind of thing…and now that i think about it, it was the first time we had to discipline one of our kids for anything…since then, we’ve had to discipline them (yes, both son and daughter) for a variety of other aggressive actions…

because even the most innocent human beings, like these two, can take things too far…

i don’t wanna

February 3, 2014 By in herding (my own) cats Tags: , , , 2 Comments

our twins recently turned two…and their behavior turned, too…

honestly, we’ve seen a lot of new, amazing, positive things happen in the months preceding the terrible two’s (which hit us at about 18 months–a time that dr. david walsh has identified as a specific and significant point in child development)…we witnessed them start to become more self-aware, use tools (like a fork and spoon), walk and run, put their boots on, learn how to be funny, play independently (sometimes), become more socially interactive, tell us when they pooped, and to speak and use a variety of new words…

of all the new words that they’ve learned…the ones that hold the title spot for my least favorite are:

“i don’t wanna” and “no”

these words can show up when they (legitimately) don’t wanna do something or say “no” to something they “don’t want”…but, they also show up often and in-between legitimate moments…when they speak these words just because they can...like the following exchange, which happens about 100 times a day…

me: you’re telling me you don’t wanna cookie–come on?!

my son: no, i don’t!

me: you’re telling me you don’t want the best tasting, yummiest thing we’ve got in the house right now?!

my son: no, i don’t!

me: what the fuck?! (not ‘out loud’)

you can see why parents need on-going and quality therapy (and potentially, on-going and quality prescription drugs)…this kind of thing, dealing with these people (children)…can make you crazy!

i am starting to see that…they are saying these words because they’ve begun to develop an awareness of their unique self in the world…differentiated from my wife and i…and so, they are resisting and rebelling against what we are trying to get them to do…

these are the first moments our kids have intentionally and deliberately tried to ‘push limits’ and ‘test us’…to see where the boundaries are…to see if we’re up to the job…and while it’s not the-most-super-fun-time we’ve experienced, we’re doing our best to ‘stand strong’–be firm, be fair, and love them along the way…

tradecraft…know your role

January 9, 2014 By in tradecraft Tags: , , , Leave a comment

whether a teacher, youth director, juvenile justice worker–or, a parent…it is important to reflect and think about how you are interacting with the children you work with or the children you have…

and to know your role…

one day in class a student asked me:

hey, mr. d., you’re my friend, right?!

i replied:

no, i’m not…i’m your teacher

on a different day, another student from another class  ‘doubled down’ on that comment and asked:

hey, mr. d., do you want to come a house party i’m throwin’ this saturday?

while images of me pulling a high-school version of ‘frank the tank’ filled my head…i replied:

no, i’m good

for the past decade, one of my biggest pet peeves with parents (and occasionally with certain youth leaders) is their wanting their kids to like them and/or being ‘friends’ with their kids (this wasn’t something i saw a lot of in my work with kids in the ’90s) 

let’s pause and think about this for a minute–parents have to realize what they are giving kids when they do things in this way…they are giving them the parental power and authority…and, this kind of power is, quite honestly, too big for young people–remember, we’re talking about kids–children and teenagers, people whose brains are not fully developed…people who, have brain damage 🙂

and to give them…the keys to the kingdom…unbelievable?!

i recently heard a phenomenal lecture by dr. leonard sax (as recommended to me by my friend, katie sanders), where he addressed this very issue…it is a lecture that should be “required listening” for all parents and youth leaders–in his presentation there are two brilliant insights that rise above a lot of good material–they are:

the first prerequisite of being a good parent is that you cannot be concerned with whether your child likes you or not…

&

parents need to be confident of their authority…parents have stepped away from their authority in this country…

(lecture on faith and boys and girls–the great disappointment, 10/10/13  http://www.faith-and-life.org/media )

the unwillingness to be the authority, to be the parent…leads to kids who think they can do whatever they want whenever they want to…they believe they are entitled to it..they believe they should be calling the shots…disrespecting every other adult they encounter along the way (including their parents)…

ultimately, it provides kids with a false sense of how the real world works…how will they handle rejection, suffering, and struggle? what are we preparing them for? what are we setting them up for?

unfortunately, i see this kind of thing play out in my classroom every single day…

luckily, there is a remedy, a fix–though far from easy–we can change how we do things…we can actually herd dem cats, instead of letting ’em run wild…

 

prepare the way

December 17, 2013 By in herding (my own) cats Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

it is the season of expectation and anticipation…

for my wife and i, it was nearly two years ago when we were preparing to welcome our twins into the world…

as we waited…we talked to people who had kids, we read books about having kids, my wife signed up for the moms of multiples club, we painted the nursery, we built cribs, and we absorbed the advice solicited and unsolicited from those who noticed the babies bump…

we even took classes…

classes that, at the time, seemed logical–want to learn something new??? take a class–my wife and i are educators after all (having that background might make you think we had an advantage–but, we didn’t)…there are a lot of things you can learn from school–however, what life will be like with twins is not one of them…such preparations seem laughable now…

one of the most bizarre classes we took was on breastfeeding–and yes, i went too…not that any amount of education would help me out on this front…so, the instructor gave us the basics and handed us our demo-babies–their eyes kinda creeped us out…you know the kind i’m talking about–they were the painted on ones that follow you around the room, we ‘were good’ once we had blindfolded both our fake-babies:) …then, the instructor proceeded to go on and on about the physical/emotional bonds of the woman and child (children in our case), how potent mother’s milk was and how very good it was for the health and well-being of the babies–somewhere along the way, she mentioned a football hold–where you snuggle in the babe just like it’s a pigskin–this gave me license to ‘not pay attention anymore’…

so, i checked out…my thoughts drifted to how the viking’s season might progress; to my favorite english premier league soccer team, liverpool, who were struggling at the time; to tests i hadn’t graded yet; to admonishing myself for failing to bring my trusty flask of jack daniel’s along to this circus; to a scene in a movie–you know the one i’m talking about–the one from the hand that rocks the cradle (where the nanny is breastfeeding kids that were not her own)…let’s just say, that scene takes on a whole new level of creepiness after a breastfeeding class!  interestingly, the instructor made breastfeeding seem like a snap…like it was one of the easiest things a new mom would be doing…in reality, it was the complete opposite in our experience–it was difficult, unnatural and something that made my wife snap!

another strange thing related to this was the off-hand comments other moms would make to my wife, like ‘i breast-fed for 6 months, it was no problem’ or ‘i was breastfeeding for nearly a year, it was such a special time’–the one-uppers came out of the woodwork around this time…i handled it maturely, like any adult would…and slashed the tires of their mini-vans…you may be able to breast-feed like the wind, sister, but let’s see how you do when you’ve got to walk your ass home?!

no, but seriously…there were all kinds of preparations made in the waiting time…things we thought would prepare us–but nothing did…the reality of it all was truly different–it was like a bomb went off in the center of our lives–and when the smoke cleared, it was harder than we could have imagined (ugh!), but more incredible and more amazing than we could have believed…