Month: June 2014

Graduation Highlights the Importance of Blending Families

With each passing year of my life, I feel for parents more and more. I had no idea the emotions that I would experience as a parent watching my children travel through each phase of their life and how happy and sad I could be at the same moment when they hit certain milestones. In the last three days, I watched my son graduate from high school and hosted a big graduation party to celebrate him. The next day was Father’s Day where we celebrated my husband, ex-husband, and my step-dad for all of their contributions to the lives of all of the kids and adults that live in our home. Early Monday morning, it was off to the DMV so that my daughter could get her learner’s permit. It was a whirlwind weekend full of emotions, milestones, change and tears. I even found myself choked up in the DMV, which was a first.

The highlight of the weekend was watching all of the members of my family work together to celebrate my son. His step-dad (my husband) spent countless hours preparing the yard for the party and getting everything ready and cleaned up. His dad (my ex-husband) and I worked together for weeks to prepare a slide show of his life that included pictures from our marriage together, and then pictures from our second marriages and the blended families that resulted. All of us went to dinner together after graduation – step brothers and sisters, step- parents, parents, grand step-parents, brothers, sisters. To my son, this is just his family. It is not a sad and awkward tale of divorce, but instead a real and true picture of life and the adult decisions that impact children but shouldn’t destroy them. This is all he has ever known since the day he was born. My own parents were divorced when I was 11 and his first memories include step-grandparents and grandparents, but to him it was all just more Grandpas and Grandmas to love.

Sadly, many families don’t operate like this and children are forced into confronting and handling adult decisions that really have nothing to do with them. Most of us have seen all sides of nasty divorces in our lives, and it is hard to understand why adults choose for kids to live and feel tension and anger. Children have nothing to do with why adults divorce. Some children are relieved when their parents get divorced after years of fighting or obvious unhappiness. Others are surprised but want nothing more than their lives to go on peacefully while the adults handle the adults’ problems. Divorce is a sad and difficult part of life that still occurs in almost 50% of households across our country. I have been asked so many times why I got divorced from my first husband and the question always give me a little laugh since it really doesn’t have an easy answer. If I tried to answer it in one sentence, I don’t believe I would be holding both of us accountable to what happened. The best guess I can give for why I got divorced and why I think most people get divorced is that we were born and subsequently our lives started happening. There are so many factors that play into divorce – personality, families, careers, handling of finances, communication, economics, friends, and differences that come up when children are born. There are lots of ways that marriages end, but most of share common ground in why we got divorced.

When my ex-husband and I decided to get divorced, it was a very hard and sad decision, but we sat down together and worked out a solution that would that would split up the assets and make sure that our kids would have what they needed no matter where they were sleeping. We didn’t need an attorney to explain that to us so we didn’t use one. We split everything in half because that is the law and we developed a schedule for our kids in case we ever needed a document to tell us what was in their best interest (which we don’t). We work together to discuss holidays and birthdays and vacations until we know we have found what works for everyone involved (and that includes his step-kids and my step-kids). We do this because we love our children and decided years ago it would be ridiculous to spend any more time discussing or fighting about why we got divorced. We knew it was irrelevant to our kids and I believe that is the case for almost every divorce out there.

We aren’t amazing people for doing this. We are just parents who decided to focus on our children and nothing else. We both believe that the other is a good and capable parent which means that any other part of our life doesn’t need to be discussed. When we start to get off track from time to time, we give each other space and we always come back together with what is best for our children. Adults need to acknowledge that adult problems require adult communication to arrive at adult decisions. That is all it takes to have an amicable divorce. You can strongly dislike your ex-spouse but love your children enough to end up sitting together at a dinner someday celebrating a big milestone like a graduation. You can show your children that mature adults can guide them through life no matter how much blending goes on in their family. The key is to blend everyone, love equally, and make sure the kids are allowed to be kids while the adults are acting like adults.

It’s Long Past Time to Portray Fathers as Leaders

Every year I dread the annual walk into the Father’s Day card aisle. I’m not the only woman who feels this way either. The aisle is loaded with cards about fathers who lay on the couch all day in a frantic search for the remote or spend hours every day fishing with their buddies. I stand there trapped as I look for a card for my husband, my ex-husband, my step-dad, my father in-law, my brother, and up until my Dad’s death in March, a card for him as well. Most of the cards don’t fit any of them or any Dad I know for that matter. There are always the gushy ones to choose from, but the ones with any humor mostly portray men as lazy and useless in the household.

I think back to my childhood and some of the shows that we watched back in the 1970’s – Little House on the Prairie, The Brady Bunch, Eight is Enough and The Walton’s. The fathers in those shows were portrayed as leaders of the family and they helped guide and shape their children. They treated their wives with respect and even though the male and female roles were more traditional in the 1970’s, couples worked together as co-leaders to run the household and help the children daily.

As time passed, and women continued to further their careers, television made a drastic switch and these older shows got replaced with sitcoms like The Cosby Show, The Simpson’s, Married with Children, and The Family Guy. These are all popular shows that ran for years and men are all portrayed as aloof and incapable of being a leader in the home. The American mindset slowly began shifting and believing that men are unable to handle multiple tasks and women are much more capable of handling work responsibilities and children than men can be. The media has been portraying it for years and Hallmark seems to support the notion as well. As a wife and a mother, I feel like we have to do all that we can to undo this mindset and teach our boys what a true Father is capable of.

Manners. Morals. Respect. Character. Common Sense. Trust. Patience. Class. Integrity. Love. These are just a few of the items that I believe fathers should list on what they are responsible for teaching their kids each day. Of course, women have the same responsibility but television and Hallmark already portray us as the ones capable of such tasks. It is the men that have been portrayed so poorly and they all don’t deserve it.

I know so many men that work all day and come home and handle all of the responsibilities of home just like their wives do. They are running kids all over town and participating in daily conversations with their children to help guide them down the right path. To all of those hard-working men, Happy Father’s Day (the card you get might not portray it as well as it should). To those men who look and act more like Homer Simpson or Peter Griffin, watch those shows again and remember that they are only cartoons. Those children in those shows aren’t turning out well at all and the lack of a leader as a father plays a significant roll. That father doesn’t have to be the biological father because life doesn’t always turn out that way. That leader can be any man that is family, or a friend, who wants to take the time to show children that men can lead at work and at home. Men can teach them how to show feelings and provide nurturing in a time of need. The media and the card aisles aren’t going to help you here at all men. You have to show this leadership one day at a time until society gives you the credit you deserve.

A Few Thoughts to the Graduating Class of 2014

Congratulations to all of you as you finish your high school career and prepare for the next step in your life. Hopefully, you are stepping. Either stepping out of the door to go work and find a place of your own or going on to some type of higher education so that you can feed yourself and your family someday. The generation before you has relied heavily on their parents to take care of them and many of them still live at home at 25 or 30 years old. No matter how you were raised, you need to snicker and tell yourself you aren’t going to expect your Mom and Dad to fund your every meal anymore.

This has been a tricky time to grow up. Since you were about 10 years old, a little company called Apple began producing phones that put the internet in your hands and completely changed the way you communicate with your friends and even your parents. You need to know that if you really want to succeed in life, you are going to have to learn to communicate looking people in the eye. You can’t text an employer your answers in the middle of an interview and you can’t dance with your partner over the phone. I suggest you take every class you can and even read books on communication to help you overcome what this technology has done to you.

The whole time you have been on this planet, you have been handed trophies and ribbons for every sport you participated in. We have not helped you at all by doing this. You will not get awards ever again without earning them the hard way and this may seem unfair to you when you look at your dresser that is right now covered in bobble head trophies. Those trophies were handed to you just because your parents signed you up. The rest of your life you will have to achieve certain goals and criteria to be awarded. Like it or not, that’s the way it is and you would do your own future children lots of good if you work to eliminate this trophy practice.

You have seen things on the internet that were way too mature for your eyes and try not to let this scar your future relationships. Whether you are male or female, you have to treat people with respect in order to get that third or second date. Don’t be afraid to hold a door open for a woman, young men. If she gets offended, she just might not be the right one for you. Chivalry is an important part of finding the right partner and don’t let our current society talk you out of it. Your table manners really matter. Practice them right now if you haven’t before and learn how to set a table and when to use a salad fork. There will always be something very attractive about well-mannered people.

You have been unfairly judged by test scores more than any generation before you. Your success will be directly correlated to how hard you work and well you treat the people you work with. Yes, you will need to read or write but don’t think that your Map Testing scores from 6th grade are going to ever play a role in your future. They aren’t. You will now be placed according to your common sense, work ethic, and overall personality instead of some number on paper. The faster you figure this out the more likely you are to succeed.

Even though adults have told you how amazing you are your entire life, the faster you accept that you are just like everyone else the better things will go for you. You can prevent tremendous amounts of future anxiety and social blunders if you treat everyone equally and also don’t expect the world to bow down to your amazing self. You are just a person with strengths and weaknesses like everyone else. Nobody owes you anything and you do not deserve a certain lifestyle or car or house. You will have to work hard for those things no matter how amazing you think you are.

If your over-bearing parents try to step in and tell your future employers or college professors how to treat you, do everyone a favor and say no the first time it comes up. Your parents may have unfortunately been such good friends with you for so long that they can’t stand to see you suffer. It’s ok if you suffer a little bit and it’s ok to tell your parents that you are an adult and you don’t need their intervention. The faster you become independent from them the better you will feel about yourself. But you should still call them and say hello and I love you from time to time. They worked hard to get you this far.

And finally, to those really smart graduates who didn’t enjoy high school because they weren’t in the “cool” crowd, I have excellent news for you. Those people that thought they were better than you and even made you feel small are about to start the journey to their 10 year high school reunion. When they arrive, they are going to look a little weathered and you are going to look sharp. You “nerds” as they called you, will be the future doctors, lawyers, scientists, and accountants that will make this world go around. The “proud” crowd will be working for you and high school was the time they peaked in life. You don’t want to peak at 18. Shoot for 40 or even 50! Your hard work and studying will pay off in a way that will have made all those awkward years of high school well worth it. Plus, you are the ones that gave the graduation speeches and ran off with all of the scholarship money.

Good luck to all of you. You have a little bit to overcome from the things that existed when you were born, but it can be done. I’m counting on you as there are too many baby boomers to take care of and we need your help. I’ve given up on most of the 25-30 year olds so I’m holding out hope for you.

Difficult to Find Solutions When You Can’t Identify the Problem

Social media sites and the news are blasted with the tragic story out of Santa Barbara. Our country has endured another senseless slaughter of six innocent people by a lone gunman who decided that others should die that day. Some of his victims knew him and others only saw him for a split second as he carelessly fired a semi-automatic weapon instantly killing complete strangers and changing the lives of their families and friends forever.

The news is mostly focused on gun control. It always is when these things happen. For a couple of weeks, the two opposing sides are going to fight about gun control and background checks and then the conversation will eventually quiet down until it is mostly gone again – until the next shooting. And so it goes. A horrific problem in our country and we all know that nothing is going to change at all. We only get really upset right when the shootings occur but nobody seems to want to discuss real solutions.

When I first hear about these shootings, my mind automatically goes to a young man in his early 20’s. I don’t even have to wait for them to identify the shooter. There is a long list growing of teenage boys and men in their young 20’s tied to these rampages, and we can’t solve anything if we are only going to focus on the guns. We have to look so much further into how our society has evolved and also closely examine the lives of each shooter. The Santa Barbara killer had recorded videos of himself discussing why he was going to slaughter his victims. He had a deep hatred towards women whom he felt had shunned him throughout his life. Although just two of his victims were women, his idea about relationships revolved heavily around sex and not companionship, and domination instead of partnership.

Most people would agree that these killers are all mentally ill. They are suffering from something most of us can’t understand but when we throw them into today’s modern technology and parenting style, we have to wonder how we can possibly stop these crimes. Children are being handed electronic devices from the age of two and most of them have access to the internet. The ability to seek out inappropriate information is far too easy no matter how many blocks parents use. Most parents start taking their children to violent movies before they even start kindergarten with the misperception that children can distinguish fantasy from reality (even though they still believe in Santa Clause). By the time boys are in elementary school, most of them are playing violent video games for hours each day and the action looks real. They are accustomed to seeing so much death and destruction that by the time they reach high school, they are numb to the reality of what they are seeing on the screen. The ability to gain access to pornography is simple and it’s almost impossible for parents to stop. This isn’t just an old Playboy magazine to look at but rather graphic and sometimes violent acts that children can watch with a simple Google search.
None of us know if our children will suffer from mental illness when they are older, but from the moment they are born, we have to protect them from ever ending up on the trigger side of these guns. We have to start by keeping electronics out of their hands at young ages so that they don’t develop an addiction to the technology. This requires active parenting and not having an easy out by placing an iPad in front of your kid every time they are bored. We have to stand strong and keep their television and movie viewing age appropriate until they are long past the age of believing in the Tooth Fairy or the Easter bunny. We have to resist giving them fancy phones with internet access that will allow them to look at anything they are curious about when they are too young to understand love and companionship versus sex and pornography. We have to be the one parent who won’t allow our middle school aged son to play violent video games no matter how many times they ask for it.

If your child does end up with some type of mental illness or is the victim of bullying, don’t you feel like they have a better shot at getting through it if they have had limitations to what they are seeing and feeling at these younger ages? Every shooter in the past few years had a history of spending hours on violent games and of course had access to guns. As for those guns, I was fortunate to be raised in a home that didn’t even allow cap guns. My children have been raised in the same fashion. We have been anti-violence and it has worked for us. I understand people want to own guns for protection or for hunting, but I don’t believe anybody can make a strong argument for why a 22 year old male needs three semi-automatic handguns in his possession. Something is wrong with our society when that is right. The guns are often compared to cars and the argument is made that the car doesn’t kill someone in an accident just like the gun isn’t responsible for the murder. For those that like that analogy, take a look at what a teenager has to go through to earn the right to operate a car and compare it to what an individual has to go through to hold a lethal weapon in their hand. This isn’t the weapon that existed when the 2nd amendment was passed – this is a gun with a magazine capable of mowing down an entire sidewalk of people in seconds. We all have to accept that rapidly changing technology requires new discipline and possibly updating the rules whether we are referring to guns, computers, cell phones or social media.

With the violent media that is so easily accessed in our country, we need to do more to protect our children from being on either side of that weapon. We have to work to prevent a violent mindset throughout their lives and then come to the table united to talk about what type of weapons really should be available for daily use. We have to discuss the real problems before we will ever find any solutions. Right now, we have six more families going through unfathomable grief and a seventh family that is left feeling loss, grief, despair, and guilt trying to figure out how they could have prevented what happened. All I am hearing is blame and all I am seeing is finger pointing at certain groups when the reality is that this problem starts the moment a child is born. We all are partly responsible for what happened in Santa Barbara and what will happen again in some other city far too soon. We can’t stop all of these crimes from occurring, but we can start talking about how to reduce them one by one.

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