How We Roll (Attachment Styles)

Wow. It's been awhile since I've blogged on to update AandA. My friend Karen sent me a very succinct set of clips featuring psychologist, Dan Siegel, discussing parenting styles and resultant attachment styles.  These provide just a taste of what the attachment style concepts are about, but I think we can recognize ourselves in these descriptions, both as a child and as a parent. Self awareness is the key to growing into the parents we want to be.

I am here to say that it is never too late to become the parent you aspire to be.  As a child and later as a teen, my attachment with my own dad was definitely that of an avoidant style.  I never felt that my dad saw me or knew me or even really cared to know me.  These were my childish and adolescent assumptions, but they stemmed from my father's all-consuming preoccupation with his own career and stature in the community.  He craved external affirmation and as a result, he wasn't mentally present to acknowledge and affirm his own children.

Today, I have a wonderful relationship with my father.  To my surprise it turned out that he is interested in knowing me. However, he didn't arrive at this parenting style until his career was over and he realized that he wanted something different than what he had pursued for most of his life. The surprise is that it's not too late.  His change of parenting style has helped me immensely and I'm grateful now (at ages 81 and 56, respectively) to have a father - daughter relationship I never would have thought possible.

"Mortified" on Thanksgiving

The best appliance in my kitchen is my computer, and as I prepared all the food I was bringing to Thanksgiving (at my brother's) I found myself streaming a radio show ("On Point") about "Mortified", a live show where adults read their teenage journal entries to a live audience.  "Share the Shame" is the tagline.

What struck me was how easily teens get lost in their fantasies and how necessary fantasies are to coping.  I was curious whether my 17 year old would think it was funny without the perspective of looking back as an adult.  She loved it.  She was groaning, cringing, and laughing out loud. It must reassuring to know that you can sound that weird, or be so rejected by peers at one time, and still turn out to be a fairly normal adult.

Good times.

You can go to the "On Point" website to listen to the hour long show, or just listen to a couple of Mortified clips from a recent show in Boston.  We thought the recording of Stacy Kasdin was the funniest. 

Apparently the producers are doing a show this year on the Sundance cable channel called "Get Mortified" and here is the clip they're using for promotions.  There are live shows coming up in February in Portland.  Too bad they're mid week!  Check out the Mortified website.
 
  

Family Time with All the Stuffing

Here come the holidays.  I hear that for some of us it's really grrrrreat! to get together with extended family.  In my extended family, getting together during the holidays is like traversing a mine field.  There has already been a blow up and we haven't even started cooking our Thanksgiving meal yet.


I've tried to understand my parents without great success.  I love them, but it has taken years of therapy (sounds cliche, but it's true) to be able to feel whole in their presence. Wow -- that's a pretty candid admission! As for my brother, he shares the pain, but hasn't gone down the therapy path. 


One of the reasons I am writing about parenting teens in my blog is that I want to examine my conscious and unconscious choices around parenting and raise my self-awareness. I've learned a lot about healthy family relationships from reading a book called Mindsight by Dan Siegel.  Dr. Siegel is a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine and his research centers around how family relationships contribute to brain development, including the physical wiring of the brain.


Of course it's too much for a blog post, but if anyone is interested they can watch a presentation on FORA.tv where he provides an overview.  If you only have a few minutes, I would suggest watching Chapter 13, "What Integration in a Family Looks Like" which is immediately followed by "Adolescents and the Brain". 


http://fora.tv/2009/06/30/Dan_Siegel_The_Brain_and_the_Developing_Mind#fullprogram


I would recommend this video for anyone examining their own family dynamics and especially anyone who is raising young children.  He has also written a book called Parenting from the Inside Out that I'm looking forward to reading.


I wish everyone happy holidays and happy families this Thanksgiving.

Penn State Penitence

Everyone is asking how the grownups at Penn State could look the other way while children were molested in the team showers.  Because this horrific lapse of judgement/citizenship/humanity occurred in the context of a high stakes athletic program, many are concluding that it's all about the money.


Football rakes in $70 million per year at Penn State (according to Slate.com). In our hyper-capitalist society we tend to assume that money explains most behavior. Media commentators are saying that those who knew were afraid to rock a boat with that much ballast. Some are even saying that the money and culture of NCAA football are the problem.


That amount of money, together with the celebrity of the alleged molester, make this case notorious, but I think we're missing the point.  What we should be talking about is what this case has in common with every other case of child molestation: the not-so-innocent bystanders.

For every father that molests a daughter, there is a mother who doesn't believe it could happen.  For every uncle or grandfather, there is the family that doesn't believe it could happen.  For every town in which a prominent citizen molests a child there is a whole community that doesn't believe it could happen. As a result, it has to happen over and over until the unthinkable becomes...thinkable.


It should be thinkable because it appears to be all too common.  Maybe if we were talking about this type of thing more openly, victims and the adults around them would understand that they need to go to the police when there is even a suspicion of child molestation.

Julie Sullivan, a middle school teacher in Belfair, didn't think her students were too young to think about child sexual predators.  Her class at Hawkins Middle School, researched how our state justice system deals with sex offenders and then came up with ways to fix the system. This project opened up a community conversation about sex offenders.  Quoting from an article in the Kitsap Sun,


"After the showcase, 13-year-old Mikayla Mehelich said the students didn’t find talking about sex offenders difficult. It’s a reality kids today live with, she said...When she told her parents and grandparents her class was working on a sex offender project they were 'dumbfounded.' But as the weeks have gone by, Mehelich said her family has been asking a lot of questions about the project."


We all need to face the reality that sex offenders can look like, or even be, grandpas or coaches.  It must be hard to report grandpa or a coach to the police, but not reporting a suspected child sexual predator?  That's unthinkable.


Read more about Julie Sullivan's class at: http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2010/feb/19/not-too-taboo-north-mason-students-examine-sex/?partner=RSS#ixzz1dvebocPP

Earlier today, 18 hours ago to be precise, I was waiting up for my daughter and went to text her about coming home.  shheeeeezzzz.  She had texted two hours earlier that she was spending the night at her friend, Leah's.  I could have been sleeping!!!

I miss you, Sleep.

Image by <a href="http://www.free-stockphotos.com" title="Free Photos">Free-StockPhotos.com</a>

Anne Collier talks about cyberbullying and digital citizenship

The 2010 Tattoo Campaign

One of the best things about my daughter is how relentlessly she herds me beyond the boundaries of my comfort zone. Case in point: the tattoo. Once her older sister came home from her first quarter at college with a swallow on her foot, the campaign was on. 


As she warmed to her theme, it seemed it would be easy to stonewall. I had the law on my side.  It isn't even legal to give a person under the age of 18 a tattoo in Washington State. I said, "Great idea! You've got lots of time to save up and think about what you really, really want to embed in your skin for the rest of your life!"  I even set up a tattoo collection jar where I would contribute money in exchange for her help around the house and yard.

Now she was inspired to read poetry, think metaphorically, and weigh every aspect of her life for tattoo-worthy material. Suddenly, she was a big fan of Walt Whitman. Ancestors were vetted for the number one spot. Everything was profound. There was so much to ponder and I was hopeful that the campaign would bog down indefinitely while options were shuffled and drawn out for mystical consideration like cards in a tarot deck.


Then one day in the high school parking lot, her friend Julie rolled up the edge of her sweatshirt to reveal a souvenir from a recent trip to Arizona.  She was sporting a tat on her hip. Would I consider flying to Arizona to get my daughter a tattoo?  No, I think not. 

This led to a new line of research: state law. What about Idaho? What about Oregon? What about Canada?!


She turned seventeen. Birthday money arrived. She settled on a winsome, cherry blossom illustration. One by one the barriers went down until there was only one thing standing in her way - my will power.

On a sunny spring day, the tattoo campaign came to a conclusion. My petite daughter, who fusses and whines about vaccinations and blood draws, spent almost two hours under a needle guided by an enormous, shaggy, crabby Canadian while I sipped tea and read the Vancouver Sun in a nearby cafe. 

I have no regrets and neither does she. Our tattoo-trip coincided with the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival. The city was coated with wet blossoms and everywhere we drove, blossoms drifted through the neighborhood skies. In art and haiku, cherry blossoms represent impermanence and remind us that one form of life gives way to another. One form of thought gives way to another, too. It was the perfect day to change my mind.