Words For Parents

Yesterday I saw an image that has apparently gone viral. It contains a bunch of truisms and some things that older generations have been telling their young-uns for millennia. More information on the origins of the image is here.

All this putting it all on the teenagers makes me wonder just how much adults assume a teenager is capable of being anything other than a product of their own upbringing. As teens we finally start getting a say in how we live our lives, right? But what if we have been having our say, and taking responsibility for ourselves from the get go? No, I don't mean being forced to look after ourselves, deprived our childhood or faced with neglectful caregivers, but allowed the option to work with others to meet our own needs and set our own ways of doing things without being continually dictated to, or organised for. I have this to say.

Words for parents

Let your children do things for themselves. They learn by *doing* so give them an opportunity, and support them doing things for themselves, even if they can't do it as well as you... yet. Give them hints on how to solve their own problems. Be available, but stand back and let them ask for help if they need it.

Let them know you love them and care for them, give them cuddles and boundaries, and earn their respect by showing them respect, that they may want to contribute to the wellbeing of others because it's the normal thing to do. Allow them idle time  (rather than over-planning commitments) so they can learn what it is to invent their own fun, ask their own questions and listen to their own thoughts. 

Listen to your children's wishes, and never tell them that they aren't worth the dreaming. Show them how to make real goals and how you plan and make things happen. Show them how to face setbacks with fortitude, to fight for the things they love, or judge when they are barking up the wrong tree.

And then be realistic. Kids are only kids once. They only get the experiences they need by trying and failing. They aren't failures when they get something wrong, they are making the mistakes that will make them wiser adults. The world has never had adolescents who are capable of the wisdom of old men... and as adults we need to get over that.

In a Split Second...

There is one thing that he does.

In that moment, when I see his face crinkling and his mouth preparing to scream, the dread I feel is palpable as I am not equipped to prevent him screaming in this moment and that, in the following moment, my own irresponsible rageful response will have been triggered. I can't explain why this is so except with the most basic of hand-waving gestures towards a "flight-or-fight" response on my part coupled with an extreme frustration at my inability to cope with that particular noise (a personal thing that I don't quite understand).

In that moment, everything that I want for him and want for my parenting falls apart. I respond in kind. I get loud. I get unreasonable and reactive and start meting out arbitrary punishments with no rational consideration of how they will affect him.

In that moment, I betray him.

"Mother is the word for God on the hearts and lips of all little children" and I feel the same is true for me as a father. They trust that their care is always first and foremost in my mind and that the way that I act is representative of my feelings towards them. If another adult were to behave in the way that I did towards them, it would most likely be met with stunned silence as well as some tears from the shock but the lasting impression would be of some mean random adult that they won't trust in future. What does it mean to them when it comes from me? I can only fear the worst...

It is something that I feel a lot of us work on in our alone spaces because these are the parts that we don't like to share. We keep skeletons in our closets because that's where they should be stored but what if by doing that we merely perpetuate our poor behavior due to an inability to receive feedback and assistance with overcoming our own demons?

I work on this every day. Every day I hold those reins tight and keep my temper in check as much as possible. I take ten deep breaths when I find myself overreacting and then attempt to think of at least two ways in which to tackle the issue without resorting to aggression.

I do this because I love my children and because I don't want to betray our bonds.

Meta Learning

Since our children first started batting at the computer keyboard they have been learning how it works. They have learned a whole pile of things about driving a computer. It was amazing watching as my boys each hit the age of about 2 years and learned how to use a mouse - things like pushing forward makes the cursor go up the screen rather than lifting it up(!), how to click, right click, drag-and-drop, double click, and triple click.

Now that they know what they are doing with the navigation they are learning more and more about how the applications actually work. You don't click in certain places on YouTube because they are "ads" and they take you to boring places or ask you for money. You click on the "x" to close things. Some of their first basic literacy experiences were recognising common prompts in menus - yes, no, ok, quit, exit, back...

Today my eldest was playing Lego Starwars. He's only 5½ but he's pretty good considering he can barely hold a pen. Today his little brother was getting frustrated (because at age 3 it's still a bit beyond him) and he handed me the game pad. I instinctively hit a shoulder button to try and change the camera angle (too many years playing Nintendo) and the character changed.My eldest was astounded at this revelation. "Oh! Is that what it means by Freeplay?", I said. (I haven't actually played the game longer than 10 minutes myself - call it competition for a scarce resource). My son's passion for the game is suddenly enhanced as he has some cool ideas for how to access certain areas using certain characters.

Half an hour later I hear a frustrated "MUM! I CAN'T get it to CHANGE!" It's at this point that I realise how much gaming knowledge I have and take for granted. He is only just experiencing these sorts of features for the first time.

"Are you in Freeplay Mode?"
"Uhm... I don't know."
"I don't think you are.... have you finished that level in Story Mode?"
"No...?"
"Well I don't think you get access to Freeplay Mode until you have finished Story Mode for that level... you have to unlock it."
"Oh... no I haven't finished this level yet.. I just wanted to try and get across with..."
"But you can't use the other characters until you have passed the level with the right characters..."
"Oh... okay."

He's got his head around unlockable content. That's a part of gaming that he's very familiar with.
He loves story and occasionally asks "why is the [bad guy] doing that?"... after a while he began to understand that it's just a plot device. The bad guy does something bad so you have something to work against. I'm sure that understanding that was recently reinforced by watching the movie Wreck-It Ralph. Fun film by the way.

An Introduction? A Mission Statement? Who Knows!

I'm establishing this blog with my partner because we feel that there aren't enough voices out there espousing our values and we want to speak more publicly about what drives and motivates us in our parenting. In exposing ourselves this way, we hope to begin a discussion on parenting in a digital age and to investigate our own precepts in a comprehensive manner.

From my viewpoint, there is a dearth of active discussion revolving around being a father, role-modeling masculinity in this modern world and sharing the enjoyment of emerging forms of entertainment with the generation that won't have experienced a world without the technology that was only beginning it's rise to prominence through my junior years.

Some of the topics that I intend to address initially are around the perception of males in care-giving roles, the serious lack of discussion around parenting that includes males as sensible role-models and the associated casual misandristic perception of men as incompetent or unwilling caregivers. In some ways, this is self-inflicted but the reason to begin discussing this situation is to share ways in which this ongoing mainstream perception can be reversed.

There will also be some fun topics thrown in with entertainment reviews discussing sharing modern media with our children and, hopefully, highlighting choices of games where we can either share the joy with them or be an active participant in the play.

In this first week, I will post regarding some of my initial precepts introduced through the context of a movie scene that I feel lays the ground for the discussion of how unprepared I was made for "adult"-life, children and accepting responsibility for my future. I will also get a structure together for how I intend to review multimedia and post regarding that (and any feedback would be appreciated if there are areas that would be useful to cover that I miss) as well as, maybe, an initial test review.

See you in the next post...

Hello World

When you live life in a way that's slightly different to mainstream it can begin to make you feel a little isolated. "It takes a village to raise a child" but what happens if you are living a modern life surrounded by people who are different from you? Where do you go to then? Where do you go to if you are a father who wants to be actively involved in parenting? For us, this blog is an attempt to answer some of these questions.

We are a couple, with three children, living in urban New Zealand. We are in the privileged position of having been raised with home computers in the 1980s. We come from families full of teachers and value critical thought and sharing ideas. We also value having close and respectful relationships with our children. I am a secular home educator, and my husband is a gamer and the sole income earner for our household.

I guess this is a mihimihi of sorts. Hi, I'm Kath Rushworth and I am a home educating, digital native parent.

Over time I hope to share my perspective. I extend an invitation for you to discuss games, technologies and information we share with each other, and with our children. I don't intend for this to be a place to brag, or tell other people "how to". Parenting is an art that changes as the world and people change, and is a unique relationship between any child and their caregiver. In the words of the brilliant Sir Ken Robinson, "If you're not prepared to be wrong you will never come up with anything original".