Dad Street

You Have the Greatest Impact On The Future of Your Children!

Jan 192012

My last post was about how we as adults have paradigm shifts early on in life. I spoke about how we begin to give ourselves false beliefs, essentially lying to ourselves about who we are. Those paradigm shifts started taking place at a very young age.

It’s become clear to me that the reason we made that paradigm shift was out of self defense and preservation. As children we were abused on one level or another to the point of having to protect ourselves. This abuse could have come in many different forms. Again, it’s not about what form the actual abuse was in but rather how it impacted us personally. That abuse/trauma could have taken many different forms including but not limited to:

1. Physical abuse

2. Sexual abuse

3. Emotional abuse

4. Abandonment

One form of childhood trauma that I think doesn’t get talked about enough and would probably fall under emotional abuse is shame. Shame is one of those things that has become so common in today’s society that I don’t even think most of us notice when it’s happening. I know because I was shaming my children without even knowing or being aware of it.

One common thing I’ve said before and I’m sure you’ve heard is when a parent gets mad at their child and says, “What were you thinking?” or “What is wrong with you?” On the surface it may not seem like much. However, to a small child or toddler this can go very deep. To a child, their parents are the God and Godesses in their life. Hearing this kind of abusive language makes them feel “less than”, “stupid”, “embarrassed”, “confused”, among other things. This shame that they feel as a result of hearing this can last for a lifetime and certainly well into adulthood. It’s language like this that sets the stage for how children begin to see themselves and think about themselves. When children feel these “less than” feelings early on awareness of their inherent nature gets obscured with lies. The child that was born loveable, good enough, worthy, and intelligent now sees him or herself through new lenses. A paradigm shift has taken place and now every meaning that child assigns to the thoughts they have is blurred by these new lenses.

So, as parents we have an incredible gift and responsibility. While our children are young and still living life aware of their inherent nature we can foster that. We can take steps to remind our children of their inherent nature. Every time we shame or abuse our children in any way we put holes in their inherent nature and help them form false beliefs about who they are. Children aren’t old enough to have boundaries and they are extremely impressionable. The shame, pain, and unresolved hurt that we carry from our own childhoods can’t be given to our children. Once we understand that much of who we are today is a result of what we were “given” as children we can begin to take the steps necessary to stop that cycle.

Loving our children isn’t just a feeling we have. To love our children is an act and an intentional one. Love has to be intentional, thoughtful, and with purpose. Loving our children starts with loving ourselves. Take a look at yourself and think about how you feel about yourself. Do you think you’re good enough? Do you think you’re attractive? Tender? Thoughtful? Intelligent? Worthy? Precious? Loveable? If you have difficulty in thinking any of these things could be true about you (and most of us do) then that is the first step. Just being aware that you feel this way about yourself will help to identify whenever you may be passing that on to your precious, loveable, worthy, and tender child.

Stop Lying To Yourself And Start Believing Again

Parenting

Jan 172012

Ever tell yourself you’re ugly? How about tell yourself you’re stupid? Not good enough? Maybe you tell yourself you’re a screw up?

It’s not uncommon for us, at different times in our lives, to talk to ourselves like this. We often complain about how others talk to us but sometimes we’re our worst critic. Even worse than being critical about ourselves, we outright lie. The truth of the matter is we’re not ugly, we’re not stupid, and we’re not screw ups.

We all live according to paradigms or maps. These paradigms are the lenses with which we view the world around us. Everything we say, feel, and do is filtered through these lenses. Somewhere along the line, from when we were babies, we decided it was appropriate to change the maps we were born with. We convinced ourselves it was okay to lie and so we changed our paradigms.

This can be a very hard subject to digest so let’s start at the beginning. If you’ve ever held a baby close in your arms, gazing deep into his or her eyes you see so much beauty. You see a baby that’s precious, beautiful, innocent, joyful, good enough, worthy, intelligent, and many other qualities. We don’t even think twice that these things are true about babies. It’s not something we need to try and prove or convince ourselves of, it’s just the way it is. These qualities we see in these babies are their inherent nature. They’re born with these qualities. Every child is born with these qualities, including you. These qualities never go away, they’re always there.

Somewhere down the road from baby to toddler, to child, to pre-teen, to teen, to adult that inherent nature gets covered over. It becomes too foggy to see and we put on new glasses. Only the new lenses are filled with lies we tell ourselves. Usually we come up with these new maps/beliefs as a way to protect us from childhood trauma. It doesn’t have to be trauma in the sense of physical or sexual abuse. Remember, what’s important to reflect on is not “what” happened to us as children but rather “how” it impacted us. No two people are alike and what causes you trauma and distress can be totally different than someone else. It’s not important to focus on the what but more so the how. We easily get caught up in the, “Well I wasn’t beaten half to death as a child so I didn’t have any trauma.” The reality is shame plays a huge role in most of our lives and how we are shaped as young adults. Parents shame children every day and in fact it’s so common that many of us don’t even notice we’re doing it to our children or that it’s being done to other children around us. This shame and childhood trauma, however brought about, shapes these new maps that we carry with us today.

These maps are the basis for our beliefs. Our actions are tied so close to our beliefs. They can cause us to pull away or overcompensate. Take for example the person who doesn’t think they’re attractive. Most of us who think we’re unattractive will give up on obtaining what we consider being attractive. We may not work out, we may eat poorly, we may not get annual physicals. We don’t take care of ourselves because we don’t think we’re attractive. On the flip side, some of us might overcompensate for our beliefs. We don’t think we’re attractive and because we feel so much shame around that we go out of our ways to make others think we are. We may spend and exorbitant amount of money, time, and energy on trying to look (in our eyes) attractive. This is an example of the extremes that we face when we carry these false beliefs. We’re much more moderate when we’re living in our adult realities and aware of our inherent nature. It’s these false beliefs we carry that swing us back and forth in these extremes and ultimately become the basis for how we respond to everything in our life.

Imagine what your life would be like if you believed you were intelligent, attractive, good enough, loveable, precious, innocent, committed…

You already are all of these things, you just need to believe it.

Finding Ways To Culture Our Children

Parenting, Travel

Jan 062012

Over the holiday we had an opportunity to have a unique experience with the kids. We were in the Los Angeles area visiting with my in-laws. My sister-in-law suggested we take the kids to Olvera Street in LA. Olvera Street is a well known street in downtown Los Angeles. It’s a (closed to traffic) street that is boasting with arts, crafts, entertainment, and food from Mexico.

O and Jake have been fortunate to have some unique experiences in their young ages. They’ve visited Israel last April, been on many road trips to Southern California and several plane trips across the country to Baltimore where my family is from. Before starting pre-school just a few months back O and Jake were raised by a Spanish speaking Nanny. Both of them fully understood the Spanish language and ate Mexican food prepared by our Nanny. We’re not the most cultured people in the world but visiting Olvera Street reminded me of how important it is, especially in today’s society.

Not only is visiting new places with people that may look and speak different fun but it’s educational. I also think it’s important for them to learn that people aren’t what color they are or what language they are or how much money they possess. I want them to learn that all people are beautiful simply for the fact that we are all people. When they get to school they’ll encounter prejudice, racism, judgement and all sorts of other things. Until then my wife and I can instill a sense of love and provide them a home and a life absent of judgement. At least, I think we owe it to them to try.

If you’ve never checked out Olvera Street and happen to be visiting the LA area I highly recommend it. There’s neat little stands with handmade clothing and toys. We even bought them their own guitars and a bongo set! The guitars were under $10 each! Now the Jew in me is screaming, “That’s a bargain!”. Another nice thing is that the Metro runs right to Union Station which is right across the street. So the grown ups were able to have Margaritas and not worry about driving home! Holla!!!

Have you taken your kids to some “different” places recently? How important do you think introducing them to other cultures is at a young age?

When Did I Become A Judgy Judge?

Parenting

Nov 152011

Yesterday I wrote a post titled, “Bad Parenting And The Park“. If you haven’t read it feel free to do so and come back here.

I knew after I published the post that the title didn’t sit well with me. Then as I sat more with the thought of what I had written I realized I was doing something I’ve done my entire life and that’s something I’m trying to stop, judging. In fairness to my experience and what I saw between the mom and her children and specifically that little boy I think I might have assessed accurately. However, that is not the point and I could be completely and utterly wrong.

This brings me to the point of today’s post. I judged that woman and her child without actually knowing what was going on. I think it was reasonable of me to identify with that woman as being a bit inattentive when it came to watching her child at the park. I think it was also reasonable to identify that the little boy detached from his family and was not very aware of physical danger. These were all things that I witnessed and make no statement about who they are as people or about their lives in general.

The problem with judging is that we make broad conclusions and assumptions about people based on very limited information and mostly not even factual information. There are many things that might have explained the circumstances yesterday. If I took an extreme but not too far fetched idea we could see where this wasn’t too weird of a situation. For example, if this woman just lost her partner to some accident or illness she would likely be devastated. Of course, who knows how the children could respond in that situation as well. It’s easy to see in a situation like that where what I witnessed would be occurring.

So the bottom line is, regardless of how accurate I was in assessing their family situation and/or the validity of that Mother’s ability to parent I should not have judged. I made a broad speculation about her ability to parent and about the mental well being of the child and that was based on 30 minutes at the park. I’m just glad I was aware enough to identify with the fact that I was doing this. After all, if we’re not aware of the things we’re doing right or wrong there’s no way we can begin to change those things.

Bad Parenting and The Park

Parenting

Nov 142011

Sunday afternoon my wife volunteered to help out with a local Prostate Screening. She works in the medical field and felt like this was something she wanted to be a part of. So that would mean I’d have O and Jake for the afternoon and we had to get out of the house. The kids wanted to go to the park so off we went to have some fun!

There weren’t too many other kids at the park when we got there. Although, there were several kids and a Mom that caught my attention. The three boys looked like they were between 5 and 8 years old. It actually caught my attention because I know how stressed I can feel keeping my eyes on both O and Jake at the same time. I was thinking how much work that must have been for that Mom having to watch 3 boys at the park!

The kids were playing on the jungle gym and having a good time. They had climbed up to the top of this ladder like contraption with semi-circle rails as steps. I’m totally not explaining this right but it was one of those things as a parent you always think they’re going to slip on and bust their chin wide open. Ughh…..just thinking about that!

Anyway, by the time the kids got to the top they were ready to go down the slide. As I went around the front of it to catch them at the bottom I saw this little boy (one of the three I saw earlier) climbing up the slide. I turned to him and said, “You’re going to want to get down Honey, cause they’re coming down”. He just sat there and looked at me without moving a budge. I tried to coax him again in as friendly as possible as a way but again he didn’t move. I told O and Jake to hold on but they were already making their way down the slide. Just as they were coming around the final turn the little boy’s mother came over and scooped him off the slide. She didn’t apologize or say anything other than, “Oh the boys like to climb up the slide.” Off the two of them went and I was left feeling like it was just a strange situation.

A few minutes later O and Jake were going down a different slide and guess who I saw at the bottom of the slide again? This time the kids were already on their way down before I saw him there and Jake slid in to him a little. It wasn’t hard enough for either of them to get hurt but it surprised me that the boy just sat there. It was almost like he wanted to get hit. I get how kids love climbing up the slide but typically they’re quick to get out of the way when someone is coming down at them at what seems like “break neck” speeds to a 5-year old. So the fact that this little boy just sat there waiting to get hit was a little strange to me. I turned and asked if he was alright (I knew he was) and gently told him to be careful. He looked at me with these big puppy dog eyes and his head tilted down towards the ground. He walked over and stood by me and the kids until his Mom came over and got him again. I realize she has two other boys to watch but at this point it just seems like this little guy is a little neglected and something doesn’t quite feel right.

The park we were at is actually divided into two separate play areas with separate equipment and everything. The kids decided they wanted to go over to the other play area. We walked over and guess who was following us? Eventually the mom caught on and came over to get him. About 10 minutes later I was pushing O on the swing and Jake was going down the slide just off to our left. I noticed the little boy again as he was coming towards the swing. I had to warn him to be careful as I was pushing O pretty high and had he stepped in front of her he would’ve been seeing stars. Fortunately he stepped off to the side. Then out of nowhere he comes right in front of me from the left and steps right in between O (who was swinging out) and myself. Thankfully I saw him just in the knick of time and was able to stop O from coming back really hard. Unfortunately, it was a little too late because it happened so fast and O did smack right back into him. He fell to the ground and laid there for a minute. I knew he was okay as the force wasn’t that hard but was still concerned that he got hurt. I was torn between feeling pissed off that he did that and concerned that both O and him were okay.

What was equally as strange as all this was that when the Mom noticed and came over she looked at him, asked if he was alright, picked him up and said, “Oh you must be tired, we should go home now”. She did not apologize to me, ask me if O was okay, or make any other remarks. I mean, both him and O could have gotten very hurt. She carried him off with her two other sons following behind and that was the last we saw of them. The odd thing was that he was quiet the entire time, even when he got knocked by the kids. Only this time he was screaming and crying in his moms arms as he left.

The whole experience was very weird but it occurred to me after I got home what might have been going on. The little boy was not aggressive but certainly put his body in harms way on several occasions. He went out of his way to get hurt and kept coming back for more. Oddly enough, (he being the youngest of the three boys) his mother was never around. I couldn’t help but wonder if he was feeling neglected or abandoned and his attempts at getting injured was just his 5-year old way of getting attention. I’m not a therapist and I could be completely off but the whole thing was just very strange.

I love going to the park with the kids and they always have a great time. It’s all fun and games for O and Jake but every time I go I’m constantly reminded of how different parenting styles there are out there. By all means am I no perfect parent and I do things wrong daily. For some reason the parks seem to attract those parents you just really question though. Could it be my way of projecting my own flaws on other parents? Perhaps it’s just that when you’re not the greatest parent in the world and you’re out in a public place it’s really hard to hide that fact. I think that brings me back to my own work and growth as a positive role in my children’s lives. I may not be the best parent in the world and far from it perhaps. One thing I do know is that I’m aware of both my good and bad parenting actions and I think that’s maybe one thing missing from that woman yesterday. I sure hope I’m wrong and that my concern of his abandonment and neglect was just something made up in my head and not a reality.

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You Have the Greatest Impact On The Future of Your Children!

Stop Lying To Yourself And Start Believing Again

Finding Ways To Culture Our Children

When Did I Become A Judgy Judge?

Bad Parenting and The Park

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