Hey Parents: Want To Stop Hating Family Vacations? Here’s Your Checklist.

So, you want to go on vacation and actually enjoy it, huh? Think maybe you were burdened with a sub par kid, or that kids in general make terrible company, because they always have a bad attitude? Want a cure to the disease of the family trip, or, gasp, the family road trip? Well, I can help – and I have the credentials to back up my big talk. I don’t mean academic credentials. I mean, real world, in the trenches, credentials. I mean 9 road trips from NJ to Bradenton, Florida, over a three-year span, with two toddlers and a baby, to spend time with a terminally ill parent, credentials. I’m talking about our family’s “cross-country, eclipse chasing, road trip, last summer, was voted “best vacation ever,” by my kids – beating out Disney and Universal trips (both of which, we love),” credentials. I’m talking about, “we take long road trips with our two 11-year-old sons and our 8-year-old daughter and we all still enjoy being around each other,” credentials. I also may or may not have become an amateur behavioral scientist, after adding mediation to my law practice. So, as fat Tony would say, “I got some credentials.” So, let’s get into this…

Humble yourself – I know your kid can be kind of a jack ass, sometimes, and that your kid has mood swings and, occasionally, can even seem completely intolerable  – and I haven’t even met your kid. So, how could I possibly know this? Well, because I just described every human being, ever. That’s right, friend: you, too, can be a total jackass. You get hangry, you take your stress out on other people – innocent bystanders, if you will, and are less than perfect. SO, why do you expect your kids, parents, sibling, or spouse to be perfect? Why do you get so annoyed with them, when they behave no worse than you, and every other human being? So, don’t make someone else put you in your place – put yourself there. With the exception of the random sociopath, are not better than any member of your family. You don’t deserve adoration and worship for loving and supporting your family. You simply did what even most evil, terrible, awful, human beings have done – you sacrificed for your family. So, get over yourself… humble yourself. It is a fantastic place to start.

Respond, don’t react – On the same line as the above, you ought to ask yourself why you get frustrated when your kid acts a certain way. In private, it is generally a “respect issue.” We feel disrespected… We all ought to respect one another. However, if you act out of humility, you can respond thoughtfully, and say, “do I treat you that way? If, and when I do, please tell me so that I can apologize. Because, I love and respect you too much to treat you the way that you just treated me,” or, you can ignore the outburst and calmly get to the underlying issue (making a mental note to calmly deal with the outburst later). If you act out of pride (ie, who do you think you are talking to me that way you little…), then, you are simply reacting emotionally, doing what you’d criticize your child for doing to you, and simultaneously picking a fight with a child. It’s a pretty foolish approach. The kid isn’t going to learn anything and they’ll likely just feel defensive and shut you out.

What do you care what other people think?  In public, I’d argue, that, generally, we are embarrassed about the way that we feel our child’s poor behavior reflects upon us, personally. We care more about what strangers in the store think about us than we care about effectively guiding our kids through their outburst, into a more productive way of dealing with things. Why would you allow yourself to care more about the perceptions that even friends have of your parenting skills, than you care about helping you r kids learn how not to be a total disaster? Parenting  isn’t about showing off your little trophy human. It’s about this human being, whose existence is partially your fault – and to whom you owe it to guide to a well-equipped adult existence.

Have some (familial) hubris – Your family is awesome, in some way, shape or form. If you can’t identify the ways, it is because you don’t know them… or they are all serial killers. In light of the fact that the latter is unlikely, let’s go with it being your fault, if you don’t know what makes them great. Not to worry – you have a chance to change that… After all, you’re about to go on a vacation with them.

Adjust expectations – Guess what? You’re going to get into a fight with at least one of your family members. I promise… so, everyone needs to know – to discuss, beforehand, the fact that this isn’t going to be some perfect family time panacea. The success of a family vacation doesn’t lie in whether or not the trip attained a “Christ-like” level of perfection. Although, it does, to some extent, lie in preconceived expectations and after-the-fact perceptions of the trip. Don’t assume anyone anticipates the same trip you do – discuss the trip in advance, don’t be a jackass and make the whole trip about you – and don’t allow anyone else to do that, either. Communicate civilly with your kids – as if you like them, or at least hope to like them someday. If you are planning to head to Orlando, but not hit a theme park, that might be a good thing to tell them in advance… If you’re only going to a theme park for a day, make sure they have a heads up. Don’t be surprised when they beg, whine and pout for more, even though you did give them a heads up (your expectations need to be adjusted properly, as well).  After all, they aren’t perfect, and neither are you – and your goal should be to guide them to work through those kinds of frustrations. Their behavior isn’t a personal attack on you, anymore than you were personally attacking your parents when you did the same thing as a child – and spare me the “my parents did such and such, when I acted that way. Who cares what your parents did? Not me, and not your kids… The question is: was your parents approach the best way to handle things? If so, great, do that. If not, stop using it as some sort of sad, broken crutch, and made the required adjustment, to be better.

A riddle – How do you make a happy man sad and a sad man happy? You tell him, “this too, shall pass.” You know how I said you’ll have at least one family fight? If you don’t, I’m going to go as far as to say, “you’re doing it wrong.” If you don’t have a fight with anyone, it is because you all traveled somewhere together, and then had separate vacations. That isn’t a family vacation. It is a fine idea if you really don’t like these people who you call family, and if you hope to be rid of all of them as soon as possible. Otherwise, you’re screwing it up. You get a handful of years as a family unit… don’t piss it away, building deeper connections with some strangers that you met at the resort, than the connections that you have with your wife/kids/parents/siblings.

Perspective – So much of this is perspective. Are you super annoyed when your kids ask a million questions? Because, they are really just trying to see the world through your eyes. Instead of rushing back to the radio, or pressing play on their DVD player, maybe have a conversation with them. Are you super annoyed when they get older and answer all of your questions with one word answers? I wonder where they learned that?  Let me ask you this: do you allow them to have their own opinions, even if those opinions contradict your opinions? If not, think about how much you enjoy conversations with people who refuse to allow you to maintain your own opinion, in the face of their contradictory point of view. I’d stick to one word answers, too. Pre-teens desperately want your attention and approval. Teens have 10 times the amount of hormones coursing through their bodies as adults do – yet, we adults expect grace when dad is hangry or mom is PMSing. Have some perspective on where your kids are coming from and where your family is headed.

Bonus – The most valuable social and behavioral psychology principles (called Heuristics), are those that point out something that is so painfully obvious, you wonder how you never saw it before… This is one of those: In our culture, we overvalue the end of things… if the last bit of eggs that we ate had a shell in it, it doesn’t matter how good all the bites before it were, we just remember the shell. Perhaps, a better example, is Darth Vader. Like every other redeemed movie villain, Vader was a terrible guy. He tortured Hon Solo, he destroyed an entire planet and murdered all of its inhabitants, and yet… we wept when he died. Why? because he redeemed himself… from a lifetime of murderous rampaging, with one decent act. So, when he dies, we cry. When he shows up at the after-party, the only thing more ridiculous than all the little teddy bear people, is the fact that we are pleased to see Vader with Yoda and Obi-Wan, whom Vader had previously murdered. Again, we overvalue the end of a thing and we discount everything that led up to that point. SO, for the sake of your vacation – don’t run tight on the money at the end and say no to everything. Don’t make the trip so long that everyone hates each other because you hadn’t spoken a meaningful word to one another for the entire month preceding the trip… and maybe, save something big, and fun, for the end. Also, if you’ve been doing a crappy job of this whole family thing – you can wipe out a whole bunch of that, by what you do now. Make now the “end,” of taking this short time in your life with these particular people, for granted.

 

British Judge Suggests Outlawing The Sale Of Sharp Kitchen Knives, To Stop Knife Attacks. No… Seriously.

A British judge used a commencement speech as a platform to suggest a solution to stave off knife attacks: make it illegal to sell kitchen knives. Also, make everyone file down their existing kitchen knives. Perhaps his next suggestion will be to take the engines out of box trucks to stop those types of attacks from occurring? After that, we can ban sticks… What a conundrum we will have then! Do we cut down all the trees, so that there are no sticks with which to beat one another or do we risk the stick beatings to save the environment?!  One thing is for certain: we definitely don’t want to try to figure out what the hell is wrong with all these people that they are so despondent and bereft of the value of human life that they will eventually go around beating people to death with frying pans, until we realize the need to ban those, too.

Sorry, folks – Guns aren’t the problem… and neither are knives. Also, you can rule out rental trucks as the culprits… and pressure cookers, large sticks, and frying pans, for that matter. Now, before all you 2nd amendment folks go shooting your guns in the air in celebration, that doesn’t mean that guns aren’t often the medium through which the problem is effectively communicated – violently and devastatingly enunciating the frustrations of someone who has reached such a dark place that they are willing to ruin not only their own life, but also the lives of countless others, as well. It just means that guns do not represent the root of the problem. Might we need stricter gun laws? Look around – I’m going to say it wouldn’t be the worst idea that we’ve ever come up with. On the other hand, I’m not sure what exactly is leaking out of the bleeding hearts that want to ban guns in order to stop the gun violence in our country, but it certainly isn’t compassion – and before you go ranting that I’m making the shooters the victims, read the rest of my words – that way, you can limit the extent to which you make yourself look stupid, by permitting yourself to be informed about what I am actually saying, prior to commenting on my thoughts. For every shooter that has gone off the deep end, you can find countless kids that have simply given up. They are contemplating suicide, they push through for reasons unknown, even to themselves. So, your efforts to save a few dozen kids from gun violence (on a particularly bad year) can roughly be translated to, “F*ck all those kids that are an emotional train wreck, as long as I don’t have to worry about gun violence in my kids school.” Never mind the fact that the statistical probability of a student being killed in a school shooting is precisely “you’ve got to be freaking kidding me, it’s really that low?! percent” To put that statistical probability into mathematical terms, it is less than a 1 in 600,000,000 chance (between 1990 and now). That’s 211 lives lost to school shooters since 1990. Meanwhile, 305 children, under the age of 13, alone,  have died in bicycle related incidents since 2009. Why aren’t we calling for a ban on bicycles? Simple: because that would be stupid. The real question is: why aren’t we trying to figure out where we went so desperately wrong, as a society, that so very many kids feel lost and despondent. [crickets]. I guess there’s nothing sexy about hard questions… They are the worst, aren’t they?! It’s so hard to face a problem when you can’t lie to yourself and say there’s one specific reason for the problem and there’s an equally quick fix and an obvious source of blame. That’s such a bummer. I hate it when we can’t pretend there’s only one person/group to blame. [sigh]. We may be experiencing an influx of active shooter situations, but, the systemic crisis appears to be the absence of very much active thinking. Apparently, our knives are sharper than our critical thinking skills.

Reflections After Another School Shooting.

Ed. note: none of this post is about blaming anyone. It is about asking questions, and sharing thoughts, so that we can find actual solutions. Oversimplified, bumper sticker solutions aren’t going to get the job done.

Ok. People keep shooting up schools, which leads to the classic shouting match where everyone starts yelling out “the reason” all these shootings take place. As if there was only one reason, and, of course, only one solution. Then, come the comparisons of America’s issues, with the issues of this European country or that European country. So, now I’ve got to say my piece, or else I’ll spontaneously combust, out of sheer frustration over the myopic and dogmatic statements that get hurled around like ideological grenades. I’m going to share thoughts and I’m going to ask questions.

Let’s start with the question that is so rarely asked: why are all these kids so angry, hopeless, and damaged? Remember, the gun didn’t pull its own trigger. Some kid had to make a decision to throw away their life, plan an attack and then carry out that attack – on people who they went to school with. They must possess such indifference to human life that they are willing to risk potentially murdering even those people that didn’t actually interact with them in any capacity. It’s cute to call that something abstract like “mental illness.” However, it is indicative of a very serious societal flaw. Gun control won’t change that. Even if it could stop the killings – which it can’t, as long as that kid can drive a truck through a crowd of students entering or exiting the school, or from making a bomb out of a pressure cooker, or whatever… but, even if it could, what you are actually saying is, I don’t really give a *$#& about the kids that are emotionally destroyed to the point of madness, as long as we can keep the other kids safe. Perhaps, that is part of the problem? Perhaps, that is just a small indication as to why those kids are losing hope? The entire discussion validates their impression that no one actually gives a %$*&, and that life only has value when it is taken away – but, we will all accept complete indifference to the depths of hopelessness felt by an apparently increasing segment of society – don’t take my word for it, look it up.

However, please spare me all of the comparisons to the number of fire arm deaths in the U.K., or France, or any other country that is smaller than the size of America’s pinky. First, remember that there is a scale difference in terms of size. Second, those countries have banned fire arms, so, when you make the comparison, you need to look at the other ways that people in those countries are voicing their displeasure with one another, via murderous rampages.

Next, all you “2nd amendment means that I need to blindly advocate for the right of every crackpot to own a gun,” folks – you need to wake up. We need to figure out how to put some checks and balances in place. And, I have to ask – what are you going to say when the shooter eventually turns out to be an Islamic extremist? Will it be different from what you say when it is some disturbed kid? How about the time after that, when it turns out to be a Timothy McVeigh? Is your story going to change that time?

America, we have been too ideologically inconsistent. We change our answers to fit the our political posturing. Democrats screamed that the Patriot Act was the worst thing ever when Republicans were pushing for its passage. Then they didn’t have a problem with it when Obama was in charge, however, the Republicans had seen the light and decided it was exactly as dangerous as the Democrats said it was, way back when Bush was in office… and so we play this game and flip all of our positions, when it is most convenient for us to do so – and it continues to lead us to a national suicide. School shootings are just one reflection of that.

These shootings are tragic, but, the solutions need to come from many corners. Any one approach will only serve to change the manifestation of the problem. It won’t be any less tragic if the killer drives a car through students, or fires bullets. However, we must get a handle on the gun problem – because, there is clearly a gun problem. But, it will never be enough to simply “get rid of guns.” That approach ignores the people who have lost all hope, and are willing to die or spend life in jail to pass their anguish along onto others. Some of those people were always going to end up that way… but, most of them likely ended up at that place through years of abuse at the hands of someone. Are we to say that they simply never reached out? That people tried to reach out to them and were all pushed away? That those people who were pushed away went to a teacher or counselor and expressed their concerns and the counselor reached out to student and family to find out what was going on and despite all of this the student was able to conceal their devastation, because they didn’t actually want anyone to know how they felt until one day they decided to let everyone know by murdering a bunch of kids? I don’t think that is a very believable story, in most cases. We need to change. We need to be better than we have been – to our kids, to each other.