Author: Veronique

Mother and writer. Not always in that order.

Friday’s Mixed Nuts

~ Veronique ~ 3 Comments

1 one new English word I learned this week: distaff. In French, the word for distaff (“quenouille”)  is also used to describe the pollen-holding part of the reed (“roseau”) as in “Holy Cow there’s a lot of pollen in a distaff!”

On our daily walk, we picked a "quenouille" and my daughter asked if she could pick it apart. "Sure", I said,"Here's a bowl."
Aaaaaah.... Lesson learned (or rather "remembered from childhood")

2 two pet-peeves (bear with me, I don’t have many): TV doctors wearing scrubs and lab coats. Really? I didn’t realize that you had to be sterile to explain how the excretory system works to a camera. And Gmail.  I can’t understand how a web service with a user interface that is so counter-intuitive can make so much money. Oh, wait, that’s right, they’re not making money from the users of the interface, they’re merely selling access to their users to marketers. I’ve been trying to find an attachement for a couple of hours now, I think I clicked on just about every icon on my screen. User interfaces like this are why it’s so hard to teach my mother-in-law how to use her iPod. “Yes, I can see the pictures but I don’t know how to open just one.” “Touch it.” “Touch what?” “The picture” ” What do you mean??” “Just touch the picture you want to see Grandma!” “Aaaaaaah! So easy!” All this time spent trying to open a stupid attachement is giving me too much opportunity to notice the targeted ads on the sidebar. Hey marketers, tell your clients that when I see their ad as I’m reading a personal email on a related topic, I’m spooked. Not tempted to buy their products. Spooked. And considernig closing my Gmail account. This book The Daily You by Joseph Turow is next on my reading list.

3 three feet is how far my baby daughter throws up when she burps. I love babies but not the part where I walk through life stinking of sour milk.

Better out than in I always say!
Mom? Could you, uh, like, put down the camera and maybe clean me up? Maybe?

4 four crying out loud!    When they say you shouldn’t type anything into a computer (and especially online) you wouldn’t want read in a court of law, that’s what they meant: Ottawa jogger sues blind runners for crashing into her . See that last paragraph?

“We Googled her name to see who she was and it showed that she ran a race in April 2010, so if she was hurt so bad that she said she’s been unable to run, why is her name listed for running a 10-k months later?” Dunkerley asked.”

5 five… I don’t have a five… Except, wait, five fingers way up (as in “High Five” ) to all the moms out there on the “mommy track”. Earlier this week I was asked by a TV research assistant how I was balancing out work and family. I’m not, I said. “Balancing out” work and family is a game of fractions where what you give to one you don’t give to the other. The idea of balance or equilibrium means that you are somehow giving equal parts to both plates. I like my work but I don’t want work and family to balance. Family comes first and in my case, it means that I write MP correspondence part-time with a graduate degree in law. I will never fly in the Prime Minister’s plane but I will always be home in time to make a healthy diner for my family. So give me a high five if you’re with me on the mommy track, over-educated and under-employed, and not resenting the workplace for being different than the family place. ‘Cuz the workplace is missing something crucial and that’s my children.

“famille nombreuse de 7 enfants dans maison trop petite”

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For my English readers: this blog post was inspired by a search engine term that landed someone on vie de cirque.com. It means “large family with 7 children in house too small.”In this post I reveal my husband’s house design hobby and our quest to design the smallest most energy efficient home for a family of 10.

Je reçois quotidiennement un sommaire des termes de moteur de recherche (Google, Yahoo!) utilisés par les visiteurs de mon blogue. Alors que mon blogue gagne du momentum — et que je développe l’habilité d’utiliser les bons “tags” pour décrire mes publications — de plus en plus de visiteurs trouve mon blogue en faisant ne recherche Internet. La recherche la plus fréquente? Gaufres belges. Bref, vous seriez surpris des recherches que les gens font (c’est Internet après tout!). Récemment, quelqu’un a visité Vie de cirque suite à une recherche des termes “Famille nombreuse de 7 enfants dans maison trop petite.” Ça m’a inspiré.

Je dois dire tout de suite que je ne vis pas dans une maison trop petite avec ma famille nombreuse. En faits, je vis dans une maison trop grande et je rêve de concevoir et de construire la plus petite maison pouvant être confortablement habitée par une famille de 10. Mon mari, qui a un hobby de design, nous a tricoté un modèle de 1 300 pi. ca. inspiré des idées de Sarah Susanka, architecte et auteure du livre The Not So Big House: A Blueprint fot the Way We Really Live. Je ne doute pas qu’il soit possible de vivre dans une maison trop petite avec 7 enfants. Cependant, ce n’est pas l’espace qui manque dans les maisons nord-américaines, c’est l’espace intelligemment pensé.

Ça m’a rappelé une conversation avec une amie, il y a quelques années, lorsqu’elle et son mari ont acheté une maison en banlieue d’Ottawa. Sachant qu’ils auraient au moins 3 ou 4 enfants, ils ont acheté une maison unifamiliale de 4 chambres à coucher. Elle me disait: “C’est un peu tragi-comique quand on y pense. Nous voilà qui pensons ‘Voici une maison assez grande pour 3 ou 4 enfants’ alors que dans un autre pays, une mère comme moi penserait ‘Voici une maison assez grande pour 3 ou 4 familles!'” Et les familles seraient sans doute plus nombreuses! Une étude de l’évolution de la maison familiale peut se faire facilement dans n’importe quelle ville canadienne d’un certain âge en partant du centre-ville et en se dispersant vers l’extérieur.

Les maisons d’aujourd’hui sont conçues pour des familles de 4 ou 5 personnes. Même dans notre maison trop grande, nous avons du repenser certains espaces afin de les rendre plus pratiques pour une famille nombreuse. Voici quelques observations sans ordre particulier.

1. Ne vous limitez pas à ce qui devrait y avoir dans une maison unifamiliale. Oui la plupart des gens ont une salle familiale et un salon, cependant, la plupart des gens n’ont pas 5, 6, 7, 8 enfants. Nous avions une maison avec un espace pour manger dans la cuisine (eat-in), une salle-à-manger (dining room), une salle familiale et un salon. Autrement dit, deux aires pour manger et deux aires pour se reposer. Nous avons fait faire un mur entre la salle à manger et le salon qui sont devenus un bureau et une salle de musique. Nous avions désormais une aire de repos, une aire pour manger, une aire de travail et une aire de pratique de musique.

2. Les espaces à aire ouverte n’ont pas été conçus par des parents de famille nombreuse. Ces espaces sont bruyants, créent de l’écho et empêchent les activités concurrentes (telles que les devoirs de l’un et la pratique de piano de l’autre.) Tentez de les éviter ou de les cloisonner (voir point précédent).

3. Pensez fonction. Lorsque nous avons aménagé dans notre maison actuelle, deux des chambres d’enfants avaient un énorme placard (walk-in closet). Nous avons transformé le walk-in de la chambre des garçons en une petite salle-de-bain (toilette, lavabo, douche) et une petite salle de lavage. Croyez-moi, j’apprécie beaucoup plus ma salle de lavage à l’étage que mes garçons déplorent l’absence d’un placard!

4. Méfiez-vous de vous même. Souvent nos maisons deviennent trop petites pour cause d’excès de fouillis, pas d’excès de personnes. Je connais plusieurs personnes qui font des miracles sur très peu d’espace avec beaucoup de monde. Ces personnes sont sans exceptions des “jetteurs” compulsifs et des acquéreurs sélectifs. C’est-à-dire qu’ils n’achètent rien qui n’a pas besoin d’être acheté et ne gardent rien qui a perdu sa fonction ou son utilité. Pour une bonne dose de motivation sur le coût du fouillis — personnel et financier — je recommande chaudement Is There a Life After Housework? de Don Aslett (en anglais).

Un peu en désordre mais vous voyez l'idée
La plupart des villes canadiennes ont au moins un quartier construit vers 1960-70 avec ce type de bungalow. Ces maisons de 3 chambres à coucher avec un sous-sol pratiquement inhabitable (voyez la taille des fenêtres contre la fondation) étaient conçues pour une famille.
Dans les banlieues, une maison considérée adéquate pour une famille -- 2 parents et 2 enfants -- doit maintenant avoir 2 étages, 4 chambres à coucher et un sous-sol fini. Assez grand pour 3 enfants ou 3 familles?
Voici une maison en construction près de chez moi. Si vous avez du mal à imaginer sa taille, regardez le petit truc dans le coin en bas à gauche de la maison. C'est le garage triple.

A life well-lived

~ Veronique ~ 4 Comments

Pour mes lecteurs francophones: cette publication traite du décès récent de Geordie Henry, un jeune garçon atteint de paralysie cérébrale dont la courte vie a touché de nombreuses familles.

 

In 2006 I went back to University to get a Master’s degree in Law with a specialization in biomedical ethics. My Master’s thesis was on informed consent in neonatal intensive care.  I spent some time in NICU, both in Montreal and Ottawa, observing the decision-making process involving severely sick or impaired newborns, their parents and their medical caregivers.It’s never long before any discussion of neonatal bioethics veers into neonatal euthanasia or the killing of severely disabled newborns. After all, Canada’s abortion laws — or absence thereof — allows abortion until the baby is born alive and viable. Some have made the argument that a passage through the birth canal shouldn’t be such a big deal. Parents who would have been allowed to abort their disabled baby until the previous day should be allowed to request euthanasia once their child is born and the disability discovered. Think this argument is far-off? It’s been made in court, at least in the U.S. I couldn’t find a link — can’t remember the name of the case — but parents in the U.S. did sue a hospital to request that life-sustaining treatment be denied to their impaired newborn. Their principal argument was that had they know of their child’s trisomy, they would have requested an abortion and it would have been fine (true enough). Even here in Canada, a recent court decision imposing a suspended infantice sentence to a mother found guilty of killing her newborn son mentioned that:

The fact that Canada has no abortion laws reflects that “while many Canadians undoubtedly view abortion as a less than ideal solution to unprotected sex and unwanted pregnancy, they generally understand, accept and sympathize with the onerous demands pregnancy and childrbirth exact from mothers, especially mothers without support,” she writes.

This “sympathy” for the challenges of motherhood not only informs our tolerance of abortion but furthermore — according to this judge — our tolerance of abortion informs our tolerance of newborn infanticide.

This is a rather long preamble to say that discussions of neonatal euthanasia are never far below the surface of neonatal ethics. There is a sense, no doubt rooted in compassion, that some lives are not worth living, that some infants are better off dead. We have an uneasiness with what we perceive to be lives of suffering and as difference is slowly but surely erased through prenatal screening and abortion, we grow-up and grow-old without the experience of loving and caring for a disabled child (our’s or that of a close one).

All these thoughts came back to me over coffee this morning as I wiped tears reading the obituary for Geordie Henry in the Ottawa Citizen. Geordie’s disability was pervasive:

Geordi, then 12, was born with severe cerebral palsy, scoliosis, microcephaly – an abnormally small skull – and a seizure disorder. Because his muscles were tighter than violin strings and his hips were dislocated, he did not bend.

I’m sure that the medical staff had many discussions about Geordie’s prognosis for an acceptable quality of life. I’m sure that some even thought that he may be better off dead. But his story shows, as so many others do, that even lives of suffering have purpose. The purpose may not be to accomplish great things but to draw others to greatness. Too often the beauty and generosity lay dormant in people until something or someone stirs it up, a little like chocolate syrup at the bottom of a glass of milk. It takes people like Geordie to give purpose not only to their own lives but to so many others!

Thank you Geordie for a life well-lived.

Le cadeau de la santé

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Journée de maladie

For my English readers: this is a blog post on the gift of health. If you have it, work to keep it!

Cet hiver a été la saison de tous les virus. Ma famille, généralement pétante de santé, a été malade, malade, puis encore plus malade. Les jumeaux combattent un virus respiratoire depuis la veille de Noël — un virus qui est en fait une succession de virus. J’ai eu une amygdalite, suivie d’une gastro, suivie d’une amygdalite. Les enfants ont attrapé, tour à tour, une variation de gastro, d’amygdalite et de virus respiratoire. Bref, c’est une véritable symphonie de maladie, fréquente chez certaines familles entre octobre et avril mais tout à fait inhabituelle chez nous (en fait, en allant chercher des antibiotiques à la pharmacie j’ai réalisé que certains de mes enfants étaient encore enregistrés sous leur ancienne ancienne adresse!)

Puisque j’ai un intérêt particulier pour toutes les questions alimentaires et nutritionnelles, il m’arrive souvent de réfléchir aux maladies qui nous affligent en nombre grandissant: obésité, diabète, dépression; ainsi qu’aux “nouvelles” maladies (qui ne sont peut-être pas si nouvelles) telles que la fatigue chronique, la douleur chronique, l’absence de résilience. J’ai un hobby d’espionnage des paniers d’épicerie et je me pose beaucoup de questions lorsque je vois une dame obèse avec son enfant obèse pousser un panier rempli de 18 caisses de Coca-Cola en solde. Est-ce qu’elle sait? Est-ce qu’elle s’en fiche? Ou est-ce qu’elle le sait, ne s’en fiche pas mais ne sait pas quoi faire d’autre?

Il n’en demeure pas moins que malgré mon intérêt pour les questions de santé, je n’ai jamais vécu la maladie. Hier soir, j’étais couchée après avoir pris une poignée d’Advil (avoir su que je dormirais aussi peu avec les jumeaux j’aurais acheté des parts chez Advil), pleine de courbatures à cause la fièvre, complètement épuisée de n’avoir presque pas dormi pour presque 5 mois, complètement vidée de n’avoir rien mangé depuis deux jours, et je me demandais “Est-ce que c’est ce que vivent les gens atteint de douleur chronique? Tous les jours? Sans arrêt?”. Puis ce matin mon fils essayais de prendre une photo de Ève avec une caméra digitale et j’essayais de dire à Ève: “Regarde la petite lumière rouge!” sauf que je n’arrivais pas à trouver le nom de la couleur. Rouge! Je rassemble mes pensées, et je dis:

“Ève, regarde la petite lumière….”

la couleur ne me vient toujours pas.

“…la petite lumière… jaune!”

Mon fils éclate de rire et moi je ris un peu jaune.

“Ève, regarde la petite lumière… Jaune!!”

Là je commence à ne pas trouver ça drôle. Je me concentre. “Ève, regarde la petite lumière…” je vois le mot “rouge” dans ma tête.

“Regarde la petite lumière… verte!”

Non mais c’est pas possible! Puis je me suis demandé: “Est-ce que c’est ce que vivent les gens atteints de fatigue chronique?” Avoir le cerveau en fouillis, incapable de se concentrer, probablement incapable de travailler.

Pour moi, cet hiver de tous les virus viendra à sa fin. Pour tant d’autres, le cadeau de la santé leur échappe et leur échappera peut-être pour toujours. Si vous avez la santé, si vos enfants sont en santé, donnez-vous une bonne tape dans le dos et ne la laissez pas s’échapper. Vous avez peut-être des bons gènes ou elle est venue à un prix. Mais le prix à payer ne sera jamais aussi élevé que le coût de la perdre. Santé!

Friday’s Mixed Nuts

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Pour mes lecteurs francophones: “Friday’s Mixed Nuts” est un ramassis d’anecdotes et de faits divers rassemblés au cour de la semaine.

1 one vegetarian recipe my kids all love: blackbean quesadilla from Canadian Living.com I serve it with salsa, sour cream and guacamole. I always double the recipe and we eat the leftover filling by the spoonful. I also warm-up the leftovers in a pan, throw-in some cheese and top it with diced avocado. It’s a gazillion time better when the salsa was made with love by your own mother using your own homegrown tomatoes and jalapenos. A little jar of spicy summer heat in the dead of winter.

2 two blogs I found this week that inspired me: The Lucas Adventures (family with 4 children and a touching adoption story from Rwanda) and Crackers (a homemade food blog about eating well, something I try to do in part by growing my own tomatoes and having other people make the salsa — Merci Maman et Faustina!)

3 three sizes of black socks is how I deal with  the laundry for 20 feet (well 16 really since the twins don’t count yet). Large black socks for mom, dad and the two larger children, medium black socks for the two medium children and small black socks for the little boy. Clean socks live in a laundry basket and people play mix-and-match as required.

4 four kilometers is how far I ran on icy sidewalks with my dog and my jogging stroller. You can read about it in the Running Diaries’ First Run post.

5 five billion dollars is what Facebook will file to raise in its initial public offering (IPO).  According to the company, its revenue rose by 65% is 2011 from 3-ish million $ to 1 billion. Ever wondered what made Facebook so valuable? It depends who you ask. According to founder Mark Zuckerberg, it is seizing the opportunity to connect people and building the tools that enable these connections. Uh? Since I don’t pay a dime for connecting with my friends there has to be more: investors are not paid in “connections”. Mashable has the real story here. In case you were wondering, Facebook is a giant advertizing bucket. We users are not the clients, we are the product. That’s good to keep in mind as Facebook prepares to put your personal information on show whether you want it or not. Is this a big deal? It depends how you feel about online privacy. Still, you may want to read this before embracing the mandatory timeline.

N’ajustez pas votre appareil

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I’ve been trying to change my blog’s visual theme for the last couple of days. I’m looking for a more streamlined appearance and I don’t like the white title over colour. It’s too busy. I found a theme that I liked but it made the pages published under The Running Diaries disappear. Then it wouldn’t deactivate certain widgets from the sidebar (the appear deactivated on the blog’s dashboard but still appear on the home page.) So bear with me and do not adjust your TV.

J’essaie de changer le thème de mon blog depuis quelques jours car je trouve le thème actuel trop distrayant. De plus, je n’aime pas le titre en blanc sur couleur. J’ai essayé un nouveau thème plus simple visuellement mais ce thème a fait disparaître les pages publiées sous la rubrique “Running Diaries”. Puis je n’arrive pas à enlever certains widgets du sidebar (belle phrase en franglais, hein?). Alors soyez patients et n’ajustez pas votre appareil.

Mise-à-jour: sommeil des jumeaux

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For my English readers: My site stats show that a lot of people stumble upon Vie de Cirque while looking for information about twins and sleep in French (“jumeaux” and “sommeil” if you must know.) This post is an update about my twins: short on helpful information and high on lived chaos.

Les statistiques de mon blogue démontrent que plusieurs lecteurs tombent sur Vie de cirque en faisant une recherche sur les termes “sommeil” et “jumeaux”. Voici donc une mise-à-jour sur le sommeil des jumeaux contenant très peu d’information utile: si vous avez des jumeaux et que vous manquez de sommeil, je suis de tout cœur avec vous! (et n’hésitez pas à me dire ce qui a marché pour vous!)

Après avoir écrit plusieurs fois sur le sommeil des jumeaux (ou plutôt son absence), j’ai décidé de faire preuve de plus de flexibilité et de me concentrer sur la survie plutôt que sur le principe. Pour une semaine ou deux, ç’a bien fonctionné et nous avons établi une routine de nuit qui semblait profiter à tout le monde: vers 19:00, les jumeaux se couchaient pour la nuit et dormaient jusqu’à minuit-1:00. Lors de leur premier réveil je les nourrissais (un au sein, l’autre au biberon) puis on se recouchait pour 2-3 heures jusqu’au prochain réveil. Vers 3:00, je prenais le premier réveillé au lit avec moi puis je le recouchais lorsque le deuxième se réveillait. Après 3:00 du matin ma nuit était terminée à toute fin pratique mais au moins je ne me levais plus (à part pour prendre les bébés qui dorment dans une couchette à côté de mon lit.). Vers 06:30-7:00 nous étions tous debout pour la journée.

Puis une nuit, Lucas n’a pas voulu se rendormir après son boire de 03:00 et j’ai commencé à le garder au lit avec moi. Puis il a n’a plus voulu simplement dormir avec moi, il a voulu téter sans arrêt jusqu’au lever. Puis ce n’était plus à partir de 3:00, c’était 2:00 puis 1:30 et ainsi de suite. Au début j’ai cru que Lucas avait besoin de plus de chaleur humaine mais mon mari, plein de sagesse, a suggéré qu’il avait peut-être encore faim. D’une manière ou d’une autre, exclure la faim en lui donnant une plus grosse bouteille n’était pas une mauvaise idée.

En bref, Lucas a faim. Et moi je suis fatiguée que Lucas ait faim. Ça fait 4 mois que ma vie est réglementée par les minutes au sein, les tours de bouteille, les millilitres de formule.

Au milieu de tout ça j’ai du mal à trouver l’équilibre entre trop et pas assez. Puisque je suis atteinte d’hypoplasie mammaire du côté gauche, j’ai beaucoup de mal à produire assez de lait pour nourrir deux bébés exclusivement au sein. J’ai réussi à réduire leur supplémentation jusqu’à 4-6 onces par jour (250-300 ml) mais c’était un travail continu: je devais avoir les bébés au sein toute la journée et toute la nuit en ne laissant pas plus de 2 heures s’écouler entre le début d’une tétée et celui de la prochaine (et puisqu’une tétée dure environ 45 minutes, les tétées reviennent souvent!). Les bébés avaient tout le temp faim puis je suis tombée malade et ma production a chuté. Tout était à recommencer.

L’allaitement de mes jumeaux me pose un dilemme continuel depuis leur naissance. Les bébés ont besoin de lait maternel. Je peux les allaiter exclusivement (ou presque) mais l’allaitement exclusif vient à un coût élevé pour moi et ma famille. Les jumeaux ne sont pas les seuls qui ont besoin de moi, cependant ce sont les plus vulnérables et cet âge de grande vulnérabilité sera bientôt terminé. Je ne suis pas de celles qui croient que la formule est normale et le lait maternel est meilleur. Pour moi, le lait maternel est normal et la formule est moins bonne. C’est une différence de perspective qui rend la supplémentation plus difficile à accepter. Comment puis-je choisir de ne pas donner à mes bébés ce sont ils ont le plus besoin? D’un autre côté, est-ce que je les aide s’ils ont toujours faim?

J’ai rencontré une maman de jumeaux qui m’a dit de ne pas lâcher avant 6 mois car tout s’améliore après. L’introduction des solides laisse un peu plus de flexibilité quant à la supplémentation et les tétées ne sont plus autant régimentaires. Enfin, j’imagine. Car si tout est plus intense avec des jumeaux (et ça l’est!), le soulagement doit l’être aussi avec chaque coin tourné. Avoir 8 enfants m’a appris une chose: tout passe et les enfants grandissent.

Les étoiles mauves

~ Veronique ~ 1 Comment

Quand je dis à mes plus jeunes que je les aime, j’essaie toujours de le faire de manière à ce qu’ils comprennent que je les aime beaucoup. Leur dire que je les aime gros comme toute la terre, c’est bien beau mais bien abstrait pour un petit pour qui le monde se limite à la maison et au jardin. Parfois je dis aux petits que je les aime gros comme une maison ou un camion de pompier. Puis en gradissant, la maison devient trop petite et je les aime gros comme une montagne. Puis on rigole, je les aime gros comme une montagne de camions de pompier et ainsi de suite.

Moyen bonhomme

Hier en couchant mon petit bonhomme — qui est en fait mon moyen bonhomme maintenant que j’ai un encore-plus-petit bonhomme — je lui ai dis que je l’aimais gros comme un camion de pompier mais c’était nettement insuffisant. Il a commencé à m’expliquer:

– Non, gros comme les étoiles mauves!

Les étoiles mauves?

– Oui, les étoiles mauves qui son très, très loin dans l’espace. Elles sont tellement loin que ça prend dix… euh, dix ANNÉES pour y arriver! Tu m’aimes gros comme une montagne aussi haute que les étoiles mauves!

C’est bien de se savoir aimé loin comme les étoiles mauves! Et il me le rend bien: la semaine dernière, il m’a annoncé que j’étais sa maman préférée. Compte tenu des options, j’étais touchée. Mais ce n’est pas tout. Il m’a aussi dis que j’étais aussi jolie que Taylor Swift. Alors là!

Taylor Swift
Moi.

Teenagers: Learning from their mistakes pt 2

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I concluded my previous post on teens and discipline by telling you about the essay as a discipline tool. You can find part 1 of Learning from their mistakes here.

Have you ever sent a child to her room to think about what she’d done? Do you really think, while she’s there, that she is pondering on the great wrong she’s done to you? If you do, I hate to burst your bubble. Your child is more likely reflecting on how great a victim she is. Assuming she is not reading, sleeping, surfing the Net or watching TV (but your children don’t have TV in their room, right?? If they do, we must have words). Let’s be honest: when we send a child to their room to “think”, what we are really saying is:

I’m really annoyed by your behaviour, please get out of my space while I regain my composure.

Agreed?

The result of sending a child to his room may not always be as intended but we are on to something with the idea of reflecting on one’s behaviour and understand where it failed. The problem with “go to your room” is that we are not nurturing our children’s budding moral development by shooing them off to “think” by themselves.

When it comes to teenagers, the development of a reliable sense of right and wrong is essential and time sensitive: a teenager in grade 10 (15-16) could be moving out to study in 2-3 years. If they are not learning self-control, impulse-management and developping a moral fiber, they can be in for a world of trouble. When I tell my teenagers to “go think about what you’ve done” I mean it in a way I may not have meant when they were little.

In Good Discipline, Great Teens, Dr. Ray Guarandi suggests using essays instead of lectures to teach discipline. I met Dr. Ray some years ago when I was on the organizing committee for a parenting conference where he was the speaker. His talks are like stand-up routines: we laughed so hard it hurt. But don’t get fooled by the funnies: while his delivery is hilarious, his approach to discipline is serious. After the conference, we went out for dinner with Dr. Ray and I asked him: “That strong discipline approach sounds great in theory but the parents I know who have discipline problems with their teenagers never had a backbone. Shouldn’t they change their approach gradually?”. His reply really left an image that inspires most of my parenting nowadays. He said: “Did you ever drink sour milk thinking it was fresh? When you realize you have a mouthfull of sour milk, do you spit it out gradually or all at once?” When there is something wrong with your children, whether its too much backtalk, too much computer or failing grades, you need to face it head on. Here is a quote from Good Discipline, Great Teens that encapsulates Dr. Ray’s approach:

Dear Dr. Ray, Any words for dealing with a fifteen-year-old who is verbally demeaning to his two younger sisters (…), sometimes abusively so?

Yes. Stop him.

He does give more pointed advice on ways to stop the bad behaviour. But he doesn’t buy the “teens will be teens” schtick. At all. Yes, teens will be teens and this may involve some attitude, back talk and abuse. But it doesn’t mean that you, as parent, have to take it, indulge it or bear it out. Being called over and over on their bad behaviour — and believe me, I have two teens, I cannot overstate how often “over and over” means — is how we imprint on their developping brain what is morally and socially acceptable (and what will get them sued, fired or dumped).

But back to essays. Last December, my husband and I were confronted with a discipline problem involving two of our four oldest children. The offense involved going behind our backs to do something they knew they were not allowed to do. For a few weeks before they got busted, these two children were increasingly short-tempered, rude and difficult. I thought maybe they were overtired or reacting to the twins’ birth, whatever. In hindsight, I think that living a lie was eating away at their souls. When we confronted them, it was very important for us to convey that the material offense wasn’t nearly as big a deal as the lying. The way we approached this was to have a family meeting where we told them (again) about the family rule they had transgressed and why it was in place. We told the children that we knew that two of them had gone beyond our backs. The transgressors were grounded for at least two weeks (except for school and sports) and their computer priviledges were removed (the computer was the instrument of the transgression). Then we assigned them with two written projects. The projects had to be handed-in before the computer priviledges could be regained and the grounding lifted. Both children had to present a written apology with an explanation of what went through their heads when they decided to go behind our backs. They also had to write an essay (500 words for the youngest and 2000 for the oldest) on personal integrity, personal dignity and respect for parental authority. The oldest of the two also had to do a bit of research on why the family rule he-or-she had transgressed was important.

When they handed back their essays and apologies, I was taken aback with how much thought they had put into their work. Here are some exerpts, published with permission from their authors (as long as I keep them anonymous). On respect for parental authority the youngest of the two wrote:

You can see your parents like your boss at work. They tell you what to do and you must obey. But instead of paying you with money, they pay you with love. Another difference is that you will never get fired. In other words, they will always love you no matter what you do.

On personal integrity, the oldest of the two wrote (I really wish I could quote the entire essay, it’s that good):

Integrity. The first image that comes to mind is that of a brick wall. Solidly built, unshakeable and most of all, strong. Every component, every brick, is held together by mortar. Remove a brick and the wall isn’t complete. Remove the mortar and the wall doesn’t hold.

Personal human integrity isn’t all that different. Your values are the bricks, held together by honesty, your mortar. Without your values, your wall of integrity isn’t complete. Without honesty, your bricks will not hold together.

Giving them an essay topic allowed us to put the emphasis on the lesson we wanted the children to learn. The grounding and removal of priviledges were tools to make sure that the children had the time and leisure to work on their essays and also provided motivation for finishing the essays in a timely fashion. I am now thinking of using essays as a gateway for earning more priviledges. For instance, before allowing your child/teen to have a Facebook page, you could ask for a short essay (500 words is very manageable for a 10-12 year-old child) on data mining or online privacy protection or cyber-bullying. Making your teens do the research and writing will always beat a lecture, take it from me.

Teenagers: Learning from their mistakes pt 1

~ Veronique ~ 1 Comment

If I title a post on parenting teenagers “Learning from their mistakes” you may think that the post will be about getting teenagers to learn from their mistakes. But I’m not so delusional as to give you such hope: I have to assume that teenagers learn from their mistakes because I once was a teenager, I learned from my mistakes, and I am a relatively well adjusted adult. Beyond that, beats me. No, the title of this post refers to what I — the parent — am learning from disciplining my teens in the great adventure of parenting.

When my four oldest children were little, countless well-meaning strangers told me to enjoy them while they were young because once they hit the teenage years it would be all downhill from there. I was never afraid of the teenage years however. I had a happy teenage-hood. I remember getting along well with my parents and my siblings. I had no interest in drugs and alcohol and I had no major academic issues (I had no clue about anything mathematics or scientific but I did get my high school diploma. This suggests that I had enough of a clue to pass whatever it was I had to pass. But it’s still a mystery.) My experience chatting with other parents is that the amount of fear a parent feels toward their children’s upcoming teenage years is directly proportional to the amount of grief they gave their own parents as teenagers. Call it cosmic payback.

Now that we are more firmly rooted in teenage-dom with each passing year (we have two card-carrying teenagers with a third one coming up the pipe) I can say that parenting teenagers  — so far — has been an experience in mixed emotions. It’s in equal parts more fun, challenging and infuriating than parenting young children.

It’s more fun because teenagers have a sense of humour. They are quirky, they love a good joke and their malleable brain seems to have an infinite capacity to memorize skits and one-liners. It’s easy to laugh with them (and sometimes at them…). Their sense of humour if often dark and off-kilter and if you don’t take yourself too seriously — because they can give it as well as they take it — you can be in for a good time. I also find that my teenagers are keen observers of human nature without the politically correct varnish that develops with age. A varnish is not always a bad thing but sometimes I wish I still had the ability to call a spade a spade the way my teens do.

Having fun with gourds
Teenagers like to make funny faces

It’s more challenging  because the stakes are higher. Higher stakes mean that you are under pressure to make the right discipline call at the right time. What do I mean by that? When raising young children, you often make discipline calls that are either bone-headed or counter-productive. Have you ever spanked a child in anger? Hit a child for hitting a sibling? Flew off the handle after catching a liar? Great. Now your child is learning that hitting is a good way to blow off steam, hitting is a good response to injury and that his lying skills need improvement. The consequences of those bad discipline calls are mild. Unless you repeat them regularly over several years, they won’t make your child into violent liar.  If the balance of your parenting is loving and forgiving you’ll get another kick at the can in a few days. But teenagers can make mistakes that will hunt them for the rest of their lives: get pregnant, flunk high school and crash a car full of friends. Even if your concerns are of a lesser order of magnitude — as mine are, thank God — you still need to be on the ball and ready to roll. Your teen is flunking high school math because he couldn’t be bothered? Sure you can take his iPod away for a week. He still flunked math. And closed the door to every paycheque-friendly faculty, like engineering, medicine, business, dentistry, you name it! I don’t want my teens to learn a life-lesson from flunking math and science out of sheer laziness: I want them to succeed. If they decide to get an English major, it won’t be because nobody else would let them in. Get it? Stakes, higher.

It’s more frustrating because teens push your buttons at a more adult level and really bring you face to face with your shortcomings as a parent. When you lose your “composure” at a 3 year-old, they still come to you for comfort. When you fly off the handle and start ranting at a teenager (two big teenage no-nos, don’t ask me how I know), they think you’re a loser. (Now, if you have done your job right up to this point, your teenagers will know better than to tell you to your face — although my son has been known to exhibit a death wish in that regard: the kid has no filter.) What really rounds-up the challenging and frustrating parts is the well-documented fact that teens really think that they have reached the apogee of knowledge and good judgement. Now, if you reach the apogee of knowledge and good judgement at 15, and the only way from an apogee is down, you can imagine where, in a teen’s mind, the parent is situated on the apogee-to-perigee-continuum: it takes 15 years to get to the top, and it’s all downhill from there, and you are say, almost 40, it means that you’ve been on a downward trajectory from knowledge and good judgement for, like… (40 – 15 = uh…)  25-ish years, rounded-up to the nearest brain fart.

Teenagers challenge, push buttons and seek out limits. Sometimes, you will blow it as a parent and they will let you know. But sometimes you will be right… and they will still challenge, push buttons and explain to you why you are wrong, wrong, wrong. The high-wire number is to know when to stand firm and when to go hat in hand apologize for your mistakes. The first thing I learned from parenting teens is to take a step back and take a deep breath. Unless your child is at the police station right now it never hurts to put a little time between you and an issue (and even then, spending the night in prison might not be an entirely bad thing…). The second lesson I learned, which flows from the first one, is to lower your voice, ideally to the point where you are not saying any words. It never hurts to hear a teenager’s grievance. Sometimes they may be right! Just don’t confuse listening with arguing or agreeing. For instance, we have a strict, unbending and controversial no-sleepover rule. This is not popular with my oldest daughter. Listening to her grievance and why we are wrong, wrong, wrong will not make me agree with her. Nor will I argue for the zillionth time why this is so. But it doesn’t hurt to sit down and hear her out. Again.

In part 2 of this post,I will tell you about a discipline tool I took too long to get out of the toolbox: the essay.