January 2023: Where to look to “fix things”?

Once upon a time, there was a couple that lived in a beautiful house.  One day they noticed that some of their door frames in the house were shifting and weren’t closing properly. They called in a door frame specialist, who worked all day and fixed the frames so the doors were working again. But a few days later, the frames started shifting again. Then the couple noticed that there were cracks in some places in their inside walls. They called in a wall specialist, who fixed the cracks and painted over them. But a few days later, the cracks started to re-appear.

One day, the couple had a friend over, who was a builder. They told their friend about the problems they were having with their doors and walls.  The friend checked the house out and told them the doors and walls are not the problem; they are symptoms of the REAL problem, which was their house’s foundation was not stable. No matter how many times they fixed the doors or repaired the cracks, the house would shift until its foundation was stable.

In our world we often tend to blame children for problems.  They have no power and, usually, no money, so they are an easy target.   In my profession, we often look at children who are acting out as “broken doors” or “cracked walls” and spend years trying to “fix” them.  But things won’t really change until the foundation is solid, and the foundation for children is their parents.

It’s pretty simple – 1) When children are insecure they tend to manifest it in their behavior (“act out”).   2)  When parents are not communicating, not happy or in conflict, it exacerbates insecurity in children.   We can send our children to years of therapy, punish them or try other behavioral techniques, take them to social skills groups, have them check in with the guidance officer at school, and even drug (oops, “medicate”) them.  Sometimes things might seem better for a short period of time, just like the newly installed door will work for a little while.   But the only way to address the issue is to repair the foundation (or, metaphorically, move to a new house).   And the only ones who have the power to repair the foundation are the parents.

December 2022: Child Protection versus Family Court

I have written extensively, here and elsewhere, about how family court is a destructive process for children. What children need emotionally and developmentally is for their parents to get along, and family court positions parents as enemies and pits them against each other.  It is exactly what children do not need, and they are often traumatized by court and its’ aftermath well into adulthood.

When parents separate their children are going through a major transition, and that’s when they need their parents the most.It is a time for parents to unite, not to be driven apart.  Our adversarial system provides the opposite answer to what children need.  Parents are often devastated by their separation and of course they are vulnerable, scared and often angry.  But it is a time to recognize the other parent as an ally, in being the person on earth who loves your child(ren) as much as you do.

In that context, why couldn’t we conceptualize parental separation as a child protection issue? Children are going through a major transition and could potentially suffer significant trauma. They need protection, love and support; not conflict. What if we saw children of separation as children “at risk”, and if parents needed extra support from a government agency, they would turn to this proposed department of child safety.

I have believed for many years that court is the wrong place for parents who desperately need to come together and instead are being torn apart.  With the increasing popularity of “Parenting Coordinators” and with some psychologists (finally) focusing on post separation co-parenting as part of their practice, there are resources available to support families.  When our relationships end we need support ourselves and certainly can use external resources to help support and protect our children.

Even if people felt the need to preserve family court for certain dire situations (such as domestic violence) why can’t we have a “primary” system focused on collaboration, cooperation and respect, instead of fighting?

November 2022: Questioning

One of the (countless) amazing opportunities we have as parents is we can open our children’s eyes to different ways of thinking about things.  When there is something in society that we wonder “why do people accept that without question?” we have the chance to empower our children to always question and always arrive at what feels like truth in their hearts.   And that is one of the ways parents can change the world.

I write about something specific, but this idea could be applied to virtually anything.  And it’s never about trying to force children to think a certain way. It’s about empowering them to make their own choices and find their own values about things, regardless of what society says.  I want to preface this by expressing my profound and deepest sympathy for any human being who has dealt with the loss of a loved one, no matter how it happened.

I’ve often wondered why we consider someone a criminal if they take money from a crime family to kill people they don’t know, but we consider someone a hero if they take money from the government to kill people they don’t know.  I was listening to a podcast about the armistice ending World War I, and how some soldiers died after the war ended, because the news had not reached them.   I imagine a 19 year old French teenager who has been told to kill German teenagers who wear different outfits, suddenly being told “never mind” because rich, powerful, white men have decided their interests have been met and the war is over.

In our culture we celebrate and romanticize young people who go off to fight because someone told them to.   This perpetuates a system where the rich and powerful can use human capital to try to achieve their political and economic ends. And this isn’t ancient history, as Russia/Ukraine reminds us.

We don’t have power to tell these rich and powerful people that human beings matter.   That ship has long since sailed.  But as parents, we have power to debunk for our children the idea that it is somehow noble or even “heroic” to go kill people you have no dispute with because someone else told you to do so.

If the “universal soldiers” on all sides refuse to do the bidding of others and kill on command, we might really see an end to war. The rich and powerful have proven to use time and time again they are not going to make that change, and why would they, when hundreds of thousands of young people are willing, and sometimes eager, to put on the designated outfit and follow the command to kill young people with other outfits.

October 2022: The Dark Side of Imagination

Sometimes I find myself confronted by my own ideas that I myself don’t like.  One of these times was when I contemplated the down side of imagination.

There are probably few words that have a more universally positive connotation than
“imagination”.  I would put it in a very special category with concepts like “creativity”, “passion” or even “love”.  So what could be a dark side?

I’ve often felt that humans think too much, and that the more we get lost in cognitions the less we are present to our current experience.  Years ago I started wondering where the “tipping point” was:   when did we start finding it so difficult to live in the moment?  And then, as I often do, I started thinking about children.

An infant, theoretically, is perfect at living in the moment.  It’s probably a pretty safe bet that a 4 week old is not worrying about what’s going to happen next week, or what the future holds.  They are truly in the moment and just experiencing whatever is happening for them (warmth, cold, hunger, etc.).   One of the ways that begins to change is with imagination.

The Oxford Dictionary defines imagination as “the faculty or action of forming new ideas, or images or concepts of external objects not present to the senses” (bold italics added).   There is a beautiful aspect to this and this definition conjures up images of Picasso or Beethoven. But there’s also this reality:  the essence of imagination is moving away from being in the moment and into an entirely cognitive process.  Imagination may be one of the ways we most strongly differentiate from animals, and while I am sure it provides us some soaring highs, I wonder if there’s not a cost of some very serious lows.

I love the axiom that what makes us sad is not what is, but the comparison of what is to what we think should be, or could be. If we didn’t know it was possible to have a different amount of money, we would never be bothered by not having what we perceive as enough. There’s also the axiom that anything we can imagine can be achieved. The dark side is that anything we can imagine can also possibly NOT be achieved, and then we are left suffering from something that was never real in the first place.

I want to be, and continue to be, a “fan” of the idea of imagination, but I also think these reflections are hard to avoid.

September 2022: Living Like An Animal

Humans can be very arrogant in believing we are the “superior” species on this planet. I think it’s worth questioning.

Many years ago, when I lived in a country that shall not be named, I was feeling really upset because that country was bombing civilians in Iraq. I could not get it out of my mind. When I got home I took my Golden Retriever for a walk.  As we were walking I looked at him and admired that he was not agonizing about children in Iraq. Neither of us was doing anything to actually help those children, but only one of us was allowing the news to ruin our day.  And then I thought about how humans are often plagued with thoughts about mortality and death, and that can prevent us from being in the moment. But as far as I know, my Golden Retriever was not aware of his own mortality, so he could live every moment fully, and not in the context of a finite life span. While I was thinking all this, he stopped in the middle of the street to use his mouth to scratch his private parts. I started thinking that I would never have the balls to do that (no pun intended).  So if we both had an itch, he’d relieve his but I would suffer until I got to a private place where I could scratch.

So what did all my “advanced cognitive functions” get me? I could worry about things over which I had no control. I could see every moment in the context of inevitable death, and I could be self-conscious whenever I am in public. I started to question whether human existence is really the highest form of existence to which we can aspire.

Maybe not worrying about things, living fully in the moment, and not being self conscious was a richer existence.Sure, we humans can figure out things like how to build nuclear reactors and vacuum cleaning robots, but is that trade-off worthwhile in terms of quality of life?

Maybe Darwin was wrong, at least in the case of humans.  Maybe our cognitive evolution has overshot the mark to where our thought processes are more of a detriment than an asset.

My Golden Retriever passed away years ago, but I have never forgotten that walk. If nothing helps, it keeps me humble about this “superior species” concept.