Category: Parenting

Family travel to troubled places

Posted on by Suki

We recently got back from a trip to Greece, where we traveled around the country with our children. Back home, people asked, “Are you sure you want to go there with all the trouble that’s happening?” Well, yes, we were sure. And yes, we had a fabulous time.

The news out of Greece these days seems to be all bad. Forests being chopped down because the government levied a high tax on heating oil. Crime up in Athens. The government threatening to leave the Euro Zone. Immigrants floating in from North Africa every day because no matter how bad things are in Greece, they look pretty good from across the Mediterranean.

Sunset dinner in Santorini.
Sunset dinner in Santorini.

I know that there are many miserable people in Greece right now, and we saw plenty of indications – mostly empty storefronts and half-built buildings – that not all is peachy-keen. But the main industry of Greece is tourism, and they are serious about it. And to us, it seemed like a fine time to go to Greece. With tourism down, prices are depressed, hotels are more available, and everyone we met was all the happier to have our support (and our dollars).

Greece occupies a strange place in the Western imagination. It is at once the birthplace of democracy and in recent times under the control of a military communist regime. It is the cradle of European civilization at the same time that its Mediterranean climate and laid-back culture link it to the warmer regions of the south. It is a place visited both for history and intellectual enlightenment and for the nude beaches and nightclubs.

A family traveling in Greece, of course, takes part only in those aspects of Greece that fit their needs. We didn’t go to the poor and immigrant neighborhoods where we would have seen the effects of the economy in a more dramatic way. We didn’t have any interest in the nude beaches and nightclubs so we couldn’t know if their popularity has declined as Northern Europeans and Britons are deciding to stay home rather than take their annual pilgrimage to the lovely Aegean climate.

What we did see, however, was a nation ready and willing to share the history and beauty of their nation with others. I have traveled everywhere from the Baltics to Central America, and I have never been to a place where the people were so kind, so accepting of foreigners who can’t speak their language, and so interested in making sure that we left with an appreciation for everything their country has to offer. In all of Greece, one person spoke shortly and dismissively to me—but I only remember her because she was the only one. Can you imagine spending three weeks in the US, starting and ending in New York City, without having dealt with annoyed Americans who expected you to speak English and were too busy to show you the way when you were lost? More than once, a Greek shop-owner left his building and walked me to a corner to point the direction I needed to go. We were never lost for more than a few seconds, and only one person who helped us tried to convince us to go to his cousin’s fabulous restaurant.

But here we are back in the States, and again, the news from Greece is all bad. A rabies outbreak, austerity measures imposed by the EU, and new taxes levied on doctors are all in the news. But nowhere is the news that travelers in Greece are still welcomed with open arms, fed wholesome, delicious food, and educated about the world’s oldest democracy and breeding ground of many of our greatest academic and artistic achievements.

What we see from the outside is never a full picture of a place. What we experience inside as tourists is never a full picture of life there. But I think it’s always worth remembering that even in difficult times, life goes on. We spent as little money as possible on our trip, but we were happy to spend what we did in a country so welcoming of travelers and so important to understanding the history of the modern world.

So here is my small addition to the cacophony of voices: Should we travel to Greece even though it’s having all these economic troubles? Oh, yes, you should. Ignore the naysayers and enjoy the beaches and nightclubs, if that’s what you’re going for, or the history and intellectual tradition. In any case, make sure to eat well and appreciate the way Greeks open their home with an invitation to the world. It’s a wonderful place to travel, whether you have to change your dollars to euros or drachmas!

Book review: The Explosive Child

Posted on by Suki

The Explosive Child: A new approach for understanding and parenting easily frustrated, chronically inflexible children
Ross W. Greene, Ph.D.
HarperCollins, 2009

The Explosive Child by Ross Greene has been on my reading list for a long time. I regret that I didn’t get to it earlier, though reading it now, when many of the other difficulties in our household have been ironed out, has been good timing.

Greene, who is a clinical professor of psychiatry, starts with a simple thesis that many families with sensitive, twice-exceptional, ADHD, learning disabled, or emotionally volatile children figure out over time: the usual parenting strategies don’t work with these kids. Many of us have taken a journey in this regard. We start out looking for help from standard parenting manuals, friends with typical kids, or even professionals. They have great ideas, but for some reason our kids are different.

Greene speaks directly to parents who feel like they’ve tried everything, and he points out that most of the solutions we’ve heard about boil down to two approaches. What he calls Plan A is otherwise known as authoritarian parenting; this is the “Because I said so” approach. Greene notes that even milder-sounding terms like “consequences” are a form of Plan A, because they don’t take the child’s point of view into account.

What he calls Plan C is the opposite: just giving in and letting explosive kids get their way. This permissive approach often seems easier in the short term, and Greene acknowledges that sometimes it’s a necessary part of getting through the day. Though most parenting books don’t advocate permissiveness directly, they do often counsel parents to offer understanding and support to their children in the midst of a tantrum, without giving any guidance for addressing the root causes of the behavior, as typically developing children will usually outgrow tantrums without intervention.

Greene’s interest is in helping parents put together a plan that not only addresses the root of the problem but also helps the child learn valuable life skills in the process. Neither Plan A nor Plan C fulfills these criteria, and in fact, both approaches can damage a volatile child’s chance of developing into a healthy functioning adult.

Greene’s Plan B isn’t easy. First of all, he acknowledges that it pushes a lot of common parenting buttons. Most of us harbor deep suspicions about letting badly behaving children “get away with it.” Also, we have immediate goals, such as wishing our children to be polite in public, that Plan B will put off for a more distant time while we work on our own responses to our children’s behavior. And, he admits, Plan B can be hard for our extended community, such grandparents, teachers, and adult friends, to buy into.

But the great thing about this book is its watertight argumentation: no matter what your resistance to moving to this new—difficult—mode of dealing with your child’s explosive behavior, Greene has a thoughtful, empathetic response.

I can’t vouch for the longterm success of Greene’s approach in my own parenting life, as I just read the book and am working slowly to implement changes in my own responses to common situations in our household. But I can say that as I read this book, I kept saying, “yes,” “yes,” “yes,” as Greene outlined the difficulties of raising a volatile child, and solutions that are at once sympathetic, humane, practical, and based on the longterm goal that we all have: raising happy, well-adjusted adults.

Update, 5 years later

I see that I wrote this five years ago. I can now revisit my last paragraph above and unequivocally state that Greene’s approach has been successful in my family and also for me as a teacher. I believe that reading this book changed the path our family was on. My fifteen-year-old is a happy, well-adjusted kid. Yes, sometimes we argue, but in a normal, healthy way. I can’t recommend Greene’s collaborative approach highly enough.

Authoritative homeschooling

Posted on by Suki

One of the questions that new homeschoolers often ask is “how am I ever going to get my child to do any work?” Having had a child in school, they lament, “it was hard enough to get him to do homework!”

Like everything in homeschooling, the answer depends on the family, their values, the choices they make, and how they view their roles. But in general, the approaches can be broken up into three groups: authoritarian, pure unschooling, and authoritative.

Authoritarian homeschoolers are perhaps the ones that the general public is most familiar with. Most conservative homeschooling families work on some version of the authoritarian model, because that’s also the model they parent by. Authoritarian families, when they transition from school to homeschool, are less likely to have a huge change in their relationship with their children. They started out already viewing their role as parents in a way that works well with a school-based model of homeschooling: “Because I told you to” is an explanation that their children are familiar with, so transitioning to a school-based model of homeschooling can work quite smoothly.

Homeschoolers who embrace pure unschooling—child-led learning where the parents do not impose any restrictions or requirements on what and how the child learns—generally spring from families that already follow a similar model of parenting. I’ve seen plenty of parents who express an interest in pure unschooling quake at really following through when their children decide to play computer games for 36 hours straight! This model of homeschooling is as hard for parents to follow as authoritarian homeschooling, if this isn’t the way their families work already. The families that this approach works for are families that already follow something like this model in their parenting style.

What what are we left with? Most of the families I know who are moving from school to homeschool do not already run authoritarian households, and would not be comfortable with a pure unschooling approach. Immediately, they ask the question, “How am I ever going to get my child to do any work?” and it’s a complicated question for them. I think the best answer for those of us in the middle lies in translating the “authoritative” style of parenting to a similar model for homeschooling. Parenting Science offers a nicely laid out definition of what authoritative parenting is (whether or not you consider yourself “science-minded”). Starting from that definition, here’s how I would translate this approach to homeschooling:

  • Like pure unschoolers, authoritative homeschoolers respond to their children’s interests, passions, and desires.
  • Unlike pure unschoolers, however, authoritative homeschoolers offer firm guidance and structure to help their children learn knowledge and skills that the parents believe are important.
  • Like authoritarian homeschoolers, authoritative homeschoolers embrace the idea that there is a body of knowledge and certain skills that should be taught in their homeschool.
  • Unlike authoritarian homeschoolers, however, authoritative homeschoolers encourage their children to question the validity of what they are studying, argue for changes in curriculum or approach, and lead their own studies when appropriate.
  • Authoritative homeschoolers value a balance between freedom and responsibility: for us, homeschooling is about freeing our children from the unreasonable and sometimes harmful expectations of school, while not freeing them from the responsibility to become educated, productive adults.
  • Authoritative homeschoolers want to produce independent thinkers, but we also want to produce adults who have self-discipline, understand how to set and meet goals, and respect the differing opinions and goals of other people.

Here are two examples of how this works in a real-world homeschool:

I hate math!

Your 9-year-old daughter says she really hates math and wants to stop studying math altogether. You believe that not only are math skills important for life in general, but you know that your daughter’s current ambition is to be a veterinarian, and without strong math skills, she will not be able to make that goal.

As an authoritative parent, you know that your child will not necessarily have the same goal when she’s 18 that she has now, but you honor your child’s goal and support her in trying to achieve it. You are tempted to lay down the law and say that your daughter WILL learn long division NOW and she won’t get up from the table until she does it. However, you know that the result will be screaming, tears, and bad feelings that will result in no learning at all.

So instead, you back off and set a meeting time to talk about what is going to happen with math. You ask your daughter why she doesn’t like math, and you listen without criticizing her. You find out, about ten minutes into the conversation, that she actually doesn’t want to stop math—she wants to stop (for now) working on long division, which is very frustrating to her. She tells you that what she’d really like to do is some cool geometry projects. You remember a curriculum you looked at and show it to her on the company’s website. She agrees that it looks fun and that for the next few months you will study geometry and lay off long division.

You may or may not (depending on how your family works) set an official meeting time in a few months to revisit the issue.

 I’m sick of this class.

You have a 15-year-old son who agreed that it was time to try out taking classes that had assignments and deadlines. He has done some goal-setting with you and has stated an interest into getting into a certain university that is quite competitive. Together you’ve researched what that college and others like it will want to see on a transcript.

So he signed up for two classes: an online math class and an in-person English class. For the first couple of months, he was doing pretty well. There was a hump where he wanted to drop out of the class early on, but after you talked it through with him, it turned out that he was feeling demoralized because he didn’t know about something that all the other kids seemed to get really easily. So you asked his uncle, who is an engineer, to help him out, and once he understood the problem he got back on track.

But now it’s spring and he has been playing baseball and spending more time with friends. The English class, he says, is too demanding. He just can’t do the work. He wants to drop out. You don’t tell him that dropping out is not an option because you know that this will turn it into a power struggle, which will mean no one will really win. Instead, you sit down with him and look at what he’s done so far, and how much is left. He has done 90% of the reading and has one paper left. He sees already, once you present what he’s done, that he’s on the home stretch.

You ask him what he will put on his transcript for spring semester when he’s applying to colleges, and he admits that it would be good to be able to say that he completed a course. You ask him if he wants to repeat it in the summer, when he was hoping to take time off from academic work, or in the fall, when he was planning an already full schedule. He agrees that he should just put in the effort to try to finish. He asks whether you think the teacher would give him a short extension on the paper. You say that it wouldn’t hurt to ask, but that he should have his reasons ready. Well, he admits, wanting to play more baseball is probably not the most compelling argument. He asks you to help him put goals on his schedule so he can make sure he gets it done on time.

These two examples are idealized, though they are altered forms of things that have happened in our household. But I think the authoritative model offers parents a way to work through homeschooling snags without damaging their relationships with their children. I admit that I don’t always remember to follow my own advice, and there are days in our house when I attempt to force my will, or just give up altogether and let them do something I don’t agree with. But our most successful homeschooling moments follow the authoritative model, where I involve my child – and sometimes the whole family – in decision-making and goal setting.

When children are force-fed violent entertainment

Posted on by Suki

Every family I know has had the experience: They were in a public place and their children were exposed to violent entertainment that they didn’t choose. If you’re at the shopping mall or a restaurant, you can vote with your feet. But when you’re in an airplane, there’s nowhere to go.

One of my favorite organizations, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, is lobbying United Airlines to stop playing “PG” movies after an incident where a family objected to their children being force-fed a violent film while on a flight. United treated the family like they were the ones who had a problem, but clearly, any organization that thinks that it’s right to force everyone on a plane to watch objectionable material has a seriously damaged moral compass.

Appropriate for kids?

“For parents who travel with young children, being unable to escape from violent and/or sexualized media is an all-too-familiar experience.”

Please join me in support CCFC’s effort to curb this practice:

Tell United Airlines: No Media Violence on Overhead Screens

For years, United Airlines has refused multiple requests from parents and advocates to stop showing violent movies on overhead screens. But after a flight crew’s overreaction to a family’s efforts to shield their children from the violent PG-13 film Alex Cross (pictured), the airline has agreed to review its policies. For parents who travel with young children, being unable to escape from violent media is an all-too-familiar experience. Let’s change that. Learn more and add your voice to the nearly 2,000 parents who have urged United to stop showing violent PG-13 movies on publicly-visible overhead screens by visiting http://www.commercialfreechildhood.org/action/tell-united-no-media-violence-overhead-screens.

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