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Yesterday we celebrated a nice Thanksgiving dinner in the U.S. and it was all very nice. I wanted to talk a bit about giving thanks for everything that we have in our lives including our children! It is interesting to me how a holiday can bring up rituals and memories from long ago. Recipes are passed down from generation to generation in the same way that our ideas about parenting.
We may not think about this often because it is just beneath the surface and goes undetected, but we experience it when we find ourselves feeling a certain way or even behaving in a particular manner. There is usually an underlying thought that is driving our feelings. Much of the thoughts and conditioning we have are from our parents and caretakers. Often we parent based on how we were parented. Even though we may have loved ones that are no longer with us their voices and our experiences remain with us.
This thanksgiving I found myself very happy and peaceful as I prepared all the fixings for the dinner we were about to eat. I could hear the voices from Thanksgivings past reminding me that they were still with me if only in spirit. I could hear the laughs, opinions, and thoughts of family that could not be with me this Thanksgiving dinner and I felt a sense of thanks for all that they had given me. The good, the bad, the other. We have so much that is given to us by our parents, grandparents, friends, and extended family.
After dinner as I relaxed from such a feast, I found myself saying a something my grandmother always said. I said, "thanks to God." Now I'm not the most religious person, but I would like to think I have a spiritual path. I consciously caught myself as I uttered the "conditioned" words that my grandmother so often said after we had a meal. Not just a feast like yesterday, but any meal. She gave thanks to something greater than her that she felt was responsible for her having so much.
I thought how appropriate on this Day of Giving Thanks that we should thank our God or Higher Power or whoever or whatever it is that we believe is responsible for us having all we do. Even if this thanks is just to the person who prepared the meal!
In Peace and Love,
George
Now some of you might be wondering, "what is the Re-Parenting Revolution?" The answer is that it is a way of Parenting that involves consciously looking at the way we were parented and then unlearning or un-parenting ourselves from all the negative thinking and conditioning we have from our past, and then parenting our children in a way that takes into account what the needs of the child may be.
None of us are born knowing how to parent and we are bombarded by the media with expert opinions and thoughts and we have forgotten to look within. The Re-Parenting Revolution is just that, a complete cycle where we are identifying how we were parented and acknowledging what worked and what wasn't so good. Next we are Un-Parenting ourselves or Un-learning all the negative thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that no longer serve us and can be of no use to our children. This may include things like spanking, name-calling, or just passing on behaviors that will not serve our children. The third step of the Revolution is to parent our children with intention.
This means that we must then put into practice what we have learned about ourselves by parenting our children in a way that plays to their strengths. It is coming from a child-centered approach that takes into consideration what is best for the child. We no longer react to behaviors of our children as if they were happening to us, because we have looked at why we are responding the way we are because of our own childhood. We begin to see the connection to the fact of why certain behaviors in our children either make us so proud or angry and frustrated.
This is the beginning of the revolution...The Re-Parenting Revolution.
In Peace and Love,
George
Wow,
I'm back after a very long absence. I can only claim raising my daughter in my defense! I used to write for "The Successful Path" and "The Parents Precinct" last year? It feels like forever but then again it feels like just yesterday. Raising a child can do that to you, losing time and all.
Well I have some very exciting news in that I have done a lot of things in the interim which I will get into after I have had a chance to get used to the format again. I just wanted to take this time to say hello to any old friends and welcome new ones!
I look forward to sharing my parenting adventures and reading yours blogs too!
In Peace and Love,
George
I'm writing this as a stay at home Dad to give a first-hand experience of what a tough job caring for a young child can be. I've been watching my daughter grow up for close to five years and have been at home with her for the better part of three. Just enough time to really get the feel of what most women go through in our society who raise children. Again hats off to anybody staying home to rear their children since it is one of the most difficult and underated jobs anybody could have. I'm going to approach this from a Dad perspective, but I'm sure most of it applies to Moms too! I'm going to also preface this by saying that I am blessed to have my daughter and to stay home with her and while she is truly a gift from God to me, she is also gifted and requires more than the usual amount of stimulation and energy to raise. Staying at home has been quite the learning experience. I would say there have been different phases of learning. There was the beginning or new phase, where we spent almost every waking moment together creating that all important bond of attachment. We were very close and never tarried too far from one another. We were in awe of each other and how the time would fly just looking into each others eyes. During this time we stayed home much and were content just to explore the living room, garden, or the occassional stroll through the neighborhood. LIfe was easy and contained. Not a problem. Later came the exploring and walking phase. We would take walks around the block that seemed like a big deal. The days became a little more tiring and started to blur. Shaving became less important but learning the names of my daughter's favorite animals and such took on an extreme quality. Memorizing tunes from her favorite programs that have stayed in my head to this day became the norm. Cooking and cleaning are entire jobs unto themselves without raising a child. Washing, drying, and folding seemed out of the question. These were the days of the beginning to realize that I would have no life outside my daughter's life. I would become an unpaid servant who would respond to every call and would be of service 24-7. LIttle did I know that I would soon lose my entire identity. Eventually I would come to the place learning and playing. I would become a parent, teacher, coach, doctor, and anything else my daughter needed. I would begin to know things that nobody else in the world knew, just because I spent so much time with her. I would get to know her in intimate ways that nobody would be able to begin to understand. I would recognize her cries, whines, the fussy ones from being tired, the serious ones from being hurt, and the crocodile tears as well. Along the way my daughter would teach me so much and I would continue my education all over again. Everything I learned in school would go right out the door. This was real life and it was all just beginning. My daughter being the bright child that she is would continue to bombard me with questions such as "how did the first man and woman come to be on earht?" And "how many miles from the Sun is Mercury?" "What about Pluto?" These questions always come after a fresh nights sleep and she is waking me up. I've learned that sleep is something I will always need more of and that children are not sleeping they are recharging. Slowly as my daughter became more interested in her world and her activites such as ballet, art, science, she began to take classes to enrich her life, I slowly began to lose mine. The process is so very slow that you cannot see it coming. One day you just wake up and realize you have slipped into a walking coma of a life. Now mind you, some like to stay home, and would do anything to be in this position, and while I feel grateful and extremely blessed, I also want to portray what can be some of the pitfalls for myself. I have actually worked with children quite extensively and have the need to be out in the world. I don't do well with monotony and being indoors, so this has been a challenge for me. I also like to work. I know who would have thought Dad's values would kick in. I like to be busy creating new projects and working on old ones. So here are my tips for stay at home Dads.
1) Get Support. I mean this in that there are many people staying at home with their children and getting in contact with others who are going through what you are going through is huge.
2) Don't Isolate. It is real easy to get into a routine, and while this is important be sure to get out there and meet some new people. This is helpful for you and your children
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Hello Everybody,
I hope everybody is doing well. I wanted to write a little bit about abundance and scarcity. Everything in our lives is guided by our thoughts and abundance and scarcity are no different. We may not give much notice to how we think about these things, but when we do, we find the clues to how we look at life. How we look at life shapes everything we do from how we live to how we spend, to how we save, or even if we think we can have something
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Hello Everybody,
Today I would like to write about the spiritual lives of children. I know many of us may not give this much thought, but children in my opinion come with their own spiritual life right from their creator and I don't mean us their parents. They seem to have a knowledge of things that grown-ups strive their entire lives to attain
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Hello Everybody,
I would like to talk to today about the people and relationships that are closest to us and how they may affect us. We may not give much thought to this, but we are likely to be much like the people we most come in contact with. If you predominantly hang around people that bring you down, guess what you're going to feel pretty bad most of the time. Hang around these people long enough and you're going to be seriously depressed
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Hello Everybody,
I've wanting to write a bit about gifted children. I know the term can be very upsetting for many in that all our children our gifted, and I would agree with this point of view. I also am faced with the reality that my daughter is extremely well...GIFTED and TALENTED as it is known in California. I know that labels are not a good thing, but there has to be a way to talk about this without getting people pushed out of shape. I went to a California Homeschoolers Network Conference last year and for the first time was able to say yes my daughter is definitely gifted. She is well advanced for her four years
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Hello Everybody,
I wanted to write a little about finding our life's purpose. Unless we figure out what we were put on this earth to do, we can never be truly happy or successful. We all have a gift or what Jack Canfield calls a "core genius." This is the thing that we do better than anybody else and that gives us such joy that we would do it for free. Now the idea is to find this gift that we have that gives us such pleasure that we would do it even if we did not get paid for it
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I have still been trying to wrap my mind around the fact that a student by the name of Cho Seung Hui, age 23 murdered 32 people and wounded 15 others before killing himself. This is such a horrific tragedy and my thoughts and prayers go out to all the families involved in this horrible event. As a marriage and family therapist, life coach, and president of a company that provides parenting to the community, I can not help but think of the implications of somebody such as Cho who had become so estranged from society and so bitter and angry that he felt the need to murder innocent people. My first thought after my sympathy towards the victims is to wonder what kind of childhood someone like Cho had endured. My educated guess is that he was not very close to his family and there was definitely not any attachment. Children don’t just one day wake up and decide they are going to murder a large number of people. This is something that is cumulative and has been seething for many years. Often times, there is a history of abuse, and in Cho’s case there appears to be a history of mental illness. I would like to suggest that somehow Cho is also a victim in this horrific tragedy. I believe that we are seeing the breakdown of so many families and without the proper parenting skills and mental health screenings in the schools we will continue to see such shootings. I have coordinated school based services in the Orange County and Los Angeles County School Districts and I am aware of all the problems that these children face. These events are troubling on many levels, but this is becoming an ongoing trend where children are shooting children. We have a troubled society when this becomes the case. No other time in history do we see children murdering children. I believe this is a symptom to a much deeper cause. Until we start making life better for these children we will continue to see this kind of violence. It really should not come as a surprise when we look at the violent video games, music, and media images that are embedded in the thoughts and minds of our children. Television has become so increasingly violent that there is nothing appropriate for a pre-school child to watch except for public television and home and garden television, and even then they must be supervised lest they fall prey to media advertising that is just as psychologically scarring as some shows. We are a country that glorifies war and holds it up as the answer to all our problems. We are not teaching peace and negotiation, but rather that power comes through the barrel of a gun. I believe that we need to start to work on the things that connect us rather than disconnect us to one another. We need to see how we are alike, rather than different. We have to learn to share and that there is enough for us all in this abundant world. I believe that children ought to be introduced to the outdoors and to learn how to cooperate at an early age. Part of Cho’s motive was revenge. This is right out of the parenting handbook of why children misbehave. Rest assured, I am not minimizing what he did, but rather suggesting that Cho never learned to fit in and cooperate from a young age. He never learned coping skills and problem solving like the rest of his peers. This is huge because so much of our education is based on autonomy, independence and winning. There is nobody teaching cooperation, empathy, and the satisfaction of doing your best. These are noble qualities but they are not being taught in our schools. We put too much emphasis on children being right, perfect, better, and not enough emphasis on allowing the child to become who they might be inside. This all causes undo stress and creates a false sense of self that is not connected to the child’s reality at all. Most children do not feel good about themselves and don’t have enough self-esteem to dress, act, and be exactly who they want to be. We don’t reward that in our society, instead we want our children to fit in and to be molded into something we can look at and understand. We need to provide role-models for our children who have good core values. We also need to be those role-models for our children. We after all, are their first and best teachers. I know that many people became very angry at the media for giving him any airtime as they thought it was giving him exactly what he wanted, but I believe we are a society in denial. We don’t want to look at this person, who was also a senior at Virginia Tech. We want to remember the victims of the shooting, but I would hope that we as a society do not deny this and pretend it didn’t happen, because that is exactly what will bring the next person to do the same thing. We need more programs that mentor and coach students. It is one of the most stressful times for young adults. Often times, being away from home for the first time, without any parental authority, and many influences. Students often have to navigate their way around large campuses without little or no support. It may also be the first time they are in charge of their own finances and time management. This may seem like a vacation from afar, but it can be one of the most anxiety provoking situations for students. I believe coaching or mentoring programs with skilled mental health screeners would be very effective. I know there is a company that is offering services like this to a college in Orange County, but it is needed in all universities. I know that once the shock wears off that people will get very angry at Cho and his family and maybe even the administration, and the media, but I would like us to remember that he too was once a child and had needs and my question would be, “Did he get his needs met as a child?” If he had a healthy attachment, then he would have been a different person. We can scoff all we want about all this new-aged parenting philosophy but really what is going on is a return to what we once knew. That children must be given attention by their caregivers. They must be nurtured, loved, and respected. They must be treated as if they were a gift from God. We cannot continue to treat them in such a manner as to reinforce their powerlessness in our society or else we can expect more of the same. We cannot continue to do the same things over and over and expect different results. This is the definition for insanity. Until we change our thinking, parenting, lifestyles, and our legislation, this will continue to happen. We must learn to honor our children and learn from them. They are the closest vessel we have to God and his perfection. Children are not born mass murders! They are born perfect!
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Comments (1)
Comment by George
on My Music is Outdated?
The Re-Parenting Revolution
I loved Def Leppard as a teen too! I was at the Pyromania tour in the States. I haven't even thought of their music in ages...Rock of Ages : )
Peace and Love,
George