kids – Page 3 – Amanda Salisbury

A key to any discipline and to the subject itself is study without being an expert. In The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron talks about the importance of being a beginner. Discispline can be a study of absolutely anything. And it always starts with a beginning.

The change in my boys as they’ve grown has been palpable. From eager, curious learners to cynical, know-it-alls. Not always, thank goodness. Often enough, they approach a problem as if they’ve already seen everything and cannot be surprised or moved to wonder. Stepping back, I ask myself how much of that is the natural progression of tweenism, how much the vast flow of information and Siri to answer every question, and how much is my mirror.

I raced through high school and college, seeing no point in slowing down. When I graduated law school, I was relatively young (23), and it was no selling point. At a time I needed most to embrace being a beginner, I thought I needed to know all and be all, all on my own.

Whether weight loss, heart disease, diabetes or finances, debt recovery, and investment – or any topic on earth – I can choose to enter again as a beginner or as a cynic who already knows what should be done. In lots of situations, lots of us do know what needs to be done. Cognitively, we know how weight is lost, what stymies heart disease, what needs to happen to course correct. So when we receive an opportunity to learn, we may say, “No thanks. I have an MBA in finance. There’s nothing you can teach me in a personal finance class.” We leave a Sunday morning sermon and gripe, “Well, that wasted my time! I already know how to avoid fill-in-the-blank.” Our kids’ schools offer classes on literacy, and we give thanks we aren’t required to attend. Our companies require attendance to re-learn the badness of sexual harassment and we all sigh because everybody knows what it is, that it still happens, that classes alone are insufficient. Our doctors tell us to reduce stress, and we think, “Mmhmm. You first.”

In part, growing older often means developing this hard outer shell that resists the very idea of being taught, let alone enjoying it or finding worth therein.

You know, I actually made a rule recently that my kids weren’t allowed to ask Siri anything for a day. What became clear is that there is still plenty they want to learn. Why work for something when a nice lady or British gentlemen can answer in a serious or pithy way?

I cannot control the cynicism of age or the ubiquity of Siri-esque searches for knowledge, but I can control the kind of mirror I am. I can read a recipe, and slow down long enough to follow the steps. I can sign up for that class I already cognitively understand but have yet to put into practice. I can return to my breath, to mindfulness, to being instead of doing. I can log onto Khan Academy next to my kid and study history, music, Pixar storytelling. I can be found reading nonfiction on topics of parenting, writing, art, living, or reading fiction to learn about the human condition and spirit.

I can mirror to my boys (and myself) that curiosity has no age threshold. That being a beginner can be synonymous with excitement and courage and remembering who we were before we knew it all.

Someday, Lord willing, my boys will grow all the way up and move out into the world. I will still be here. And I will need to learn. How to embrace them living separate lives. How to not first be introduced as mom. How to. Forever. In all directions.

When you live with chronic depression and anxiety, you can be robbed of many things. Among them, curiosity and entertaining the beginning. In depression, beginning again can signal that I stopped again. Failed again. Fell down the rabbit hole again. Beginning is not exciting. It’s nerve-wracking. I desperately want to not need to begin again. I want this beginning to be my last beginning in that it lasts.

With anxiety, beginning can be triggering. Beginning anything with anxiety means new people, new places, new situations and tools and plans and schedules and routines and on and on and on. It means a lot of coping and not a lot of thrilling.

Here’s what I can say to both depression and anxiety: the beginning is real, meaningful, exciting, and sometimes only calculable in recovery. I celebrate your beginning, even if you can’t yet. Because it means you are here. It means you are here. Embracing the beginning the tiniest bit mirrors to yourself that beginnings can be positive, good, worthwhile, and eventually exciting. Hang in there. Keep beginning.

I challenge you, as I’ve challenged myself this year, to be a curious beginner. Start something with a wide-eyed, uncynical clarity and amusement. It can be dinner. Or literally anything else. Take a deep breath, drop your age-old sneer at not knowing, and get started!

I’ve been absent for a long time, while I moved from Oklahoma to Florida. I wanted to come back in a fun, catching-up way, but here we are.

I am raising three boys and they are white. When I see the pictures from Charlottesville, I think, someone raised those white men from boys. What went wrong? Am I doing everything in my power to raise mine differently?

The blame is not wholly with the families/parents of those men. They are grown and have made their own decisions. Mine will be grown and make their own decisions in too few years. I cannot control who they become. All I can do is teach them everything I know to be true.

To be clear, my boys are just…boys. They eat a lot. They enjoy computers and laughter. They sometimes cry and sometimes rail at the void. They love fiercely. They question and seek and forget and remember.

Since they were itty bitty, we have taught them about no. That no means no the first time every time. That they have a right to say no to any interference of their body or mind, and we will stop – tickling, hugging, whatever. They are expected to hear and heed a no from others whether the no is said verbally or nonverbally through winces, screams, tears, deflection, shaking the head, whatever. This has not been a one-time lesson and it still isn’t. They tussle. They annoy. We say, no means no. We remind them. We teach them. We role play.

With any subject, once is not enough. Sex. Critical thinking. Respect. Math. Cooking. Grammar. Love. Once is never enough.

I miss the days when I would gently explain that every person has a Secret Code, one that cannot be overridden, one that is theirs alone. I miss it being enough to explain that every Secret Code is sacred and therefore every person is to be honored. I miss DNA being shorthand for differences: skin tone, body structure, hair, and so on.

They are too old for The Secret Code to inspire much awe, and our conversations surrounding race and bodily capacities and internal views and external views – they grow and morph as is necessary. I wish it were easier. I wish it were simple. I wish it were one-and-done. I wish I could embue them with goodness greater than mine all on my own.

But that’s not the goal. That would be the shortcut. No, the goal is to help them build goodness within themselves and recognize it in others.

Last night I taught them more about Nazis. I showed them the Nazi salute. I told them about Charlottesville. I answered their questions. I hated it, but I cannot put them, unawares, on a school bus today learning about all this from their peers or watching news reports with hot takes. They deserve to be taught what racism is as much as what it isn’t. They need to know how much hate a hand gesture can communicate and what to do if they see it. They need to be 100% clear on mine and Husband’s position that Nazis are doing life wrong, that racism is to be reduced rather than glorified.

I cannot stop their whiteness any more than I can stop my own. I wouldn’t want to rewrite our Secret Code. And that’s not the answer even if I could. The answer – my response, anyway – is to teach them how to inhabit who they are in a way that honors who the people they encounter are.

A few years ago, our family saw a therapist, mostly to help us reengage after the worst phase of my conversion disorder. He asked what our family rules were. No one knew. I sat astounded. I had thought the rules were clear. I had thought the rules were communicated and understood. It wasn’t exactly anarchy at our home. But my kids couldn’t articulate our family’s rules. That sent me on a journey to put words to what our family believes, what we expect from one another, and what we value.

Husband and I share a biblical worldview, so our rules and values have roots in our faith. Eldest, Middling, and Third have learned and continue to learn that the values are ours – mine and Husband’s. We’d love for the boys to share our values. But at the end of it all, they each must determine what they value. Our values exist to put them on notice what we find unacceptable. Still, we’ve asked them to consider the values a roadmap, a way of figuring out the terrain in their own lives.

Each summer I revise and clarify and repackage rules because the kids are older and can comprehend a higher level. I do the same with the values because we evolve and find new and better ways to express them. Often, the newer inclusions are more wordy because we’re still defining them to our boys.

I’m sharing the ones I just revised a week ago, NOT because they are perfect but because they are a start. Maybe they are a start you need. A roadmap to clarifying your own rules and expectations and values. Lots of people talk about ‘our values’ or ‘family values’ or ‘community values’ or ‘organization values’ – how many can list what those are? Ask your kids, what are our house rules? Or, what does our family value? Or, what does being a member of our family mean?

If they cannot say, it may be that they cannot articulate what they feel to be true. It may be that the rules and values haven’t been consistent or clear. It’s nothing to get mad about but an opportunity to capture your family’s not-so-secret code of living.

As a mom, I often feel my primary mission is to parent in a way that produces good humans. These small people are my sphere of influence in current, tangible, and lasting ways. Teaching my own kids and sharing that with you is not the only response – or my only response – to Charlottesville, not by a long way. It is one mom trying to reach out to other parents who all want the same thing: to raise good humans doing good in the world.