I have a favorite saying that goes something like this: You teach people how to treat you.

When I first heard it I felt my muscles stiffen. It was so harsh and unfair, surely it couldn’t hold much truth. However, my efforts to prove it wrong ended up only proving how true it really is. It’s as if we hold a mirror up with our actions, words and decisions. Those around us will quickly learn from those things and will often throw them back at us, usually at the most inconvenient times.

I once heard a mother calling to her then nine or ten year old daughter to come into the house from play. The child didn’t want to come in and some arguing ensued. As I had recently been instructing teachers on improving their teaching skills, I was keenly aware of this concept of teaching as well as others. What I’ll never forget is the way the mother responded to the child’s exclaims of not wanting to. I heard in loud tones the words: “I don’t care what you want! This is what we’re doing right now!” I immediately pictured this same scene in future years, though reversed. A time when these words of ‘not caring what you want’ would come back to haunt this mother and she’d be stunned wondering where on earth they came from.

As with most things this concept is much easier said than done, but that doesn’t make it any less true or important. Perhaps if we stopped once and while to think about how we’re teaching others to treat us it would impact our actions, words and decisions. It seems like a reasonable start to improving ourselves and our character.

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My friend Kelly has challenged her readers to participate in defining their view of responsibility for her Pass The Torch Tuesday project and as responsibility is huge with me I knew I couldn’t pass this up. So I’ve chosen to define what a responsible parent is to me.

I don’t have a perfect little definition paragraph for an answer. I only have my reasons for knowing it’s important, my personal experiences with it and my goals and direction as a parent.

Given that I believe that we live in a society that is largely lacking responsibility, I think the root of the problem is found at home in the way children are taught or not taught to be responsible. This means the parent must be responsible too for you cannot give that which you don’t have.

Some would say that my judgment of society is harsh. If you wonder why I think our society is largely irresponsible I ask you to look around and see how many people spend valuable time, resources and energy playing the blame game, excusing themselves or their actions, caring only about themselves or any combination of all these attitudes. We have become masters at believing there is always an escape, at believing that only ourselves matter. Just look at one simple example of the controversial topic of abortion. Look at the energy and resources spent arguing this consequence. It isn’t even viewed as a consequence of a previous action or decision, it’s disguised as an issue of choice.

I was taught that you can choose your decisions but not the consequences. That for every action and decision there was a corresponding consequence. This is at the top of my list of important elements in teaching my children what responsibility means. The world will not teach it. In fact it seems to me that society today cultivates an attitude of acquiring skills to aid them in attempted side-stepping of the consequences of their actions. Some even believe they’ve succeeded. I believe with every fiber of my being that no matter how long you may delay a consequence it cannot be erased and often the harder one works to eliminate it the longer the trail of additional offenses and consequences will follow.

Further, I was taught the the right for me to swing my fist ends where your nose begins. This is another critical principal to me as a parent to teach my kids. This means you have to think about someone other than yourself, you have to learn how to respect yourself and others in every sense.

The hardest part of all this as a parent is not just the burden of teaching your children correct principles and moral values, but more importantly how to let your children have the experience of making their own decisions to learn the consequences for themselves. Because at the end of the day, the true teacher is experience. The close shadow to this teacher is that of example and truly the lessons taught are often the ones we don’t even realize we’re teaching. Do as I say and not as I do never works. No, this as in all things has to start from within.

I don’t have a Harry Potter wand or a crystal ball to help navigate these troubled waters. But clinging to the principles that are most important to me will help me charter the course. I know that patterns of behaviors don’t correct themselves, that what you feed is what grows. I know that I want my kids to understand the most basic and fundamental principles of responsibility that I was given as a youth. So for now I can only charge ahead to the best of my ability to teach them personal accountability and basic respect. And a little positive motivation from time to time can help a great deal, now where’d I put that chocolate?

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I set up my Mii account on our Wii Fitness this morning and to my delight it calculated my BMI and weight in the normal region. Yay! Now, I didn’t really need it’s balance and muscle assessment to know that I’m not in great shape and my body is weaker than it should be but who knows, maybe it will help me work on that. One thing I learned with Dance Dance Revolution is that exercise in the form of some entertainment works well for me. So I’m hopeful. I also took heart in my first rounds of yoga exercises and balance games that I placed in the top three of my family members who have been doing it for a week now. I’m also delighted that the pool season is back because I can do so much more with my joints in the pool than in other exercise settings.

In other good news today I’m happy to report that I found another solution that is helping me with my summer vacation parental strain. As my husband and I talked last week, I realized that no matter how many things we did or planned to keep our daughter busy the fundamental problem wouldn’t be addressed. My ten year old daughter has ADD and that means her brain doesn’t organize things naturally, or at least the way most of our brains do. It’s why she’s always asking to do 10 things at the same time and why she spends 5 minutes of quiet time complaining of boredom. So I decided to take my last organization attempt during the holidays a step further. I printed out calendars from my Google calendar for each of the kids. One page was a month overview and then each week broken down on a single page with the hours of 6AM-5PM each day. My thought was if I made their planning visual not only would they better understand time and feel some control over their activities, they might also see how much they really have.

I’m happy to report that so far so great. They are both working at filling in their wants on their calendar and mom helps fit in some needs (a.k.a. chores) and catching the vision. This morning we planned out this week which took about 10 minutes compared to our first attempt last week which took about 20 minutes for 2 days. Progress. I’m finding it helps me too because the time we block for academic review and games is small enough that none of us go crazy. In fact, this morning they both asked if we could do it longer so that’s a plus for mom.

Speaking of time, mine is up so that’s all for today on the blog! *giggle*

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Today marks the third day of summer vacation for my kids - that is the third day without holidays or special circumstances as their last day of school was actually last week. Day one was a fiasco for me. The kids had a great time but it was basically friends and playmates all day that ended in some less than stellar decisions; including throwing mud in the pool *grrrr*, attempts and skinny dipping and messing with the pool pump which really freaked mom and dad out. While these things weren’t the fault of our kids, it was a result of their friends and their actions and led for many discussions and new ground rules. *sigh* Day two went to the opposite extreme with no friends accompanied by plenty of whining (despite my new sign) and fighting. So today I started the day different with a brainstorming session on rules and consequences and calendaring out our plans and activities. It’s been a better day and I’m hoping to keep things rolling. I even scored getting in some math and problem solving with some creative games this morning. Go mom! So there’s hope that I’ll survive this summer.

Speaking of hope, there is a need for much of it for a loved one right now. This past weekend my son’s birthmother was stricken with Sepsis and she is currently battling for her life in ICU on a ventilator and dialysis machine. All that can be done is being done and the roller coaster ride is wild. She is having hours that are good and hours that are bad. This was so unexpected and so our hearts and prayers are full for her and her family right now.

Life can turn on a dime. I suppose that’s the good thing to remember on all those other manic and survival days.

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Influence is a powerful force. So many times we make decisions in our lives based on influence whether we recognize it or not. Many blindly give all power to influence blaming it for “making” them do or say things, or not. I have a real hangup with responsibility so that doesn’t fly with me, but even knowing each of us has the control and power to make our own decisions I readily recognize how powerful influence is.

A few weeks ago I was reading a book that described a powerful scene where influence played a nasty hand. It made me think on my own life and how many times I may or may not have done something that wasn’t me but that I felt pressured to do for appearances or acceptance of peers. In the book, it was a traitorous blow from one brother to another and the consequences were devastating. In fact, neither ever truly recovered from that split decision that was made more for the friends present than for the one making it.

Sometimes you know when you have a profound influence on another person, sometimes you don’t. I think I prefer the ones where I don’t know because you don’t have any reason to ask the ‘what if’ questions. Take my youngest sister for example. I knew the influence I had in her life and consequently I frequently wonder how things might have been different if I had been around longer for her. You see, I was ten when she was born. Having a ten year old daughter now is a stark reminder of how baby crazy girls can be at that age. All my daughter wants to do is babysit for people and hold babies. So it was with me and the timing was perfect to have a new baby sister. I treated my baby sister like my own china doll and she received it very well. In fact, it used to infuriate my older sister because she’d always choose me over her; a personal triumph for me that I secretly relished. Moreover, because she was so much younger than me I don’t remember any sibling struggles or frustrations like I do with those closer to me in age. Our relationship was always different, bordering on parent like for me. I was her protector, her nourisher and a lot of the time her care giver. And then I moved a thousand miles away to begin my new life as a wife. She was only ten and I can’t help but catch myself in thought sometimes about how my influence may have helped her if I’d been around a little longer, especially have a ten year old daughter now.

When I think about my own life and people who have influenced me, my feelings and decisions I find myself smiling. Some have added needed drops in my confidence bucket even though they never knew it. It makes me happy to remember those unseen and unknown influences and even happier to think I may have done the same for someone else sometime. I hope I have.

There’s the famous saying that you may not mean the world to everyone but to someone you may mean the world. I think that’s a good thing to remember when thinking on the intricate web of influence. I think it’s important enough to stop and think about once and while, to take inventory of the type of influence I am on those around me and to work on being the best one I can be, to be a lifter instead of a leaner.

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Sometimes I feel that I could write endlessly about the experience of having no TV in our home. It’s amazing to me how much I’ve noticed, the little changes and big ones all from one decision. One of the things that I learned a long time ago is that you can’t simply remove things, they require replacement if you want success. It doesn’t matter if it’s thoughts, habits or tangible uses of time the rule is the same. So when we talked as a family about not paying any more for any TV to come to our home we also talked about the other things we could spend that money on. So today I share some of our tangible replacements and their enthusiastic reception.

Behold my last order from Oriental Trading: A full box of summer fun:

I splurged on the hoppity horse style bouncers. I remember these as a kid and my 5 year old begged and pleaded. But the delight was well worth it and we’ve all had hours of fun since their arrival. The kids were blown away that mom still knows how to bounce on them and even challenged a race.

They couldn’t wait for school to be out to dig into one of the activities, so I let it buy my Sunday afternoon Mother’s Day nap. It was a little rock and gem set. The kit included a brick with rocks and gems trapped inside the plaster brick. They had to chip away until they could remove the rocks and then could examine them with the little magnifier and identify them based on the poster that came with the set.

I love that my kids are enjoying spending their time doing things that are fun and educational and not just watching hours of TV programming that dulls their senses and whittles away at their morals. Another post for another day. *wink* Meanwhile, the suspense and anticipation of all the surprises in this box are treasured by this mom - almost as much fun as Christmas.

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So many things are calling for my attention this morning but my mind is likely to explode if I don’t find a way to get some of these thoughts and memories out. So the laundry, dishes and vacuuming will have to wait while I attempt to organize and store these thoughts here on my blog - my personal pensieve.

The memory mumble in my head has been building for a while now. The culprits for the growth include: 1) watching my daughter and remembering life at her age, 2) being in touch with old classmates, 3) reading. All three seem to have recently collided in the same space of my mind.

My daughter is 10 this year. She reminds me frequently that she’s really almost 10 1/2 because she’ll be 11 this fall. What she doesn’t know is that I need no reminding. Nor does she comprehend how well I understand her feelings of wanting so much to hasten growth not to mention the emotions of girl troubles and boy crushes. But I do remember and watching her experience it is like reliving some of my past on a regular basis, which until recently I’ve completely underestimated the power of. This is intertwined with viewing photos yesterday of some old classmates at my last high school reunion that I didn’t make it too. I saw a picture of one of my best friends when I was her age and it brought back a flood of memories. Then last night as I was reading, I was struck with the harsh reality of how many things we do in our lives because of influence or peer pressure and how that impacts our lives, the lives of others and the memories we lock away.

Lock is an intentional verb in the concept of storing memories. You see I’ve recently come to the realization of how I’ve locked in so many memories, expectations and criteria based on association and timing. Sadly, many of those were done automatically when I was the least capable in my life of looking beyond myself - namely, high school. As I looked through pictures of classmates from a few years ago I found myself thinking terrible things like, “wow, they sure got fat”, or “woof, time has not been friendly to them”, or even “they look as mean and stuck up as they ever were.” These aren’t the things I think when I meet people every day now, I don’t hold them to this standard. And then I thought on how I was being so harsh in my judgments and expectations simply because of association. The fact is, I knew these people when they were teens. The fact is, teens are self-centered and egotistical and often down right unkind. The fact is, teen bodies haven’t been impacted with age. I didn’t think I was a terrible teen, I still don’t. But I concede that I was totally wrapped up in myself, my own fears, anxieties, self conscious worries, etc. Heck, I never wore a short sleeved shirt to school or shorts because I was so sure everyone would notice my horrifically bony elbows and knees. It never even occurred to me that they wouldn’t notice my imperfections because they were so focused on their own. And I certainly never thought on the physical state of maturity and age, I just took for granted that my body would always be the same and therefore only focused on the things I didn’t like about it. This is where hindsight becomes so valuable and we’re back to that reality of not truly appreciating what you had until you no longer have it principle.

What really got me into a muddled mess was thinking about never giving these classmates a chance. I locked in my memories of them at their best or worst and that’s where they live in my mind. It’s why I’m so shocked when I find out how many kids some of them have or how nice they are now that they’re adults and I’d be equally shocked to learn anything negative about my personal heroes and the few I put on pedestals. I’m ashamed to admit it, but to this day there are two girls whose names make me cringe when I first hear them. It was a silly thing that happened clear back in 7th grade when they made fun of me for not having any boobs when I refused to give them my math answers. But it made its mark on me because it hit on the area of physical bodies and so many insecurities I battled with every day being so skinny and nothing but a straight highway. I’m sure neither one remembers it and I’d guess that both would feel terrible today to know how much it devastated me. And that’s the point. Kids are mean. Sometimes they’re just stupid and do and say things without thinking. Most of the time they do or say mean things just to impress someone they’re with because they want so much to be accepted and feel important. This peer pressure makes kids do things they wouldn’t do on their own and often things that are uncharacteristic. This describes the scene I read last night in my book and it made me really think hard on my own locked memories. Moreover I wonder how many people have locked memories of me doing or saying something that was hurtful to them that I’m not even aware of? And wouldn’t I like the chance to be redeemed or make things right?

I’m not sure if this post is really going anywhere or not. I just know I have a lot of thoughts and feelings regarding the many memories in my head right now. As my husband’s 20 year reunion comes up this summer I see and hear so many shallow things regarding these locked memories. Some are so bitter that they have nothing but complaints and unkind things to say. Others purposely attempt to live in those days past because they were the height of their glory days. All I know is that I’ve grown SO much as a person since my school days and the person I am now is the one I’d like my classmates to know, not the growing, insecure teen I was. That means I have to look at each of them with different eyes too. So why is association memory so difficult?

I’ve definitely identified some things I need to work on, namely my own lock box of memories. Maybe it’s time for me to find a key and allow those babies to move around a bit, rub up against some new memories in my mind. Perhaps I’ll start unlocking those trapped memories here in some more posts on specific memories; try to view them in a new and different light. It’s funny what you choose to remember and how when you start thinking on those things other memories find a way of spilling out. It’s part of who we are - a natural process. But if I want to keep growing as a person I think I need to air out some of these memories. Besides that, they’re not all bad. In fact, I’m sure I’ll be surprised at how many good ones are hidden under the locked ones. Hmmmmm that’s something to think about.

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It seems to be human nature to not truly appreciate what you have until you don’t have it. It doesn’t seem to matter so much whether you ever really had what you now want either, although if you’ve had and lost you know first hand what it was like which can certainly add to the longing. Sometimes it’s even the perception that you thought you had it, when in fact you never really did. Either way the result is the same, you simply appreciate things more if you associate a form of loss with it before.

This morning I stopped to visit with another mom at my son’s school. I have to admit that I don’t know her name or anything about her really. We’ve exchanged a few friendly smiles and hellos on the playground before school starts for our Kindergarten sons. Recently, she’s been coming in a wheelchair and with some assistance, again I don’t know what the circumstances are but I know my heart aches for her. So this morning when we met at the crosswalk on the way back to our cars I asked her how she was doing and she replied that she was hanging in there. I could hear the weight of it in her voice and I told her how seeing her reminded me of myself about 5 years ago when I too was in a wheelchair. And then the entire drive home I considered how blessed I truly am.

I pondered on three primary elements of my life where I got to experience what I’ll call the “Greater Appreciation Algorithm” or GAA for short. (How’s that for pithy?!) The first, thanks to my friend, was my health and ability to walk. This in turn leads to the greatest gift of how you view and thus live your life. Dealing with unknowns is terrifying and lonely, even when you’re surrounded by loved ones. During the three months I battled some bizarre and never defined illness, I experienced some deep soul searching and gratitude training. I learned to be grateful for pain because it meant I could still feel and was still alive. I learned to be grateful for the many years of unfettered freedom and health I’d enjoyed without notice. Consequently, I don’t view life the same way anymore, I recognize each day as the gift that it is determined to make the most of it. There are no certainties; you make the most of what you’ve got while you’ve got it or you die on a bed of regrets. Life is too short for petty offenses, too fragile for postmortems and too wonderful for despair. How grateful I am to have learned this all important lesson before I was 30.

The next thing I thought about was one of those perceived items; the ability to become a parent. Suffice it to say that control in all things parenting from becoming to being one is an illusion. The GAA part of this experience for me is the ability to be a better parent, to recognize more. One woman compared this to experiencing children more on the level of a grandparent because you have different eyes and understanding. There’s some truth in there. At any rate, I find myself being supremely grateful for these parenting eyes even though obtaining them wasn’t something I was so sure I was on board with during the trial and wait. And I am especially mindful of the blessing that the vision was granted before I had children so I could make the most of the short time I have them.

And finally I couldn’t help but consider the blessing of all things temporal. At the height of my personal health trial came the greatest financial storm of my marriage. My husband and I were so close to the edge of losing everything that to remember now still causes my heart to skip a beat. Up to this point, we felt a level of control and confidence in our temporal situation. We were putting money away in a few different retirement and savings programs, paying more than minimum on our consumer debt payments, making conservative big decisions on our home and cars, and enjoying the freedoms of being your own boss. Sounds great right? It was, right up to the point where the revenue stopped, and I do mean stopped - no trickling, no bleeding, just plain gone. Oh, and now we had a mountain of medical bills too. For six months we plugged holes, depleted resources and extended every ounce of credit waiting and hoping for a new job to be in the cards. Not surprising, the climb out of that hole was no small task. But you know what? You keep climbing. No bankruptcy was declared, bills were paid and life continued albeit a bit strained for a while. And what I learned from all of it was that there is a difference in managing your money and in really having money to manage. I learned that money is not just some means to an end, it is a blessing and a gift that enhances your life if you let it. I learned that perception is everything and I learned it before I was 40.

So you see why I consider myself thrice blessed. Each of these primary areas are major aspects of life and I can’t imagine living my life without the gifts of knowledge that are now mine. This morning I thank the sweet lady that comes to school in a wheelchair each day to see her son off. She is an important reminder of just how blessed I am and sometimes you need the reminder. Maybe there really is something to the “gaa gaa” thing. *wink*

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Well it was an interesting weekend indeed. The father and son had an excellent time on their first camp out and the boy is already asking when they can do “just the guy” thing again. Dad says it was great right up to the point of having to attempt sleep. We fumigated the car on their return and the laundry is still going but all in all it seems to have been a successful trip for the two of them.

My mommy daughter night went considerably different than planned. At about 7:00 that evening my daughter comes into the house exclaiming at high decibel volume that she’s just found a lost dog. The next three hours were spent walking the neighborhood, making and placing fliers and fielding questions about what we’ll do if we never find the owner. To her dismay and mom’s delight the owner did call within an hour of putting up fliers.

We took the kids to “Nim’s Island” on Saturday night and I’m still bracing myself for the continued requests for personal pets, now to undoubtedly include pelicans and sea lions. *sigh*

The weekends always go too fast. Why is that?

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