Some Loves Are More Equal Than Others

I remember my first love. I was eight. His name was Michael.

He held my hand and opened doors for me. People thought we were cute together.

It never occurred to me that it was okay for some kids to have first loves, but not others. And that people only thought it was cute because I was a girl, and he was a boy.

When I read things like this: Student cites bullying, seeks school OK for gay-straight club my heart aches.

So, a student approaches school directors and asks to start a Gay Straight Alliance Network club at her high school in order to, amongst other things, ease the transition to high school for gay middle schoolers.

The directors knew she would be speaking at the meeting. Four of nine members were absent.

Last month, the board removed the term “sexual orientation” from their anti-harassment policy because they did not believe the law required “sexual-orientation” to be included.

According to the article, parents have expressed concerns that the “‘sexual orientation’ term in harassment and bullying policies in schools have been used by radical gay activists to keep their opponents silent,” and may be a “gateway to homosexually-based programs coming into the school district, and potential predators targeting innocent students confused about their sexuality.”

Wow!

It seems we are simply unable to get over this irrational belief that people of non-heterosexual orientation are more likely to be child sex predators than their heterosexual counterparts are.

We, as a society, claim that we are becoming more accepting of people with diverse sexual orientations. (i.e. we are making slow, tedious strides towards not being such judgmental pricks about whom another person loves.)

But apparently, this only applies when the people in question are adults.

Not when they’re children.

That a young person could fall in love with someone of their own gender is still a concept many cannot accept.

Kids, unfortunately, aren’t stupid.

We are sending them a very loud message, and they are hearing it:

• Non-heterosexual orientation is abnormal, and a concept to which innocent children should not be exposed, let they become victim to predators.
• If you are not heterosexual, there is something wrong with you.

Transitioning from childhood to adulthood is a challenging and confusing time for all young people.

How much more challenging must it be for young people with a non-heterosexual identity?

Why would we not want to support these young people during their transition from childhood to adulthood just as much as we do their heterosexual counterparts?

And, more importantly, why would any group of educational directors resist having a student organization on campus that would not only provide support for LGBT students but also encourage us all to be more accepting of each other?

What could possibly go wrong? I mean, other than, perhaps, young people starting to realize that it is normal for one person to fall in love with another person, and that people who fall in love with people are, well, just people.

Adolescence is a confusing time. But it should also be an exhilarating time, a time of crushes and first loves, and recognizing ourselves as sexual beings. And not a time to be too scared to fall in love!

Valentine ’s Day is coming up.

Imagine this:

You are in the park. It just happens to be a sunny, and not freezing cold, Valentine’s Day. (Use your imagination!)

A twelve-year-old boy sits on a bench with his arm around a twelve-year-old girl. He gives her a box of chocolates. She kisses him. They both blush.

Passersby probably think to themselves, “Ah, young love, how sweet!”

I doubt anyone would speculate that either the boy or the girl was sexually confused.

But what if, instead, the boy had his arm around another boy? When the second boy kissed the first boy, would the reaction of passersby be the same?

Sadly, I don’t think so.

I look forward to the day (I have to believe it will come) when a boy can fall in love with another boy (and a girl with another girl), hold hands in the park and share a first kiss and it will never occur to anyone to think anything other than, “Ah, young love, how sweet!”

My Jiu Jitsu Family – The Best Self-Defense!

I love jiu jitsu.

But sometimes I hate it too.

Jiu jitsu forces me to see myself for who I really am – all of me – the good, the mediocre, and yes, the ugly.

I’ve always thought of myself as a nice and generally humble person. And I think for the most part I am.

But on the mat I discovered that I have a bigger ego than I ever knew. It’s a side of myself that I don’t much like.

And jiu jitsu forces me to confront it every time I roll.

It’s one of the things I love about jiu jitsu. And one of the things I hate about it too.

A while ago, I had a health issue that took me off the mat for a few months. Being off the mat allowed me to hide from that side of me that I don’t like and reassure myself that I’m a nice and humble person without pesky ego issues.

By the time I finally recovered and was able to resume rolling, I realized I wasn’t looking forward to being confronted with the ugly that I don’t like to see.

I counted up the months I’d been gone, and couldn’t handle the thought of going back and being that much “farther” behind than all the people who hadn’t quit and who’d been showing up every day and getting steadily better.

So, instead of going back, I convinced myself that it was time to quit. I told myself that I was getting too old, and I’d had too many injuries, and I had too many health issues……suffice it to say, I came up with a litany of reasons for why I should quit.

It was a litany of bull manure, true, but I told it to myself all the same.

I’m nothing if not stubborn, irrational, and stubbornly irrational.

For 44 years, self-sabotage has been one of my primary go-to coping strategies.

This has It has led to a very long list of regrets.

But be that as it may, quitting has always seemed preferable to actually facing unpleasant things. So quit I did.

Not unsurprisingly, however, quitting jiu jitsu didn’t protect me from seeing the not-so-good in myself.

It merely meant that instead of staring at my pesky ego issues I was staring at my pesky quitting issues.

And I was miserable.

It took me a long time, but finally I allowed myself to see the truth.

When I gave up on jiu jitsu in order to avoid facing the fact that I have flaws, I cut myself off from a community of people I loved dearly – my jiu jitsu family.

Jiu jitsu is an interesting thing. When you roll, you have an intense close and personal interaction with another person.

You may have known that person for years, or you may have met them for the first time only a few seconds earlier.

Either way, you roll around on the mat with that person and become absolutely drenched in a mixture of their sweat, your sweat, and a bunch of other people’s sweat.

But it doesn’t matter. You roll. You play. You laugh.

It’s like being a child, only better.

I think you can learn just about anything you need to from a person just by rolling with them.

If you’re a jerk, you can’t hide that on the mat. If you’re a caring, nurturing person, you can’t hide that either, not even when you’re choking someone. Timid. Scared. Anxious. Can’t hide any of it.

My jiu jitsu peeps are people who’ve rolled with me.

That means they’re people who have seen the me that I see when I’m on the mat – the good, the mediocre, and the ugly.

And they like me anyway. They’re a community of people who like me, and accept me, just the way I am. It doesn’t get much better than that.

That’s something worth fighting for.

I have lots of regrets in life. But I’ve decided that giving up on jiu jitsu and losing my jiu jitsu family because of I don’t like seeing my imperfections is not going to be one of them.

My jiu jitsu peeps don’t give a rat’s butt about my ego issues, in fact, they probably have their own issues. We all do. They just want me to get over myself, stop the self-sabotage nonsense, and get my butt out on the mat so that we can all have fun, play, and roll around on the ground in our jiu jitsu pajamas.

Which is exactly what I’m doing.

I love jiu jitsu.

And I love my jiu jitsu family. They may just be the best self-defense against my worst enemy – me!

The Apple Falls Far From The Tree

My son is twenty-two. So far, he has not lived up to the shining example of transitioning to adulthood that I set for him so many years ago.

When I was his age, I was a high school dropout with a toddler in tow. I had no clear idea of what I wanted to do with my life, or how I intended to support myself and my son. I was immature, irrational, and quite certain that money grew on trees. I was also possessed of a thick skull and a stubborn streak, both of which were very resistant to the learning of life’s lessons through my mistakes.

My son has failed to embrace this marvelous heritage.

For one thing, he graduated from college yesterday. He is now a graduate student with a vision for the life journey he’d like to carve for himself.

For another, he already demonstrates a level of maturity, rational thought and financial sensibility that remain (to my husband’s chagrin) foreign and incomprehensible to me.

But most importantly, at twenty-two, my son knows who he is. He is happy, well in his own skin, and full of life, love and laughter. A feat that took me decades to accomplish!

The apple of my eye, it seems, has fallen so very, very far from the tree :-)!

 

My Child Is Gone – It’s A Beautiful Thing!

I loved being a mommy.

When my son was born, I nuzzled his nose and fell head over heels in love with him.

He was my very own little person to love and nurture, and I could snuggle and cuddle and kiss him to my heart’s content.

I knew immediately that motherhood was the greatest gig on the planet.

As my son grew older, though, my mommy role changed. Cuddling and snuggling were replaced with homework help, driving lessons, and, one day, a ride to college.

For years, I secretly yearned to have my little boy back, the one who needed me to hug him, kiss him, and make his booboos all better.

Fortunately, despite having me as his mother, my son has completely failed to fail-to-launch.

He graduates from college next week.

My child is gone. My days of motherhood are over.

And I’ve never been happier.

It took me a long, long, long, looooooong time – but I finally realized that motherhood is not about me. It never was.

Motherhood was only ever about me giving all of myself for my son – love, worry, fear, hope, money, time – in hopes that, if I was truly lucky, one day, he would:  leave me, thrive without me, and even, fall in love with, and cuddle, someone other than me.

The entire purpose and hope of the journey of motherhood is for it to end.

My child is gone.

In his place is an amazing man.

And with this man, I’m embarking on a new journey – a journey of friendship.

Unlike motherhood, the journey of friendship is a journey that need never end.

It turns out that the end of motherhood is just the beginning of a beautiful, beautiful thing!

Parental Honesty – Bad For Our Kids?!

Supposedly so!

According to news reports, in a recent study researchers found that it may be harmful for parents to be too honest with their children.

“Honesty may not be the best policy.” – A quote from both the ABC report and the video.

One headline goes so far as to claim that parental honesty could be detrimental to children.

Detrimental!

Needless to say, this disturbed me immensely!

For if it were true, I have been an even more horrible parent than I’d previously thought!

The idea that a study determined it best not to be too honest with our children bothered me so much that I decided to actually read/quickly scan the articles. (Yes, I, too, was shocked by my actions!)

I learned that this is indeed what the study’s researchers (publishing their findings in a recent edition of the Journal of Human Communication Research, a journal of The International Communication Association) claim to have determined.

The summary of the study recommendations were for parents to:

• Not disclose their own hx of drug use (i.e. not be honest)
• Not volunteer any more information than they have to (i.e. not be overly honest)
• Not lie (okay, scratching my head now)
• Use specific dialogue guidelines to speak with children about drugs (the article in the journal supposedly breaks down the dialogue and gives parents an idea of what to say. Which I guess is a good thing, because I don’t know about you, but I have no idea how to not lie and not be honest at the same time)
• Make sure children know their parents disapprove of drugs and that drugs are bad and harmful (Yeah, in the year 2013, if your kid still hasn’t heard the “drugs are bad” message by the time he/she reaches middle school, you’ve got bigger problems)

Don’t take my word for it. Click on the links below, read the first sentences, skim the articles quickly, watch the brief video. Then go back and take a closer look:

Don’t Dish About Your Past Drug Use to Your Kids, Study Finds (ABC news)

Hey Parents, Don’t Tell Your Kids You Did Drugs (Yahoo news)

Parents talking about their own drug use to children could be detrimental (Eureka Alert)

Video clip (Fourstateshomepage.com)

After my first read through, I was very confused. None of the reports did more than glaze over the actual study. Nor did any of them link to the study, or anything that would point us to the study, should we happen to want to read it ourselves. I thought this odd, in light of the recommendations.

In fact, as far as I can tell, the study findings are only available in the journal.

The best I could find was an abstract, which I hunted down.

The title of the journal article by Kam, J.A. and Middleton, A.V.:

“The Associations Between Parents’ References to Their Own Past Substance Use and Youth’s Substance-Use Beliefs and Behaviors: A Comparison of Latino and European American Youth.”

Here is a link to the abstract.

Abstract in hand, I went back and read each article, word for word, to better understand how something I’d always thought of as germane to parenting (honesty) could be harmful to a child. (Yes, tell Casey that honesty is a bad thing, and she will actually get off her butt and, gulp, research it! I even printed the articles and attacked them with my trusty red pen AND my highlighter!)

This is what I gleaned:

• The study examined how two different communications styles related to Latino and European American youths internal beliefs
• The study was limited to 561 students (253 Latino and 308 European) in rural Illinois (and not, as the video clip claims, almost600 children across the US)
• The study involved a survey of children’s reported conversations with their own parents about the use of three substances – alcohol, cigarettes and marijuana (two of which, I feel compelled to  mention, are legal substances)
• The study did not distinguish between illegal vs legal substance use, or whether or not such use actually contributed to an addiction or drug problem
• Parents’ references to their past use (of cigarettes, alcohol or marijuana) related to lower levels of anti-substance-use perceptions (the news reports this as higher levels of pro-substance abuse attitudes)
• Targeted parent-child communication (I can only assume this is the scripted dialogue, or as I call it, the not-so-very-honest approach) related to higher levels of anti-substance-use perceptions (the news reports this as lower levels of pro-substance abuse attitudes)
• Only a tiny percentage of the children in the study had ever used any illicit drugs

That’s it. The study found a correlation between parental honesty and a child’s reported belief/ perception/attitude towards substance usage.

The study did not find a correlation with drug use itself.

The study did not find that parental honesty was the cause of these so called drug-tolerant attitudes, only that there was a correlation.

The study did not actually find that any harm resulted from parental honesty.

Yet, a scholarly journal, devoted to the study of human communication, puts out a public release stating that parental honesty could be detrimental to children!

And despite the fact that the study did not actually find any harm to result from parental honesty, flashy news headlines tout that it may be better not to be so-very-honest with our children.

I am appalled and outraged!

Are we really going to buy this bull manure?

And why is it that we keep turning to researchers and scientist to learn how to interact with our loved ones?

We are not science projects. We are people.

Each of us is an individual, diverse in our needs, and unique in how we interact and communicate.

Parenting is an art, not a science!

We bring our children into the world and walk with them at the beginning of their human journey.

Hopefully, as we walk our own journey, the act of parenting prompts us towards a selflessness that encourages us to do whatever we can to guide our children on the path that is best for them.

We learn human interaction by spending time with the people we love. And we learn how to interact with our children by spending time with them, not by turning to scientific studies.

Certainly not ones that would encourage caution with honesty!

Perhaps it’s my innate stubbornness, but I refuse to believe that the way to develop a trusting relationship with our children during a time of great upheaval (for that is what adolescence is) is to be cautious with honesty, and to cloak the truth using prefabricated dialogue.

The parent child relationship does not end when a child reaches adulthood. On the contrary, it undergoes a metamorphosis, and has the potential to transform into something glorious.

I cannot believe that withholding honesty at this stage would do anything other than sabotage this beautiful transition.

This human journey is a journey of human relationships, an exploration of our humanity.

So perhaps when we seek answers to parenting, instead of looking outward, we should look inward, to the humanity that exists within each of us.

To the humanity that tells us that dishonesty, especially with loved ones, is not a part of This Human Journey.