Parent Exploratory Group...

Parent Exploratory Group Meeting
August 16, 2001

Home of Debra Hughes, Harrisburg

Introduction --
This meeting of PEG was arranged quietly under a white pavilion tent on a rear deck at the home of Ms. Debra Hughes, her mother and father Mr. and Ms. Rice. Parents began discussing almost immediately while gathered comfortably in various chairs around a small table in view of the neatly sculpted yard complete with trimmed flowers and a fishpond. Our gratitude is extended fully to Debra and her parents for so graciously opening their home to us.

How Are We Doing --
Following introductions, our talk turned to the current efforts with Words of Caring and the Affective Skills Web Site. The assembled parents expressed general approval for the Affective Skills Web Site, for Words of Caring and with our meetings to date of the Parent Exploratory Group. These efforts appear to be striking a responsive chord and participants are finding value in what they read and hear.

In response to questions, it was indicated that PEG would continue as an on-going and active function throughout the coming DCTS school year. PEG and the other parent-based projects are intended primarily to supplement the DCTS Parent Seminar as taught by Larry Evans. The hope is that, through stories, examples, discourse and information shared both in writing and verbally, we can work beyond the beginnings provided by the Parent Seminar to more fully understand, apply and ingrain in us the lessons of affective skills.

Universal Principles --
General discussion continued with a comparing of the Parent Seminar to religious instruction. Larry made it quite clear that, while he makes no secret of his Christianity, he neither intends nor does the Parent Seminar encourage the teaching of any religion or of proselytizing to students or parents. Instead, the Parent Seminar teaches universal principles of conduct and behavior that no objective individual of any belief would find offensive or have disagreement with. There is no intention whatsoever within these lessons to violate the separation between Church and State.

Parents, and in fact all people, are hungry for this focus on values and positive relationship in ways they don’t even realize. We have here a means to help satisfy that need to benefit of us all. There is a true and lasting value in actions humbly taken to advance the building of community between parents and their children, friends and neighbors, with everyone everywhere.

Our Teens Think Differently --
Our teenagers became the next center of attention with several stories relating to the real-life practice of Parent Seminar lessons.

One parent expressed how grateful she was for Larry’s indication in the Parent Seminar that our teens don’t think as we do. Being able to center on the fact that her teenager sees the world much differently than she has helped her to eliminate frustration and stress. It often is not with deliberate or malicious intent that teens appear to defy or mishandle our instructions to them. It is that their thinking is not at all as ours.

We spoke to how teenagers increasingly, as they grow, have to face and deal with adult situations – rights of passage if you will. Within this process comes a transition as our teens adjust their thinking from that of children to becoming fully adults.

We grownups see the world and set our responses to it from an experience base and maturity of perspective that teenagers are only beginning to develop. There is little way that our teens can handle situations as we would. Knowing this helps us to understand, relax, change our expectations and become more effective in supporting and guiding our emerging adults through this difficult time.

Boundaries and Limits --
One parent expressed that, too often, parents, by doing too much for their children, help to keep them as children beyond an appropriate age. This thought was acknowledged and balanced with the idea that, by allowing our children too much freedom and by not appropriately setting limits and enforcing expectations, we can all too easily allow our teenagers, and even our younger children, to enter the adult world before they are prepared. We inadvertently may aid in robbing our children of their childhood and diminishing their ability to relate and interact effectively in the world.

Regarding boundaries and limits, a parent related the story of installing invisible fencing for her dog. The dog tested the fence twice, received a shock from her collar and, thereafter, respected the property boundaries. Even after removing this collar, the dog still understood and respected the designated limits, and this behavior continued even when the family moved into a new home.

Continuing this line of discussion the story was told of how, as an experiment, a school removed the boundary fence from around its playground. Instead of running free, the children tended to huddle together in the center of the play area no longer certain of where they were allowed to go.

Our children need the boundaries we parents impose on them. If you look closely, they are really crying out for these boundaries even when they act as though they are not. Boundaries help our children to define themselves against the world and give them a sense of what is safe and acceptable and what is not. We need place boundaries on our children to give them a sense of reasonable limits such that, when those limits are no longer being applied externally by us, our children will continue to apply them internally of themselves.

Questions were generated as to how to impose boundaries and set limits such that they will be accepted and valued. The general feeling among the group was that you must carefully pick your battles while allowing your child to try, and even to fail, where failure is relatively safe and reasonable.

Their Way vs. Our Way --
One parent’s example of her teenage son learning to dry denim jeans seems to fit here. The boy wished to hang the jeans on the wash line his way, by the waist, instead of by the legs – the way that experience shows would allow them to dry most quickly. Others parents were quick to point out that, if her son hung the jeans his way and they did not dry, he would have wet jeans and may learn a lesson that by the legs works better. In this case no one is harmed except the teen and no serious damage is done.

But, in situations where others may be harmed or a failure would be dangerous, we must be more careful. For example, we would not want our children to cause an auto accident by allowing them to drive, and potentially fail, their way. Experiences with teenage smoking and drinking were raised. Such examples are more difficult and allowing teens to fail in these areas could be life threatening.

Out of this discussion we came to the general conclusion that parents should try as much as possible to set the expectations their teenagers are to meet while allowing the teen to choose the ways by which the expectation will be realized. Of course, it also the our role as parents to hold to our expectations and, through guidance and example, to help ensure that the ways our children choose to meet expectations are legal, moral, respectful and dignified for themselves and for those affected by their choices.

The Hard Stuff --
Larry then asked the question, what are the really hard things for parents in dealing with their teens?

One response was the difficulty in determining, between their way and our way, which is the best way. In other words, in a given situation which way is most beneficial and appropriate rather than being just the way we want it done or the way they want to do it?

For parents, the answer to that question means looking closely at what our children do and trying to ascertain, as best we can, why they do it. But, more importantly, it also means looking deeply and carefully at what we want and checking our true motivations as to why we want it.

Too often we want things done a certain way simply because it is our way. That particular way may well be good, but is it necessarily better than the way our teenager would choose to do it?

We are called as parents to be servants to our children, to their best interests and outcomes. One explanation of this involves giving fully to our children, not necessarily what they want and not necessarily what we want, but always and continually what they need; constructively, truly and honestly.

The thought of another parent involved trying to balance the growth in independence so necessary in our teens against the need for them to obey and adhere to certain expectations, rules and acceptable modes of behavior.

An example had to do with rules of the house. One family allowed their adult son to return to their home as the result of a dispute. Though his son was a full adult, the father gave notice of the rules of his house concerning alcohol, smoking and women. On one occasion, the father, upon finding a cooler of beer on his back porch, enforced those rules by disposing of the product and quietly, but firmly informing his son of the transgression.

Our children need learn and come to accept that, despite being granted a certain degree of independence as they grow and become more self-sufficient, no one – not them or us – is free to do only what he pleases, especially in violation of the rights of others or of social convention. This lesson, taught gently, but consistently in childhood, can only help to increase effectiveness and reduce stress in our children as they come to take their places in life.

The lessons portrayed are indeed difficult to apply consistently in our everyday interactions with our kids. We will fail, sometimes more than we succeed. However, if we are to grow and improve as adults, we must be willing to forgive ourselves. Not to ignore our mistakes with self-protecting defense mechanisms, or to justify them through deceiving rationalizations, but to acknowledge our mistakes with regret, but also as experience base for making better choices the next time.

Out of respect for them we must be willing to share our humanness with our children and ask their forgiveness of our all too human actions even as we endeavor as parents to forgive theirs. We should remember always and remind our children that we are on their side and together in this with them.

The Personal Power Code --
While the group took a break and shared together the snacks and drinks brought by each, we used the opportunity to demonstrate from the “Mastering Anger – Resolving Conflict” curriculum a portion of Lesson 6, “The Personal Power Code.”

We learned from this lesson that to operate in life means making choices; with the invitations we will choose to accept or reject, with how we choose to react to those invitations, with what we choose to give back to others and with how we choose to give. It is our choices that determine what we get in life.

To become and remain powerful in the choices we make we must endeavor to build, define and live by a personal code – the moral, ethical and legal standard against which all our choices are measured. This personal code allows us to make real choices in any given situation and defines ultimately who we are, both to others and to ourselves.

This same lesson was captured in the April/May 2001 issue of Words of Caring in the article, “Finding the Center.”

We went on to characterize the personal power code and the powerful person by discussing in more detail what it means to get what you want in ways that maintain dignity and respect for self and others.

This lesson in defining personal standards is vitally important for teens – our emerging young adults – who are the target of the “Mastering Anger – Resolving Conflict” curriculum. However, parents too can and should continue apply and learn from these principles to their benefit.

Our personal power code is continually molded and reshaped as we mature and add to our experience base. In the on-going process of knowing ourselves, there is considerable value in closely examining our personal code against our changing perspectives.

The introspective person will invariably come to recognize the numerous ways in which he or she has, over time, subtly violated dignity and respect for others, and truly for self, even while appearing to act in accordance with his or her personal code.

Our various fears, needs anxieties and passions, unseen and unchallenged, very often blind us to the realities of who we are and how we act for self-interest and against the rights and needs of others. Only by looking deeply inside with honest and piercing eyes can we begin to uncover these dark recesses and, in the light of awareness, move more fully to reorder and refine our personal standard.

The Intended Person --
The truly powerful person after all is called ultimately to be a servant to others. This is not slavery. A slave is one who is imprisoned and so is forced, by the power of another, to act against his or her will. A servant is one who acts by choice, in accordance with his or her will, which has been shaped and aligned to seek in truth the good of the other.

The truly powerful person is increasingly concerned for and active with serving constructively the best interests of those around him. The sense of self in the powerful person is not at all trampled by this action, but rather is reordered, and redefined to gain fulfillment in that which best and most appropriately benefits his neighbor. This is the meaning of transparent love.

Again, we as parents are called to live our lives as servants to our children. We do this so that, by our guidance and example, our children may learn, understand and grow to be servants in kind. The actions of each parent to ingrain this essence of true relationship within the nature of his or her children – the succeeding generation – form the vital fabric of continuing community.

This term community was chosen very carefully and deliberately to signify our efforts here in fostering dignified and respectful personal relationships.

• Community has its basis in Communion,
• Communion has its basis in Unity, and
• Unity has its basis in Love.

By serving the growth of community we are serving the growth of love. We do this by examining, recognizing and struggling to throw off the faults and failings, deceptions and hindrances in each of us that act to kill love, destroy unity, deny communion and keep us alone, in isolation, outside of true community.

In this process of realization unto service we are released from self-interest, from trying to build for ourselves the person we believe we are to be. Instead we are able finally, through trust and in love, to let go of concern for ourselves. In so doing we become, not a different person, but the true and genuine person already within us; the person we are intended to be.

As servants, we parents struggle always to provide critical aids to our children such that they may also become the true and genuine persons they are intended to be. This giving of ourselves to them constitutes fully the essence of love.

Next Steps --
Because of a large number of commitments in October and November, I would like to request that the next meeting of PEG be held in late September. The agenda will likely be very much like the last two meetings. We will provide notification of the date and location as time gets closer.

As my wife Judy announced, she and I would like to explore the possibility of using one of the meetings rooms at the Hershey Public Library to hold some future PEG meetings. We do not intend to pursue the Library as a permanent meeting site, but as an option for locating meetings, primarily in the summer, when the Dauphin County Technical School or parents’ homes might not be readily available to us.

There may also be an opportunity in this to spread the word by advertising our PEG meetings and other efforts on the Library’s community bulletin board. We will keep you apprised of these developments.

Finally, there was a general call for us to keep spreading this word of help and hope to those around us, to work always in community to improve the quality of our relationships with others and, by so doing, help them to do the same.

The meeting reluctantly adjourned.

-- John Borland --

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Last Modified: March 30, 2003