Why Am I Crying? [Life]

When my husband and I were still dating (for seven years, mind you) I cried any time we went to a movie in which a man made a commitment to a woman he loved. My husband always cries in movies about fathers and sons. All it takes is a son’s longing to connect to his dad or vice versa and the tears flow. Recently, I had a week in which three different clients cried in the context of our coaching session. In each case, the tears came when I (or the client’s partner) said something that desperately needed to be heard:

“You need to give yourself time to mourn the life dream you let wither.”

“The memory of your dad, is a memory of acceptance, he accepted you and that memory can bring you to your own self-acceptance.”

“I want to always remember how much I love you.”

In all cases, the tears represent a kind of release, when a longing we have is suddenly tapped into. A truer, deeper part of ourselves has been touched and even if we can’t speak about it, our tears are the pathway there. They are a signal for us to pay attention.


The power is magnified by the fact that someone else’s words were able to reach us. Even for those of us blessed with close family and friends, it is always a surprise when another human being manages to dip into the deep well of our being, and create a splash. And once they do, we have a unique opportunity to swim around in those deep waters we may rarely visit- and if we let them, we have a partner who can join us.

Tips for following the path of your tears

Don’t make a joke of it and move quickly on to something else.

Don’t judge yourself for being weak or sentimental.

Do get curious about what is there. Set aside time to write in your journal, talk more with your partner or friend, or just sit with a pencil and paper and write a letter to yourself.

When and why do you and / or your partner cry?

Why You Should Stop Asking Why [life]

"Why?” is the province of toddlers. They are learning at such a fast pace, their curiosity is off the charts. Do you think children need answers to their why questions? I wonder. Answers can often be full stops and the end of conversation. It’s more likely that children are in fact simply using “why” as a form of exploration rather than searching for a one-word answer.


Why questions take you to your head. You immediately try to figure something out. Not a problem if the question is, “Why does red and blue make purple?” When we are trying to find meaning in our lives and make a difference in the world, I say, let’s go straight to our hearts!

Why questions deceive you into believing that there are simple explanations for complex questions. Like, “Why can‘t you settle down and make a commitment?”- There’s an easy one!

Why questions can sink you deeper into a problem rather than guide you toward meaningful action. Okay, so maybe you keep sabotaging your diets because your father told you how much he loved his plump baby. And maybe your father did this because you have a genetic predisposition towards eating disorders. Wow, that sucks. Better go eat some ice cream to cheer up!

The value of questions is their capacity to connect us to our truer, deeper selves. They let us linger in the questions, and explore. They awaken our curiosity about ourselves and our world. Abraham Joshua Heschel said it best on the first page of his book, God In Search of Man.

In the process of thinking, an answer without a question is devoid of life. It may enter the mind; it will not penetrate the soul. It may become part of one’s knowledge; it will not come forth as a creative force.

Teach your Children Well: Redefining Charity as Justice [parenting]

Give if it feels good? In Hebrew, the word for charity actually emerges from the root word for Justice. Perfect isn’t it? We are not just talking about a nice thing to do. The spirit moved you and you acted charitably. Great! What if the spirit doesn’t move you? Are you not responsible for acting justly in this world? I sound a little strident don’t I? I am not trying to get biblical here.

I just think that if we rely on charity we are hoping that people will be inspired to give, to serve this world. Some people are more inclined to tap into that capacity than others. If, on the other hand, we are pursuing justice, well, it seems like we can teach people to be just. I am really not preaching. I am simply thinking like a mother.

Take Pride in Your Children’s Natural Instincts
I have two boys who amaze me constantly with their capacity for giving. I see my boys when they were toddlers holding out their teddy bears, and other cherished toys, to offer to a friend’s child. For years, every summer and winter the three of us would roll up our sleeves and enthusiastically clean out the toys so that we could deliver them to children in need. (I will never forget the winter break when my older son was about eight and he suggested it as a “fun” activity we could do together). When my children come into some “extra money” from their grandparents they start planning on gifts for each other and for us. Really, I am crying here in Barnes and Noble as I realize what a gift my children’s giving nature has given to me.


Teach Your Children Well
So, is this charity or justice? Well as parents we are not taking chances. When we started to give our sons their allowance, the stipulation was that 10 per cent got put aside for charitable giving. (Mind you for most of their childhood their allowance has been $1/week so it took awhile for that tithe to amount to anything!) We sent our children to middle schools where there was a service requirement. Our older son visited a boy with autism weekly for two years until the boy’s parents had to send him to live away from home. In high school now, he assists weekly at a creative arts program for children with autism. Our younger son trained to be a clown. Most Sundays he was at a local hospital or elder care home entertaining residents with jokes and song. This past summer he volunteered at a week long summer camp for children with special needs.

I whole-heartedly believe in the power of charitable giving and I also know that as a parent I am responsible for teaching my children how to create a just world. We haven’t been as consistent as I would like but over the years, as a family, we have delivered meals to home-bound elderly, served at soup kitchens and packaged meals for the hungry. I recently heard of a community in the northeastern United States that surveyed its population and discovered that its members were giving over $13 million dollars to causes outside of their own community.

Let’s Serve Up Some Justice in our Communities
Imagine if every community actually gave to its own. It feels like we have come upon a time when we are going to need an awful lot of justice in our cities and towns to enable the less fortunate among us to live dignified lives. I want my kids to be equipped to respond. And yours too. I think that all of our families are the hope of the future. Three resources that have recently inspired me:

The White Envelope Project: founded by four siblings, they encourage others to do something for someone else and in lieu of a gift, give your friends and family a white envelope with the story of what you did.

The Three Big Questions for A Frantic Family: Leadership Guru Lencioni encourages all families to start by asking the question: What makes your family unique?

You identify the core values that serve as the foundation for your family. It is who you are without even thinking. I intend to start this conversation in our own family. I’ll let you know what happens.

The Best Gifts for our Children II [parenting]

When our eldest turned 13, he received an iPod from my husband’s sister and a laptop from mine. Could it really be that bad? We all love music, singing and the piano have brought us together. My husband had an iPod for about a year at this point, and this became a “thing” around which they bonded. Our son was listening to my husband’s favorites and vice versa. Two years later, my younger son got the same set of gifts and the bonding intensified exponentially. But look. The brothers weren’t driving each other crazy; they were sharing music and talking about playlists and how to use the programs on their computer. Now presents in our house are more likely to be Apple gift certificates.

It is a slippery slope
We kept noticing that we were spending a little less time in each other’s rooms. Sunday afternoons had become a time for all of us to “work” at our computers. When we tried to pick a Sunday night movie to watch together, we would huddle around the computer and check the parental guidance site. Our boys had figured out how to watch TV on their laptops. Bad news. The kids were getting exposed to reruns of Seinfeld and Everybody Loves Raymond. Good news.


Through it all, as our family entered the computer stage, we kept talking about it. We bemoaned what we were losing. We looked for ways to compensate. We had new ways to acknowledge our kids because, you know, they really do get this stuff better than we do!

So, when my son was ready to start high school he actually asked us if he could have a Facebook account. I was really conflicted. (First of all, I barely knew what it was. This is never a good place to be as a parent.) Would we be giving him access to his friends or exposure to shady characters? Would he be tempted to waste all his time when he should be studying? I called the guidance counselor at his high school the summer before his freshman year. This turned out to be a great decision, “If you don’t let him have an account, and he actually listens to you- he will be an outcast. If he doesn’t listen to you and gets one anyway, you have just created a situation in which he has to lie to you. Let him open and an account and talk to him about it. Keep the lines of communication open.”

So that is what we did. In fact, my son and I joined Facebook at the same time. (No, he did not ‘friend’ me- that is SO uncool). We actually read the fine print that tells you that everything you post is eternally searchable. We talked about the power of our words and he agreed to give me his password so I could monitor what was going on. (I stopped doing that after the first year.) My son got his gift - he is on Facebook with way more friends than I have. And I got mine. I have a relationship with a pretty trustworthy teenager who is learning that independence comes with responsibility to us and to his peers.

So, is it okay to give our kids access to technology?
In the end, I am still conflicted. I think as parents we have to decide when and how much. And based on my own experience I offer my suggestion:

Keep giving your kids your most precious commodity- your time and attention to listen and talk. Reach out to experts who can guide you when you are struggling. We were never meant to figure this all out alone.

The Best Gifts for our Children [parenting]

When I was a teenager, I never asked my parents for small things. (It could have something to do with the pair of roller skates I asked for when I was 10 and never got, Dad!) I asked for big things. Really BIG things: a car, a trip abroad, a week at a spa. In each case, I felt they were extravagant requests, and I also thought “what the hell? what is the worst that could happen, they say no?”

So, now I am a parent. When we buy gifts, we try to spend our money in ways that bring us together as a family. Vacations and meals rank high on the list. We favor puzzles and our ping pong table. Rather surprisingly, the hammock, which I bought for my husband, has turned into a family magnet as well!

We try to set limits
Today, BIG things usually mean a gadget or game for your television, anything hand-held and electronic, cell phones and access to social networking websites. Our kids do not have TVs in their rooms. There was no internet access until last year (they were 14 and 12). We never owned a Nintendo, an Xbox or a PS2. We don’t have a Wii. When our oldest son was in 8th grade he was in the “no cell phone” club. There were three of them until the day he came home and announced, “It’s just me, Ma!” Now that he travels to a high school 30 minutes away, he does have a cell phone (bottom of the line; NO bluetooth and NO texting). AIM accounts were started and stopped. (Okay, this last one was more because they were messing up my computer than because of any objections we had to it.)


It is our way of expressing love
You might think that all of this has led to a lot of strife at home. It hasn’t. Mostly, it led to our kids preferring play dates at their friends houses! Now that our kids have their own laptops and internet access, even they agree when I say, “This computer thing is out of control, don’t you think?” (Is it better for me to keep shouting upstairs that dinner is ready or should I follow their lead when they e-mail me to ask, “what’s for dinner?”)

Really, the amazing thing is that our kids get that we value human interaction over parallel play on a screen. They may feel periodically deprived, but they know this has been our way of awakening their potential and forestalling their addiction to technology. Things do change though. Stay tuned!

Raising Sons to be Husbands [parenting]

I am a mother of sons and I am raising husbands. When my son was three years old, he considered pink his favorite color and he loved to play with his kitchen set. These would not even merit mention but for the fact that the moms around me felt it was “interesting.” It is amazing how invasive society’s rules about our gendered lives really are. It has always been important to me to help my boys express themselves fully. What that means in reality is giving them opportunities to recognize, name and confidently feel a full range of emotions. Anger, silliness, and joy. These are the more socially acceptable emotions for boys. But fear, sadness and a deep sense of connection are so much harder to nurture.

Here are two moments in my son’s lives (Insert: Your future sons-in-law) that I treasure:

My teenage son’s camp friends have just spent a long weekend at our home as part of a camp reunion. My husband drives the boys home and our son joins them to say goodbye. My husband comes home amazed to have witnessed the emotional farewell of these close friends-hugging and all!

I walk into the living room where my son is reading a book on the couch. As I get closer I see that he is crying. Gently, I sit down next to him and ask him if he is okay. He looks at me. “Yeah”, he says through tears, “but this book is so sad. The children in this book are being treated so meanly.”


Thankfully, we don’t have to leave this important process to chance. There is wisdom out there in the world to help. Our goal as parents should be to normalize our children’s emotions. There are no bad emotions, only unhelpful responses to them.

Introduce your children to the language of emotion
When children pretend play, ask them how a character feels? You can also label emotions and connect them to what you are seeing. (“That boy jumping up and down in the picture looks really happy doesn’t he?”) Go beyond happy, glad, mad and sad. Find opportunities to use more nuanced words like frustrated, wistful, and confident.

Help kids recognize emotional courage
In the words of the authors of Raising Cain, “Many adults display emotional courage in their work or personal lives, but rarely do we allow our children to witness our private moments of conscience or bravery.”

Show your love openly
Dads, this one is especially important for you. Hug your son, kiss him, and tell him how much you love him without condition. No dad around? Borrow a mentor and a role model who will care about him, do things with him and make an emotional connection.

Let boys be boys
Boys can be sensitive and caring and they are not going to express it exactly like girls. Honor and appreciate them for their capacity to take action, their willingness to be inclusive and their structured games and fidelity to fairness.

Getting to Know Your Children Without Snooping [parenting]

When our kids were young, there were so many windows to perch from to marvel at who they were becoming. There were play dates and park benches. The tables around which we painted and made play-dough. The floors we sat on to read stories and engage in make-believe. Car rides in which anything and everything could (and did) happen. Today car rides are more likely to include other kids in the car pool and surreptitious texting. Most weeknight dinners are too rushed for relaxed and unobtrusive parental perching. And unless we are babysitting our cousins, our play-dough days seem to be over!

So, as they grow, we need to be much more creative and alert to catch the quick reflection of the evolving spirit of our children. If you want a good view, here are some of the places I have learned to look:

Their writing
It is true that a lot of so-called creative writing in school is circumscribed by topic and rarely reveals your child’s inner soul. Nevertheless, as kids get older, their perspectives on their world, and the books they read, for example, can tell you a lot about how they think and what moves them.

The music they love
My son has recently become a fan of Ben Fold. He told me to listen to the words of his two favorite songs: Learn to Live With What You Are and Still Fighting It about a dad who doesn’t want his son to grow up…Need I say more?

The way they treat their team mates on the field
My kids have been frustrated by losing soccer games. They can mope with the best of them. But I have watched them when a team mate is beating himself up for his poor performance as they rally to his side, with respectful encouragement.

Their privacy requests
Around the time my older son turned 13, I learned to knock on the door before entering his room. So far, they have an open-door policy with me- except for the bathroom. That is strictly off-limits.

How are you learning about your children?
What do you do to walk the fine line between your children’s privacy, and knowing who they are and what’s happening in their lives?