"Don't do drugs!" OK, because you said so. Meanwhile, my friends, cousins, the world apparently, are all doing drugs. What shouldn't I? It's not like anybody is getting hurt. Bad stuff is just happening on TV. Not in my neighborhood and definitely not with the people I know. So why shouldn't I do drugs? Do you even have a reason?
Yes. Because I want you to give yourselves a chance to grow up. I want you to give yourselves a chance to feel real emotions like love and anger, frustration and rejection without the aid of sedatives to dull your responses or stimulants to make more of issues than needs to be. I want you to experience life in all of its fullness and learn how you fit yourself into it. If you end a relationship, cry through the night while eating a container of Ben and Jerry's with your best friend. Just feel the pain. Allow yourself to experience it and learn how to deal with it. Trust me, the morning will come if you allow it to and you will gain perspective. You will have the ability to handle things and survive them without them crushing you.
I am greatly in fear of all the the teen suicides and think about the causes. Is it because kids aren't allowed to experience pain any longer? Is it because parents attempt to thwart all the negative experiences from their children's lives and then children are left to self-medicate or escape when issues come up that their parents can't shield them from? So when serious issues come up, the kids copy the model - make the bad things go away. When that doesn't work, do the next best thing - you go away. Crazy!! Never give up. Face anything. We are made to handle what is put in front of us. That's when we have families, friends, school, etc. We can't hide from the people we love - we must turn to them and trust that we will be accepted and loved and then we can handle what is thrown our way.
Children are growing up in such an anesthetized time period. If they have a cold, their parents give them cold medicine to take away the symptoms. If they have an issue in school, classes are moved, schedules are changed, conflicts are avoided. If they have no athletic ability, they never need to feel the pain of rejection because everyone is a winner in kids' sports these days.
Where are the life lessons that kids are supposed to be learning? Where are the coping skills and survival instincts that should be at the heart of childhood experiences? In many ways, they are gone and replaced by common sense. Well, it seemed to have made sense when adults tried to protect kids from the pain of life. Stop! Life has pain. The sooner we get kids to accept this and learn how to deal with it, the stronger and more adaptable they will become as grown ups and leaders.
So back to the main issue, telling kids not to do drugs. Who are we kidding? All we do is keep our kids on drugs. We might not be setting them up with a particular drug, but we are their connection. We need to realize that if we are serious about keeping kids off drugs, we need to start with ourselves. And I think if we told kids that we were going to let them experience their childhood and allow them to make decisions, and experience consequences, they would support the change. Children talk about the meaningless of life and want to feel they are in a position of power. Give them a chance to sink or swim. After all, they will have to eventually. Why not let them while the stakes are still relatively low?
So why shouldn't kids do drugs? Because they should have too much to accomplish in their lives and they will need to keep things together to be in control. Let's support hard work and initiative. Let's celebrate children that aren't afraid of failure, but are afraid of not trying. Let's teach our children that to live means to have tried, lost, and rallied to fight once again for what they believe in. Whether this relates to school, friendships, dating, family issues or health issues, it doesn't matter. Learning to be brave enough to face life is a skill that all kids need to possess and they can't get it on drugs.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Rat Race? No Thanks, I'll Wait for the Shuffleboard Tournament
I was reading an excerpt from the book Malaika by Van Heerling. One line stuck with me and it read,"Life is slower here..in a take-a-deep-breath-and-live kind of way." The main character later defends his feelings as not being un-American. That's a funny sentiment and true for so many of us. Being American has become synonymous with a driven, don't get off the treadmill way of life.
One of my yesterdays (I like to think of time past in the collective sense, that way some memories don't seem so distant to me-coping mechanism 101) my father in law, nono, was living with us after being left alone by his wife of many years to cancer. He was a trouper as he tried to keep living his life. At the time my children, Michael and Marielle were around five and three years old. Every day there was a hustle to get to mommy and me swimming at the YMCA and then afterschool kindergarten for Michael. We rushed out of the house each day with the same routine. Nono would be in the kitchen waiting while I rushed to get us out of the house getting past one child's crying over wanting to wear different shoes, while the other had a sudden need to go to the bathroom while we were walking out of the door. I kept my head down and took one challenge at a time, and all the while, Nono whistled.
Oh how sweet you are probably thinking. It wasn't. I could handle the screaming, I could handle the dog barking, I could handle the chaos, but it was the whistling that threw me over the edge. One day I managed to calmly ask him not to whistle when we were trying to get out of the house. Any other time, it would be fine. He looked at me and said, "You know what is wrong with this new generation?" I said, "No, but can you tell me when we get in the car?" He laughed and after we buckled the kids into their car seats, I turned to him and said, "Go on..."
"The problem is everybody is nervous. You wake up late with too many things to do. You rush here, rush there, but you never stop to enjoy life."
He was right. This was a man who came to this country at the age of forty to give his wife and two daughters a better life. (Eighteen months later they also got my husband Nick.) Nono went from a posh government job in the old country to living the American dream: a laborer riding a bike to each of his three jobs while going to night school at Red Bank Regional High School to learn English. My father in law had lived both lives and was here to tell me that I had to make the two come together.
The old adage that it takes a village to raise a child should be It takes a village to help families flourish and that is what I discovered from my many talks with nono. He was the baby of twelve and the five closest in age to him were all girls. As he described it, they each treated him as if he were their own. As they grew and had their own families they remained close. Through his biased eyes he spoke about his sisters sharing the responsibilities of daily life and enjoying the tasks they did together. Their husbands I suppose came together to do whatever men do. Honestly, he didn't talk much about his brothers from that time because several had already come to America to make a better life for their families.
But did they? Yeah, they did. Nono would talk about the social problems in southern Italy. I learned about the mezzogiorno not being allowed to migrate to northern Italy where the better paying jobs were found. Families in southern Italy had few hopes for their children in towns with one main road and street light, and few professional opportunities. In the new country their children thrived, but at what cost?
Is it ani-American to want to feel you are a part of life? Do other countries have to remind their citizens to stop and smell the roses? I was reading a tweet from the Borowitz Report making fun of people emerging from their homes after Hurricane Irene only to walk outside and talk on their cell phones.
I would love to feel what Van Heerling wrote about in his novel Malaika experiencing life on the Serengeti. I would love to get on my bike with a backpack and go cross country with my family for a year. What a rich experience that would be. But I am forty five years old with a mortgage and two kids in high school. My big adventures are riding my bike to the Manasquan Reservoir and taking pictures to remind me that I'm still part of this world. I document my life and hope for a time when I'll be able to truly live it.
It may be a European concept for average people to go backpacking across the continent meeting others along the way and sharing experiences. It may only be for the privileged or utterly fearless to step away from their lives and go to Africa. But why can't that be the American dream instead of saving up for the new i-something. Maybe we just have to redefine our dream.
One of my yesterdays (I like to think of time past in the collective sense, that way some memories don't seem so distant to me-coping mechanism 101) my father in law, nono, was living with us after being left alone by his wife of many years to cancer. He was a trouper as he tried to keep living his life. At the time my children, Michael and Marielle were around five and three years old. Every day there was a hustle to get to mommy and me swimming at the YMCA and then afterschool kindergarten for Michael. We rushed out of the house each day with the same routine. Nono would be in the kitchen waiting while I rushed to get us out of the house getting past one child's crying over wanting to wear different shoes, while the other had a sudden need to go to the bathroom while we were walking out of the door. I kept my head down and took one challenge at a time, and all the while, Nono whistled.
Oh how sweet you are probably thinking. It wasn't. I could handle the screaming, I could handle the dog barking, I could handle the chaos, but it was the whistling that threw me over the edge. One day I managed to calmly ask him not to whistle when we were trying to get out of the house. Any other time, it would be fine. He looked at me and said, "You know what is wrong with this new generation?" I said, "No, but can you tell me when we get in the car?" He laughed and after we buckled the kids into their car seats, I turned to him and said, "Go on..."
"The problem is everybody is nervous. You wake up late with too many things to do. You rush here, rush there, but you never stop to enjoy life."
He was right. This was a man who came to this country at the age of forty to give his wife and two daughters a better life. (Eighteen months later they also got my husband Nick.) Nono went from a posh government job in the old country to living the American dream: a laborer riding a bike to each of his three jobs while going to night school at Red Bank Regional High School to learn English. My father in law had lived both lives and was here to tell me that I had to make the two come together.
The old adage that it takes a village to raise a child should be It takes a village to help families flourish and that is what I discovered from my many talks with nono. He was the baby of twelve and the five closest in age to him were all girls. As he described it, they each treated him as if he were their own. As they grew and had their own families they remained close. Through his biased eyes he spoke about his sisters sharing the responsibilities of daily life and enjoying the tasks they did together. Their husbands I suppose came together to do whatever men do. Honestly, he didn't talk much about his brothers from that time because several had already come to America to make a better life for their families.
But did they? Yeah, they did. Nono would talk about the social problems in southern Italy. I learned about the mezzogiorno not being allowed to migrate to northern Italy where the better paying jobs were found. Families in southern Italy had few hopes for their children in towns with one main road and street light, and few professional opportunities. In the new country their children thrived, but at what cost?
Is it ani-American to want to feel you are a part of life? Do other countries have to remind their citizens to stop and smell the roses? I was reading a tweet from the Borowitz Report making fun of people emerging from their homes after Hurricane Irene only to walk outside and talk on their cell phones.
I would love to feel what Van Heerling wrote about in his novel Malaika experiencing life on the Serengeti. I would love to get on my bike with a backpack and go cross country with my family for a year. What a rich experience that would be. But I am forty five years old with a mortgage and two kids in high school. My big adventures are riding my bike to the Manasquan Reservoir and taking pictures to remind me that I'm still part of this world. I document my life and hope for a time when I'll be able to truly live it.
It may be a European concept for average people to go backpacking across the continent meeting others along the way and sharing experiences. It may only be for the privileged or utterly fearless to step away from their lives and go to Africa. But why can't that be the American dream instead of saving up for the new i-something. Maybe we just have to redefine our dream.
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