Parenting and the Loss of Privacy

Parenting is the most wonderful adventure most of the time, but with the gaining of pride and joy, we lose one important thing – our privacy. Sometimes, this happens so slowly, we do not notice we got from giving up just some privacy to where we have very little of it left.

When I had my first child, I gave privacy up easily. Gal and I both wanted to spend all our time with Eden, but when she was 11 months old, we realized we did not really have a life and we could not blame anyone but ourselves. Every spare minute we had, we wanted to be with Eden, so she went to sleep at the same time we went to sleep. All our conversations were about her. At night, when we looked for a moment we could enjoy some privacy, I remember giggling and shushing each other, waiting for her to fall asleep, but by the time she was sound asleep, so were we…

When you have kids, privacy is not what it used to be anymore. Suddenly, intimate time is so rare and precious there is not a lot of opportunities to be spontaneous. Suddenly, you have to plan your private time together as a couple and the more time goes by, the more kids you have and the older they get, the harder it gets to find a private time to enjoy and love each other.

Luckily for us, we woke up when Eden was just 11 months old. We realized we needed to plan our time together if we wanted to enjoy each other’s company. We sat and thought of some things that would help us “keep the fire burning” between us and how to manage the loss of privacy that comes together with the joy of having kids. I recommend that every couple do these things, regardless of the age of their children. One important thing kids need is parents who stay together, so invest in your togetherness for the sake of your children too.

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Teach Your Kids How to Network

Every parent wants well-connected kids. Many people invest a fortune to allow their kids to hang around others they may benefit from. The saying “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know”, is very tough but true.

I learned it the hard way that connections get you places and that there is no need to fight it. I remember the first time I realized it when I was about 24 years old and went to the bank to get with a credit application. As Gal and I sat down in the manager’s office, he looked at us like we were two young kids and said, “Never! I don’t know you and I can’t give you any credit”.

People like doing business with people they know. There is an assumed trust with someone you know. My dad had suggested he come with us to the bank, but I said, “No! It’s not supposed to be like that”. We both had salaries, we owned our home (and had a huge loan my dad had organized) and I was convinced the bank manager would look at the facts and understand we were a reliable couple, but he did not.

At one stage, I asked the bank manager, “Do you know my dad?”

He asked, “What’s your dad’s name?”

When I told him, he cried, “Why didn’t you say so? Sure, I’ll give you credit! Here, give me the form and I’ll sign it”

I was furious, but I realized my dad had built this connection for a long time and it was just wise for me to take advantage of it. I also realized I had to do the same for my children.

Much of our success in life depends on our ability to network and connect with other people. This is a very important skill that your kids will learn from you. It is almost a form of art.

In my leadership training, I tell the participants that good leaders have good networks and they build them like spiders. Every person they meet, they weave a web that connects them. This is true in life and in business. You connect with people and you both benefit from the relationship. Benefit does not have to be financial, it can be emotional, but as long as both sides benefit, the relationship will continue. This is a very important social skill to teach children – having a network of friends is important for their success and it based on “give and take”. In a good relationship, you cannot be a constant giver or a constant receiver.

This post is part 4 of 4 in the series How to Raise Friendly Kids

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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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Handy Family Tips: Make a Note

When I took a course in journalism, one of the tips in the course was to have a writing pad everywhere. Since I am a very good student, I did whatever they said. I had a writing pad in the car, in all my bags and even next to my bed. It is funny that only after you use a handy tip for a while, you realize how much you need it. Originally, this tip was meant to help me with my work, and it did, but I never thought it would be so beneficial for us as a family until I realized that the note pads I had put in so many places around the house were being used by all the members of my family.

With the very hectic and full lifestyle that we have today, remembering everything that needs to be done occupies a very important and limited space in our memory. If you ask parents to sit down and write the entire to-do list for the week, most of them could do it for 3 hours straight.

Of course, the more kids you have at home, the more memory space you need for your timetable and tasks. You need to remember the dates of rehearsals, what to bring to school, when to pay for the dance class, to call your sister, say happy birthday to your friend, coordinate an outing with your partner, get a babysitter, have enough money in your wallet/purse when you go to the market, to buy a gift for the party your daughter is invited to on the weekend, go over the spelling with your child before the exam, send the right uniform on the excursion day, change the pickup time, dentist appointment, add turmeric to the shopping list for the Moroccan dish planned for Friday and … the list is endless.

We have a good friend that says, “The opposite of forgetting is writing down”, but what happens when you need to remember something while you are driving or when you are in bed, ready to go to sleep?

This post is part 13 of 24 in the series Handy Family Tips

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Lost in Translation

Motivation seems like a very tricky thing for many people, parents included. Motivational speakers make a great living out of presenting it as a mysterious art, mastered by the few, that will bring you endless prosperity if you “get it”.

One main challenge with motivation is that it is mostly subconscious. We find ourselves wanting to do or to achieve something, but when the time comes to actual do it or take steps towards achieving it, we snooze. This is frustrating and reinforces a negative identity of being incapable, undisciplined losers. We punish ourselves, blame our parents or circumstances, and try the next thing, but…

Motivating other people is further complicated by the involvement of more than one subconscious mind. We want someone else to do or to achieve something, so we try to communicate that to them. What happens all too often is that our message gets distorted – lost in translation – and they end up doing or achieving something else. This, in turn, creates frustration and bad vibes on both sides.

Many hierarchies rely on a “chain of command”. This includes schools, government departments, armies, religious organizations and corporations. Each person in the organization has an official title, an official job description and a set of official authorities, which they use as the main method of motivating other people. If you have ever worked in a hierarchical system, you know this does not always produce the desired outcome and that very often, what happens in the organization is very different from the organization’s stated vision and mission.

Regrettably, many families also function in a top-down manner, sort of like an army unit. One parent is the General or Admiral, the other is the Second-in-Command (the ranks may change for different circumstances) and they children rank anywhere from Foot Soldier to Sergeant, depending on their position in the family and their level of responsibility.

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Video Games Violence (3): Parenting

While Tsoof was doing his assignment on video game violence, I was shocked with the level of violence the kids were exposed to and it really got me scared. By the end of it, he also showed me some statistics about parents and that got me even more scared.

Parents and video games

Here is a list of figures from a US research into parents’ involvement and attitude towards playing video games:

– 50% of parents play computer and video games with their children

– 93% of computer and video games are purchased or rented while the parents are present

– 88% of games are purchased by adults

– 72% of parents believe video games are “fun for the entire family”

– 71% of parents are asked to play by their kids

– 66% of parents believe computer and video games provide good opportunities for them to socialize with their kids

– 63% of parents believe computer games are a positive part of their kids’ life

– 50% of parents claim that playing computer and video games with their children provides good opportunities to monitor the game content
10% of parents never check the official rating of the computer and video games their kids use
Now, I ask you, would you not feel like there must be someone to blame? Do not feel devastated after reading these figures?

Did you know when reading such things, people use a defense mechanism that says “It won’t happen to me”. I did the same. I said to myself, “I’m OK. My kids are not exposed to video games. We have never purchased any computer game in our life. We don’t have a game console at home”. But this mechanism only gives us a false illusion that we are safe, because we are not.

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Video Games Violence (2): Video-game-inspired real violence

In the first chapter of the series, I wrote some facts about the gaming industry and some research regarding video games and violence. Here is a list of real life killings and acts of violence inspired by video games. You may even recognize some of them.

April 20, 1999: 18-year-old Eric Harris and 17-year-old Dylan Klebold killed 12 students and a teacher in the Columbine High School massacre. The two were allegedly obsessed with the video game Doom.

1 April 2000: 16-year-old Spanish teenager José Rabadán Pardo murdered his father, his mother and his sister as an “avenging mission” given to him by the main character of the video game Final Fantasy.

20 November 2001: 21-year-old American Shawn Woolley committed suicide after what his mother claimed was an addiction to EverQuest.

February 2003: 16-year-old American Dustin Lynch was charged with aggravated murder and used an insanity defense that he was “obsessed” with Grand Theft Auto III.

7 June, 2003: 18-year-old American Devin Moore shot and killed two policemen, inspired by the video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.

This post is part 2 of 2 in the series Video Game Violence

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War and Peace are Personal

People often wonder how a large-scale conflict, involving hundreds of thousands of people, causing numerous deaths and leaving countless people emotionally and/or physically maimed for life can occur. Yes, I am talking about war.

All around the world, no matter when you look, there is some war going on. Sometimes, they are obvious confrontations of armies. Other times, they are a wide spread collection of small events and often involve civilians, but they are wars nonetheless.

Wars are stupid. Wars are cruel. Wars are wasteful. Nobody truly wins in a war. Yet, they are always there. Worse, they mostly involve people who have no desire to fight whatsoever.

This week, Ronit and I watched two war movies: Letters from Iwo Jima and Captain America. That made me realize the extent to which everyday people can be mobilized to serve some external cause. The Japanese had their tradition, their emperor and their honor. The Americans had the propaganda that told them they were protecting their country and their freedom. In the end, many people fought on both sides, many people died, many were injured and many families suffered.

Watching a war movie, we do not count deaths. There are just too many. In reality, each dead soldier has a mother, a father, friends, maybe a partner and maybe even children. Each dead soldier has a future and then, nothing. A hole in the fabric of society.

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Video Games Violence (1): Shock and Awe

This year, my 15-year-old son Tsoof had to do a school assignments in drama class. If you think Drama studies are all about playing, make belief or acting, they are not. He had to research a topic and present it in a special style and he worked really hard on this project. Gal and I felt happy and privileged to watch the whole process of this assignment and the way he grew from doing it.

Our kids do not play computer or video games that often (they are too busy ice skating, singing, playing music, dancing, playing sport and reading to have much time left for video games), so we did not expect this to make any difference to Tsoof, but it did big time.

We were shocked by how easy it was to find information on video games and violence. It is all there – all the proof for the negative and devastating effects of violent video games on our society. Yet, the spread of violent video games is increasing and things are getting worse.

I was not sure how to present Tsoof’s findings to you. I was debating whether to tell you my opinion or maybe there was no need. I think maybe just giving you some of the facts about it will be enough for you to understand the severity of the problem. As I believe that as parents, we have lots of power to change this horrible phenomenon. So sit back and be horrified!

This post is part 1 of 2 in the series Video Game Violence

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Parents Doing Business

I had my first business at the age of 25. I finished my Special Education studies and opened an Early Childhood Center that became a very successful business within a short time. I was a mother and a wife and had a mortgage, a car and a personal loan for my business.

If you hear parents tell you that kids are an obstacle for them, I can tell you that having kids is a bad excuse for not doing business. When the kids grow up and leave the house, they will be left with their excuses. So when they have to explain why they have never done what they have always wanted to do, they will start saying, “It’s too late now”, which is just another excuse.

If you are thinking of starting a business and will need to juggle business and family, it is a good idea to discover what you will have to do to succeed at it. Some people are not cut out to own and operate a business. Others do not know how to balance a home and a business. Managing your business, your home and your parenting well requires some skills and attitudes that will determine the success of your business, the quality of your family life and even your health.

Unlike people who do not have kids, business parents risk a lot more than their own time and money. They risk their relationships with their partners and with their kids, as well as the quality of preparation their kids get for life. You go into business because you want a better life for your kids, not to destroy your relationship with your kids, so do it right!

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