Make Eye Contact

Fear of people is a modern vehicle for many things, like product sales, communal loyalty, organizational compliance and patriotism, which is why we are surrounded by alarming messages about the people around us and the people in other places. Unfortunately, once we become afraid of people, we can no longer tell them apart, because we cannot see them through our defenses.

I walk around our neighborhood in the mornings and see different people. What surprises me often is how they respond when they notice me approaching. I am not too tall and quite thin, I wear normal clothes and a hat and there is nothing in my appearance that should cause anyone alarm. See for yourself on the left (not the best picture of me, but you get the idea).

Yet, some people cross to the other side of the street. They literally pick a spot well beyond contact distance and pretend they cannot see me. Other people, who might have to cross back to “my” side later to keep going, look down as they walk past me or give me a nervous forced smile, while picking up their pace.

I do not take it personally, but it makes me sad.

Now, I used to suffer from fear of people myself. Maybe this is why I interpret others’ behavior this way, but hopefully my suggestions today will be helpful either way.

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Winners vs. Whiners

If you ask people what success means, some will tell you it is a mindset and others will tell you it involves pure luck. When they lose in a battle, it is mainly because they believe life is all about luck. When they win in the battle of life, it is mainly because they believe they have control of their mindset. There are two kinds of people – those who win in life and those who whine about life. Which one are you?

Life is full of battles. From the first second we come into this world, we have challenges to conquer. Babies have the most challenges. Without the ability to speak, satisfy their own hunger, take care of a wet or smelly bum or change the temperature, they are fully dependent on others. Yet, although they lack the ability to satisfy their basic needs, they never consider quitting.

With crying as their only tool for communication, they win most of their battles by whining. Unfortunately, this is when they also develop the belief that whining is a good way to get things in life.

Whether this mindset will stay with them for life or change depends on the baby’s social agents, especially the parents. If they consider the crying baby to be a complainer (“What’s wrong? Why are you crying so much? It’s not the end of the world”), he or she will grow up to be a complainer. If they see crying as a form of communication (“Yes, Mommy is here. You’re right. You’re all wet and Mommy needs to change your diaper”), he or she will grow up to be a communicator. When those two babies grow, they will both have the desire to be successful, but one of them will go for it and the other one will complain about not having it.

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Proud to Be a Teacher

World Teachers’ Day was this week (5th of October) and I had been approached by a pre-service student at the University of Queensland for an who wanted to interview me for an assignment she had about being a teacher. At the end of the interview, she said to me, “I think they should use you as a motivator to make people choose teaching as a profession. You make it sound like it’s the best profession in the world”. I told her I had heard that many times before, because I am a teacher by choice and not a teacher by necessity.

Teaching, as you probably know, is not the best-paid job in the world. In some places, it is even in the lowest income range, which I find shocking. At the beginning of my career, I thought I valued education only because I needed to justify my choice of becoming a teacher, but every year that passes, I see that this justification is the only one there is, as there are so many disadvantages to being a teacher.

Maybe it was no coincidence I received this story by email on the day I had the interview.

A school principal addressed his students during a graduation ceremony.

He said, “Doctors want their children to become doctors, engineers want their children to become engineers, businessmen want their children to become CEOs, but a teachers also want their children to become one of them. Nobody wants to become a teacher by choice. Very sad, but that’s the truth”.

Then, he told them this story.

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Crazy, Stupid, Love

This is NOT a film review. It is a post on love and romance and marriage and kids and family and parenting. But it is inspired by the fact that Ronit and I watched the movie “Crazy, Stupid, Love” this week and it has been running around in my mind to the point where I just had to write about it.

Steve Carell makes movies that are full of embarrassing moments and this usually turns me off. I see him as the American version of Mr. Bean. I also find his acting melodramatic and externalized and I generally prefer subtle and deep. In this film, he was not only the main character, he was also the producer, which should have had me running in the other direction, except I only found that out in the final credits, and by that time, I already had a lot of respect for him.

If you have not seen Crazy, Stupid, Love, it starts with a marriage breakdown and divorce, continues through the attempted recover of both partners and their children and at the same time, weaves in the generational difference between the old one-partner-from-a-young-age and the new ongoing-partying-and-casual-sex-until-thirty-something.

I came away from the movie with a lot of love in my heart. In the past few days, there is more love in everything I do, more softness, more attention and more respect. I checked the patterns of my life against scenes from the movie and compared myself with the characters in it.

I want to share with you what I discovered.

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Secret Demons

Kids’ mind is a puzzle. Working with kids for so many years (and with grownups who used to be kids), I am amazed by what demons they carry with them and how they use naive conclusions to navigate their life. The more I see clients, the more I am convinced there is never a way to predict how kids will interpret their young life and what they will make of it later in life. The kid’s mind puzzle becomes an adult’s mind puzzle that is even harder to solve. Trish’s story is a wonderful way to get some insight into how this happens.

Trish came to my life coaching deck with her partner. Ben, her partner and the father of their child, had said she needed help but he had no idea how to get it. Trish had not contacted me, had not completed the session preparations and had not even talked to me before coming, so this was an unusual session.

Trish was a beautiful young woman. Her hair was tied back and she looked tired, as if she had spent weeks crying. She was 27 years old and was preparing for her wedding. She had a one-year-old boy, a great job and … a demon.

“Hi, Trish. Thank you for coming. What brings you here?” I asked.

She looked at Ben and started crying. I gave her the tissue box and waited. She tried very hard to stop. Every time she started saying something, tears started again and she choked. Ben held her hand and whispered, “You can do it”. She looked at him and looked at me for a while before she finally started telling me her story.

After her son was born, memories of a childhood trauma had come to life. In-between sobs, she said, “At first, I thought it was a dream, but then I realized I see the same scene over and over again even when I’m awake”.

“Can you please tell me what you see?” I asked.

“It is very vague… I think it had something to do with my dad… I can see myself at the age of 6 or 7 playing with another girl… She was my neighbor and we played a lot together. I think someone did something to both of us… I can see my dad screaming and having a fight with her dad… I think my dad raped both of us”, she managed to say.

This post is part 5 of 19 in the series From the Life Coaching Deck

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Discipline in Question

The topic of disciplining kids is going to be forever hot for every parent. It is a hot topic because it bothers many parents and it is hot because too many parents find themselves in a huge conflict over it. Here is a question I got about discipline from a reader.

“Hi Ronit,

My husband and I do not agree on the right way to raise the kids. I spend most of the time with them and he works until late and on the weekends he needs to rest and goes out with his friends.

This week, he said to me that his job is to be the provider and my job is to discipline the kids and that I was failing as a parent. He said that if he was my boss, he would fire me. He thinks I am not objective towards my kids and I do not prepare them for real life.

What is your opinion about discipline?

Gina”

Dear Gina,

How to discipline kids, what is discipline and related issues are a source of friction almost in every home. I think your husband has expectations from you and your children that are probably based on his definition of good parenting and discipline, which I am not sure are healthy, although they were very typical 20 to 30 years ago when he was a child.

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Parental Troubleshooting

I am sure you will agree that nobody is perfect and that kids, being people-in-the-making, cannot be expected to be perfect. So when your child struggles with some difficulty, it can be just part of being a child or it can be something else. It is often hard to tell.

Community nurses will tell you that the phrase “Mama knows best” is true and when a parent feels their child is suffering some kind of problem, they should be taken seriously and the child should be thoroughly checked until the problem is found and fixed. Ronit helps identify kids’ problems regularly and is amazed at how many times parents arrive in desperation, having been dismissed and ignored by “the professionals”.

So whether you are Mama or Papa, if you suspect your child might be having some sort of a problem, you know best. Do not let anyone put you down or discourage you. Your child is your responsibility and if you say he or she needs help, that is good enough. Keep on searching and doing the best for your child until you succeed.

What’s the problem with my child?

Excuse me if I use a computer metaphor, but in the IT world, there are 3 kinds of people: hardware engineers, software developers and implementers. Hardware engineers know how to combine electronic components and build computers. Software developers enable the hardware to do a lot of wonderful things. Implementers (business analysts) choose the best hardware, software, settings and methods to use in a particular context.

Parents, unfortunately, have to be all of them.

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The Intention Trap

In the last chapter of the “Save your marriage” series, I wrote about one trap that married couple are in. It was the “right” trap, when one person or both are convinced they are “right” and do not accept that the other person has a story of their own that can explain their behavior and be just as “right”. Many marriages break down over this type of dispute.

In my relationship coaching, I have discovered there are two more traps that are signs the relationship is going nowhere and may be heading for a breakdown. One of them is the “intention” trap and the other one is the “blame” trap.

The intention trap
Everyone wants to feel good in their relationships. We give ourselves to the other person and we want a good feeling in return. Usually, we find a partner who makes us feel great. At the beginning of the relationship, we want to spend lots of time together, we constantly want to be with him or her and when we are not together, we imagine us being together.

Our marriage is good when we look forward to the time we will spend together, because it boosts our self-esteem and motivates us.

Over time, this excitement gives way to stress, work and kids, and many couples just wait for the moment things are quiet, so they can veg in front of the TV, hit the bed, sleep in on the weekends or go away on a holiday. Most of their time is not filled with fun and the fun bits are pushed to the side. When we push too much of our “fun time together” to the side, the arguments start.

I do not think I have ever learned how to argue and in marriage. Strange as it may seem, I believe it is very important to learn how to argue, because if we do not argue fairly, we increase the stress and the pressure and decrease the fun time together.

This post is part 19 of 33 in the series Save Your Marriage

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Goodness Week

My life and relationships used to be mostly based on some imaginary expectations and assumptions that were the result of mimicking my parents and other people I knew, who had done the same growing up. I would go as far as calling that period “my dark ages”, but after I went through life coaching, things became a lot clearer.

Today, I want to give you an example of how a simple exercise changed my view of my marriage with Ronit for the better and, in fact, improved the way I interact with everybody in my life.

This was before Ronit and I discovered communication styles and love languages and I had a strong feeling I was going out of my way to make Ronit happy, but she was doing very little to do the same for me. I thought this was unfair and I was frustrated.

Fortunately, I had a session with my life coach, Sheryl, that week.

I started pouring my frustration as soon as I sat down. If you have ever been to life coaching, you know you can only do this for a very short time.

“Gal, I get that you are upset and that from your point of view, things aren’t equal in your relationship”, Sheryl said.

“They sure are”, I said.

“But by now, you already know that what matters most is your perception of the world, not how the world is. So let’s look at your choices and your focus, OK?”

I nodded in apprehension, because I knew what was coming.

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You is Important

In today’s strange world, not many movies make it into my favorites list. There are even fewer movies with meaningful parenting content. But this week, Ronit and I watched “The Help” and it moved me deeply with its mix of race, gender, marriage, friendship, parenting and social status messages, its great characters and its deliberate plot that included a twist on the very last word.

On the face of it, The Help is set in Jackson Mississippi, but the social and financial pressures and the ways in which different people handle them are timeless. In fact, it is a lot easier first to analyze the characters in the film and THEN quietly admit that we behave in a similar way towards our friends, partner or children, at least sometimes.

I have chosen to focus on a few of the topics that have come up in my mind.

Who is raising your children?

The movie starts and ends with the mention that the colored maids raised the white women’s children and there are many scenes that drive this point home. Caring for children was considered a chore, feeding little kids and changing diapers were messy and unpleasant and white women had to look presentable at all times. They could not afford to sweat or have smudges on their dresses.

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