Our Kids – Our Happiness?

by | Jun 19, 2011 | Bully Proof Classroom, Grandparents

I was speaking with my daughter Sarah over a year ago and she asked  me if I would make an appointment for her with the doctor. She wasn’t sick, just a check up. I said sure and made the appointment for her on January 4, 2010 at 1:30 in the afternoon. That date just happened to be my birthday. When I called to tell her the date of the appointment she said to me “Isn’t there something else you would rather do on your birthday than take me to the doctor?” I responded by saying, “There isn’t anything else I’d rather do than spend time with you on my birthday.”  She kept insisting that I should reschedule the appointment, but I insisted it wasn’t a problem so she gave in and said okay, with another OKAY just for good measure. On another occasion I was visiting my sister and her husband with my children for the Christmas Holiday. Her and her husband gave me a wonderful gift: Two tickets to a New York Giants football game. What a gift. I put Sarah on the spot and asked her if she wanted to go, she reluctantly agreed. Then I thought what about Grace, my youngest daughter, can’t take one and not the other. I spoke to them on the way home telling them that I was going to take one of my good friends to the game, Mr. Olsen. To my surprise they both said yes please take Mr. Olsen and have a good time. Their tone was almost one of relief.

 

I love being around my kids. They mean the world to me. They make me happy. They are my best friends. But, I learned a very important lesson after these two events that almost slipped by me. My kids do not want to be responsible for my happiness; they want me to be happy on my own, with my own life, and my own activities. When our children are young they rely on us to teach them how to participate in activities that are fun and bring a sense of happiness and joy to their lives. As they grow older and more independent they learn how to discover these things on their own and need less and less of our help and honestly need our presence less and less. This begs the questions; do we as parents grow more or less dependent on our children as they grow older?  Did we as parents get so lost in the lives of our now grown children that we lost our own life and have diminished our ability to live independent of our children? We raised our children to function independent of us as parents. We raised our children to perform as adults in our absence. This is all done so unwittingly and so incrementally that parents don’t even see the dysfunction coming. They don’t see it coming until they have a parent who is 75 years old whose happiness has been measured over the years by the amount of time their children have spent with them. Parents, you know who you are, you feel such a responsibility to that elderly parent, and such guilt that your life is not your own. That dysfunction becomes normal for you; consequently you deal with your children the same way. No one grows up; we all remain children looking to others to be responsible for our happiness.

 

We should enjoy the presence of our children but we shouldn’t rely on it as our sole source of enjoyment. Our kids don’t want the responsibility of it. They want us to enjoy our spouse, a friend, or if you are divorced a male or female companion. Crushing your kids with phone calls, and demands for their company, or worse yet feeling guilty because you believe in some sick way that they constantly want or need you around is unfair to them and to you as the parent. Trust me when I tell you that your kids will never tell you, but as they grow older they won’t love you more they’ll resent you more. You will be waiting for the phone to ring, and will wish you knew how to deal with your time and your life. You will be wondering if they’re mad at you. The less they call, the more anger you will have toward them. When you die your kids won’t be bereaved they will be relieved. All because you didn’t know your place in the lives of your children.

Bullying Behavior Is Never Forgotten

by | Jun 6, 2011 | Bully Proof Classroom

I speak to teachers all over New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia so I was thrilled when I got a call from my hometown school district, and they asked me to do a workshop for their teachers. Some of the teachers I had when I was a student were still there, and it was a lot of fun for me to be teaching them something. The topic that they asked me to speak about was “Student Behavior Management.” I started to talk about bullying which is a significant part of behavior management today, and what an impact this horrible behavior can have on the school climate, individual classrooms, students, teachers, and even the community where the students live. When I gave the group a break one of the teachers in the audience came up to me and said, “When we were kids, you and I were both bullied by Tommy.” I looked at him and realized that he was the cousin of two boys that I played with when I was in elementary school. One of those was Tommy, who had bullied me. As soon as he mentioned Tommy and the fact that I was bullied by this boy I automatically started to look around to see if Tommy was there, even though I knew he probably wasn’t. This young teacher shared with me that even though Tommy was his cousin, Tommy had bullied him. He told me that his cousin used to hold him under water, push him, shove him, slap him, and to sum it all up, terrorize him. Both of us agreed that we were still scared to death of him, even though we were grown men. We talked about how he had been much bigger than we were and used his size to intimidate and frighten us. The part of our conversation that concerned me the most was that even after more than 30 years we both still remembered every bullying thing Tommy had done to us; we still had the experience of being bullied tucked away somewhere in our minds. It is no surprise to me that bullying has gotten worse over the years. Bullying has gotten so bad that the government has had to step in and make it mandatory that programs be created to stop bullying in our schools and in society. Not all people understand this behavior, and some people don’t even realize what bullying actually is. Many people don’t understand how they contribute to the continuation of the behavior, and in their own way make it worse. What is bullying? Bullying among children is most commonly defined as intentional, repeated, hurtful acts, words, or other behavior such as name calling, threatening, and/or shunning committed by one or more children against another. These negative acts are not intentionally provoked by the victims, and to be defined as bullying, an imbalance in real or perceived power must exist between the bully and the victim. Bullying may be physical, verbal, emotional, or relational. Bullying interferes with learning. In schools, acts of bullying usually occur away from the eyes of the teacher or responsible adults, consequently, if the bully goes unpunished, a climate of fear envelopes the victims. A comprehensive approach to bullying is necessary. Many children and adults seriously underestimate the effects of bullying and the harm that it causes the victims. Educators, parents, and children concerned with violence prevention should be concerned with the phenomenon of bullying because it is linked to more violent behavior.