Summer Self-Reliance for Kids

Every year the local paper publishes a special guide to local summer activities for kids - camps, classes & activities at places like the library or Y. All the activities sound fun. But there are so many that it would be possible to fill a kid's schedule from dawn till nightfall every day. And some parents try to do this - I know because for several brief summers I was one of them.

Ten to fifteen years ago there was a prevalent parenting notion that said "left to their own devices, kids will naturally gravitate towards trouble. Keeping them busy is the only solution." Coupled with the previous decade's trend towards trying to produce superachievers, this encouraged a generation of moms to become micromanagers.

Micromanaging our kids creates several problems: they don't learn the real-life skills of time management and we become frustrated and frazzled. Saddest of all, the kids miss out on some of the greatest pleasures of childhood - impromptu play with whoever happens to be around, making up games and imaginary worlds as they go along.

Kids need unstructured play time just as adults need "down" time. And any parent who is at home with a pack of kids all day needs time to herself as well. Sometimes the best way to arrange this, as I finally discovered, is to invite a few well-behaved kids over for the afternoon and turn the backyard over to them. Provide free things like boxes that can be made into forts. Let them take favorite toys outside. Set out a big bowl of popcorn and jug of kool-aid.

Another option is taking them to a large public park. Let them play freely while you indulge in a "summer read" book.

During the past few years I've met an increasing number of parents who are opting out of summer teams sports, June-August camps and expensive "enrichment" activities all summer so that the whole family can enjoy a slower pace. Maybe mainstream culture is ready to step back from helicoptering and admit that when kids are allowed to manage themselves, they often do just fine.

Letting kids make some of their own choices allows them to exercise independence while giving the adult in charge a much-needed break.

Tantrum Nation: our double standard for public behavior is confusing our kids

(Note: I wrote this piece for a certain occasion, not for this blog. It doesn't exactly fit the theme of living outside the lines...then again, maybe civility is enough of an "endangered species" to qualify.)

Last fall, a local student received a short term suspension from school for engaging in a shouting match with a classmate. When he returned to school, he was required to participate in counselor-mediated sessions with the classmate and devise an anger management plan.

Later that week, a grown man from the area was lauded by Tea Party types for his over-the-edge rant at a town hall meeting. He received free publicity via YouTube, with encouragement to run for office.

What's the difference between the two cases? I don't see any. Bad behavior is bad behavior, whether the tantrum is thrown by a toddler, a teen or an adult.

It's hard for me to explain to my teenage son why anger management is a good thing when media personalities such as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck get paid millions to rant on air. Or why elementary school-style name-calling is considered immature in his case, but not for Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin. Or why Dr. Laura and Michael Moore are allowed to routinely use epithets like "idiot" and "stupid," but he and his peers aren't. Use of abrasive language crosses political and gender lines; while ultracons are the currently the most visible (or audible) , they certainly aren't the only group guilty of trash talk.

When I've had to reprimand kids (my own or students) for losing their cool in public, I give the speech that adults are supposed to give: trash talk is wrong regardless of who's doing it; rants say more about the ranter than the target; right action eventually provides its own reward. But he isn't buying it anymore, and I don't blame him.

Young people are better at seeing through hypocrisy than most adults realize. This should make all of us over 25 profoundly uncomfortable. Yet in all the media-driven discussions about our supposedly disrespectful youth culture, I've never heard anyone point out that maybe kids hurl insults, push each other around or solve problems with fists because they observe adults getting away with aggression.

A small percentage of the population in any society is cursed with a short fuse but most societies don't see this as a virtue. It seems to me that an increasing number of Americans do. Being angry makes us special. It gives us permission to disrupt events, be rude to customer service providers, threaten teachers, punch the referee or call anyone who disagrees with us an idiot.

Righteous anger even gives a few people permission to kill. When anger stems from political or religious extremism, bad behavior takes on a frightening tinge. Like the Viking berserkers who ate psychotropic mushrooms before going into battle, someone raising holy hell is beyond the reach of reason or restraint; their zeal acts like a drug. How many parents would want a troubled teen to emulate Timothy McVeigh? Yet when we grant celebrity status to people who threaten violence, like the guy who posted the Obama assasination site on Facebook, it looks like approval to an attention-hungry kid.

We need to get a grip on ourselves or we won't have anything to offer kids who are angry, confused and hurting. As with any public issue, it starts at home but has to move into larger society eventually. This might entail challenging inflammatory statements or refusing to fuel certain conversations - situations that make mild-mannered, easygoing people like me uncomfortable. But if we don't act, who will?

Not long ago I was at a conference. Six or seven of us stood around making small talk about current events. One participant cracked a joke with ugly racial overtones about the President, coupled with hints of violence. The punch line hung in the air for a moment, probably because the rest of us were too dumbfounded to respond. Then one of my colleagues - a staunch Republican, by the way - said, "That's not funny."

Speaking up like she did takes courage. But if those of us who are concerned about civility and what the future holds for our kids don't stick out our necks, we have no grounds on which to judge young people for disrespectful behavior. It's time to take out the trash - before we bury ourselves in it.

Spirituality Outside the Lines - Seekers, Skeptics & Explorers

I'm amazed by the number of people I've met in the last decade who don't fit into any one religious "box." They draw inspiration from a number of traditions, and often feel uncomfortable in organized religious institutions. Most consider themselves lifelong seekers.

Here are a few resources for spiritual eclectics:

• Seeking Enlightenment Hat by Hat by mystery author Nevada Barr. A down-to-earth skeptic, Barr explains why she chose to convert to Christianity and join a neighborhood church.
• The Road Less Traveled and Different Drum by M. Scott Peck. These two books, written by another late convert who continued to appreciate the value of free inquiry and skepticism, are classics.
• The Red Book by Sera Beak. The intended audience is young women but anyone who has ever wondered if spirituality could be both practical and magical should read this. Check out her website spiritualcowgirl.com
• A Charmed Life by Patricia Telesco. For those who want to explore Pagan or Wiccan paths.
  
• Full Catastrophe Living by Jon Kabat-Zinn. A Zen-based guide to navigating life's rough waters. He heads the U. Mass. medical school's mindfulness program, the Omega Institute - eomega.org
• God's Politics by Jim Wallis of Sojourners, the organization for progressive, politically active Christians. See also
  
• Einstein's God - Conversations About God and the Human Spirit by Krista Tippett, who hosts the PBS radio program Speaking of Faith (speakingoffaith.publicradio.org).
• Create Your Personal Sacred Text by Bobbi Parish. The author leads readers through a process of reading passages from the world's sacred books such as the Bible, Koran and Vedas, then choosing passages to include in a personal book. After completing this step, she provides springboards for the reader to write her own sacred stories, poetry or sayings.
• Return to Love by Marianne Williams; As Above, So Below by Ronald Miller (definitely for seekers - it describes progressive variations on the largest world religions plus less well-known alternatives) ; To a Dancing God by Sam Keene.

The market (and libraries) are, in fact, awash in books, audio & digital resources and DVDs on spiritual exploration. These items are only a tiny sample.

A2D

Summer is the time for class reunions and other events involving getting together with large numbers of people you might not see often. You may have been close at one time but grew apart over the years. Or you might be part of the same extended family but never quite saw eye-to-eye. Judging from the vast amount of literature - books, magazines, websites - on managing social or family-related holiday stress, a lot of people feel trepidation over these gatherings. Much of the stress seems to come from ongoing disagreements over lifestyle, politics, religion and other personal choices.

Although I haven't experienced the intense ongoing conflict that friends have described to me, I've been through a fair number of incidents where I felt uncomfortable and unsure how to respond. During one large event, one person arrived so amped up by a political cause she'd joined that she forced the topic into every conversation, loudly and aggressively. I had the sense that she was (perhaps subconsciously) looking for an argument, and I didn't feel like obliging her. Nor did I want her to leave the event with the impression that everyone felt the same way, which was what would happen if no one spoke up. At a smaller gathering, about 10 of us were sitting around the table, and someone made a statement about a certain group of people in a manner that implied we all agreed.

Both times I was stuck for words. It wasn't until my son, age 12 at the time, confessed to me that he'd had an argument with a cousin over religious beliefs that I decided to come up with better ways to deal with disagreement than either fighting or staying silent. After a lot of experimenting, I've noticed that one simple sentence does the trick most of the time: "We'll have to agree to disagree." I call it A2D.

A2D works because it lets the person pushing the envelope know that you don't agree but that you're not willing to duke it out. Of course, if you enjoy loud debates and stirring things up, it's not an issue. But if you'd rather spend precious time with friends or relatives enjoying their company, it's your right to refuse to argue. It's also your right to be treated respectfully. A2D is the most effective one-liner I've found that gets this message across.

Before heading out to another "do," I coached my son on various ways to respond to aggressive or hostile exchanges arising from differences of opinion. We rehearsed A2D and other scenarios. He felt more confident after that.

People who live outside the lines are especially susceptible to feeling like outsiders within their own family or school. Using A2D eliminates some of the stress engendered by feeling as though you have to defend who you are.

The Guilty Bystander

When I was growing up back in the 70s, harassment and bullying weren't on the social radar, either at school or in the workplace. I vividly remember a classmate who was relentlessly hounded until her parents actually transferred her to another school. As far as I could tell, the only reason her tormentors decided she needed to be bullied was that she ran faster than any of the boys. It didn't take much to be "different" in the early 1970s, especially in a small parochial school. Living outside the lines was risky.

Counselors work with both bullies and victims but only recently have professionals turned their attention to the group called Bystanders. These are the people who know what's going on, know it's wrong but are afraid to take any risks inherent in helping the victim. In elementary school I was a bystander. I knew that the reasons my classmate's harassers gave for picking on her were silly and probably untrue, but I didn't speak up.

In certain settings, bystanders might be perfectly right about the fear of retaliation. School cliques can be cruel. Employees in companies with ruthless policies and no union protection can be fired for telling the truth. But the stubborn fact is that injustices don't usually change until someone challenges them. The challenge often begins when one person speaks up.

One of my intentions for this year is to get into the habit of speaking up for others who are being slammed. In the current economic and emotional climate this might include whole groups of people; hard times always produce scapegoats and underdogs are easy targets. For easygoing introverts, speaking up is a real pain - we'd rather kick back and shoot the breeze over a beer.

But in cases where another person's safety, livelihood, reputation or even life (remember the recent Phoebe Prince case, where the victim committed suicide?) are at stake, doing the right thing trumps personal comfort.

Although some of us are pretty good at blending in, the truth is that we're all a little quirky. The life we save may someday be our own.

The Anti-Helicopter

Once when our younger boy was in Scouts, he ran into a dilemma. If he didn't finish a certain project that evening, he wouldn't receive an expected award the next day. However, he'd allowed household tasks to build up as well, and they also needed to be finished that evening because of an outside deadline. He'd had the opportunity to finish both tasks over the weekend but chose to delay them. If he finished the Scout project later, he'd get the award next month.

The den leader called me and asked if I would accomodate his need for extra time for the project. I explained to her that he'd brought the situation about via his choices and we felt that he might have the opportunity to learn an important lesson in delayed gratification and time management. Nevertheless, we would help him figure out possible ways to complete both tasks, if he wanted.

He did the household work and didn't quite finish the scout project. The leader gave him the badge anyway. "He worked so hard on it during meetings," she said.

All I could think was, "What does this teach him?" That he doesn't have to manage his time, keep agreements, make difficult choices or complete things on time? That someone will bail him out when he doesn't follow through?

For the last 20 years, mainstream American parents have been so devoted to helping their kids "get ahead" that sometimes anything goes. Acting responsibly, contributing to the household/family and even treating others well have fallen by the wayside. Helicopter parenting has been the gold standard - if you don't type your kid's papers for him, do all the cooking and dishes so he can focus on get-ahead activities, or pay his way through college, you're a slacker.

Yet from what I can see, copter parenting hasn't created responsible young adults. It seems to keep a lot of "kiddults" stuck. Maybe those of us who anti-helicopters did the right thing. Only time will tell.

Parenting Outside the Lines

Nowhere did I feel more out of sync with those around me than my new-mom days almost 20 years ago. We still lived in the homogeneous suburb into which we'd landed when we moved back to the Northwest. All around me, other mothers of young children were loading up minivans and SUVs with kid paraphernalia whenever they went anywhere...enrolling their offspring in every enrichment activity that could be crammed into the schedule... "staying home" so that they could spend their days chauffeuring kids all over creation...and buying stuff for the kids. Lots of stuff.

My husband Tom worked as an assistant in a school district program for the children of farm workers. People who work with low-income Spanish speakers don't make lots of money themselves, so I always had to work as well. During an era when staying home was trendy (rather than being seen as one choice among many), this automatically downscaled me. So did not having the kidstuff and the minivan in which to cram it. My then-teenage stepson resented our "poor" lifestyle.

The problem was that his dad and I didn't feel poor. The house was small but comfortable. We ate well, mostly because we grew many of our own vegetables and we both cook. We found plenty of free and cheap things to do on weekends. Best of all, we were both extremely fit and could walk everywhere. Why would anyone feel sorry for us?

We moved into a downtown neighborhood, boy #1 graduated and left for college, and boy #2 went through school. In this neighborhood our thrifty habits and anti-career jobs weren't out of place. However, another way of being the Very Oddmother presented itself. This was during the late 1990s through about 2005, when the frenzy of "scheduled family hyperactivity" reached its height, along with the glorification of the Helicopter Mom. Any woman who didn't spend every waking minute helping her children be all that they could be was a slacker.

Tom didn't want to give up hiking, I chose to keep on writing and neither of us thought that excusing kids from household work in order to facilitate soccer superstardom provided good role modeling. We made a family rule: each of us could have two activities. Each member gets some of what he wants, but no one gets everything he wants. And all family members contribute to the smooth functioning of the household via useful work (usually called Chores).

Both boys had to earn a certain percentage of expensive wish-list items, such as electronics, by saving allowance, doing yardwork around the neighborhood or eventually, getting a part time job. At age 12, Noel bought his Xbox after saving for nearly 16 months (we paid roughly one-third the cost).

Some of my collegues in the PTSA and other parent groups seemed shocked by this, and by the limits we set on extracurricular activities. But to me, it makes sense: part of the job of parents is to prepare children for adult life, and kids won't be prepared if they don't have basic life skills.

Parenting outside the lines means challenging some basic North American practices:

• Excusing kids from work at home so that they can devote all their time to superachieving at school.
• Buying something simply because all the "it" kids have it.
• Driving kids everywhere when bicycling, walking, taking the city bus or carpooling are options.
• Mistaking good grades for signs of learning or high test scores for evidence of intelligence.
• Insistently railroading all kids towards "college" (the 4-year university) even when the child's interests and abilities lie elsewhere, such as in the trades.
  

Over the past decade, it has seemed to me that more and more parents are questioning these practices. Tough economic times make us reconsider appropriateness and affordability. Maybe someday the lines themselves won't be so confining. In the meantime, people who parent outside the lines need all the resources, support and company they can get. That's what I'll cover during the upcoming month.

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One More Thing About Work...

Before I go on to another topic, I'd like to emphasize that if you're a Living Outside the Lines person, especially on the job, it's vital keep a bunch of irons in the fire. No matter how demanding your job is, don't let it usurp time for family, friends, community and solo pursuits. You need as many sources of satisfaction as possible, and as many people in your cheering section as you can gather. The people, places and activities we love are like water, and when a large patch of your day feels like a desert, small springs here and there can be life-savers. Here are a few concrete small actions you can take now to make sure your "springs" don't dry up:

Spend the last half hour of the day talking to your spouse or partner - but not about business.

Tuck young kids into bed and tell them you love them.

Send a quick "hello" email to a friend.

Take a walk through your neighborhood and greet whomever you meet.

Call a long-distance family member during lunch break or on the weekend.

...you can probably come up with a number of other ways. Happy watering!