| As I write this article, I am amazed at how quickly and drastically the world has changed. The events of September 11th and the subsequent bombing of Afghanistan have forever altered the way we look at things.
Assertiveness has given way to anxiety — confidence into confusion. It's like somebody changed the rules of the game and forgot to tell us. To make things worse, they also walked away with the rulebook.
And so we are left to find our own way. Many of us, myself included, feel ill equipped to handle the task. How do you make sense out of the senseless? How do you comprehend the incomprehensible? We stand before our children without any answers. It is a humbling experience.
A few days ago, I was putting the finishing touches on an article about discipline and the older child. Suddenly it all seemed rather silly to me. After all I thought, what parent is really focusing on fine tuning their skills right now. Most of us are just struggling to survive.
And survive we must. Many people look toward experts at this time to help them learn how to cope. I take a slightly different approach, I turn to our children.
Some of you may be thinking, "That's it, this guy has finally lost it." After all everyone knows that you don't burden your child with your own problems. You’re absolutely right. What I am proposing is to take a good look at how children handle adversity.
Here are a few things that we can learn:
1) Take time to play. No matter how difficult life gets, kids know when to take a break. Grown ups need them too!
2) Know when to ask for help. When kids get overwhelmed they often turn to a friend or grown up for guidance. Don’t expect yourself to handle everything. Reach out if you need it. This is not the time to start practicing 'rugged individualism'.
3) Tell it like it is. Kids never sugar coat anything. If you don’t know an answer to something admit it. It’s better to say that you don’t know than to make up elaborate explanations for things. It’s more stressful to trying not to get caught in a lie.
4) Find something joyful every day. Children find pleasure in the smallest of things. Unfortunately, we are living in a time when it seems that beauty is being bombarded by brutality. The beauty is still there; we just need to look harder for it.
5) Take time to laugh. There is nothing more infectious than the sound of a child’s laughter. It is okay to laugh. Humor is one of our greatest coping mechanisms.
6) Focus on what’s really important. Kids know how to zoom in on the things that matters. Forget the petty stuff. In the scheme of things is it really that important that your child left the cap off the toothpaste?
Although the cost was way too high, this tragedy has given us the rare opportunity to stop and reflect on the direction that our lives are taking. It has given us the courage to comfort strangers and neighbors alike. And perhaps most importantly, it has given us the chance to reach out to our children and hold them tight.
I suspect that we will never have all the answers to our children's questions. That's okay. We have each other. And for now, that means everything.
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