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Parenting/Children
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Your son will probably lie to you if you make telling the truth harder for him than it ought to be
21 Jan 2012 by Rod Smith / 1 Comment
“Please help me. My son (15) and I are fighting over a girl he wants to have as a girlfriend and I think he is too young to be seeing any girl. Now he says he will probably have to see her in secret. This is worrying me. We have always been very honest with each other and now I am sure he will be afraid to tell me the truth. By the way, he has no relationship with his father and it has always been just the two of us.”
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It is not only some exotic insects and creatures that eat their young
29 Dec 2011 by Rod Smith / No Comments
It is not only some exotic insects and creatures that eat their young. I’ve seen parents do it quite regularly. It happened to my friend when we were boys. His mother ate him. She tried to eat me too but I got away. I ran as fast as I could and after I did that once she left me alone. After I ran away that first time I could visit without her making a meal out of me. She knew I knew what she was up to and furthermore, I knew she knew I knew. Before all this “knewing” gets ridiculous I know that because of what we both knew I knew, she didn’t like me much which was okay with me. If you don’t like someone very much you are unlikely to eat him. Knowing made me safe – which I think it usually does.
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My son (14) comes home with horrific stories …..
07 Dec 2011 by Rod Smith / No Comments
My son (14) goes to his dad and comes back with horrific stories of his stepbrothers and sisters and their behavior. These children (older than my son) are teaching him things he’s never been exposed to and most of it around technology and games. He likes his visits but I am worried about what this is going to do to him. Do I intervene? (Extracted from a much longer letter)
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You lifted a huge weight off my shoulders…….
22 Nov 2011 by Rod Smith / No Comments
“I read your Mercury column of 21/11 about the child who will not visit his father. A line was of such importance it might as well have been a book. It read: Your son’s relationship with his father is his father’s responsibility – not yours.
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The anxious mother
01 Oct 2011 by Rod Smith / 1 Comment
- Sees the world as being out to get her child or family – it’s “us” against “them.” Of course “them” might even include husband and in-laws.
- Has little or no capacity to trust her immediate or extended community’s ability to enhance her child’s life.
- Confuses worry and love, thinking they are the same.
- Is suspicious of relaxed, carefree parents, convinced they do not care about their children or are at least in denial about what’s really going.
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Get Rod on FaceBook and/or Twitter
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Verbal log-jam
When I was a boy I’d endlessly practice the fluent delivery of my name but it seldom flowed easily from my lips. As if it was new news to me, adults pointed out my stutter. Perhaps they thought I was beginning, at that precise moment, for the first time in my life to spit from the mouth, twist at the neck, jig my head back and forth trying to expel some inane statement log-jammed between my gut and my throat.
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Life in our beloved 122
If the inside of a house (outside, too, I suppose) is a metaphor of the lives of the people who live in it – which is something I once read somewhere – gosh, are we in trouble. Our house is a mess.
I consistently clean it room by room, thinking often of the legend that the Golden Gate Bridge that says there’s some guy constantly painting it. I feel for him. While I am sure the view is wonderful I must believe that the poor guy whose doing it daily from one end to the other must find the wind and the weather quite a challenge.
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Being a white South African can come with complications
Being a white South African reared under Apartheid is no simple matter. It permeated everything for me. While I do not pretend to have been a political activist, I was always cognizant that my privileges, simply a result of being born white, were unmerited, and most unfair especially when enjoyed at the expense of others who were not. I think this unsettling truth (for I took advantage of my station in life) was somewhat of a companion to me from the age of about six or seven.
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Location, location – remembering winter in August
We live very close to our school and church, so close we can hear the school bell from our kitchen and the church bells in my bedroom.
Sometimes we walk to both and we don’t see the car for days.
I like it. I like not having to get in and out of the car. I like not having to negotiate traffic, something as synonymous with life in the USA as Disney, Fast Food, and the Fourth of July.
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Ready to adopt?
If you wait until you are ready to adopt a child you never will because you will never be ready. The baby, and only the baby, will make you ready. Reading the right books will be helpful, but “ready” magically comes upon you when a real baby is sleeping in your arms or crying in the middle of the night. If you are not ready to change diapers – and I always am amused at the big deal about this non-issue – being unprepared will last only as long as a clean diaper.
Life inside the Smith household
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