Thanksgiving thoughts – the light and dark side!

What I like about thanksgiving is that everyone in the US celebrates it. It is a national family holiday. It allows the diversity of our country to be celebrated as there is no religious affiliation associated with it. I like the focus on gratitude and families gathered in the spirit of abundance and thankfulness. I do have some issues with the holiday though. I think we should drop the whole pilgrim thing. To me it is a farce and completely out of integrity to celebrate a friendly, peace-making gathering with the Native Americans. Cause even if we did we certainly didn’t act like a loving family toward them in the long run we ripped their land out from under them and killed off most of the native population. So, we celebrate a “happy” family moment and lie and hide the “dirty laundry.” In this way the holiday supports what happens all to often in families. What if we used the holiday to tell the full truth about what happened as we began our country and thereby support families to look at the dark side of their family history so they can learn from their mistakes and choose more consciously going forward? That would be my vision for Thanksgiving.

Huddle Up!

In my last blog I talked about the Family Adventure Weekend we attended at the Wright Leadership Institute. I shared about one of the assignments we gave ourselves that we did that first night back. We also came up with one we would do every day for a month. It is called the Family Daily Huddle. We picked a time, 7:45pm, where we would gather if we are together or get on the phone if we are apart to share briefly about our day. We have been doing it for over 3 week now. A few night we all completely forgot, but we are trying to be forgiving of ourselves given it is a new habit. On the days we have done it, it has been really cool. Some have been quick like a minute each while others we took longer asking questions as people shared. Our girls are 10 and 13 and we all lead busy lives so, in the past, it was not uncommon for us to barely talk in a day. So far this has helped us feel more cohesive and connected on a daily basis. Another thing that is neat is that on days we have actually all been together, like on a weekend day, we still did it and found out more about how the day was for each other even though we had been together – very cool!

The Wright Family Vacation

I love family vacations! As a family, we have done some really fun things and gone to lots of really cool places like Ireland and Paris and a ranch in Wyoming to name a few. Our latest was the Family Adventure Weekend put on by the Parenting Program at the Wright Leadership Institute on September 25-27, 2009 and it was by far one of my favorites. Granted we didn’t go a far distance geographically (80 miles to Elkhorn, WI), but we travelled many, many miles in our connection and cohesion as a family. We did typical family things like camp out, carve pumpkins, and canoe races (see photo of us about to win the race!), but what was so different was the context in which we did these activities.

Dr. Bob Wright, founder of the Wright Leadership Institute, facilitated discussions amongst the families attending that put our family in the perspective of the system that it operates in. I was pretty impressed that Bob kept a room of parents with children ages 4 months to seventeen years old engaged in the inquiry of the different roles they play in their family. Everyone left with ways they were going to apply what they learned on the weekend in their every day lives.

We had worked really well as a team in the canoe race – cheering each other on and putting our full selves into it. So, one of the things we said we would do was that night was approach a chunk of work we had to do in the basement with the same attitude. It was great! A job of sorting and moving things and preparing for workmen the next day would have taken us a whole day in the past with a fair amount of complaining. We accomplished our goal in 2.5 hours with no complaints. And while it had gotten too late to have our reward of watching a movie we felt really good about our teamwork and watched the movie the next night. In my next blog I will talk about oneof our other two assignments…

Night Fright Resolved in the Family System

Who knew that by my husband and I talking about our current fears our daughter would no longer be afraid to go to bed! It all started one night when our daughter was six years old and she got up during the night and could not find us in the house. We were in the very back of our basement on the computer, but when she called down there we didn’t hear her. She was really scared and eventually made her way back there to find us. But it started a pattern where every night when we put her to bed she was afraid and she wanted to know where we were going to be in the house or tell us we couldn’t leave the second floor.

We tried reasoning with her and telling her we wouldn’t leave her alone and that we would be somewhere in the house. She would cry and beg us not to leave. We set up a system where we put a stuffed animal on the top of the stairs to let her know we left the floor. None of it made a difference.

We brought the issue into our parenting coaching session with Dr. Bob Wright and we were surprised that rather than try and figure out what was wrong with her, he asked how the two of us were doing and what we were afraid of but not talking about. What did this have to do with our daughter’s night fright? Knowing a bit about family systems I understood that sometimes if feelings are being withheld in the system someone else will play those feelings out. It turns out that once we started talking my husband and had a lot we were afraid of. He had just started his own company and I had recently gone back to work after having been a stay at home mom for four years. These were exciting changes but we were ignoring the fear we were also experiencing. Once we started openly expressing this fear with each other and talking as a family acknowledging the changes that were going on my daughter’s fears literally stopped! She had unconsciously been playing out the fear in the family system. So now, whenever one of our daughters starts acting out in some way we look at what is going on with each other as the first step in dealing with it.

Anxious soccer mom

I don’t think I am alone when I say watching my children play in sporting events is an anxiety provoking endeavor. Sure, we say it is all about wanting them to learn how to play a sport, be a good team member, and just have fun, but the truth is those things are only a small part of what is really going on. At age 4 my daughter hit the soccer field. I came to the first game and actually expected her to be good! Not only that – I wanted her to be the “best” one on the team. I even imagined her being “discovered” and me being told how much natural talent she has. Knowing that might be a stretch, I at the least I wanted her to be better than the other girls. Now, nine years later when I watch one of them not being as aggressive or as “good” as another player I feel angry and want to criticize them and yell at them to do better.

As a parenting coach I know that what is going on is a classic case of living through my children. I want them to fulfill all my unmet hopes and dreams. I’m the one who is hoping to “be discovered.” It is actually a natural part of parenting to want for my kids what we didn’t have or achieve, but when I don’t recognize this other part in myself my kids are going to end up feeling they have to perform for me. So anytime I feel the feelings I described above I have to go back to myself and ask how well I am doing at going for it fully in my life.

A Unique Rite of Passage

Our daughter turned 13 in August. In addition to feeling old and part of the cliche, "they grow up in a blink of an eye," I was very stirred by this birthday. As I watched her with her friends at her birthday party I didn't choke back the tears - I let them stream down my face. I felt a combination of sadness at how fleeting and precious the time I have with her is, joy at what a lovely young woman she is, and fear at what lies ahead as she fully enters adolescence. I know that the groundwork has been laid as to how she will manage the tumult of this stage of life and my husband and I have worked hard and conscientiously to be decent role models for her. But I also know it is time for us to let go at another level and for her to take more responsibility for her choices.

So, we invited her to join us at a training my husband and I have done for years called the Soft Addictions Training led by Judith Wright. She had only done parent/child trainings at the Wright Leadership Institute so this would be her first "adult" training. I wanted her to gain insights into why we create bad habits and more importantly have tools and strategies on how to deal with them. I was really proud of her as it is challenging material besides the fact you are sitting still most of the day for 2.5 days! Even better, she was proud of herself and said at the end it was a really big deal to do this.

Following Bill Gates Sr's advice...

I have been holding onto the wisdom of the quote from the article in my last blog these past few weeks and have had to opportunity to apply it. For example, both of our daughters (ages 10 and 12) are playing some tennis this summer. My younger daughter is a decent player, but gets frustrated easily and resists opportunities to do it more to get better. I got an email today from her tennis coach that she has the opportunity to play in a match today. It would be her first as she has said no to other opportunities. I thought about giving her to choice again, but decided to sign her up and have her do it. I know she will likely resist it and be mad, but it felt like one of those times where I need to push back and get her over the hump.

I had a different experience with my older daughter recently. She got the tennis bug this summer and is loving it and wanting to play as much as she can. What happened with her is this. She played in a tournament last week and won all three sets. But in the last set, which she won 5-0 the opponent said the score was 4-1. My daughter didn’t argue it because she was afraid to make a fuss about it. If she had told the coach he would have handled it and she would have gone to the finals. Since she didn’t speak up she tied another girl and lost the tie-breaker to go to the finals. This gave us the opportunity to talk about the cost of being to shy to speak up. We also talked about being on your own side and that it is not OK to let someone get away with cheating.

Developing Your Kids

Guess who gave this response when asked what the best advice he ever got was?
 
“Well, my dad and my mom were great at encouraging me as a kid to do things that I wasn't good at, to go out for a lot of different sports like swimming, football, soccer, and I didn't know why. At the time I thought it was kind of pointless, but it ended up really exposing me to leadership opportunities and showing me that I wasn't good at a lot of things, instead of sticking to things that I was comfortable with. It was fantastic, and now some of those activities I cherish. They had to stick to it because I pushed back a lot, but it was fantastic advice.” (Fortune, July 2008)

Unless you saw the article in Fortune magazine I doubt you would guess it was Microsoft billionaire, Bill Gates. I know I would not have because I would think someone so successful would say the best advice he got was more directly business focused. But as a mom I am really struck by both the simplicity of it and the power of it. To me the point isn’t so much that his parents just put him in a bunch of activities. I see it as guiding my children to develop as many aspects of themselves as they can and to stick with the ones that are challenging and not give up.  I like remembering that I can be strategic and set standards for my family around participating in diverse activities.  We have said things like you will play so many different types of sports and you will master one of them. We also expect challenges and failures and strategize how we are going to deal with them ahead of time. As I am writing this I am bubbling with just how rich the “advice” from Mr. Gates is. Let me know what you are thinking and I will add more in my next blog.

Gertrude