Traveling Toward Independence

12.19.2010

In the Travel Section of today’s LA Times, there was an interesting article about giving the gift of travel to a loved.[1] Although the article didn’t focus entirely on kids, I want to include its opening paragraph:

As parents struggle to find just the right gift for their children this holiday season, let me make a suggestion: I’d give the gift of independence. In this age of “helicopter parenting” – our unceasing hovering over our children – it’s not always easy to instill in them the joy of independence and its corollary, self-reliance. Do we really want them to put us aside and embark on some other journey, separate from our care? Yes, I’m not suggesting dropping a teenager in the middle of the Gobi Desert and wishing him good luck…but a series of escalating challenges is the quickest route to becoming your own person. Travel not only opens a window to the world; it also grants the traveler an opportunity to peer deeply inside himself…When we travel, we change under the influence of impressions, memories and experiences that force us to reexamine and reevaluate our present, our past, who we are and what we aspire to be. Travel puts life into perspective, often reminding us of what’s important.

I was sixteen years old when I spent my junior year of high school abroad. As a teen, of course, you think know absolutely everything but when I think about how young I was, I’m astonished that my mother, very much a control freak, allowed me to go. It was also the year where I began to grow up emotionally in ways that I wouldn’t have ever been able to do otherwise. I was always “older” than most because of my situation at home and the responsibilities I had but that year abroad…it made me see the world and what was possible. I agree with the journalist that when you travel alone (or with a select few friends) and become faced with decisions that only you can make, it forces you to draw from within in order to find a solution. This produces confidence and allows a “take charge” mentality to emerge. As parents, I imagine that the point is to help your child develop these kinds of characteristics and I believe that traveling is a perfect template.

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[1] http://www.latimes.com/travel/la-tr-gift-20101219,0,2204867.story

Sesame Street's "I Love My Hair"

10.20.2010

Well. It’s about time.

And the Scales Tip Yet Again

09.24.2010

I’ve been struggling lately with trusting my decisions because I tell myself that what I’ve decided isn’t perfect and it pisses me off how much of my childhood issues still creep up. I can’t help but wonder how much of these issues that are damaging to my own self-esteem would be transferred over to any child that I may have, thus, damaging theirs.

I logically understand that there’s no such thing as perfection but this is easier said than believing. I’ve forever battled a duality within me where one side wants to throw caution into the wind and the other recites the law and/or the Bible. The latter usually wins and, though I’m not complaining much by living on the straight and narrow, I often feel like I miss out on a lot of fun because I’m constantly trying to be perfect. We don’t learn about ourselves by being perfect, we learn by making mistakes. So why is it so difficult to accept these mistakes? I mean, one of my fears is making the mistake of having a child by “ruining” my life or “ruining” the child’s life because of something I did or didn’t do. I’m still sorting through traumatic childhood experiences and poor judgment on my mom’s part. How is this fair?

When I have such thoughts, it underscores that we pro-create not out of a desire to really have a kid but out of a selfish, biological necessity. Babies are cute because if they weren’t there’d be no drive to protect them. We didn’t know our great-grandparents personally and our great-grandchildren won’t know who we are; therefore, the fact that we have a child satisfies the immediate drive to pro-create, as well as an immediate emotional need to feel like we’re a part of something here and now.

Based on this, it’s hard to convince myself that having a child is “the right thing to do” when it’s more of an act of selfishness to have something I could ostensibly call “mine” during my lifetime because after that, only my kid(s) will have any memory of me and maybe my grandchildren.

Makes for a bleak picture, doesn’t it? Leave it to me.

Perfecting the Perfect (Illusions)

06.22.2010

My sister sent me this video the other day and I want to post it up because I think its message is incredibly important – especially for girls and women.

I consider one of my best friends and me to be some of the worst offenders in the self-hate department. We’ve been friends since high school and I can’t tell you how many conversations we’ve had while growing up about how much we hated ourselves and how much we wished we looked like the models and actresses we saw. It’s disheartening to have to look in the mirror and see a reflection of flaws when you see nothing of the sort in movies, TV or magazines. It’s only when you’re older and more mature that you start to realize how that business works and, hopefully, it becomes easier to remind yourself that it’s not real. But I can’t say that I don’t have my moments…

I hope that mothers who have daughters especially take note of the message of this video because, at the end of the day, it’s your voice and support of who they are that is going to be needed desperately as a weapon to fight against the conflicting images and messages that are blasted across the pages and screens. (This, of course, goes for boys too with an emphasis on the father’s voice.)[1]

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[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYhCn0jf46U

Has "Girl Power" Gone Too Far?

06.17.2010

In the middle of grad school, I decided to take an adolescent psychology class to complete some pre-reqs for a secondary credential thinking that I’d give teaching one last try. It wasn’t until 1½ year later after many meltdowns I turned to my then fiancée and said, “I can’t do this. I don’t know what I’m going to do, but it’s not this.” Of all the education classes that I had taken up to that point, the two most beneficial were a technology-based course and the adolescent psychology course.

One of the books I read was Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood by William Pollack (1998). Event though the book can be labeled as pop psychology, I found it to be incredibly beneficial and it really opened up my eyes to the world of boys. I grew up without a father and very little male influence in my life so the world of testosterone is both a fascinating one and one that often scares me. I’ve gotten better over the past 9 years, thanks to my husband’s patience, but, nonetheless, it’s a relatively foreign territory for me.

I grew up in a world that emphasized “girl power” and while attending an all girls high school this was definitely a mantra. But what this book helped me realize is that in the process of society focusing on “girl power,” the boys got left behind. “Recent studies…show that not only is boys’ self-esteem more fragile than that of girls and that boys’ confidence as learners is impaired but also that boys are substantially more likely to endure disciplinary problems, be suspended from classes, or actually drop out from school entirely.” It continues, “…statistics now tell us that boys are up to three times more likely than girls to be the victim of a violent crime (other than sexual assault) and between four to six times more likely to commit suicide.”[1]

How many times have you seen in person or on TV/in movies, adults telling little boys to stop crying because it makes them look like a “sissy?” What this book points out is that just because a boy is a boy, it doesn’t mean he doesn’t have fears or concerns. And starting at an early age, society labels boys a particular way and they are “trained” to grow up and be a certain way: the providers, the strong-ones, to have emotional-containment, etc. I’ve seen many times that when a man has more emotion than “normal,” he’s immediately labeled as “gay.” Why? Why is a boy/man not allowed to cry and to feel?

There is a difference between teaching a boy that his fears and concerns are valid and letting him cry over “spilled milk.” I wouldn’t allow my little girl to cry for no reason or not reprimand her for throwing a tantrum to get her way. These are educational moments; moments to help the child become a better person and to learn that sometimes things just are the way that they are and crying over them isn’t going to change the situation. But, e.g., if a boy wakes up from a scary dream, why do some parents tell the boy to “man up?” To any little kid, a scary dream is just that: scary. Hell, I get nightmares all the time and it scares the crap out of me when I wake up in the middle of the night and I’m sweating.

I think it’s important to remember that each gender has strengths and weaknesses but most importantly each person has strengths and weaknesses and that’s what should be focused on and worked on. Look at the high percentage of Asian men killing themselves because they can’t keep up with the demands on them that society has brought about. These “demands” and images of perfection are destroying the essence of who we are: being human.

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[1] Pollack, William, Real Boys, p. xxiii.