Parenting Archives : Page 9 of 80 : Suki Wessling, writer

Half-empty nest syndrome

Posted on May 23, 2017 by Suki

I remember when my kids were little and I would talk to parents of teens. They always seemed so… calm? resigned? detached? Parenting little ones was a full commitment, physically, intellectually, emotionally. But clearly parenting teens was something different.

If you have little ones and you’re reading this, you might think that I seem, well, calm… resigned… detached. It’s true, part of having kids who are leaving the nest, as my older one is in a week (gak!), is a process of letting go. And as a friend pointed out to me the other day, I am really letting go. My son is jetting off to the Middle East to study Arabic and regional history and politics.

This is not at all like sending him off to sleepaway camp.

But sending our kids out into the world is also the culmination of the biggest commitment we can make in our lives: to bring a person into this world that we will nurture and do our best to raise into a functional adult of the kind that we want to be around. I know some people who have had to let go of their precocious ones early, and some people whose teens morphed into mid-20s adults before they were really “out of the nest.” But eventually, this ending, which is really a beginning, will come about. Our newly adult children will go off to college to study with teachers we will never meet or get a job working for people we don’t know. They will hang out with friends whose parents don’t see us at PTA meetings. They will make decisions without even bothering to text us about them.

Cuz is also going off to college! How they do grow.

And it will be good.

I know that I’m not losing anything, and I also know that the job of parenting is never quite over. But I do know that when he steps onto that jet, even though he’ll be back for a few weeks before college, and then he’ll probably be home for holidays, this is the end of something.

And it’s been great. I will never forget the way the pre-mom me laughed off the phrase “the hardest job I’ve ever had,” which so many parents echo. Before I had children, I simply had no idea what this was all about.

But now that I am sending one off into the world, I can tell those of you who are in the thick of it—sometimes wondering whether your sanity, your physical health, or your marriage will survive it—that parenting is truly the hardest job.

And truly the most rewarding. The imperfect, complex, still-developing humans that we send out into the world are the result of our hard work. What they do with their lives is their responsibility, but no matter what ends up happening, we parents can know that we did our best with what we had.

Related: A good word about teenagers

Santa Cruz Families March for Women… and all of us

Posted on February 5, 2017May 23, 2019 by Suki

Interviews by Suki Wessling
Photographs by Abe Jellinek

(C)AJellinek2017 — Thousands of Santa Cruzans marched together in an incredible show of unity in our support of diversity and dignity for everyone.

Click on photos to see them full-size.

If ever all of Santa Cruz gathered for a big family photo, this would have been the day. On January 21, the day after the inauguration of a president that Santa Cruzans overwhelmingly voted against, whose platform contradicts nearly every strongly held value of our citizens, our community came out for a day of celebration. We celebrated our diversity and our strong values, along with our affirmation of the rights of all the people who felt that their voices weren’t heard in this election. In this photo essay, each family we photographed answered the question, “What are you doing here?”

Kate: “We’re here to support rights for everybody, for women, for minorities. There’s a lot of fear out there. For the kids, we’ve been aware that the fear is going through to them, so we wanted to say something positive. We’re stronger together!”

Andi: “I am marching as the parent of a transgender child whose safety is in jeopardy with the incoming administration, as well as her trans-specific healthcare which will almost certainly be removed from insurance mandates.”

Tessa: “I’m here for women’s rights and just because of everything is going on, I want to feel safe with everything.”

Tiffany: “We wanted to be an example to her to show that in terms of standing up for yourself, you’re never too young to come out and be supported by your family and others in your community to get your point across.”

Julie: “We’re here in solidarity for women. Everybody is equal, we need equality and reproductive rights. Equal rights are human rights. We can try to support love and not hate. I think that’s really important.”

Bella: “My mom said that she wants me to grow up to do anything that I want to do.”

Darrin: ”I’m here because I love my kids!”

Kids: “We want to protest!” “I want to avoid World War III!” “Yes!”

Gretchen: “We’re here in solidarity with women. We’re disappointed with the direction of our country and we want to do something positive.”

Craig: “I want my son to know that all people are equal and that no one can put anybody else in a box and tell them what they can and can’t do. It’s the world I want him to live in, so I’m here to show that.”

Evyn: “We are here to support women’s rights, gender equality, basic civil human rights, religious freedom, LGBTQ rights, and immigrant rights.”

Leslie: “I’m here because I’m really upset at the illegitimacy of this election and I want to promote values across the US, I feel like we’re really inoculated in some ways against what’s happening in other parts of the country. I don’t want there to be normalization of values of racism, homophobia, xenophobia, and islamophobia.”

Rose: “I’ve known many situations and I know lots of people who would probably be in trouble if things like that happened and I care about things too much, so I don’t like it.”

Macky: “Because I like protesting!”

Lisa: “We’re here to support anyone who, now or in the future, might not be treated fairly. We’re trying to stay on the positive, it’s not that we’re fighting against something. We’re fighting for equality and fairness for everyone.”

Anthony: “To support women!”

Kristin: “I think it’s important that they see they have the right to stand up against tyranny and fascism and to make their voices heard and to peacefully assemble.”

Sebastian (about his sign): “I just wrote ‘Be Kind’.”

Elizabeth: “We both come from families that our parents are immigrants. I feel that we have a right to be here, our parents have a right to be here, and I’m just happy to be among people that are for that. I’m really happy to stand strong and not let hate get to us.”

Tyler: “For my mom. To stand up for our rights because everyone is the same.”

Ben: “We wanted to get involved in things for a little while, and now that we’re in Santa Cruz we decided that this is the time.”

Christina: “We’re here to fight for everything we believe in that we feel is at risk. The rights of all people, the environment, science, the fight against bigotry, and also against the 99.9% having all the power.”

Children playing with bubbles before the start of the march.

Our approach to Internet safety

Posted on January 11, 2017 by Suki

My older child takes part in open source projects, posts on forums about topics he’s interested in, and uses the Internet daily in his education, his leadership/service projects, and his social life. He’s now almost 18, but he’s been online for many years, starting in the Scratch community at the age of 9.

talkingonyoutube My younger child is an active Youtuber. He loves Instagram. He chats with friends he’s never met in person. He loves to share his creative work, and he takes part in conversations about topics that interest him.

I think that overall taking part in creative communities and finding people to share interests online is an extremely positive experience for most kids. They get direct feedback on their work, and get to feel like they are taking part in a larger creative conversation. I definitely feel that parents who keep their kids off the Internet are being too cautious, sort of like not letting them travel to a nearby city by automobile because it’s more dangerous than walking. The benefits are so great it’s worth taking some risks.

However – the big however – I also think it’s really important for parents to be aware and to educate their children. Kids are growing up as digital natives, and this is all within “normal” for them. So we adults run the risk of sounding like reactionary old fogies when we talk to our kids.

Lots of parents are confused about whether they should allow their kids to share online, and how they should do it. Ours is an imperfect system, of course (all family systems are). But I’m offering it up as an example for others to consider.

Reasonable restrictions

Here are the restrictions we put on our kids’ Internet usage:

1) Before the age of 13, they chose a pseudonym to use online and were not allowed to divulge their real name to anyone we already didn’t know IRL. My younger one is still using the pseudonym as a Youtuber, though now 14. My older one, who is building the foundations of a career, uses his real name.

2) Everyone in the family is required to have a master password that they write on a piece of paper (how 20th century!) and keep in a sealed envelope in a special place. This is just in case of emergency, and we’ve never opened these envelopes and hope we’ll never need to.

3) I subscribe to my kids’ channels and connect with them on all of their social media. For one of them, this is easy. The other one loves to generate new accounts, so it’s a challenge! But I feel that they shouldn’t be saying anything online that they wouldn’t feel comfortable saying IRL, and I hope that my presence as their online “friend” normalizes this connection between the online and physical world. I don’t snoop, but I do want to know where they are if I need to help them.

Bad things happen

independence-day Of course we all read the horror stories about kids on the Internet. But here are some of the bad things that are actually likely to happen:

Unless your child creates a password-protected blog and only unlisted Youtube videos, others will be able to find them. Those others may have different values. The most common thing that raises my hackles is the type of language used in comments on Youtube. This is something you won’t be able to get away from. In our family, we just talk about how this isn’t the way we talk to each other, and we try to brush it off.

You will also get people who are dismissive or critical – maybe once or maybe they will move into bullying behavior. In any case, your kid is likely at some point to get “you suck” type of comments. My Youtuber just totally shrugs them off. But more sensitive kids might need support when this happens, and of course, extended bullying has to be dealt with.

Kids also get really drawn into conversations and can experience obsessive/emotional/depressive behaviors as a result. Again, how kids react to this depends on what they’re like to begin with, and parents can watch for signs and keep an open dialogue if they are concerned.

But what about the really horrific stories?

And then there are those other horror stories: My personal approach is to know that we take appropriate precautions in our family and that these things are unlikely to happen. And also, they’re just unlikely in any case. Just like stranger abduction, they’re scary but much less frequent than the media leads us to believe.

Balance

robosukipatrck What our family aims for is creating the same balance in online life that we try to have in “real” life: We want our children to be independent, creative, and to feel comfortable exploring. We also want them know that we love them, support them, and have their backs when people mistreat them.

Each family, of course, makes their own decisions based on their own values and experiences. The important thing to consider is whether you are communicating those values and experiences to your children by making reasonable, supportive rules for their online lives.

Resources:

I love KidsHealth.org—here’s their Internet safety advice for parents.
Common Sense Media has advice for parents on all sorts of Internet safety-related topics.
All kids should learn about Digital Literacy.

Other posts on this topic:

An Indecent Man

Posted on December 14, 2016February 28, 2018 by Suki

Forget politics.

I want to focus on one thing and one thing only here: What it means to be a decent human being.

Why are we indecent?

Pretty much every human religion ever invented has a mechanism for explaining and dealing with (however imperfectly) the fact that we humans do not always treat each other decently. Most of us, when it comes down to it, basically want to be decent, but we fail on a daily basis to live up to our ideals.

This is fine; this is what it means to be human. I have spent my parenting years helping my kids wrestle with this. It’s a common issue in the classes I teach. It’s good and right that kids wrestle with this issue, and it’s good and right for them to be put into situations where they clash with others who are unlike them so that they get used to wrestling with this issue.

Bullies are often the first ones to point fingers and call themselves victims.

This indecent man

Then there’s our president-elect. I’m not going to discuss his policies.

What I want to discuss is how he is an indecent man, and anyone who supports him becomes, through their support, indecent. Luckily, there’s a way to come back to decency—I’ll get to that.

In what ways is he indecent?

He’s a liar.

All politicians stretch and bend the truth to try to make their case. All politicians change their positions (which I think is a good thing!). All politicians say what their audience wants to hear as much as they can.

However, our president-elect is, quite simply, a liar. He clearly believes that whatever he says becomes true, which is the mark of someone who is a liar to the core. The most effective liars believe themselves deeply and consistently. The most effective liars simply dismiss anything that isn’t consistent with their lie as a lie.

If you support him, you support a liar.

He’s a bigot.

Even when he’s trying to be nice to people, he shows his bigotry. Remember, believing that something is better about a group of people based on an attribute they have no control over is bigotry, too. So when he makes generalizations about women, people of color, immigrants, the disabled—add other categories here—and says something “nice,” remember that’s still bigotry. Though let’s face it, most of the content of what he says is negative.

If you are still on the fence about whether or not he’s a bigot, look at his supporters in the “alt-right”—let’s call them by their real title—white supremacists. They believe he’s a bigot, and they like that about him.

If you support him, you support a bigot.

He uses his wealth for power, not to help others.

This is an important aspect of a decent person that, again, all religions agree on: decent people always help others when they can. Ironically, research shows that the less you have to give, the more likely you are to give your time and money to help others.

In other words, it’s hard being rich. It’s really hard to help others that you don’t see, don’t have contact with, and think of as “the other.” But it’s easy enough, if you’re rich, at least to give some money. Any money.

Yes, our president-elect has a foundation, but there seems to be little evidence that he has used it to help anyone. It’s also worth a fraction of the billions he says he has. And it has spent plenty of money helping…him and his family.

If you support him, you support using wealth only to empower the wealthy.

He treats others with open disdain.

It’s true that politicians are often accused of being disdainful, such as Mitt Romney after his 47% comment or Hillary Clinton after her “basket of deplorables” comment.

But our president-elect doesn’t have to say things that can be perceived as disdainful—he is simply openly disdainful. The way he behaves towards others—even, sometimes, rich white men like him—is indecent. He shows no respect for the dignity of other human beings.

If you support him, you support treating others with disdain.

How can we fix this?

The following is what I teach my children and my students.

Reject indecency
Do not vote for or support people who do not treat others decently
Call out indecency
Don’t (out of a fear of impropriety) hide the fact that you reject indecent people
Ask others to reject indecency
Make the “call to action” so that others see someone standing up for common decency
Do all of this decently
Don’t, in the name of decency, behave indecently

I have decided to be open about the fact that I reject indecency in our personal and political spheres, and thus I reject our president-elect.

I ask you also, no matter who you voted for, to reject indecency in our personal and political spheres, and thus reject our president-elect.

If you voted for him, rejecting indecency is your ticket back to decency.

If you do not reject him openly and publicly, then you, in your silence, join in the support of indecency.

This blog is not about politics, but it is about parenting. And all parents know that sometimes it’s uncomfortable to do what’s right.

Book review: Raising Human Beings

Posted on November 11, 2016December 27, 2016 by Suki

Raising Human Beings: Creating a Collaborative Partnership with your Child
Dr. Ross Greene
Scribner, 2016

There are times when I fervently wish that all human beings were raised to understand the value of empathy, cooperation, and collaboration. This is one of those times.

I’ve been meaning to write a review of Raising Human Beings: Creating a Collaborative Partnership with your Child by Dr. Ross Greene ever since it came out. Uncharacteristically, I bought this book in hardcover. Perhaps that’s because when my younger child was 10, I believe that I joined with a zeitgeist of parents around the country who willed Raising Human Beings into reality. Collectively, we had read Greene’s The Explosive Child because we had a child of that description, then realized that it was also the perfect manual for raising any human being, explosive or otherwise.

Dr. Greene apparently heard our collective cry for a book aimed at all parents outlining his approach, which so improved the lives of families trying to raise difficult children. He heard us, and Raising Human Beings was born.

Greene starts from a place of simple logic: All children want to do well if they can. As much as we want to impute devious motives to our misbehaving children, they are misbehaving not because they want to

Drive

Out

Our

Minds,
but because they simply need something. Sometimes they have no idea what they need. Sometimes they think they need something completely different than what they really need. But they have a need nonetheless.

Greene’s approach is to teach parents to work with their little human beings starting not from an assumption of misbehavior, but from a place of empathy and compassion. Our little human beings are works in progress. They need our guidance to learn how to work within this complicated, confusing world. As parents, it’s our job to raise our children, not to beat them down or lord over them.

All of us want to raise the best human beings we can, but many of us fall back on the flawed reasoning that informed previous generations of parents. Dr. Greene calls this Plan A, and he understands why you use it. It’s quick, dirty, and seems (sometimes) effective. It feels good to say “because I said so.” Getting angry can be cathartic.

But Plan A isn’t what our kids need in this world. We live in a Plan B world. In this world, you’ll do best if you know how to figure out what other people need, understand your own needs, and learn to collaborate so everyone gets their needs met as well as possible.

Plan B is complicated, slow, and frustrating. I would venture to predict that most parents actually give up on it somewhere before actual full realization of the approach (I certainly did). But I feel very confident that all families will benefit from however much of this approach you can implement in your particular family situation.

I can’t recommend this book highly enough. If you have a particularly tough nut to crack, get The Explosive Child instead or in addition. It will improve your lives, and you will send out into the world healthy human beings who understand the value of empathy, cooperation, and collaboration.

And we could all use a few more of those around.

Category: Parenting