When Dr. Wendy Mogel became disillusioned with her private practice bubbling over like a martini with the spiritual bankruptcy of all the babyboomers' spoiled hothouse flowers who get great test scores but can't tie their shoe and never say Thank You for anything...she came out with her wonderful book called: The Blessing of a Skinned Knee. A plea to get back to the conventional wisdom and time honored lessons of the old testament and some old fashioned good manners. I applauded her philosophy--and i'd like to affirm her good work with a little field experience of my own. Or let's just say, perhaps my contribution might have ended up on the cutting room floor of her book due to its aesthetically challenging motif....but since this blog is all about the questionable "appearance" of things and what REALLY lies underneath (yes THAT's what it's about)...i upload this entry in support of Dr Mogel's excellent work. (PS I later met her pesonally when my marriage was exploding (The Blessing of a Cheating Spouse) -- she was conderably less helpful then, i recommend her work with kids more than couples. but to be fair to her, there was clearly less hope for me and my ex than there was for our kids. we had become numb to the Pain of life. they still felt things.)
Speaking of pain...Dr Mogel says: Let the kids ride a bike and run too fast...and EXPERIENCE their own fall. Let them *feel* their own little injury and this will teach them to be more careful the next time. Such experiential teaching will be far more efffective precisely because you are neither protecting them from the fall nor simply "telling" them how dangerous everything is.
Bravo Dr Mogel....and I say, let's take it a step further: Go out of town, keep your cell phone on "most" of the time and let your recovering potsmoker ex husband (a guy) "watch" the kids - next thing you'll know they'll have the "lived experience" of alcohol poisoning and hurling in your very own living room on your very own green velvet club chair. And no matter how much Febreze your 15yo applies to the mess, it will never kill the stench of his buddy's barf and will remain forever in your home as an educable (and visible!) parenting aid. Just like a skinned knee--the matted Lysoled portion of the formerly beautiful living room furniture will forever remind the whole family of the consequences of alcohol poisoning and the skyrocketing costs of reupholstering.
If you and your kids gain nothing else from this type of suburban Outward Bound journey--if they're STILL not able to extrapolate this event to other areas of their lives and take the lessons with them---at least you'll never again have to tell those kids to watch their liquor. I call this The Blessing of a Good Barf.
best of luck and....and finally, when you come home from that much needed adult weekend away and you find a futon outside and the house smells like you own too many animals and the siblings keep winking at each other and are getting along a little "too well" ...just look for the Bevedere in the freezer and rest assured that you've given your kids the Best.
2 comments:
a word of advice to your poor younguns lest they despair that they may never again greet the sunday noon with a margarita or other adult beverage... every 15yo has his Perfect Barf and the revulsion to all things alcoholic is lasting but not permanent. back in 1969 parents didn't lock their bars and after mark lewis and i each topped off our 8oz tumblers -- one whiskey and one dark rum apiece -- and balanced them all the way up to the third floor i remembered that i hated whiskey and traded mine for his rum, yes that's sixteen oz of myers finest and i didn't think a bathtub could hold that much barf or that i could outlive the revulsion. but five years later i discovered the Stinger in a small ski lodge bar tended by a queens expat in the white mountains. brandy and creme de menthe, an innocent concoction that defeated my childhood demons and made me new again with robust capacity. many sonoma wineries are in business today because i discovered that stinger. thank you nnillo for bringing back that Moment.
thank you for your comment, anonymous. glad to be your memory swizzle stick. and i like your glass half full interpretation. l'chaim!!
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