Archives For December 2013

If you have or had children who played with other children at their homes or in a other locations other than your own, the question “Would your mother let you do this at home?” is often used by the host or concerned parent as a gentle way to deter activities in children other than their own that they are uncomfortable with. For many of these parents who said this to the Harapnuik brothers their answer most often was…Yes!
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The picture above is of the living room of our current home in North Vancouver and as you can see the traditional use of the living room has been supplanted by the Harapnuik brother’s bike repair shop. If you look beyond the obvious, these boys have too many expensive bikes (…and their road bikes aren’t in the picture), and try to understand who lives this way one might assume that this is just a bachelor pad and the boys are living by themselves or with other young males who have very different or unconventional priorities. No, my wife and I also live here.

You may then assume that this family and perhaps the parents don’t appreciate the finer things in life and are very tolerant of disorder. You would be wrong again because the picture below of our living room in our house in Texas clearly shows that we do have a taste for the finer things in life. Take a few minutes to view all the pictures of hour house in Texas and you will clearly see we do appreciate a fine home and that my wife is a wonderful decorator – Saddle Creek Estates house in Texas.

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The picture of our boys using our living room as bike shop demonstrates just how committed their mother is in supporting their dreams and how much she believes in them. I often wax eloquently about creating significant learning environments but in this single act of allowing her boys to use a very special space in our/her home as their repair shop (we currently don’t have a garage) she is telling our sons that their dreams of becoming professional racers/riders are significant and that she will do what she can to help build the environment that will help them to achieve those dreams. For anyone who knows my wife Marilyn you know just how much she loves to have people over, so to give up this valuable meeting space is not something that she would do without significant motivation.

It is my hope that my boys appreciate the sacrifice and the commitment that their mother has made toward supporting them in their goals. It is also my hope that the modelling of support and commitment that a family needs to make is a value that my boys catch and bring to their own families in the future. My wife’s flexibility in our living space, her willingness to shuttle the boys and their friends up the mountain and then wait for them to ride down and then do this over and over again, and her modelling the commitment and sacrifice it takes to achieve very big dreams are key factors in being an intentional parent.

I have been writing about being an intentional father for the past several months and now I realize that without my wonderful wife’s commitment and support I would not be able to do what I do and I finally recognize I should be talking about becoming an intentional parent NOT just an intentional father. I have been talking the talk about being an intentional parent and my wife has been walking the walk or being an intentional parent. This is demonstrated so clearly by the answer to the question – Would your mom let you do this at home. My boys can answer – Yes she does and so much more.

MOOCs future of Education

Source: Best Colleges Online Rankings of the Top Online Colleges and Degrees

what do you want

In a matter of seconds a wonderful time of father and son collaboration and sharing went from warmth and respect to anxiety and frustration. Unfortunately, my son was on the receiving end of my wrath and the image above only conveys a portion of the frustration I put upon him. As we can see from the Bible verse Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged (Colossians 3:21 NIV) and the following from C. S. Lewis’ book The Four Loves, I am unfortunately not alone in this:

We hear a great deal about the rudeness of the rising generation. I am an oldster myself and might be expected to take the oldsters’ side, but in fact I have been far more impressed by the bad manners of parents to children than by those of children to parents.

Who has not been the embarrassed guest at family meals where the father or mother treated their grown-up offspring with an incivility which, offered to any other young people, would simply have terminated the acquaintance?

Dogmatic assertions on matters which the children understand and their elders don’t, ruthless interruptions, flat contradictions, ridicule of things the young take seriously — sometimes of their religion — insulting references to their friends, all provide an easy answer to the question, “Why are they always out? Why do they like every house better than their home?” Who does not prefer civility to barbarism? (p. 42).

Fortunately, from my son’s face I recognized the hurt and frustration that I had caused and took a moment or two to consider that I was the source of this anguish and I apologized. The source or cause of this event really doesn’t matter because I was just wrong.

If I expect my teenage son to grow into a compassionate man who is aware of his impact on people and is respectful of others I need to model this behaviour and this means admitting when I am wrong and asking for forgiveness. We all react in ways that we later regret or say things that we know we shouldn’t have–it is what we do immediately following an outburst or error in judgment that will determine the lasting impact of that event. If we are able to acknowledge our mistake or incivility and apologize, the situation has the potential to strengthen a relationship and even become a learning opportunity.

All parents make mistakes while interacting with our children, we are only human, how we chose to deal with those mistakes will impact the level of respect our children not only have for us but for themselves.

myers briggs career paths

Source: Colorado Tech