Change. This is a word we all know and I am sure, particularly as parents, often think about. I have heard it said many times and in many places that, here in America, "We are Change." Change is what we are about and who we should be. Change is good, change is necessary and change is always there and happening. Change comes with learning, change is a part of growth and maturity and change is for improvement and making things better.

Change can indeed be good, but is all change, or all attempts at change, for the better? If not, then what change is really the best, what change is not and how do we know the difference? Change can also be frightening and at times more than a little confusing. And change often does not occur in the ways we think it will or as we desire.

How, in fact, do we change, what is real change, how can we bring change about and have it stick? And how can we better ensure that change for ourselves and that we seek with our teens and other family members happens in the best way?

These questions are most definitely important, and I am not sure I know the answers. I have, however, attempted here to bring to you some remembrances from the Parent Seminar regarding change. But rather than simply recite the lessons, I have tried to weave them somewhat within the applied context of my own experiences.

Change is something I have long pondered over and worked with. While I have certainly not done it all correctly, I have gathered some certain points and insights on the subject of change that I hope you will find of interest.

We all change and we all desire change for ourselves and with those around us. And though we wish for only the best, even change done poorly can help us to understand change and lead us to do better. And this too is change.

Perhaps you have a story, an experience or something you would like to say about change. If so, please let us know we would love to hear from you.

Enjoy!

-- John Borland --


Change
By John Borland

The lessons in the Parent Seminar talk a lot to us about change – change in our attitudes, change in outlooks and with self talk, change in our ways of listening and speaking, change in our responses to events, change in how we look at problems, and on and on.

But, practically speaking, even when you know that you need to, how do you really change who you are or what you are doing?

I must say I have been through this question of change more times than I dare to discuss and it has never been easy.

At first I thought that I was all right and it was everyone else who needed to change. Failing at that, I then came to believe I couldn’t change and that this was it forever. Once I came to understand that change for me was indeed possible I faced the dilemma of not knowing what about me really needed to change. Now that I have figured out somewhat what to focus on I am endeavoring with how to actually change it.

How do you change?

I have addressed this question in a number of ways. Much of my effort has involved looking for plans, strategies and formulas aimed at understanding, structuring and bringing about the change I am seeking to have. This book, or that class, or this saying, or that thought applied to my life will surely bring about the desired change.

To be sure these tools have been helpful – some more than others – but I don’t think that any of them, of themselves, have created change for me.

I have also, as you might guess, thought a lot about change, what change looks like, how I will actually do it and when I will know that I have changed. And yet, for all of my thinking about it, I don’t feel either that thinking, of itself, has created change in me.

And so what actually has created change for me? Several ideas come to mind:


Change is not about learning or thinking about it as much as it is about doing it.
To be sure teachings and thoughts help to determine understanding and awareness concerning what to change and how. But no one or nothing else can create change for me and nothing happens until I get off the sidelines, get in there, and do it.


Change doesn’t have to be a big thing.
I have attempted through formulas and mechanisms to find change. I have pondered it, analyzed it, built strategies around it, struggled with it and agonized over it. Usually though the plan for me that best brings about change is as simple as:

I will think this way, or
I won’t think that way.

I will do this, or
I won’t do that.

And when I catch myself thinking or doing what I said I would not, I stop myself, say no, and start over again.


Change is small steps.
So many times I have said, I will make some change or another and it will be this way forever. Well, for me “forever” rarely comes. Rather than thinking about changing forever I have found it more effective to say that for this day, or this hour, or this minute, or even for this fleeting moment I will be different. By seeking to change one moment at a time, forever takes care of itself.


Change is a habit.
Often the way I am has more to do with the habits I have developed than with a desire to act that way. In spite of my best intentions to do something different and better, I find myself doing the same old things I did before. I got into the habit over time and with repetition. If I want to change it means I must consciously work against the old habit and do the new thing – time and again, with repetition – to establish the new and desired habit. If I want to change I must get into the habit.


Change means changing the pattern.
Much as with habit, my actions have a lot to do with the ways I have learned to think and with patterns of action, or reaction, that have become ingrained in me by upbringing, by society or by my own experiences. To change often means that I first have to change my view or my outlook towards a person or situation. I also must avoid getting caught up in what I call "patterned thinking," in short, thinking or acting without really thinking, rather automatically, the way I have always thought or acted or the way the system or everyone else wants me to think or act. I must relearn, refocus and think for myself apart from what others or even I myself have called me or taught me to think. To change sometimes means going outside of the box.



Change means being responsible.
If I believe that situations or other people cause my actions to be I can never really change. To change my actions I must understand and truly believe that, while situations or people may invite me to act in certain ways, it is I and I alone who chooses what my actions will be. To change I must know and accept that I am responsible for what I do, that everything I do has a consequence and that I am responsible for that consequence because of what I do. To be willing to change I must accept that the people and things around me may not change until I change first.


Change is a two-way street.
Most often in any change that I have made there is invariably another change that happens with it, the change back to the way I was. That change is cyclic should be expected and should not be a reason for distress. In that I can change, change back and change again just gives me lots of opportunities to practice with change. Sooner or later I will get better at it.


Real change is seldom seen.
How many times have I struggled and struggled to change and have felt defeated because nothing is happening? But often, in this struggle, when I look back after a time, I realize that I really have changed much more than I thought. Change that I can see as it’s happening is usually not real change, and change that is looked for is like the watched pot that never boils, it happens far too slowly or doesn’t happen at all. Personal change can seldom be measured or its progress tracked, nor should it be. The change in me that really means something is generally the change that others see.


There are likely many more constructive things that can be said about the process of change, but these provide you (and me) some things to think about.

And change is really not that big a deal when you consider that some kind of change in us – such as age, hair color, skin tone, weight, hearing, memory retention, energy levels, etc. – is happening all the time.

Change is dynamic, change is constant and change is inevitable, so which changes do you choose to be a part of?


What Will Be
By John Borland

Last night I had a very strange dream concerning change. I won't go into the details as it was truly odd, but the dream set me to thinking about change with my family: what change is appropriate, how much I can expect them to change before I am asking too much and who can actually effect such change.

The dream and my thoughts afterward put me again in mind of the lessons of the Parent Seminar. I remembered the Behavior Loop, the movie, Johnny Lingo, and what we are taught in these lessons about change.

While we can influence change in another by the invitations we send them and how we react to the invitations they send to us, the only person that can ever really create change in another person is that person himself. If we wish to be powerful we must come to realize that we can change ourselves, but we cannot directly change someone else.

My dream showed me that this limitation with changing another is likely a very good thing. I started thinking about the loved ones in my family, who they are, who they will be and how I have dealt over time with my expectations regarding them.

I could see again with my wife, Judy, how diligently in the beginning of our relationship I tried to change her. This change had to do with making Judy into my idea of a better individual. I felt that I knew best whom Judy should be and was determined to make her into that person. My purpose in this was supposedly to help Judy, but even more it was to fulfill my personal ideal of the partner who would share my life.

I was largely thwarted in my attempts at change by the fact that Judy is sturdy, very resilient and stubbornly dogged in her determination to be exactly who she is.

Thankfully, by virtue of these very good character traits in my wife, and with reflection, additional learning and a certain amount of accommodation over time, I came to understand that Judy is the person she is going to be and who she is supposed to be. Judy is also old enough and mature enough make her own decisions and chart her own course. In the end I came to appreciate my wife’s unique personality (what attracted me to her in the first place) and have largely released my need to change her.

In the case of Joshua, my youngest, I feel that, as a father, I have an obligation to help my boy become the best person he can be. In my earlier days this to me again meant creating change. The difference here, however, is that Joshua is my son, he is bonded to me biologically (a phenomenon I never believed in until I had Josh). Joshua is of me and so is very much like me in many respects.

At eleven years of age I can see traits and habits in Joshua that need to and likely will change. But the fact is I can talk to Joshua and he understands me and listens rather closely to what I say. This is for me a tremendous help.

Because of the bond between us, Josh has an innate desire to please me. This need on his part helps him to overcome his resistance, take in as advice the things I say to him and go forward faithfully in acting on them.

I can see that Joshua, in the end, will be rather like me and will have generally my set of understandings and values. This is very much how it is now between my father and I.

This comforting realization has largely quelled my need to control change in Joshua. Further, as I have come via the Parent Seminar and other means to know and practice better ways for interacting with my family, my tension with Joshua has been even further diminished and moved toward growth oriented and much more constructive activities.

However, with my nineteen-year-old stepson, Troy, it is very much a different story, and it is with him, I believe, that my dream was primarily focused.

In the dream there was a scenario in which one person had the ability to change another person at will and almost completely. There evolved an agreement requiring that the individual capable of making these changes not exert them on the other person for fear that the other person would be made into someone other than intended.

Troy is not my natural son. He first came to me at the age of four, the product of another union involving my wife. If you have never been a stepparent what comes next may be hard to identify with. I am, however, speaking from the real knowledge of being both a stepfather and a natural father.

I will say simply that if I had only ever had Joshua I would have known only one dimension, that of being a traditional father. But, if I had only ever had Troy I would have never known the difference that comes with having your own natural child.

You see I have no biological bond with Troy, nor he with me. That connection lies with his mother and father. I can observe it operating between them in accordance with their natures and I am not a part of it.

And Troy is not at all like me, he isn't structured as I am and he does not think or see the world the way I do. I can easily see how much Troy is like his father and mother, as he should be.

Now Judy does not think or see as I do either, but again Judy is her own adult person and I have come slowly to accept and respect her as she is. With Troy it really should be the same, but in truth with me it is different.

Troy is also his own person – very much so – and I have worked hard over the years with trying to accept Troy in that. But Troy has also been for me a child growing to adulthood under my roof. And I have been a father to him with all the same feelings of caring and concern for Troy that I hold for Joshua.

It is hard to explain the struggle that goes on in attempting to influence a child in growing up to meet particular goals and expectations when you are not really sure how the goals and expectations for that child should appear.

Of course I have wanted Troy to be respectful, kind, generous, hard working and all the rest, but these are more conceptual ideals than reality. The question – and for me the struggle – has been what should these concepts and ideals really look like in Troy.

With Josh it has, relatively speaking, been much easier. Again, for the larger part Joshua is like me. I can definitely see Judy in him, but I can also very much see me. I understand Josh as he does me and, by understanding myself, I have a much better picture for where he is going.

In Troy's case, I can see the part of him that is Judy, and that part I somewhat understand. But there is also in Troy the part that is his father, a relative stranger to me whom I really know from a working sense very little if at all. And there is no part of me in Troy to identify with or relate to.

As such, though by long experience I can rather predict Troy, it is very hard for me even now to read and truly understand him. And I am reasonably certain that Troy has similar problems in understanding me.

Further, given that Troy has no specific bond with me, he has within him no strong connection to me and no inbred need to please me. When Troy does seek my favor it is for different and generally more subjective reasons than with Joshua. I too find it much harder to interact genuinely with Troy as compared to Joshua.

Thus, it has made me almost crazy over the years trying to sort out the lines and distinctions that are specifically Troy, between what is simply Troy's unique and personal way of doing things and what are acquired habits and the results of influence. Add to this the almost continual changes Troy has gone through as he has grown up and the experiential differences between the two of us in terms of generation and background and the permutations become beyond anything my mind can fathom.

Herein lies the real rub and, I believe, the lesson of my dream.

All my life I have been a person who works to discern the desired endpoint and then engineers the process to achieve that expected end.

When, in my sophomore year of high school, I determined to become a wildlife biologist I began taking the classes and pursuing the college level pathways that would bring me to the end I was seeking. When I realized that the only way to make it in this career was to physically master the out-of-doors I began camping, canoeing, hiking, backpacking and exercising to acclimate my body and make it as limber and strong as possible to meet the challenge. And when, many years later, I came to understand that I wasn't happy living alone I took the steps necessary to change my life, meet Judy and become her husband (a long, but fascinating, true story).

For a long time I tried also to do this with Troy. I worked with increasing, active force to mold Troy to the endpoint of being what I thought a boy had to be. Though he fought me tooth and nail I was still generally following this strategy with Troy when I came to my first Parent Seminar in the year 2000. And I must admit there is still a part of me that wants to do this; it's what I know.

But it wasn't until the dream last night that I really focused on Troy's and my situation the way I have written it to you here. I came to the realization that, even if I could possibly succeed, for me to make Troy into what I can see as an end might very well produce a Troy who is other than the person he is intended to be.

I say this because, with this dream, I really understood for the first time that, given who Troy and I are to each other and what I really know about him, I have no idea at all who Troy is truly intended to be.

For the first time I could understand the newspaper clipping that Larry Evans uses in the first week of the Parent Seminar when talking about "Responsibility To" versus "Responsibility For." This is the article that contains the quote from Dr. Norm Wright. As I wrote it down in part, it goes something like this:

[As parents to our kids we are only] responsible to love, care for and surround them with a positive, nurturing environment.

With this understanding I can more clearly see that, with people, it is the process and not the end that is most important.

I will illustrate my point by asking you, look clearly at the relationships you have with the other people in your life and tell me, have you ever actually made someone else change?

Change with another is always the result of influence. Thus, building the process – the loving, open and supportive environment in which positive change may occur – is the only thing that any of us can really do for someone else.

Though I want so much for Troy to succeed, I truly have only a limited sense of what that means with him. I cannot build an end for Troy or make him change to it no matter how much I would like to.

·        But I can instill in him values by holding to the larger expectations around safe legal and moral choices,

·        I can show him responsibility by carefully challenging him to do what he is able to and helping him to be accountable for his actions,

·        I can invite him to discuss by being open to his questions and being there for him to ask them,

·        I can help him to trust by believing in him and allowing him to try it his way, and

·        I can example for him love by guiding rather than controlling, encouraging rather than condemning, showing calm rather than upset, and giving respect rather than reserve.

After all, Johnny Lingo did not make Mahana anything; even Moki couldn’t do that. And he did not tell Mahana how to be. But Johnny did gently create for Mahana the opportunity for her to discover and become for herself the person she really is.

Is this easy?

No – and here I must be realistic and honest. It is definitely not easy at all. For me, especially in this situation with Troy, it is at times extremely hard.

You see, I love Troy very much and still want so strongly to protect him, to hold him safe with me, and choose for him what I know to be right. That Troy remains detached and is not close with me, that I am still tentative and awkward around him, that I feel like I have never been able to bring him to me, only makes my romantic longing for him – and my difficulty with the reality – all the more. It's tough being a stepparent.

We talk a lot in the Parent Seminar about allowing our kids to "fail their way to success."

I very much agree with this idea in concept, but with Troy it is so very hard for me to do because I secretly hurt with each of his failures and fear for his ultimate direction.

It has been so painfully challenging all these years for me to watch Troy struggle – sometimes in great travail and confusion – largely alone, and resisting aid. This is especially so when all I have ever wanted in my whole life is to be allowed inside, to join with him, guide him through the trouble and help him to a better place.

I have made so many mistakes with Troy, but all of them, no matter how contrary or misdirected, have been at heart from this confusing, but intensely loving motive.

Still, I do not and cannot own the end with Troy. And it has become increasingly clear that the more I hold to his end as my focus the more I act anxiously to demean him and myself within the process and risk destroying the very end with Troy that I am seeking.

It has taken much time and effort for me to learn with Troy what true love is, and I am still learning. But everything that I do learn, with Troy and for Troy, I carry equally to Josh, to Judy and to others. Perhaps this is the blessing.

Last month I was given by grace to see my stepson graduate, and now I am granted the opportunity to witness his first halting steps into his new life. Just maybe I too am graduating and being allowed to begin once again anew.

And now I'll let you in on a little secret. Despite all my calculated focusing and engineering around the endpoints I never did become a wildlife biologist and I never did master the out-of-doors. The only one of these certain ends that did happen was becoming Judy's husband, and with her came Troy… A lesson?

I don't know exactly what will happen with Troy; or with Judy or Josh, or even myself. And I think I am learning that it's really better that way.

Maybe, just maybe, I can be happy to just sit back with my family, give them all the love I can, and together with them wait to see, what will be.


The PEG Meeting Summary Will Be Out Soon
The Parent Exploratory Group (PEG) held its scheduled meeting at DCTS on the evening of June 16 for our growing community of parents and friends. This was a very energetic and exciting meeting with a number of old faces in attendance, but also very many new parents from the 2003 Parent Seminar.

For those of you who couldn't be there we have prepared a summary of the meeting and will be posting it to each of you very shortly via e-mail and on the Affective Skills Web Site. We hope that this brief overview will help to keep you informed of our activities until perhaps (if you are close enough to come) you can join us in person.

The next meeting of PEG will likely occur in August of 2003, but could also come earlier based on the interest shown. We will keep you informed of this and other upcoming meetings through e-mail, in Words of Caring and on the Affective Skills Web Site.

PEG meetings are open to all and we warmly welcome you to attend. If this last meeting is any indication, we will have much to talk over and likely many things to think about and do towards better understanding, applying and spreading affective skills education. We look forward to seeing you. -- John Borland --

YOU MAKE THE DIFFERENCE IN WHAT WE CAN DO TOGETHER!

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