Bullying
This past weekend I had the privilege of speaking at the iParenting Seminar in North Richland Hills. It was a privilege to work with several other non-profits and 4 school districts, one private school, & a church to put on a seminar for parents dealing with the transition years for their students.
Below are the slides from my presentation. I hope to add audio later to make it more clear what I am talking about but for now hopefully it will help you recognize bullying and if your child is bullied, as well as give you some practical ways to address this issue.
The resources listed are as follows:
The Bully, the Bullied, and the Bystander by Barbara Coloroso
Being a Parent, Teen or Adult
This past Sunday we had our monthly Teen Parent meeting. We dicussed scenes from the MTV show Teen Mom. It is probably worth your time to watch at least the summary episode if you know a teen parent.
The interesting thing to me was that I found many of the things we talked about didn’t just relate to being a parent as a teenager. They were applicable to all parents, the difference for teens is the fact that they have so much life ahead of them.
For example, one thing they talked about centered around relationship problems for these young couples. WOW did that relate to me. I had no idea how much having kids would change the relationship I have with my wife. For many teens, especially the girl, they think that having a baby will give them security in their relationship. What happens too often is the guy realizes how hard having a kid is and without a marriage to be committed to he bails. Oh, he still cares for the baby and senses some responsibility but he is more interested in having someone that will focus on him and not the kids.
This leads to the second thing. I was in agreement at how different guys and girls attatchment to the new baby is. As men we feel a strong love but not nearly what the mom feels. One teen described it as an obligation that is sometimes a lot of fun and sometimes sucks. I can see this and I could definitely see it if I had kids in my teen years. What has to happen no matter when you have kids is to realize this is a choice you made and you have a responsibility to care for your whole family. As a man it is up to me to provide, keep safe, and raise my children to be good caring people and at the same time to continue to cherish my wife as I promised I would in our marriage vows.
The next piece that I noticed hit home more than the rest. It was how selfish some of the teen parents were. They wore their selfishness on their sleeve and had no remorse for saying they have a right to still be a teenager and go out and date, etc. The reality is that once you have kids, no matter what age, you give up your right to be selfish in the same way. You have chosen, like it or not, to be a parent and you are now responsible for another life. It is up to you to take care of that life as a mother and a father. Everything else is out the window.
Some poistives I saw were an emphasis on having a mom and dad. It is so important to have both. Some of these kids ended up where they are because they didn’t have a good model of what a caring loving relationship is. The other thing was encouraging these parents to have good support they can trust. Use that support to take breaks and take time for yourself. Yes this baby is your responsibility but if you don’t take care of yourself you will likely do a poor job caring for the baby as well.
SUMMARY.
- Parenting is the hardest and best thing you will ever do, don’t make it harder by getting pregnant before finishing high school.
- Certainly don’t try to do it alone.
- Be sure the relationship you’re in is able to hold up to being completely turned upside down with the addition of a beautiful new baby.
These are the kind of things that lead to a Life Lived Better, and that’s what we are all about.
The Surprise Hill
About the same time I was feeling good about the hill I had overcome. I started noticing that there was a new hill that was giving me problems. This hill was at the end of our run when I was the most tired and ready to be done.
This gives me two thoughts. One, know when you are good at facing challenges and when you aren’t. When I was facing the other hill at mile 2 or 3 I was able to conquer it. But when I was facing this hill at the end of the run I was struggeling. This applies in life when you are just tired. We are all so busy and just keep going and going. We need to be able to recognize when we need a break. This is what vacation should be about. Not always just going to do something we don’t usually get to do. Sometimes it should be just taking time to relax. Using this time wisely will help reduce the stress that everyday tends to bring.
Second sometimes you have to know when to go another direction. We have decided the last few weeks to avoid this hill and instead go around another way. This is proving to be a good break from something I was beginning to dread. I hope that when we start going that way again I will appreciate the time away and start looking for the good it does me to take on this challenge again.
Take a moment to share a challenge you have overcome or maybe just how you avoid challenges at difficult times. All with the purpose of living life better.
Conquering the Hills
As we started training we realized that we didn’t really have any hills in our route. Which we were fine with but at the same time knew would hurt us if we ran a race where there were hills. So we decided to find some hills to help us with our training. We did and they were killer. I had such a hard time with those hills every time we ran them. Then we started training for another race coming up in November and we ran the hills again. I noticed I didn’t dread the hills as much as I had before. I commented about this to my running partner and he agreed. The more I thought about this I tried to think about how this could apply to helping us live life better.
My take is this. As I ran those hills more and more and ran some hills, bigger and smaller, my body got used to running them and my head realized that I could do it. The deal was it took time and doing something I didn’t want to do over and over again to reap the benefit that I finally got, just this past August. In life I think there are challenges that we face often. Maybe it is a person or a boss or a car that keeps breaking down. There are several things we can realize in this. One that we will get some benefit out of the situation. Whether it is learning to deal with people, submitting to authority, or being able to appreciate a new car even more after dealing with one that has problems all the time. For me it has been facing those challenges head on time after time when I don’t want to and finally reaping the benefit and knowing that I made it through a season or a rough time in my life. This increases my confidence and helps me know even more that I can face the next challenge without breaking.
Share your story of overcoming challenges in the comments. I’m always encouraged by reading about other peoples stories too. I hope you’re encouraged by mine.
