Category Archive for Parenting

Earlier this week, I ran across Stephan Miller’s blog post, “What To Do When You Forget What Romance Is” on the smartmarriage.com newsletter. He writes about how he’s sweating it, working nights and weekends, caring for the kids, never making enough, making the wrong moves.

I love [my wife] and she loves me. We both know that. But the nights of me staying up late to get a handle on work and the weekends of telling the kids, “No, daddy has to get some work done,” has done some damage to this love. I have forgotten how to bring it back.. .Plus I am paranoid. One bad day of sales and I’m Chicken Little. The next day, I spend even more time here with this stupid machine.

Oh, God. I so remember those years.

Does she understand? Yes. Do I understand what all this has done to her and to us? I tell her I do, but I am slow to learn. She is a much more patient, trusting, understanding person than I am. . .

You have to read her comment to his blog. It’s so sweet. She’s taken her older friend Juanita’s advice to expect the bad times. She blows off the “work at it” approach and goes with a “this too shall pass” philosophy. No matter how much he worries, her response is, “It’s okay. Go for it. You’re fine.”

She’s not trying to change him. She’s not on him about needing or wanting more. She appreciates his work and encourages him to keep going. She’s fine.

She knows the secret: If you just take care of yourself reasonably well and if you appreciate him for who he is and what he does, then you’ll have the ability to say the right thing. Then you’re able to speak, not from fear or anger, but from the heart and from a good feeling.

And look how he responds: “Love you too baby.”

Ah. . .

Now that’s romance.

Last week I got an email from David Ing asking if the incoherency of my last blog entry was due to the same jet lag that he was experiencing. We had just been in Tokyo for the annual International Society for the Systems Sciences meeting.

I took a look at that entry again and he’s right. (I love it that someone as cool as David is not only reading it but cares enough to critique it!) I wrote about what too many middle schoolers experience and then tried to tack on midlife crisis and every other crisis. What a mess. So here’s a rewrite:

There are times in life when nothing seems right. Early adolescence is one of those times and it’s heartbreaking that we’re putting our kids into systems that make it all worse.

On Tuesday teacher and blogger Dan Brown in Huffington Post told why New York’s mayor is completely off track in his approach to middle school improvement:

Rather than making school a nurturing and personal experience, kids, as early as kindergarten, are jammed into overcrowded classrooms, denied support services like fundamental skills tutoring, denied much-needed counseling, and are supervised by administrators more worried about test scores than their real needs. It’s no wonder that they “stop doing what you tell them to do,” as the mayor says. Bloomberg is blaming the victims here.

Here are 10 more reasons why middle school kids’ scores drop:
1. Loss of sense of self.

Just when they need people around them who know them, to give them a sense of belonging and connectedness, sixth and seventh graders are put into massive schools, into multiple classes, with teachers who may have over 100 kids/day.

2. Leslie Ritter.

In 1963, when I was happy enough with my saddle shoes, little cotton dress, and new lunchbox, Leslie Ritter showed up for the first day of sixth grade at Berryessa School with ratted, hair-sprayed hair, eye makeup, and pale, almost white lipstick, a tight skirt, and shaved tan legs. Leslie Ritter changed the rules and upped the ante. Life shifted for us all.

3. 8 times 7.

Just ask any kid having real problems with math, reading, or writing. That child never mastered the basics and then is expected to perform and are graded for poor performance. Far too many intelligent-enough children dread school every day, feeling stupid, losing hope. The more they worry about it, the harder it is to learn. It’s a private, stress-filled hell that compounds in middle school and then there’s. . .

4. Homework hell.

Slammed with daily homework since kindergarten, kids expect to get even more now. Gone is any hope
of time to themselves, of rest, freedom, the creative time to run wild, to experience nature, to explore life together.

5. Reorganizing brains.

A feeling of chaos and confusion comes with the reorganization of a childhood brain and the building of an adolescent brain, all accompanied by hormonal storms. It’s a creative process, not a breakdown. No one’s telling them that. But then major life transitions are poorly understood at every life stage in this culture.

6. Lack of sleep.

Kids get up as early as 6 a.m. to catch the bus for school. Often they can’t sleep until after 10 p.m. because of their biological clocks or because they have so much homework or because they’ve spent so much time doing video games or on the phone with friends. They need 10 hours of sleep to feel normal but Saturday morning they are roused out of bed for chores or sports. They can be accused of laziness and bad attitudes when their problem is fatigue.

7. Malnutrition.

They aren’t hungry at 7 a.m. (those biological clocks again) and rely on snacks–sugar and caffeine–at 10. Many drink sodas instead of milk and too many don’t have protein until noon. Dinner isn’t until after sports after a long day at school. They’re starving. And often overweight because of this cycle–They fuel up their malnourished, starving bodies with junk.

8. Too much cynicism and hyperactivity.
Where are the ideals? The dreams? The visions of a good, clean life? Where’s the Beaver and the Cleavers?
9. Recreational drugs.

Finally, some relief to all this. A vacation from the mess of their brains and their lives. A vacation from the brass band blasting in their heads.

10. Chaotic, demanding schools.

School could be a safe haven from the mess of life. A place of refuge for poor and disadvantaged children, for children from angry, crazy households. But too often it’s the opposite.

Oh, lots of kids are doing just fine. But far too many aren’t. It breaks my heart.

There are times in life when nothing seems right. Midlife or middle school, the “crisis” is the same.
On Tuesday teacher and blogger Dan Brown in Huffington Post told why New York’s mayor is completely off track in his approach to middle school improvement:

Rather than making school a nurturing and personal experience, kids, as early as kindergarten, are jammed into overcrowded classrooms, denied support services like fundamental skills tutoring, denied much-needed counseling, and are supervised by administrators more worried about test scores than their real needs. It’s no wonder that they “stop doing what you tell them to do,” as the mayor says. Bloomberg is blaming the victims here.

Here are 10 more reasons why middle school kids’ scores drop (While you’re reading this, think of your current or last chaotic life transition episode):

1. Loss of sense of self.

Just when they need people around them who know them, to give them a sense of belonging and connectedness, sixth and seventh graders are put into a massive school, into multiple classes, with teachers who may have over 100 kids/day.

2. Leslie Ritter.

In 1963 Leslie Ritter showed up for the first day of sixth grade with ratted, hair-sprayed hair, eye makeup, and pale, almost white lipstick, a tight skirt, and shaved tan legs. Leslie Ritter changed the rules and upped the ante. Life shifted for us all.

3. 8 times 7.

Just ask any kid having real problems with math. That child never mastered the basics and then was expected to do fractions and long division. Years of toil with stupid charts. Perfectly intelligent children
dread math–or reading or writing–every day, feeling stupid, losing hope. The more they worry about it, the harder it is to learn. It’s a private, stress-filled hell and then there’s. . .

4. Homework hell.

Slammed with daily homework since kindergarten, kids expect to get even more now. Gone is any hope
of time to themselves, rest, freedom, creative time, time to run wild, to experience nature, to explore life together.

5. Reorganizing brains.

This feeling of chaos and confusion comes with the breakdown of a childhood brain and the building of an adolescent brain, all accompanied by hormonal storms. It’s a creative process, not breakdown. No one’s telling them that. But then major life transitions are poorly understood at every life stage in this culture.

6. Lack of sleep.

Kids get up as early as 6 a.m. to catch the bus for school. Often they can’t sleep until 10 or later because of their biological clocks or because they have so much homework or because they’ve spent so much time doing video games or on the phone with friends. They need 10 hours of sleep to feel normal but Saturday morning they are roused out of bed for chores or sports. They are accused of laziness and bad attitudes when their problem is fatigue.

7. Malnutrition.

They aren’t hungry at 7 a.m. (those biological clocks again) and rely on snacks–sugar and caffeine–at 10. Many drink sodas instead of milk and too many don’t have protein until noon. Dinner isn’t until after sports after a long day at school. They’re starving. And often overweight because of this cycle–They fuel up their malnourished, starving bodies with junk.

8. Bummer news.

They are confronted with cynicism, with demands, with pressures. Where are the ideals? The dreams? The visions of a good, clean life? Where’s the Beaver and the Cleavers?

9. Recreational drugs.

Finally, some relief to all this. A vacation from the mess of their brains and their lives. A vacation from the brass band blasting in their heads.

10. Chaotic schools.

School could be a safe haven from the mess of life. A place of refuge for poor and disadvantaged children, for children from angry, crazy households. But it has become another unpredictable mess.

Apply the same list to midlife crisis and the workplace, to women after childbirth with young children, to men on verge of retirement, to 20-somethings at a loss in the work world, and to empty-nesters. Leslie Ritter has to shift to some other model of the next stage and you’ll have to get creative with #3. And you don’t get to blame the school system.

Parenting magazine’s 20th anniversary survey was covered by the Today Show and commented on by bloggers.

The statistic that struck me: 96% of women believe that they are more stressed than moms were 20 years ago.

As a new mom 20 years ago, I was stressed. Tradition disappeared in the 80s. How to eat, exercise, parent, partner, work, on and on. I was running to keep up. At one point my husband and I almost divorced because of it. But by the time the kids were 5 and 7, I had it reasonably together.

My mom had different stresses—dentures at 40 and heart disease meant death, drunk driving deaths were “accidents,” and abuse was a private character fault. But she knew what to do in her life. She knew her role and she followed the rules.

Now it’s all happening faster. Schools and work are less stable. Standards of perfection are much higher.

Under it all is a lack of support for and understanding of the chaotic inner experience of being hit with mommihood. The work of it all. The massive demands. The normal but not well understood or described breakdown of sense of self and connection with others that happens periodically throughout life but is particularly distressing at this time, when responsibility for others is so great.

It’s life as a design space. We’re all winging it. In Men Are Easy, after 20+ years of research, I spell out the basics for life in this new world.

As I watch my 26-year-old daughter and as I read the blogs, I’m encouraged. Smart women everywhere are getting it right!

In the New York Times and in his blog yesterday Daniel Goleman wrote an excellent description of performance and stress in the face of testing. It was a message to those considering the No Child Left Behind Act soon to be up for Congressional debate. I made the following comment:

No Child Left Behind is a last ditch Industrial Age attempt at a simplistic, socialistic-style solution to a complex problem. It goes along with the Bush administration’s focus on prisons over education and war over human development.We are a culture in rapid transition, where none of the old industrial systems are working all that well. School is one of them.

My book Men Are Easy describes the evolving system of marriage and how to live in it creatively and mindfully. The same advice applies to work, school, and all other continually evolving systems.

The best thing parents can do is to practice mindfulness and then teach mindfulness to their children through example and practice. This world demands the ability to respond thoughtfully to one’s own reactions, to open up and calm down in the face of threat and failure, to think clearly in emotionally-charged situations, and to learn to trust one’s self to do the right thing in spite of surrounding craziness. Often we have to design our own systems of support on the run, as we go, and that requires skills that are not taught in our expensive universities.

The good news is that out of the breakdown and chaos much more interesting and creative educational systems will emerge. Our digital age children are going to show us how to do it.