When I was your age.....

Oh no! Not this, anything but this. I know you are thinking to yourself, okay, here come the stories of my grandparents. WRONG! But be honest, how many of us really paid a lot of attention to the stories we heard over and over and over again. They were all the same except the distance changed, or the medical condition was worse. Most of us will find ourselves repeating history with our own stories to grandkids of our own. But kids don’t want to hear this. They know at some point and time that we were their age. The statement I hear most often when talking to kids is “My parents just don’t understand what things are like these days.” Each generation has it’s own problems. Each generation has to face something new, something different, and something worse than when our grandparents were kids. For example, I remember being told that if a girl was pregnant when my mom was in school, she had better be married already. When I was growing up, inter-racial marriages were a big deal. Kids these days have to face things like AIDS. Sure, all of these examples are in each generation, but one is always more in the spotlight than the other.
I’ve been able to talk to a lot of kids about any number of things from having sex, to smoking, to fear of a stepparent or their first heartbreak. Why do kids feel they can talk to me? Easy, I don’t start what point I want to make with “When I was your age..”. I let them tell me the situation. Then I look for a way to turn the worst to something not quite so bad, without letting them off the hook. For instance, I had a young girl that went to school with my daughters. Her parents had gotten divorced before I really knew her. She was an only child, and lived with her mother. But her mother had to provide for her the best she could, so she worked a lot. This girl was alone a lot. When she did get to be with her mom, she wanted all of mom’s attention. The day finally came when her mother met someone she wanted to spend time with. The girl was very hurt because her time with her mom had been cut in half and was shared most of the time. The girl was very upset. She came home with my daughter one afternoon in tears. She said this man was taking her mother away from her and she didn’t like him. Her mother also started enforcing her father’s visitation rights, so our friend was forced to spend time with not only her dad, whom she had anger against for leaving them, but with a step-mom and 2 younger step-sisters. She felt she was all alone. She didn’t think her mother loved her anymore and was going to leave her as well. She also started saying that her mother’s new boyfriend was mean and hateful to her. She was getting into trouble at home and was grounded a lot. She didn’t understand how her mother could do this to her. The advice I gave this girl after letting her cry on my shoulder for over an hour was this. If her mother’s boyfriend really was hurting her, go to her counselor at school. Let them take pictures if there were physical marks; let her counselor hear what emotional trauma she was suffering. These people are qualified to help her, and could get the right departments involved to change the situation. On the other hand, if she was being hateful at home, it was possible she was being treated as she was acting. Perhaps she could try doing something nice for her mom and boyfriend like cooking dinner for them one evening. It wasn’t long, and the situation had changed. The boyfriend was no longer so bad, and mom was back to paying attention to her. The complaints stopped, and even the time she was spending with her dad was becoming easier to bear. I didn’t tell this girl that when I was her age divorces were hush hush, and she should be lucky for any attention she was getting. I turned the tables and offered her a legal way out of the situation, as well as, forced her to look inside herself to see if that was where the problem was. Of course, if I had seen any type of physical marks, I would have called authorities myself, but I hadn’t. Nor did she offer to show me any.
Another example would be about a girl I met in church several years ago. I was teaching the 3-4 year olds Sunday school class, and this girl had a sister in my class. She would sit behind us in the auditorium during the sermon and pull her sister’s hair or pinch her neck. She would physically hurt this 4 year old. The parents of this child did not come to the services, but the kids were there every Sunday. I took the older sibling outside and asked her why she insisted on hurting her sister. She told me that it was how you kept kids in line. It was how you made kids behave. I started watching her when she didn’t know it, and the girl was very physical and I suspected abuse. I talked our minister about it, and it was found that their father was abusing the kids. They were placed in foster care and the last I heard, they were doing very well. It doesn’t always work out for the best, but in this case, if I hadn’t taken the time to ask, I would never have been there to help these kids.
Now the other side of this situation is our kids do need to know that things were different when we were young. Times do change. My kids had heard stories of us riding our bikes for hours on end without worry or having to check in every hour or so. They couldn’t understand why they had to when we live in the same neighborhood I grew up in. The only way I could express my concern of not knowing where they were was to tell them that the neighborhood had changed a lot since I was a kid their age. Kids didn’t carry guns or knives with them; people in the neighborhood knew each other. Things such as this just didn’t happen in everyday America in those days. But everyone in the neighborhood knew everyone else, or at the very least they looked out for each other’s kids. Of course today, we know who the people are next door, and the girls know the kids they go to school with, but adults are so busy trying to get wherever they are going in life, time for visits with the neighbors is almost gone. Single parent households are so much more common that my generation has grown into adults who don’t really trust people they know, let alone someone who lives 2 doors down. Once I told the girls the differences in the neighborhood now and when I was a kid, they understood. It wasn’t that my parents cared less for my brother and me; it was just safer back then.
It’s sad to think that if we adults would take the time to get to know the neighbor just down the street, things might be different for our own children. Realistically, all we can do is pay attention when a kid comes to us and is distressed. Take the time to assess the situation before reacting. Listen to the whole story, ask questions, and LISTEN to the answer, the whole answer, both verbal and non-verbal.

SHHHH!!

Did you hear that? Listen, did you actually hear that? A moment of silence in a household with kids coming and going all the time. That usually means trouble. If you have ever listened to a group of parental figures talking about their home life, one of them will certainly come up with the phrase, “I don’t worry as long as there is noise. It’s when it gets quiet that I go looking.” How very true it is. However, did you ever sit and listen to the noise?
The everyday noise of people is chocked full of what is really happening in the world around us. People are worried, happy, angry, sad, broke, lonely, wealthy, lucky, etc. In a crowded mall, you can see every possible emotion there is. But the trick is to be able to identify it. Who’s lying, who’s telling the truth, who wants help, who just wants to rant and rave? We as adults listen to each other, and make remarks in our own minds as to what we truly think of any given situation. We react to each other in the way we THINK the other person needs us to, or how we would want someone to react if it were our problem.
But have you ever sat and listened to a group of children playing? Listened to the conversation between the Barbie’s and GI Joes. Listened to how the car races around the corner and what the driver says when he meets up with a roadblock. Listened to what ingredients go into the imaginary dinner they are preparing? I don’t mean in the “Oh how cute” listening way. I mean really heard what is behind the words. Kids tell us what is going on in their minds by the way they play. That’s the first form of self-expression they learn, and so often, it is never heard. We see the surface value of the situation, but never hear what these small adults are telling us.
For example, easy now everyone, this is a story about myself. I played with Barbies until I was a teenager. (Don’t worry girls I won’t tell how old I really was). Looking back now, I realize how badly I was trying to tell anyone who would listen that I felt out of place and was alone. I always had one doll that would get left behind at home, always have the worst of the doll clothes. Never got to go on a date with Ken. That doll was me. I saw everyone else as having a good time in life, always having a boyfriend, always wearing the very latest styles, having the cool house and cars. Don’t get me wrong, I had a nice house, everything I ever asked for in due time, and once I bloomed I wasn’t hard on the eyes. BUT I KNEW I WAS DIFFERENT SOMEHOW. I was extremely shy, and very sheltered from the world. I would see the other girls walking down main streets in town, while I was in the car with my parents, hear about the dances, or sleep-overs they had on the weekend, but that I wasn’t invited to. I always had one friend at a time, and when that friend left me for “better friends”, I had myself. I was alone. I had to entertain myself, be my own best friend, share my secrets and dreams with my dog. I needed someone to think I was special and worth their time. But no one heard me. I cannot imagine what I would have turned out to be if someone had heard me.
If you take that time to listen to kids play, and something triggers inside your head and you ACTUALLY understand why the Playdoh person always “looks fat” or why the pretend dinner is a never ending supply of food, or why that one particular action figure has to stay at the window and watch as the others save the planet, then you’re one step closer to being able to talk honestly and openly to kids. It won’t work with all of them. Let’s be realistic here. Some people are never understood, and it would probably scare us to death if we did understand them. But for the most part, talking starts with listening. We have to figure out what is bothering, troubling, scaring, concerning, our kids before we can even think about trying to talk about it with them.
This in no way means we should spy on our kids or eaves drop on phone conversations or have their rooms wired for constant viewing via installed cameras. They are individuals who need their privacy too. But when they talk out loud or play around you, listen. A lot of the time, nothing is there. It’s just play or gossip or whatever, just like with adults. But sometimes, there is a recurring theme, a conversation that only changes a very little bit, but is repeated to everyone who comes around. Why is that story so important to retell? Why is the theme behind the playtime ALWAYS the same? It’s the recurring items, like dreams, that we should hear. Perhaps that one gets left behind because the new baby has to have so much done for it, that the older sibling feels left out, when you THOUGHT you were giving him/her the same amount of attention as always. Why all of a sudden is bed wetting a problem? Sure it could be a medical condition, but think about it, especially if you have a new baby. Babies have to have their diapers changed, and what does Mom/Dad usually do? Tickle, cuddle, and talk to the baby while changing the diaper. The older sibling doesn’t get that kind of attention because they don’t use diapers anymore. Therefore wetting the bed happens. I am NOT saying go into the bathroom with the older child and do those same things you would with a baby while changing their diaper. But perhaps find someway of giving that child the snuggles and cuddles while they are doing an older sibling thing. They need to feel special for what they CAN do that the baby can’t.

It’s all in the listening that we can see the problem and learn to teach ourselves to talk about it.

Who do you think I am?

We’ve all seen them. Those television ads telling us to talk to our kids about drugs and sex and such before it’s “too late”. But what do you REALLY say when you have your child in the same room and they aren’t involved with their own television show, computer game or on the phone with their friends? How do you start any conversation with anyone younger than you are? And we all know that “kids” are anyone younger than ourselves.
This isn’t meant to be another “SEARCH YOUR SOUL” or “HOW TO” blog. It is quite simply my perspective on how to talk to anyone. Some of the stories I’m going to tell will surely register with some of you as very close to something that has happened to you. But don’t worry; I didn’t use any REAL names.
And just for the record, I don’t have a PhD in anything; I didn’t even complete a full year of college. I don’t claim to have psychic powers or bionic body parts. I’m only a simple, medieval times loving romanticist living in Oklahoma trying to shed a little light and give a little hope to someone else – anyone who has contact with others from younger generations.
My dream has always been to be a published author. If making that dream come true in any way makes a positive difference in ONE person’s life, then the time, effort, nerves and anxiousness I felt while writing this will be all worthwhile.
So you are asking yourself at this point, “Why should I read this blog?” My question to you is why not? Give it a chance, see if it sparks an interest or opens a door to let some understanding in. Or read it for the stories. But most of all, JUST READ IT, SHARE IT, and listen to your own thoughts as you go thru it. Who knows, you could be that ONE person!