The Evolving Parent

The Evolving Parent

My Pen Mates,

I and my wife are the parents of a teen-ager. To most parents of children this age, that's all that needs to be said to elicit a knowing nod and perhaps a smirk followed by eyes rolling into the socket. With two younger siblings behind him, it seems that all of a sudden, we have to overhaul our heretofore effective parenting style to accommodate the foreigner who's now residing in the house.

Not that we didn't expect it; we have been conscientious about monitoring and anticipating growth periods that our children go through. We openly discuss as a family matters relating to growth and expectations associated with those changes. In other words, we considered ourselves prepared emotionally and intellectually to process the whole adolescent strife. After all, we went through it and we didn't imagine having caused too much trouble for our parents, did we? What were we thinking?

By any measure, we are truly blessed with the teen-ager we have. Lucas is smart, practical, healthy, and well-liked by both his peers and their parents. He has a public persona that exudes confidence and maturity, and is well acquainted with integrating his ideas in any conversation. That he has turned his bedroom into a hovel fit for a hobo is such a disjoint with this picture that one wonders whether a split personality exists. The deer in the headlights look he's mastered when we talk to him lacks only that glassy tear layer, evoking memories of a hypnosis scene in a bad movie, to complete that "you can talk but I'm not here" aura. While he can sustain focus on the computer screen for hours on end, and do instant messaging with multiple people without losing a beat, he can't seem to retain the last piece of instruction we give him. He listens without hearing, and looks without seeing (at least when we engage him in this sensoral activities). Like I said, we appreciate this as symptoms of independence-assertion and a teenager's way of defining his ever expanding border and limits. But it can be frustrating to pay attention to on one hand, and guilt invoking to ignore on the other. What if we let things be and he turns out wrong due to lack of guidance?

That's where the worry lies really; an observant parent has to show concern, enough for the child to notice that he still does not get everything his way. It's more a push-pull system rather than a pure pressure environment of conflict. As a parent, I have to convince myself that most of my frustration has more to do with seeing traits in my son that I know I hate possessing. I do expect him to be a better person than me, that when he reflects my defect, especially if that trait happens to have been manifested while I was his age, I express my fear through anger. I'm sure I take it out on him sometimes, which adds to his confusion. But hey, I'm a work in progress as a parent too, and I explain that we do need to deal with it as partners not adversaries, and that we have to communicate our mutual concerns.

I also realize that sometimes I may be talking over his head and I loose him in the discussion. It's a mistake I try to watch out for but it's one that I cannot admit to in his presence. For I expect him to be intelligent by not doting on him or making him feel patronized. I end up over explaining but the only danger I see there is being shut-out after several rounds. But this is easy to detect so I guess I'm erring on the side of more not less.

Overall, I know that I and my wife are the mature factors in the equation. Even as we are learning how to navigate the parenthood role in this maze, we embrace the expectation of providing correct guidance to whom who has more questions than answers. That holds true even if the teen-ager is empathic when he says 'I got it'!

Mon

Getting Back on the Horse

Getting Back on the Horse

My Pen Mates,

Not sure if it was enough to knock me off in the first place, but my four week absence from blog posting was due to a project commitment for my 8th grader's school. Early in the school year, I signed up to help put together a middle school graduating class memory video project, sort of an audio-visual trip down memory lane for the students to take as keepsakes.

My initial interest was less artistic but technical; in previous years, the parent-volunteers produced DVD in triple or quadruple volumes which proved unwatchable and overproduced. They used to take hours to watch, and in my opinion lost some of the audience interest which to me was essential in the graduation experience. My challenge was to produce an upbeat yet sentimental montage of student activities throughout their school experience and present the complete show in one viewing.

Coming to the first meeting with this agenda, I should have expected to have the whole project fall on my lap__ and I did. Expectations were set high as a couple of the volunteer group members had previous graduates who had the "old" presentation format which I'm aiming to debunk. No worries I assured myself; with an efficient material collection team and advance planning, I imagined that a good software will make the task simpler and manageable.

Forty-two gigabytes of edited material later, I've come to the conclusion that I was walking away from the completed project with two rewards. The first was a new operating knowledge of a very good movie editing software, the second a surprising connection with each member of the graduating class. After weeks of hounding for photo and video materials, hours spent grouping, editing, and rendering individual segments, everyone's face became familiar. Whereas the previous years that my son was in this class I got to know his close friends, doing this project allowed me to know the whole class and individual members of the class. It was an unexpected outcome, but one that I was happy to have experienced.

My wife and I burned the final version of the DVD last night. Though we have lost some of the sentimental burnout that we used to go through during the early days of production, we are happy with the final outcome. More important, we have condensed the presentation to one hour and sixteen minutes, which achieves my original objective.

I'm happy to be back blogging.

Mon

First of May

First of May

My Pen Mates,

"Wise men say... looks like rain today...."

I wonder often about how my kids will remember their childhood; without perfect recall, I imagine they will have glimpses of today in the not so distant future and piece together their unique tapestry that will comprise the fabric of their lives. In earlier posts, I related memories I have of my parents and early childhood. While vivid and true in my version of reality, I won't be surprised that it could be related a different way, perhaps even by me as I age.

I remember this song but not beyond the opening line. The association between date and rainfall have stayed with me for as long as I remember, wondering out loud even during a hot end-of-summer day in the home country whether rain will come. Of course, I neglected to consider that it was a Western song played in the tropics, thus reducing the likelihood of precipitation. I recall years that it did occur though, and I carried a smile those days as I hummed the melody.

Funny that I don't even associate the song with happiness or anything particularly memorable. Like a coat hanger in a closet, I just chose to hang a piece of memory that remains for retrieval when I need a connection to the past. I once read an apt description of success; that it's an accumulation of advantages, the possession of which predisposes the collector to recognize opportunities and more mindful of pitfalls. As I ponder the significance of threads and filaments of my life experiences, I wonder if I have, through the years, gathered enough advantageous knowledge and material that will merit the definition of success.

Let's see... by far, my greatest joy and source of pride is my wife and three children. By some random act of divine kindness, I have grown to be totally absorbed into watching over them and thrive in my fascination for observing and growing with them. I recall no seminal moment that I could peg this conversion. I grew up like a normal male, through the hormone years, the carefree period, the lost and limbo moments of early adulthood. I've seen friends, neighbors, family, and erstwhile acquaintances who have trekked their own paths through the labyrinth of life; yet, I am perfectly satisfied to claim that mine is one that I truly possess. Was my passive observation the learning, the accumulating that the definition alludes to? If so, then this accumulation activity may largely be an innate ability and not necessarily an active pursuit. Not setting out to destroy the self-help instruction industry, perhaps some of us are just hardwired to perform and excel in areas beyond our own reckoning; that in the balance of nature and nurture, it's not so much what we actively pursue but what we allow to engulf us with the resources that we have or come to own that determines our ultimate appreciation of where we are at any given moment. Since material possessions come and go, the ethereal components that fills the heart and mind are what truly counts in accounting for what we have accumulated.

More on this another time. I've got to remember to get the coat from the closet before stepping out today. It looks like rain.

Mon