I was listening to a CBC-1 radio interview yesterday with Canadian astronaut Dr. Dave Williams. He is a medical doctor, a specialist in neurology, trained as an emergency doctor for extreme environments, like the Arctic, undersea, and outer space. He is also Director of Medical Robotics at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.
At one point, the interviewer asked him if it was obvious that he’d excel from an early age. He replied, “Oh, not at all. If you’d asked any of my teachers to pick out the kid who’d be an astronaut, I’d have been the last person they picked. I was a very average student. What got me into the space programme was my passion for space and the confidence to pursue my dreams.”
That got me thinking about the amount of energy I see so many parents putting into worrying and stressing about their children’s future. I see parents making themselves and their children absolutely miserable, pushing the kid to excel, to work harder, get better grades. “You’ve got to think of your future,” is the refrain.
But what Dave Williams says got him where he is are things that are not as measurable as grades: passion, dreams, confidence. Not high marks.
It is not our job as parents to make sure our kids are at the head of their class. Not our job to push them to graduate Summa Cum Laude. It is our job to nurture their passions, encourage their dreams, and to help them develop the confidence to aim for the stars.
I wonder what Dave Williams’ life would have been like if his parents had nagged him to put down those stupid science-fiction novels and concentrate on improving his grades?
Not nearly as interesting, I’d bet.
Showing posts with label Children. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Children. Show all posts
Friday, February 27, 2009
Monday, February 2, 2009
Being "Too Nice" to Our Kids
(originally posted Tuesday, March 13, 2007 )
Many parents resist being “too nice” to, or “coddling” their children. “The world is a tough place,” they reason, “and I need to prepare them for it.”
I would argue that this is terribly misguided. We best prepare our children for the tough parts of the world (rather than the monolithically “tough world”), by giving them a foundation of unconditional love, acceptance, and sense of self-worth.
So many people find it difficult to trust, to believe in the possibility of being loved without ulterior motives, or hidden agendas. They find it hard to believe in unconditional love, or unconditional positive regard, never having experienced it themselves. When they experience conditional acceptance, negativity, mistreatment, they don’t feel confident about rejecting this, and seeking something better. Because after all, the world is a tough place, and their role is to suck it up and deal with it.
However, people who were raised with a firm foundation of love and acceptance from their parent(s) have far less tolerance for mistreatment. They will seek an environment in which “tough” is not accepted as a given. They will seek out those people who believe that we can do better than “tough.”
Unconditional love does not mean spoiling your child, nor being a pushover. It means that we respect the personhood of our children, and lovingly accept them as they are, even when they aren’t doing what we want. Even when we are disciplining them.
And for those who have never experienced unconditional love, the quickest way to experience unconditional love is to GIVE it.
Many parents resist being “too nice” to, or “coddling” their children. “The world is a tough place,” they reason, “and I need to prepare them for it.”
I would argue that this is terribly misguided. We best prepare our children for the tough parts of the world (rather than the monolithically “tough world”), by giving them a foundation of unconditional love, acceptance, and sense of self-worth.
So many people find it difficult to trust, to believe in the possibility of being loved without ulterior motives, or hidden agendas. They find it hard to believe in unconditional love, or unconditional positive regard, never having experienced it themselves. When they experience conditional acceptance, negativity, mistreatment, they don’t feel confident about rejecting this, and seeking something better. Because after all, the world is a tough place, and their role is to suck it up and deal with it.
However, people who were raised with a firm foundation of love and acceptance from their parent(s) have far less tolerance for mistreatment. They will seek an environment in which “tough” is not accepted as a given. They will seek out those people who believe that we can do better than “tough.”
Unconditional love does not mean spoiling your child, nor being a pushover. It means that we respect the personhood of our children, and lovingly accept them as they are, even when they aren’t doing what we want. Even when we are disciplining them.
And for those who have never experienced unconditional love, the quickest way to experience unconditional love is to GIVE it.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Emotional Literacy
(originally posted Monday, March 12, 2007 )
I am often struck by the frequent observation that men are not good at expressing their feelings. The reason for my perplexity lies in this question: “In what way are men taught to express their feelings?” From infancy, girls are rewarded for being emotionally expressive, and invited to explore and comprehend their feelings. Boys are taught to “suck it up,” to “get over it,” to “be a big boy.” The underlying message is, your feelings aren’t important.
We seldom believe that we are doing this. Yet it can be shown. Researchers who have been allowed to monitor the homes of parents of newborns have found that parents take significantly longer to respond to the cries of a boy baby than to a girl baby, and invest significantly more time and effort in soothing girl infants than boy infants. Without realizing it, from birth, we expect boys to be tougher, and have fewer emotional needs, than girls.
As a result, when you ask many men about their feelings, they often don’t know how to respond. Not only don’t they have the vocabulary, they seldom have the skills to identify their feelings. They do not know what they are feeling. They’re not used to thinking about it.
I lead a therapy group for men. Part of what we teach in the group is Emotional Literacy. This is the process of identifying and articulating emotions.
It goes like this:
Step 1) Pay attention to the feeling. Often we try to distance ourselves from our feelings, or shrug them off. All too often we try to judge our feelings, trying to decide whether we should or shouldn’t feel what we are feeling. But as I wrote in a previous entry, you feel what you feel.
Step 2) Name the feeling. Identify it, give it a label that “fits.” This may take some thought, and may require you to expand your vocabulary a bit. The most basic part of this is to identify whether the feeling is good or bad, positive or negative, and how intensely you’re feeling it.
Step 3) Identify the meaning that this feeling has for you. We not only feel what we feel. We feel it for a reason. Feelings are your subconscious’s (or your body’s) way of sending you a message. What is the message here? Are you telling yourself that something isn’t right? That everything is okay. That you need something different, or more of the same? To hear the message, you need to pay attention to it and think about it.
Step 4) Decide how to act on your feeling(s).
There are, of course, a lot of dysfunctional and unhealthy ways we can act on our feelings: with violence, with hostility, by shutting down, with resentment, by numbing with distractions, drugs, or alcohol, by blaming others, by denial.
But we can also give ourselves the choice to connect with others, and with ourselves. We can take responsibility for our emotions, communicate them, and decide how and how much tom communicate. When we connect with our own emotions, we are connecting with our true selves.
So, the process is Feel, Name, Think, Act. By following this process, we become less reactive, and more authentic. We could all benefit from developing our emotional literacy more fully.
(Based in part on material from Tian Dayton, 2000. “Trauma and Addiction.”)
I am often struck by the frequent observation that men are not good at expressing their feelings. The reason for my perplexity lies in this question: “In what way are men taught to express their feelings?” From infancy, girls are rewarded for being emotionally expressive, and invited to explore and comprehend their feelings. Boys are taught to “suck it up,” to “get over it,” to “be a big boy.” The underlying message is, your feelings aren’t important.
We seldom believe that we are doing this. Yet it can be shown. Researchers who have been allowed to monitor the homes of parents of newborns have found that parents take significantly longer to respond to the cries of a boy baby than to a girl baby, and invest significantly more time and effort in soothing girl infants than boy infants. Without realizing it, from birth, we expect boys to be tougher, and have fewer emotional needs, than girls.
As a result, when you ask many men about their feelings, they often don’t know how to respond. Not only don’t they have the vocabulary, they seldom have the skills to identify their feelings. They do not know what they are feeling. They’re not used to thinking about it.
I lead a therapy group for men. Part of what we teach in the group is Emotional Literacy. This is the process of identifying and articulating emotions.
It goes like this:
Step 1) Pay attention to the feeling. Often we try to distance ourselves from our feelings, or shrug them off. All too often we try to judge our feelings, trying to decide whether we should or shouldn’t feel what we are feeling. But as I wrote in a previous entry, you feel what you feel.
Step 2) Name the feeling. Identify it, give it a label that “fits.” This may take some thought, and may require you to expand your vocabulary a bit. The most basic part of this is to identify whether the feeling is good or bad, positive or negative, and how intensely you’re feeling it.
Step 3) Identify the meaning that this feeling has for you. We not only feel what we feel. We feel it for a reason. Feelings are your subconscious’s (or your body’s) way of sending you a message. What is the message here? Are you telling yourself that something isn’t right? That everything is okay. That you need something different, or more of the same? To hear the message, you need to pay attention to it and think about it.
Step 4) Decide how to act on your feeling(s).
There are, of course, a lot of dysfunctional and unhealthy ways we can act on our feelings: with violence, with hostility, by shutting down, with resentment, by numbing with distractions, drugs, or alcohol, by blaming others, by denial.
But we can also give ourselves the choice to connect with others, and with ourselves. We can take responsibility for our emotions, communicate them, and decide how and how much tom communicate. When we connect with our own emotions, we are connecting with our true selves.
So, the process is Feel, Name, Think, Act. By following this process, we become less reactive, and more authentic. We could all benefit from developing our emotional literacy more fully.
(Based in part on material from Tian Dayton, 2000. “Trauma and Addiction.”)
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