Thoughts on Family Function

Collaboration and Visibility

2012-01-05T13:07:00.002-05:00

A few days ago my kids were playing MineCraft together. Each of them was in their own room, and they were all playing on a common server. In MineCraft, this means that they share a world and can either build things collaboratively or they can compete. In this case, my daughter Haifa became very upset because my son Justice killed her character (not the end of the world). Anyway, at first I was very angry at Justice. However, after consulting with Melanie, we realized that some of the problem was simply that Justice was not aware of Haifa being upset until it had escalated to crying and shouting!

Solution? A very simple rule: everyone needs to be in the same room together if they are playing together! So, we set them up in my office downstairs where there is enough room.

Now - no problems. Visibility creates empathy which in turn enables better collaboration!

Lost the Camera... for the Second Time!

2011-10-18T22:25:00.002-04:00

Melanie and I and the family have been in the Bahamas at the Atlantis resort for three full days now. One of the great features of the resort is the "Rapids River" which is a tube ride that includes water slides, rapids, and a very large wave generator as well as some nice "lazy river" type parts for relaxing. This morning, I was going on this ride with Verity, my seven yo daughter. I took our brand new Sony EX-10 waterproof digital camera with me and snapped a few pics of Verity along the way. And then, somewhere, I lost it. Ug.

What's worse? Last time I was here (just with Melanie), I did EXACTLY THE SAME THING!!!! Gosh. How stupid? Well. Suffice it to say I feel terribly ashamed. I went over the stretch of the Rapids River three times, twice with goggles, looking for the darn thing. No luck. This evening I called three separate on-site lost-and-founds. No luck. Tomorrow morning I'll call the water park management. See if it has shown up. Not likely.

Last time, I was lucky. The same evening I lost the camera, it was recovered, returned to lost-and-found, and I got it back with all the pictures. This time? Only time will tell. Maybe if I really lose it this time I will really learn the lesson: don't put things unsecured in my pocket while riding a water park tube ride!!!

Turn of Phrase

2011-10-04T23:48:00.002-04:00

My mom and I were talking about how it is hard to reach my brother (in China). He doesn't seem to be on Skype nearly as much as he used to. His in-laws were spending a lot of time with them helping to take care of his two young daughters, but they have now left to help his sister-in-law with her own new baby. That leaves my brother and his wife in a situation they have never been in before: the throes of early familyhood. Nice turn of phrase.

The Unity of Food

2010-07-14T10:42:00.002-04:00

Two days ago I had a little discussion with Justice, my eldest, who is just turned twelve. As Baha'is, we are very aware of the importance of unity in solving the problems of the world. So we are talking about what to eat for breakfast. Justice comments that toast is boring by itself, butter is icky by itself, but united, they taste great. He also used the example of pizza - melted cheese, pepperoni, etc. are all boring by themselves, but in pizza they are fantastic. He said these are good examples of unity in diversity.

I was thoroughly impressed!

Forgiveness

2009-05-21T23:26:00.003-04:00

Great little article about forgiveness: http://zenhabits.net/2009/05/how-to-let-go-and-forgive/. I have to admit: I have never had a hard time forgiving people. However, I know that sometimes it is very hard. I see it in other people around me from time to time. I hope that if you come to that article through my blog, it will help you or someone you know. Pass the link along!

Cute Comment

2008-11-08T23:28:00.002-05:00

Verity said: "I can hardly wait until I'm an adult... So that I can cut lots of things with sharp knives. "

Some Family Photos

2007-09-18T15:07:00.000-04:00

My sister-in-law, Kristine, has put up some photos of our family from this summer.

Potty Training and Multiplication

2007-09-18T08:38:00.000-04:00

No, those two things aren't directly related, except in time.

My youngest daughter is potty training... finally! She's 3 1/2 and we've tried a couple times before. Each time before, there was a great deal of resistance and we buckled in to it. This time, there was less resistance (although still some) and we did a much better job of encouraging and not giving in. So today will be day 3 without diapers in the day time. Yesterday evening she did both #1 and #2 in the toilet... I was so proud :-D She goes to the bathroom about 25 or 30 times a day. I think that's just so she makes absolutely sure that she will not wet her panties. She's very diligent about it. Of course, she's still wearing diapers to bed. That probably won't change for a while either. Today I'm going to be home to help Melanie again with the potty training, but tomorrow and the two days after that I will be teaching a course. I hope that Melanie will be able to keep up the discipline for Verity.

My son, Justice, is starting to do multiplication of two-digit numbers (like 24 x 83). He seems to understand the procedure well, but is extremely frustrated by how long it takes him. I sat down with him yesterday for a few minutes near the end of the afternoon. He was in tears because his math worksheet was taking him so long. I discovered that even for very simple multiplication he still does the addition in his head (e.g. 3 x 2 = 2 + 2 + 2) and so of course, doing something like 9 x 7 is incredibly painful and slow. Well, I felt terrible. I thought for sure he new these "times tables" much better than that because he is doing so well in his math comprehension - doing more advanced things than just simple single-digit multiplication. I decided to get him to stop his current lesson and we sat for 10 minutes doing verbal times tables. I would give him five and he would give me five. The way I did it was to give him one, say 4 x 6. He would calculate it out. Then I would reverse it 6 x 4... and he would sometimes remember it was the same results, sometimes he would re-calculate it. Then I would re-reverse it, 4 x 6. And then usually he would get it by memory. I'd like to do this with him a whole bunch of times over the next while. We also did a bit of prime factors stuff (e.g 2 x 2 x 2 x 3 for the 4 x 6 question). Justice really enjoyed doing this. Then he went off to study Chinese where he is doing an excellent job. And I went off and made up over 5000 random single digit times tables questions on 40 worksheets!!! He actually seems excited about doing them. We'll see how long that lasts...

Now it turns out that those two things, potty training and multiplication are related. They are both about capacity. Last night my family went to our friends house. Melanie and I are studying Ruhi Book Seven. This is a book about becoming a tutor or facilitator for other books in the Ruhi Training Institute series. One of the questions is about human capacity and do we know others' capacity, do we know our own capacity. On the face of it, this might seem a simple question, but I admit to being mightily confused about it. The two examples with my children above are at least partly about me as a parent discerning the current capacity of my two children. Do we use this discernment in many aspects of our life. We hear people say "he's not living up to his potential". Or we hear people tell us "you have so much talent". Both of these statements are about the difference between where we are and where we might be. Our unused capacity. Can we really do this? Is it accurate? Is it just?

Exposing Children to Hardship

2006-10-31T10:57:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure about other parts of the world, but in Canada and the United States, there is a trend towards trying to provide extremely safe environments for our children. This, frankly, is being taken too far and is making our children wimpy, spoiled and incapable of dealing with the inevitable tests and difficulties that are part of being human. Here's a good example.

Here is a little blurb I wrote up for an email list recently in response to the idea that we have to go abroad in order to experience hardship.

I think that no matter where you are in the world you are exposed to hardships. I also think that there is nowhere in the world where it is morally "safe" - where we can go as a retreat from societal ills. The whole world is in a terrible state. Baha'u'llah' s message is necessary for all of us, not just to give hope and encouragement but also to heal the ills that are afflicting the _entire_ world. The extremes of wealth and poverty are one of many ills. Our wealth in North America protects us from many physical hardships but it also opens us up to being exposed to many subtler hardships such as extremes of competition, individualism, apathy, materialism, family breakdown, violence, drug abuse, infidelity, backbiting, etc. etc. etc.

I've only done a little bit of pioneering to poorer parts of the world so my first-hand experience is limited. What I saw was that those places also suffer from many of the same ills. In the Republic of the Marshall Islands, promiscuity and early teen pregnancy was common. The people were very nice, friendly, poor and in many ways it would be easy to idealize their environment as "good hardship" vs. "bad hardship". But it would be a mistake, I think. Many parts of Africa are suffering from a terrible level of the spread of the AIDS virus. That's a sign that they are having a huge amount of trouble with some of these same social ills. In eastern Europe, I have heard that society is suffering from very high levels of alcoholism - if true, it is yet another place suffering from social ills.

No matter where we go, we are exposed to tests and difficulties. We can't run from them, nor can we go any place to have "good tests".

All that said, I strongly agree that it is important to live in other cultures and environments. It helps our children develop compassion, empathy, a sense of world citizenship, etc. But I would recommend the same to a family in India: leave your culture for a time and go to a very different culture. The problem is, not everyone can do this. Not everyone can afford the travel. Not everyone lives in a country it is easy to leave. Our countries in North America actually make it quite hard for people to visit either for a short or an extended period of time.

So I don't think it is strictly necessary to travel to gain this world-encompassing vision, nor to expose our children to hardship.

Communication

2006-08-18T12:40:00.000-04:00

As an agile coach, one of the basic things that I teach is the idea that "Reality is Perceived" and that therefore, communication and learning are essential components of any type of work and relationship.

As it turns out, I have a lot of learning and personal development to do to improve my communication abilities. Last fall, my lack of communication with my wife, caused a large crisis in our marriage (there were other things too). I wasn't deliberately, consciously holding back information, but my unconscious habit was to do so. I didn't talk about my feelings. I didn't talk about our financial situation (which at the time was bad). I didn't talk about my concerns and problems at work. I didn't talk about things that were going on with my friends and family. I didn't talk about my concerns with my relationship with Melanie. I just didn't talk about stuff much.

As it turns out, I recently discovered, this poor communication was also causing problems for me at work.

Since that crisis last fall, Melanie tells me that I have improved in my communication abilities. I have been working at it very hard.

Part of my lack of communication comes from high school. In grade eleven I had a large problem with some of my friends because I was too free with their confidences. After that crisis, I made it a habit not to talk about anything that anyone had told me to anyone else!

Another part of the problem was put into place in my early twenties when I was involved with a woman who was extremely good at manipulating me emotionally. Again, in response, I became even less forthcoming with my feelings and thoughts, as a defense mechanism.

There may have been other things too that contributed.

What am I doing to improve? Well, I make a conscious effort to review my day mentally and talk to my wife about what has happened throughout the day. I don't always remember everything, but I know it is better than before. More difficult, I have also been making a conscious effort to talk with her about my feelings. I am fortunate that I don't have too much trouble identifying and being aware of my feelings. But I still feel uncomfortable sharing them, particularly negative feelings.

I know I still have a long way to go, but hopefully these efforts will lead to better family function... both at a practical day-to-day level, and in the long term in creating beautiful relationships with my wife and children and friends.

Poemotion: My Mom's New Blog

2006-05-21T00:46:00.000-04:00

Check it out at http://poemotion.blogspot.com/. She will be publishing poetry, images, videos, music and announcements about performances there.

Melanie's new web site

2005-11-08T23:03:00.000-05:00

MelanieAndersen.com has lots of information about homeschooling, ecological and ethical housing, our family and other nifty tidbits. Check it out!

Detachment and Emotions

2005-11-08T23:00:00.000-05:00

In a marriage, hiding emotions and bottling them up is very bad news. They'll come out somehow, and it will probably be in a dysfunction of some sort. For myself, I ended up over-eating in restaurants and buying lots of silly gadgets that I didn't need in order to make myself feel better. Bad, Bad, Bad.

Great Resource for Age-Appropriate Books

2005-07-25T12:59:00.000-04:00

http://www.amblesideonline.org/

Man's Search for Meaning

2005-07-19T23:02:00.000-04:00

Great book, read it. I highly recommend it to everyone. It is well written, accessible and deeply insightful.

Welcome

2005-07-17T22:55:00.000-04:00

This is just a first post to get started. I welcome everyone to the Family Function blog. Basically, I'll be talking about my own family, how it functions, and trying to point to resources to help other families - yours, to be specific. As a starting point, you can look to my wife's web site for pics and some stories. You might also check out my personal journal blog although it's not quite as relevent.