The Big Red Button

As hard as I try to be cool calm and collected, there are moments where the kids just seem hellbent on pushing the anger button – that big red button that sets my blood to boil, that big red button that says “DO NOT PRESS” written on it in a font that only kids can’t understand…

I admit that I have to fumble around for ages to pop the button back out again (ie., defuse the temper). Sometimes I wish it simply wasn’t there but it is and I have to deal with it…

The main two ways they seem to press  mine are

1) telling me they are/aren’t doing something when the opposite is clearly true. eg: Oldest Son says “I’m not doing anything to him” while his arms are wrapped around his brother’s neck…

2) ignoring me. I realise analytically (rationally) that this is normal, that it’s not personal, that whatever it is they’re doing is just soaking up their available bandwidth and Dad’s voice can’t get through. I know the techniques for calmly gaining their attention. But this still gets to me!!!!!

[Deep breath]

So. What presses yours?

Wednesday’s What’s What

Recently Carole Dissendorp asked a bunch of facebook friends a question that I will shamelessly regift here.

WHAT WERE / ARE THE CHILDREN’S BOOKS MOST POPULAR AT YOUR HOUSE? 

My answer was:

1. Younger years: Mr Men and Dr Seuss
2. 7-10 y.o.: Roald Dahl and Winnie the Pooh (actually, I was the only one who enjoyed Pooh Bear, so let me change that to Narnia)
3. Pre-adolescent: Captain Underpants series, Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, and anything by Andy Griffiths 

And I’d happily read Captain Underpants any day.

How about you? What say you?

**

Slightly related posts:

• Boys and Reading
• Wednesday’s What’s Worse?
• Wednesday’s What’s Worse IX

Enough is Enough

All you Melbournites saw Sunday’s horrendous crash that took 5 young lives and shattered dozens of other lives, right?

The police urge parents to step in and find out where their children were going and how they were getting there. I gotta tell ya, at 16, 17, 18, 19 – if you don’t have the kind of relationship where that’s already happening, it ain’t gonna start now.

Folks, help me help some Dads save some lives. Some of you must know a Dad in Melbourne with sons about to hit adolesence, or Dad who’s got one son already doing stupid stuff and wants to do something about the next son not following in his brother’s footsteps. TELL THEM TO CONTACT ME! Someone must know a business looking to improve their public profile as an awesome supporter of families and youth welfare:  TELL THEM TO CONTACT ME!

Please, we actually can do something about changing this! In just one weekend, we can keep/start the ball rolling in the right direction for 15 young men and their dads.

Rites of Passage

This post was originally published here on FoF at the end of March 2009. It’s one of the many that was lost during the Malicious Code Attack of August 09, but thanks to my great friend Leah Maclean, we’ve found it and am republishing it here. Almost a year down the track, it’s interesting for me to read it again, and hope it is to you too. Sorry to those who commented last time and whose valuable comments were lost!

My oldest son (affectionately known here by his tag Ewrokka) celebrated his 13th birthday recently. We celebrated with a kind of bar mitzvah. No we’re not Jewish and my Jewish friends would probably think it nothing like a true bar mitzvah; but the similarity was in the purpose of the event - to welcome Ewrokka into young manhood.

For many years, I’ve read the writings of men who say rites of passage, male inititation, the bestowing of identity and confidence and responsibility on adolescent males is sadly missing in Anglo/Western society. Traditionally througout history, throughout the world, the time between 12 and 14 in a male’s life was the time of entry into the World of Men. We have ditched that for an invention of the Industrial Age: the teenage boy.

Our intention was to bestow manhood on my son, with all of the people present (men and women, boys and girls) telling him what they love and respect about him and with many of the men present giving him a word of wisdom and a prayer for his future adventure and contribution to the world.

I’ll say no more about it unless I have express permission from him. We have another collection of challenges for him and some friends to complete over the next 12 months (whose Fathers have gathered together to focus on this year of their sons’ lives). This will culminate with another very different “rite of passage”.

But I’d like to flag the issue of the rite of passage for young males here. (And young females too … I have boys, so I can only focus on my experience with them).

So fellas, what has been your experience with becoming a man? How did you know you were one? Did any significant older males spend time with you during your ‘teens’ and ‘preteens’ to become a compass or mentor to you?

What rituals have you had around coming-of-age for your children, male or female?

Vacation, Vacation, Vacation

Sigh. Well, I’m freshly back from 5-day road trip with my two boys. (My long-suffering wife kept working, enduring lonely nights at home with nothing to keep her happy but having the TV, the bed, the popcorn all to herself. Poor thing.)

Most important lesson I learned from this trip was not to pack too much in.

Second most important, boys eating lots of junk food and being cooped up together in a car and motel rooms = lots of farts – live with it.

Third most important was, if you’ve travelling to another city, get a real map. a handful of google map print-offs won’t do. Canberra is the most bizarrely laid out city on earth. You literally drive in circles, under one cross streett and over the next until you are heading in the opposite direction you think you are. In fact, oldest son came up with the best advice: “Dad, just drive opposite to what you think.” It worked…

Anyhoo. It was definitely worthwhile, and I’m so glad I took the time out to do it, and grateful to the wife for helping me plan accomodation etc. Left to me, we’d be doing the Mary and Joseph thing, roaming around a town after dark looking for an inn…

Without boring you with anecdotes and too many slides, here’s some photos…

Youngest Son (pretty much the only Aldin willing to be photographed). Here you see said youngster posing by a vehicle of destruction at our War Museum in Canberra, probably dreaming about hotwiring it…

 

This is one of the amazing sets of models at the Museum depicting famous scenes from the Great War. Absolutely breathtaking.

 

Constable Pete putting his son in the tree-trunk jail for farting  in the car. 

Smacking

Giving a child a smack. Is there any topic that parents could be more divided over in their opinions? Is there any topic in which ‘experts’ could be more divided… etc?

Let’s compare two recent articles in our Australian press about the topic.

The first article is from last September: Smacking can lower a child’s IQ

“Wow”, thought I, “so that’s what’s wrong with me.”

I’d be impressed with these kinds of headlines if the article actually delivered something to substantiate it. In fact, it was fairly thin and turned around to endorsing smacking in certain circumstances. The main gist of the case presented against any smacking at all went like this

He called on governments to outlaw corporal punishment.

After studying 800 toddlers aged between two and four over a four-year period, he found those who were subjected to smacking had an IQ five points lower than that of a child who wasn’t physically disciplined.

When I read this, one of the things I wondered was “Or could you interpret this data as meaning that kids with lower IQ will tend to be naughtier?” – the article didn’t join the dots and I feel for the researcher (though I disagree with him) because I’m sure his research hasn’t been abley represented here.

A far more helpful perspective, I felt, was this one:

While not an advocate of smacking, Sydney psychologist Dr Judith Kennedy said parents who gave an occasional tap on the bottom should not fear damaging their child. “But a child who is suppressed through physical punishment regularly is going to behave differently,” Dr Kennedy said.

I can see that. There’s a difference between discipline and bullying, as there is between disciplilne and abuse. But I’d be interested in your thoughts, if you have time to read the article itself…

Then there was this second article which came out this week: A smacked child ‘is a successful child’ - the exact opposite claim to the first study, also supported by research. (I loved the comment in this article: “Research into the effects of smacking was previously hampered by the inability to find enough children who had never been smacked, given its past cultural acceptability.”)

The main gist of this latest article/study went like this:

According to the research, children smacked up to the age of six were likely as teenagers to perform better at school and were more likely to carry out volunteer work and to want to go to university than their peers who had never been physically disciplined.

Only those children who continued to be smacked into adolescence showed clear behavioral problems.

Again, I wish they would tease out some of the chains-of-logic within the research, because seriously, you can make statistics say anything you want. (For instance, did you know that 67% of statistics are made up on the spot?) But as someone who isn’t convinced that the odd smack on the bottom = child abuse, I find a study like this very interesting…

My kids haven’t had a smacked bottom in many many years. It was something I never dolled out routinely or often. It felt very very bad to do it. And in all but one case (when the behaviour was due to me feeding him too many coco pops – food additives and all that), I don’t regret it from a “shaping my kids to be better people” perspective. But I have always leaned toward other forms of behaviour managment, and as I say, I haven’t used it since they were young. It was a last resort when their attention needed some serious grabbing…

For my oldest son, financial penalties have been and still are the best form of consequence and punitive discipline. For my youngest, loss of technology priveleges and time outs (where he returns to family life when he decides he can control his temper etc) are the best. (The money one doesn’t work for him).

Quite seriously, the other means of preventing both of them from behaving irresponsibly/disrespectfully are:

• natural consequences. (You made the mess, you clean it.)
• loss of xbox time.
• the threat of a good “talking-to” by dad. Yes. Seriously. (”Son. Do you want me to have a talk to you about this?” “No, Dad, it’s ok, I’ll stop. I’ll never do it again. Just please, PLEASE, don’t give me a serious talking-to about this!!!”). Apparently, I’m boring. Well, whatever works…
• Prevention. Taking them aside BEFORE something happens, or training them to appreciate certain values so that they manage their own behaviour. See, sometimes the talk-with-Dad approach does work, but it’s usually in a positive relaxed manner … and usually involves going out for McDonalds or icecream…

So where do you draw the lines in your discipline of your kids? What’s your opinion on the whole smacking thing?

If you want to leave a comment anonymously, just leave out the website thing. (You’ll have to trust me when it asks for the email address; that’s one of those blog design things I can’t change. But as an accredited life coach, the ethics of my professional prevent me from disclosing things you tell me in confidence anyway … unless you’re really really abusing your kids. If you are, I don’t want to know…)