Showing posts with label Parenting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Parenting. Show all posts

Sunday, July 12, 2020

Explaining things to kids - Peer pressure

Parents Guide on Teaching Kids with Autism | LoveToKnow

We are in a period of rapid social change. It is stressful for adults to manage the many changes that seem to affect our lives, and it is especially challenging for parents and grandparents who wonder how to explain what they are seeing and hearing on TV, social media, and in their families and communities every day. This is the first of several articles for parents and grandparents describing ideas about how to manage situations by explaining things in our society to our children and grandchildren from a Unitarian Univeralist perspective. These articles will be tagged, "Explaining things to kids."

Our first topic is peer pressure.

Many members of the Republican party, while expressing private dismay at his more outrageous behavior, seem intimidated and completely unable to speak out against him (despite the fact that many of them were mocked and humiliated by him during his campaign). Those who bow to Trump’s threats do not seem to understand the axiom that you cannot accommodate to a bully, nor normalize his aggression.

But we must also try to explain to them how someone like this could have been elected to the highest office in the land, and why our country seems to have rewarded behavior that most of us condemn.

How Do I Explain This to My Kids? . The New Press. p.x

Children understand peer pressure. My mother used to say to me when I wanted to do something that my best friend, Jack Blackburn, was doing that she disapproved of, "Would you jump off a bridge just because Jack Blackburn did it?" I was ten. I got her point. I would drop my head, look at the floor, and moan, "No, mom." to which she would provide the coup de grace which was, "Well, then you shouldn't do ________ either."

I was lucky. I had a good mother who encouraged me to think for myself, use my common sense, and stand up for myself and not do things that were wrong headed. I was raised Roman Catholic not Unitarian Universalist, but Roman Catholics stress in their character formation, as Unitarian Univeralists do, the right of conscience and the acceptance of responsibility for the consequences of one's decisions and actions.

At age seven we were taught to review our conscience regularly and go to confession to admit to our Higher Power what we had done wrong and to amend for any harm we had done, learn from our experience, and get our lives on a better track. This practice, unfortunately, seems to have diminished in Roman Catholicism and is not practiced at all in Unitarian Universalism. Children, now days, are not only not being taught the difference between right and wrong, they are not being taught to review their lives on a regular basis - to examine their consciences. Consequently, we are left with people who jump off of bridges following a bully bowing to peer pressure even when they know it is wrong.

Our goal is to raise courageous and brave children who will engage in the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. This truth and meaning is to be found in their conscience which has been informed by research, review, and understanding.

How and where is one to find truth and meaning when one is being pressured and bullied? First, one turns to trusted family. Then one turns to friends. Then one turns to social media. Maybe one turns to school. Lastly, one turns to chuch and religion. Family, friends, social media, school, church.

There was a time when the priority of sources of guidance was different. When I was growing up in the 1950s it was family, church, school, friends, media. Now the order of priority has shifted and church comes in last.

Why has church lost it's importance? There are many reasons, but perhaps the biggest is relevance. The teachings of the church have become irrelevant. The church no longer addresses the fundamental existential issues that people have to confront.

What does UU teach children about how to deal with peer pressure and bullies? How is it that a person with the character of Donald J. Trump got elected as President of the United States and supposed leader of the free world? What does it tell us about ourselves that we freely elected such a person to make decisions for us and the society we live in. How do we explain this to our children?

The simple explanation is that our society is very sick and dysfuctional. Our social values and beliefs are fundamentally immoral and antithetical to our mutual welfare. Unitarian Univeralism offers a better way based on its seven principles. It is time for us to stand up for what we believe in and proclaim our values and beliefs to the rest of the world. What better place to start than with our children and grandchildren?

The first step might be Peg Markham's question to her son, David, "Would you jump off a bridge just because Jack Blackburn did it?"

Would you vote for the Republican candidate for president who is a bully, a liar, a con man, an assaulter of women, a racist, a cheat just because your party put him on the ballot?

Bowing to peer pressue can have terrible consequences which we are living with now. We, as Americans have made our bed and now we have to lie in it. Unfortunately our children and grandchildren have to too some of whom have been separated from their parents and put in cages. Can we teach our children so that they can create a better world than the one we are giving to them? Do Unitarian Univeralists do a better job of character formation and parents of other religious traditions?

Sunday, June 16, 2019

Role of fatherhood has changed over the last century


As an old guy at 73 who became a father for the first time at age 20 and then went on to have 8 more children, 9 total, yes, with the same woman, very unusual in this day and age, I will acknowledge, I have seen drastic changes in the role of fatherhood in our society from the time of my grandfather who was born in 1894 and my father born in 1918, and my time born in 1945, and my youngest son's time born in 1980.

The role of fatherhood significantly changed when Roe vs. Wade was decided in 1973 and abortion became legal in United States and motherhood and fatherhood became optional when a pregnancy occurred. The current curtailment of abortion in Repulbican States has sigfiicant impact on women who have the right of abortion or are losing it, but the "rights" of fathers, if there is such a thing, is rarely recognized and acknowledged. Fathers, when they have impregnated a woman, have no rights unless the child is born and then they are frequently contested.

Fathers have been rendered impotent by the state when it comes to whether a pregnancy will be carried to term or aborted and with that decision comes a great deal of angst and what Freud might have called "castration anxiety". This social event of whether to carry a pregnancy to term or to abort leaves most men marginalized and disenfranchised by the legal system because they have no rights and thus many men take what the attachment theorists an "avoidant" or an "anxious" stance. It is rare for a man in this situation to feel secure.

In this day and age, unlike my grandfather's, father's, and mine, a man is not even required for impregnation. Women are quite self sufficient in regards to whether she wants to become a mother or not, and men who donate semen to a sperm bank may not even know the extistence of children they have sired.

It is a new world, we are living in, in this day and age, a world in which fatherhood has become a luxury and a privilege if a mother will allow it and wants it, but men have been rendered ancillary and no longer primary when it comes to the role of fatherhood.

Parenting, of course, is another topic. There is a distinction between being a father and being a parent. I don't know if fathers are doing more parenting now than they have in the past. I suspect, if studied, we might find that the type of parenting males do in our current culture is quite different than the parenting of my father and grandfather. I changed diapers, burped, bathed, feed, supervized, and played with my children something that neither my father or grandfather ever did, nor would have thought of doing, because it was "women's work."

Fathers who also parent deserve repect and honor for the roles they play in nurturing the suceeding generation. Grandfathering is important too and many of my clients report that while their own fathers were M.I.A. their grandfather not only took an interest but were there for them.

In my practice, parenting for fathers is a constant theme, usually surfaced as we discuss the genesis of their symptoms of depression, anxiety, anger, fear, and demoralization. It is interesting how the focus on "social issues" in our politics largely ignores the role of fathers as parents unless it involves father bashing as portrayed in our media like TV shows and movies where fathers are portrayed as imcompetent morons like Homer Simpson, Family Guy, Archie Bunker. It is interesting how fathers are so easily made the butt of jokes, satire, and sarcasm.

In this enviornment, men struggle to understand what it means to be a man in our current culture, and fatherhood and parenting are fraught with ambivalent and ambigous messages. When it comes to fatherhood and parenting, men need to be empowered by clearer defintions of the role they can and should play. There is a lot of work for us psychotherapists and family therapists to do.

Best wishes to all the men who are not only fathers but parents,

Friday, September 1, 2017

How do UU parents explain Donald Trump's election to their kids?


Dr. Ava Sigler wrote in her book, How Do I Explain This To My Kids: Parenting In The Age Of Trump, "Beyond these threats to our democratic way of life, Donald Trump's performance during his campaign and presidency has seemingly validated a long list of behaviors we strive to get our children to recognize and reject, from rudeness, prejudice, and bullying to dishonesty, greed, and shamelessness." p.ix

Here in New York State most school districts start school this coming Wednesday, after Labor Day, on September 6, 2017 and the societal tension will increase as adults, parents, teachers, and other adults must address the problematic behavior of the U.S. President and what to tell the kids?

What ideas do you have? What have you told your kids? What would you hope would be taught to them in school? If Donald Trump exhibited his campaign and post election rally behavior in school he would have been suspended or expelled. Yesterday, I heard a focus group on TV and these were people who voted for Donald Trump, discuss the idea that they no longer expect him to act "presidential" because they stated he doesn't even act professional. Many of the members of the group stated that they would be fired from their place of employment if they acted like Donald Trump, and most kids would be place on some sort of disciplinary protocol if they acted like Trump in school.

Even more egregious are the congressional members of Donald Trump's party who fail to act, and who by their silence allow the behavior to continue uncensured. Evil triumphs when good people do nothing and look the other way.

Sunday, May 13, 2012

Mother's Day

Today is the day that the greeting card companies and florists have capitalized on sentimental tokens of affection for mothers. Julia Ward Howe a Unitarian, and a pacifist and suffragette, tried to get a Mother's Day for Peace established in 1870 but her attempts died and nothing much happened until Anna Jarvis tried to get Mother's Day recognized as a holiday and was finally successful in getting congress to proclaim the second Sunday of May as Mother's Day which was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914. By 1920 the commercialization of Mothers day began.

Mother's Day of peace however has dropped by the wayside and women have cooperated to continue to offer up their children for the militaristic activities of their governments even Unitarian Universalist mothers.

In our current presidential election cycle once again the reproductive rights of women have been challenged at the highest levels of the American government, and women and children have been objectified in the culture wars with cynical issues of birth control, abortion, and sexual orientation.

As a psychotherapist, I am aware on a daily basis of bad mothering. Bad mothering is very common with the clients I see caused by substance abuse, mental illness, and a history of trauma to which they were subjected themselves. Poor parenting whether perpetrated by mothers or fathers is the basis of much of the dysfunctional behavior that negatively affect our communities. Sentimental acknowledgements aside our society is very stingy and unsupportive of mothering whether we look at maternity leave policies, welfare policies requiring mothers of small children to work at minimal wage jobs while they must place their children in day care, and subjecting children to compulsory schooling which often is toxic for healthy social, emotional, psychological, cognitive, and physical development.

The pain and suffering cause by dysfunctional mothering in our society is enormous and the costs to our society in the form of child protective services, juvenile delinquency, poor school performance, criminal justice costs, and substance abuse and mental health services are enormous. As a society we tend to be oblivious to the negative consequences of poor parenting. We require people to get licenses to fish and cut hair, but have no such requirement for parenting one of the most important jobs in any society.

I would like to live in a country like the social democracies of Europe where maternity leave is generous, child care subsidies are generous, quality education is provided through college, universal health care is available, and economic justice including economic opportunities to earn a living wage are available, and food insecurity and homelessness are no longer problems. Getting all misty eyed at a pollyannish celebration is hypocritical unless we as a society are willing to step up and support mothers in the most important role which our society offers for women to play. We spend a trillion dollars for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and billions of dollars for "too big to fail" bank bailouts, but very little support for the mothering of the future citizens of our country.

A Unitarian social activist wanted to state a Mother's Day For Peace in 1870 for which she found no support. After the wars of the 20th and 21st century I don't think she would find the support today even among her fellow Uniatrian Universalists which is a shame given the values which we covenant to affirm and promote as a way of life in our congregations.

May the Spirit of Life bless the mothers struggling to raise the next generation, and may we as a society advocate for the appropriation or resources so that they can do a good job.

If you are interested in a more personal and clinical view of bad mothering I highly recommend Dr. Christine Ann Lawson's book, Understanding the Borderline Mother: Helping Her Children Transcend the Intense, Unpredictable, and Volatile Relationship. You can find the book in the carousel in the right hand column.


For all you folks who had/have borderline mothers, and to fathers who conceived children with them, I wish you peace everyday, and especially today as your suffering is bound to intensify as a result of memories of your abusive experiences being triggered by this holiday..
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