The importance of talking with your kids cannot be disputed.  Questions, role playing, being read to and silly interaction all fill specific purposes. “Talk to your kids about -fill in the blank- or someone else will.”  No question.  How about listen to your kids or they’ll create some weird uninvited guest in your house who will.  Listen to your kids or they’ll start talking to the dog or inanimate objects.  Their brains are going a mile a minutes and SOMEBODY is going to hear it goshdernit!  When I see my own kids cultivating relationships with a favorite doll, one of our dogs or the short-lived as of yet - imaginary friend, I wonder what they are not getting from us that these things provide. In my own childhood I employed a stuffed Curious George, a mutt-terrier and I am certain a couple stray imaginary friends, all for individual reasons. The common variable between the three is silence.  A blank sounding board of undivided attention.

I’m not very good with people. Even when I was little, my imaginary friend would play with the kid across the street. And I’d be like, “I guess we’ll meet up later.” And he’d be like, “Whatever, queer.” - Daniel Tosh (comedian)

Listen to the desires of your children. Encourage them and then give them the autonomy to make their own decision. -Denis Waitley

While I find most of their stories extremely entertaining and genuinely thirst for detail there are the occasional stories that lack either beginning, middle, end, any semblance of order or hope for purpose. With my boy, he will not volunteer up much information about his day without prodding but will tell me all kinds of stuff about his friends that reveal plenty of areas for digging if you listen.  In contrast, my little girl will spend an hour recapping a half hour event with granular detail. Oftentimes, the adult listening techniques of repeating an interesting phrase or digging further for information is met with a frustrated groan that I have thrown off their story.  There is also very few opportunities to provide undivided attention.  The demands of 3 other siblings and home upkeep often result in multi-tasking at the expense of eye contact and full engagement in the ride they are trying to take me on.

Daniel Pinks’ new book A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future declares that one of the six aptitudes or senses necessary for success in the upcoming “conceptual age” is the gift of story-telling.  Let your kids learn by doing.  Give them a pleasant smile and some eye contact.  Listen for their queues and give inaudible but energetic reactions to the yarn they are spinning just for you.  Schedule one on one listening time as a break while helping with homework.  Ask for the best and worst part of their day at bedtime.  Give your child the empty space pets, dolls, prayer and imaginary friends allow.  In short, zip the lip and listen!

Did you hear there was an inauguration this week?  Apparently it is kind of a big deal.  Ahh, I kid.  Truly a momentous day in American history.  With all the doom and gloom of economic downturn, lack of consumer confidence and the housing market crash, there are aspects of America and therein the world that are on the upswing.  The scar of racism is healing.

Racism isn’t born, folks, it’s taught. I have a two-year-old son. You know what he hates? Naps! End of list. -Dennis Leary

Here is the story of how Barack Obama caused a play change in our house as to how we deal with race.

Our oldest boy is in kindergarten.  They had considerable coverage of the election process in his class and it was the subject of emphatic discussion after school and over dinners.  Whether or not anonymity was encouraged was a moot point as he could recount the position of every student in his class.  He informed us he voted for Barack Obama because John McCain was “wayyy too old” (my wife insists he did not hear this from her).  He asked us “Do you know why Barack Obama is special?”  My initial honest response was “Do you mean why do people like him? Well, he is a great speaker, very charismatic, etc…” He interrupted “No, why is he different?”  My knee jerk reaction to “different” was negative.  We are sure his teachers did not present it this way but  felt the need to clarify “different”.  Why? One of our core principles of raising our kids is tolerance.  Our vision was not that race would be ignored but that skin color would be as inconsequential as shoe size or hair color.  Here we were now acknowledging the differences rather than his similarities.  Bigotry, prejudice and racism are ugly human conditions but from a personal development level they are limiting. Intolerance means you are no longer open to a person or situation as a learning opportunity because you think you have all the information you need.

It is impossible to begin to learn that which one thinks one already knows.  -Epictetus

Was our plan being derailed? How do we get back on track? OK, step back.  HUDDLE!! What were we missing? What was the intention of our principle of tolerance?  We wanted to raise responsible, educated and accepting adults.  Simply put, we missed something HUGE.  We were trying to use forced ignorance (albeit good-intentioned) to fix ugly ignorance.  It would be doing a great disservice to the occasion to soften the history behind it and why it was so world changing. Only by acknowledging where we once were can we appreciate where we are or where we still need to go.  There was a comment from a reporter to (then candidate for) President Obama that he was using the race card to get him ahead.  Personally, I never saw that as a predominant focus in his campaign but he had a though provoking response.  I can’t find the quote verbatim but the gist was that if someone wanted to increase their chances of being elected President of the United States they would most likely not choose to be an inner-city black boy named Barack Hussein Obama. I believe our 44th President was elected in spite of race, not because of it.

There is ugliness in the world.  A LOT of it.  There are wars being fought on the simple difference of what you call your god or what book you read about him/her.  Racism is less vocal but just as dangerous underground.  This “great melting pot” we live in is more of a tossed salad.  You can still pick out the individual parts.  When filling out “race” in most any form or questionnaire there is no pie chart or percentage breakdown.  25% Black is Black, 25% Hispanic is Hispanic.  There is work to do.

Ya’ll don’t know what it’s like being male, middle class and white. - Ben Folds (Rockin’ the Suburbs) read satirically

While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about. -Angela Schwindt

This is not the first time we have dealt with race or ignorance in our house.  It won’t be the last.  While the goal is that it no longer be an issue for discussion, progress is when it is.

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