I have a great opportunity to help my ten year old autistic son, who speaks little but understands a lot more, when asked for something or a command like bringing the remote or where is the iPod? If he had it, he´d jump and go look for it. He listens to us and rarely misbehaves whether I´m around or not; he is centered, and it is no magic. It's that he has a very clever dad that challenges him every step of the way, we get along fine and he respects me.
You can only respect the team that can beat you. No, there's never a need to hit your child but any parent can lose his or her head and be louder, more vulgar. Just rude. Treat your children with integrity and respect but they got to follow your every command. Not like a robot that learns a new program, implementing it without a period of assimilation. Instead of an austere tone, making the bed can be fun; this way, the child doesn't associate discipline with a negative experience. We want to lead by example, and if we are to make civil individuals, we ought to civilize our ways. Thing is, we can and should and must be better than our parents. For some, that's a difficult task coming from great parents, in which case just aspiring to be even close should be plenty. For others, it's easier, since the bar is so low to start off with that you can only go up. Of course, that's not to minimize my parents' experience, but had they chosen a more functional approach than that of an erratic couple settling long enough to have another baby and then another, and another, totaling three. That's just not right, but there are worse cases. My parents weren't bad people; they just made the wrong choices. It's bad enough that mom had to stay back home with the responsibility of three kids, and that he would send money to his mother, not his wife, and that we all lived under his mom's roof. She made sure that's what that was. Living under her roof.
Mom had to escape, of course. If she wanted a place of her own and eventually she did get that and brought me and my sisters together. I pushed for that agenda. For a long while before that ship took off, I wandered through my grandparents' home, and there was a lot of anger and resentment as to the state of affairs: mom and dad gone their separate ways, and we were living it at my grandma's house. It wasn't just us but some other ten cousins who would've driven the sanest person on earth insane.
I thought that the best thing for us was to stay a family and remain so. Childhood may be remembered as a period of struggle, but the experience of it wasn't as bad. The same cannot be said of adolescence. It is inexplicably uneventful in most cases, but when a new life in a foreign land opened up for me, I saw it as the beginning of a lifelong adventure. We weren't all tragic teenagers. I remember having a blast in high school, despite the fact I was among the poorest.
The advent of adolescence and the raging hormones that morph your boyish frame into that of a elongated teenager was uneventful. We were always home. I remember having a girlfriend whom I kissed shyly on the lips once.
Memory is not a reliable source, in essence everything is fiction. Stories we tell ourselves as we go along in order to better navigate ourselves through the sobering bewilderment of consciousness. Life, it's just what happens in our heads, or is it not?
Mom had to escape, of course. If she wanted a place of her own and eventually she did get that and brought me and my sisters together. I pushed for that agenda. For a long while before that ship took off, I wandered through my grandparents' home, and there was a lot of anger and resentment as to the state of affairs: mom and dad gone their separate ways, and we were living it at my grandma's house. It wasn't just us but some other ten cousins who would've driven the sanest person on earth insane.
I thought that the best thing for us was to stay a family and remain so. Childhood may be remembered as a period of struggle, but the experience of it wasn't as bad. The same cannot be said of adolescence. It is inexplicably uneventful in most cases, but when a new life in a foreign land opened up for me, I saw it as the beginning of a lifelong adventure. We weren't all tragic teenagers. I remember having a blast in high school, despite the fact I was among the poorest.
The advent of adolescence and the raging hormones that morph your boyish frame into that of a elongated teenager was uneventful. We were always home. I remember having a girlfriend whom I kissed shyly on the lips once.
Memory is not a reliable source, in essence everything is fiction. Stories we tell ourselves as we go along in order to better navigate ourselves through the sobering bewilderment of consciousness. Life, it's just what happens in our heads, or is it not?
Our children respond to how we feel and if we're anxious or frustrated, expecting little out of them as our best resources are invested elsewhere, they may take advantage of that weakness in your character. Children know how to bargain for attention and oftentimes we can see ourselves in them, if we play close attention. Not just my autistic son responds to me favorably; so does my three year old. And they both behave much better when I'm around. It is not austerity; or harsh discipline. It's quite the opposite: a relaxed mind and a kind and curious attitude towards them. Their world, especially that of an autistic child, is mesmerizing. It exposes biases you never thought you had. How dare you feel sad at such a prognosis? Little did we know that it would change us in ways I am still marveling at. It goes to show the futility of language in most cases. The least, the better; and we can be both doing our thing feet away from each other than we are each in our very own world and sometimes I come down and check up on him. Or he comes, and shares what he is drawing. Isn't that something? And then you make up plans of moving to an even colder state to make this reunion even stronger and be closer to his brother. So that I can watch them play. That would be more than just a dream come true.
The best of us remains unsung. Like all the conversations we did not have that taught me a great lesson in silence, the treasure of quietude, a threshold you push to stillness. Anxiety melts in the absence of thought, absorbed deep into a mindful state; nothing hurts like being conscious of pain. It's a state of mind you get to way of meditation but also when the mind isn't too fixed on something or someone, when you truly lay back. In those moments, when you're least aware of it, you become intensely alive. And the realization may spoil it to an extent, but it is a sign that we can see ourselves being the ones we are all the time and realize that there is in each one of us (or should be anyway) an observer, often objective and wise. And that the world would change if only we could summon that better version of ourselves at times. Here's a tip: relay the reactive mind.
If we were all to adopt this simple step: Inhale deep and hold your breath for a few seconds, then slowly exhale. If everyone were to follow this simple step before taking any major decision, the world would change overnight.
The best of us remains unsung. Like all the conversations we did not have that taught me a great lesson in silence, the treasure of quietude, a threshold you push to stillness. Anxiety melts in the absence of thought, absorbed deep into a mindful state; nothing hurts like being conscious of pain. It's a state of mind you get to way of meditation but also when the mind isn't too fixed on something or someone, when you truly lay back. In those moments, when you're least aware of it, you become intensely alive. And the realization may spoil it to an extent, but it is a sign that we can see ourselves being the ones we are all the time and realize that there is in each one of us (or should be anyway) an observer, often objective and wise. And that the world would change if only we could summon that better version of ourselves at times. Here's a tip: relay the reactive mind.
If we were all to adopt this simple step: Inhale deep and hold your breath for a few seconds, then slowly exhale. If everyone were to follow this simple step before taking any major decision, the world would change overnight.
No comments:
Post a Comment