Journal - Dave Darby's One Particular Harbour

Entries in Family (15)

Monday

26Jan2009

Soap and Water Still Works

Monday, January 26, 2009 at 01:26PM

When is progress a setback? What are acceptable risks? What price are we paying for our obsession with laziness and speed?

A commercial today might as well read like this:

“No time on your hands? Tired of your clogged sink? NO PROBLEM. Pour this highly toxic chemical in your drain and let it sit for 10 minutes. This not only eats away grungy hair, but it releases harmful toxins that may likely send you into shock or give you unexplainable cancer one day. But, HEY, this is TODAY! And today, you don’t have time for such petty concerns. Give us 10 years of the end of your life and we’ll save you 15 minutes every 4 months - GUARANTEED or your money back.”

Several years ago, we broke free and took a stand. No more chemical cleaners in the house. Well, not 100% gone, but probably 95.4% gone.

We still keep chlorine bleach but we also alternate with hydrogen peroxide bleach. We keep window cleaner but we water it down in a separate bottle. And we don’t spray for bugs so much to my wife’s chagrin, we occasionally have ants.

What’s the big deal I say? Ants aren’t so bad. In fact, we homeschool and I think having ants fulfills a biology credit. Those little suckers are amazing to watch!

Plus, it’s pretty simple. No food crumbs left behind - no ants. No matter how clean we are, with 5 kids, we’re going to get a few ants from time to time. What I don’t want is those suckers tracking in pesticide for our 2 year hold to be handling. And trust me, this girl will and does handle them. It is not uncommon at all for her to walk into the room holding a prize by the legs proclaiming -“pider!”

By the way, fear is a learned behavior, but that’s for another day.

So, the lesson is this: we have more access to both medical knowledge and care than any other time in history. Yet cancer rates continue to rise. Why?

YEAR NEW CASES DEATHS*

2002   1,284,900      555,500
2004   1,368,030      563,700
2006   1,399,790      564,830
2008   1,437,180      565,650

*from the American Cancer Society

At what point do we realize that cancer just might be a poor-man’s or rushed-man’s disease? At what point do we realize that feeding and caring for massive population growth requires preservatives and toxins that just might - oh my what a coincidence - curb population growth?

From a big picture, macro level (i.e. Government), it makes sense to have acceptable levels of death by toxins, cancers et al. After all, it is a strain on our global economic systems to have population booms, unemployment and poverty. What would it be like if 2.5 million people didn’t die each year in the US alone?

But nobody lives on the macro level. Nobody want’s cancer nor do they want it for their loved ones. So here’s an example of how we ‘survive’ by not playing the macro, mainstream advertising game and by living without chemicals in the house.

About 2 weeks ago, I grabbed a bucket and a few old towels and hit all 3 bathroom sinks. It’s this simple, removed the drain trap (ample info on Google), stuffed a rag in the pipe coming out of the wall to keep fumes out, then I took the parts to a working sink and cleaned out the trap. The main bathroom sink was the worst so I started there - I always like to do the hardest job first. Oh by the way, It’s also a good idea to do this 2 hours before or after a meal.

I use an old bottle washer to clean out both the trap and the pipe down through the sink - just remove the stopper and swab away. Put it all back together, run water and test for leaks then the real test - pull the stopper, fill the sink with water the pull. Ahhhh, record time. That’s how a drain should work.

No expensive chemicals. No harmful toxins released in our house. It wasn’t the most apetizing thing I’ve seen, but who cares? For 3-4 months, our drains will work perfectly.

See? Soap and water still works.

Save yourself and your kids - get rid of those chemicals. It’s a great way to teach kids how sinks work and hey, in these (or any) economic times, it’s a great way to grow your net worth.

Dave Darby |

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Family,

Health,

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Sociology

Monday

02Jun2008

Our Personal Legacy Plan

Monday, June 2, 2008 at 11:07AM

(Originally posted November 7th, 2006)

Yesterday I shared with you why it is important to create a Legacy Plan (see Big Family Success). Today, I am going to begin a series to share our personal Legacy Plan in hopes that it encourages you to get started or compare notes if you already have one.

What is a Legacy Plan? It is your set of values, actions and plan for teamwork that will leave a lasting impact on your children and their children and so on. It is the plan that works towards the goal of raising competent little people who will one day leave the nest and go out to impact the world with their gifts and personalities.

A great legacy plan includes a balance of love, understanding, boundaries, discipline and something I feel is the ultimate key: treat children like little people. Respect their feelings and give them increasing responsibilities, even at an early age. If you reward kids, not with something you value, but with something they value, you will generally have their coorperation. My experiences and research tells me that if you reward selfishly or have selfish expecations, you will surely know it by the frustration you encounter at almost every post.

So, our plan? Our plan begins with remembering these little facts:

No matter how frustrating children can be at times, they mean no ill will as they carve their own niche to discover and reinvent life.
We must always remember that they didn’t choose us - we chose them. We did the deed that planted the seed.
It’s perfectly normal to want to send your kids on a boot-kick trip to the moon. It is not normal, however, to actually send them.
Kids are never as bad as people may say they are - nor or they ever as good as people may say they are.
Aside from brain development disorders or the rare prodigies, all children begin with the same blank slate. No child is ‘smarter’ than any other child. What we call smart is just this - knowledge. If somebody has a great deal of knowledge of a particular subject, we call them smart as if they had some greater ‘ability’ to learn. Sorry, but no. If you want children to have more knowledge - give it to them. (read my ‘Secrets to High IQs’) But remember, the more you give them, the more they will want.
Each passing year, a child will fight for increased independence and the more they gain, they more they will secretly seek out a parent’s approval.

Remember, raising a child is a lot like playing on the teeter totter. In the beginning, you have to offset the imbalance and carry the load. As your child grows, the more they will be able to participate and the more they should.

Next up? Goals we have for our children. Cya then.

Dave Darby |

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Coaching,

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Wednesday

19Dec2007

Is Competition Healthy for Kids?

Wednesday, December 19, 2007 at 06:49PM

Many times in my life coaching work, I get to work with parents looking to develop a healthier image/esteem/confidence in their kids. Many times, they will want definitive answers: is spanking good or bad? Is it ok for my son to cry? Is it ok that my daughter is tough? Am I too tough and competitive? Am I too easy and not challenging them enough?

The answer is always the same. Find the balance. Children need (and want) both love and discipline. And here’s my experience that cemented that lesson for me.

When I signed up my son Jonathan to play tackle football a couple years ago, we were both a little anxious. His anxiety existed because he had grown up watching football and seeing my passion for it, both playing and watching, and he was afraid of getting hit - a normal reaction for first time players.

My anxiety rested in that little checkmark that I put on the application form - the box asking if Dad would be participating. Being an aggressive personality and passionate about football, my wife and I decided that I should check it - the box for ‘head coach’ - both to spend time with my son on the field and to teach others which is my passion.

Being a first-time coach, I had choices to make and obstacles to overcome. As I had not been a coach before, I had an ‘initiation’ to go through. When I looked around the room at our first coaches meeting, it was obvious most coaches came in with ‘buddies’. They had coached their kids together in soccer and basketball and, having a good idea of the kids’ talents, they joined forces to give their teams a competitive edge. Jeez this is just second grade!

So they paired me up with other first-time coaches for assistants and handed out the roster. We all did a double take as the rosters included every team and included both the kids’ weight and speed in the 40-yard dash. Out of 12 teams, we had something like the 11th slowest bunch and the 11th smallest team. Crap.

I assure you that I wanted to bond with my son and my kids and to create a great team experience. But make no mistake, I wanted these kids to experience winning and learn tough love and hard work.

So, I put in some overtime on planning our practices. I knew to make our kids competitive, we had to keep it simple and then we had to do simple better than any other team. I also had to push them and here is the key - you should only push kids within their own personal limits. My son, who was used to my tough love along with other kids on the team, ran many, many laps for lack of concentration or goofing around. With other kids who were more embarrassed easily, I or my assistants just pulled them aside or whispered direction and encouragement between plays.

Competition builds a healthy self-esteem and confidence, but my challenge was to meet each kid at their own breaking-point and push them to their best efforts, without pushing them over. And, thanks to a great group of parents - all of whom mirrored their child’s personality - as they stayed late and we were the last team off the practice field every night.

We started off 0-2, but we didn’t change our routine. And how do you think our kids responded? We kept up with the encouragement and with the tough love. You know what? We won the rest of our games to make it into the season-ending playoffs in the championship bracket. On one beautiful fall Saturday, our little team of misfits pushed, shoved, blocked, ran and passed themselves into a win from our nemesis, a tie with the best team in the league and a 1-touchdown loss to the eventual champion.

I assure you that at our season-end party, our kids walked 2 inches taller than when we started the season. Not just because we overcame so much and earned the respect of all the other teams, coaches and players, but as much because of how we did it.

We gave them balance. We encouraged them to find their strengths, however big or small and put them in competitive situations where they could succeed. And succeed they did not in wins alone mind you, but in personal growth. To this day, my son still talks about that season and how much fun he had with me and his team. And this is from the kid who ran more laps than anybody on our team!

The best checkmark I ever made.

Dave Darby |

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Thursday

08Nov2007

Get Your House in Order

Thursday, November 8, 2007 at 11:49AM

A couple of years ago, Julie and I went out to dinner with some friends and discussed the housing market and general economy. I assured my friend that the housing market would in fact bust as it was not sustainable.

Why? Because growth on the back of debt is not sustainable - it’s a fundamental sociological and economic principle. If you own your own business then you know that debt is almost unavoidable to initiate growth but it cannot sustain growth. Debt is just really a primer. It will help to ignite a spark and turn the engine over, but if the gas tank is empty the efforts are fruitless.

So who was right in our friendly dinner discussion? Both it appears. Everything I stated was in fact true and his arguments held little water - just faith. But what I failed to recognize was the governments determination to keep a recession at bay. American debt is at record highs - even adjusted for inflation - both on the personal and federal level. We cannot sustain this and the bubble will burst.

We are involved in many trade deficits - this means we are spending more money in foreign markets than they spend here. Think of it like this, you own an auto repair shop and your friend owns a grocery store in town. You buy the majority of your groceries from your friend, but he splits his auto repair money between you and somebody across town. At some point, you are not making enough money and must cut back your grocery spending or you borrow against creditors to buy groceries. At some point again, the credit load is full and you are now in trouble. Your friend selling groceries however doesn’t take the fall because everybody is still buying groceries.

This is the state of our union right now. The US dollar is trading at an all-time low. Gasoline prices are at an all-time high. The government has propped up our economy with roller coaster interest rates and - well, war. War is always a good economic remedy - short-term. And this war is no longer short-term at 5+ years - so the war too will begin to drag down the economy - look back to Vietnam. Vietnam was a recession-avoiding war, but it went too long, then came the gas/oil crisis and economic turmoil. I don’t envy the next President who will inherit this mess that is being propped up to implode on January 21st, 2009 so the George W. Bush can proclaim “It didn’t happen on my watch! Leave it to the Democrats to do something wrong and screw up everything I built in only 1 day.”

So right now our economy is propped up by war and foreign investors. So, I say to you, get your house in order. Buy back your debt. (Pay it down.) Stop using debt for consumption - food, gas, leisure/comfort, improvements. Use E-Bay to get rid of those closet, attic and garage stuffers that you hardly ever use, but they still have value. If whatever you have is in really good, working order/shape, then you can expect to get 40-60% of retail value. Do repairs around the house yourself if you can and avoid any repairs/expansions that are not vital to survival. If you think any expansion is going to add value to your resale, think again and check out how many homes are sitting on the market for 6-9 months and going through price-drop after price-drop.

If you have a recession-proof business, then debt is not a bad idea to initiate growth while you can. Remember the Great Depression? Of course you don’t. But you should study it and learn from it. You probably picture soup lines and starving families in tent cities. What you probably don’t picture and won’t read too much about was how many, many, many people actually grew rich or richer during the depression. Why? Because they had their houses in order and were indebted to no one.

Now, I’m not an end of the world kind of guy so don’t get me wrong or panic that the sky is falling. This is just a friendly reminder that ‘those ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it’ - meaning, sociological/economic cycles are predictable. We have conservation which leads to greed which leads to arrogance which leads to bust which leads to poverty which leads back to conservation and the whole thing is a ‘little history repeating.’ Right now we have arrogance in America - our debt levels indicate that we think we can just keep on spending and somehow, it will all work it’s way out. It will my friend, it will. The question is though - are you riding the wave which will crash or are you jumping the curve to conservation which means you will be among the first to enjoy the spoils and endure the struggles?

But don’t take my word for it. Look around you and review your history. :)

Dave Darby |

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Economics,

Family,

Finances,

Sociology

Friday

22Jun2007

It's "Trash Time" You Vultures!

Friday, June 22, 2007 at 01:47PM

And the father of the year award goes to: ME!

Well, at least that’s what I told the kids this morning. That’s right. I walked up to my office - which is an open study area upstairs - and I was halted by a massive pile of crayons. The same crayons that for 2 days now have been the target of my idle threats.

It seems our extra work load this week has created an opportunity for the kids to take advantage of us and leave their work/play behind. We’ve had a daily grind of ‘clean up that room’, ‘clean up this room’, ‘clean up that room again - hey, wasn’t that room just cleaned??’. Jeez - makes me dizzy.

Kids are like angels. Kids are like vultures. Kids are angelic vultures! You ever see those who flirt with danger on the Animal Planet channel? What do they always say when handling wild, dangerous beasts? “Never show fear!’ Ditto with kids. On a great day - angels - the minute you show fear or weakness - vultures.

Right? They’re kind of smart like that.

So this is weak week - Mommy & Daddy are dragging butt. Vultures. If I’ve said ‘pick up that mess’ once this week, I’ve said it 100 times. So today - new tactic.

I’ve used this tactic before with success, but I warn you, it’s like any good negotiating and the #1 rule of negotiating applies - if you are not prepared to walk away (or carry through the threat in this case), then you lose.

So, today I say to the kids, ‘Kids, I am am about to make you the happiest kids in the whole world, which surely will qualify me for Dad of the Year!’ Oh, their eyes were wide open and I even think I saw their ears turning forward and towards me - you know, like cats and horses do. I said, ‘Cleaning sucks! Picking up after yourself sucks. So starting right now, you no longer have to clean up your mess!’ ‘Oh boy’, they must have thought. Surely, this must be like the kiddy lottery. Grins started crossing their faces as the only thought I could imagine they were thinking was ‘Ah ha! We’ve finally beaten our parents into submission! Great joy!’

Vultures. That’s when I let them know why they no longer have to clean up. “You no longer have to clean up after yourself because everything I find on the floor, I am throwing into the trash. I shall relieve you of the heartache and misery that accompanies cleaning.” Smiles are gone by this time. Their eyes are no longer trained on me with excitement, instead they are exchanging glances of ‘Did he just say trash?’

But again, you’d better be prepared to follow through for this to work. Knowing this, I started with the crayons. In the trash they went. Must have been like 84 crayons on the floor. Well, more like 168 1/2 crayons and crayon wrappers. To the kids - this is their art - their creativity. To me, I’ve just thrown away some screwed up crayons begging for death. Next week, while at Target, we will pick up a new box of crayons for $3. The kids will once again experience creative joy and I will relish knowing that we have whole crayons again in a box that has it’s dignity intact. Zip-locs are for food!

Sounds like I’ve used this trick a few times eh? I have. But be forewarned, you can only pull this off maybe 2 times a year depending on the age. Once they catch on, they’ll throw all their old toys on the floor knowing you will throw them out and get them new ones. Vultures.

So, right now they are cleaning like crazy. Stopping to occasionally ask for clarity. ‘It’s simple’, I say, ‘if it is touching the carpet it’s outta here.’ To which Jonathan says ‘Even my desk?’ Vulture.

The house is clean and it didn’t cost me the time and aggravation of yelling. It cost me a $3 box of new crayons. I win Vultures - if only for today. ;)

Dave Darby |

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Children,

Family,

Organization,

Parenting

Tuesday

19Jun2007

Where's the Carrot?

Tuesday, June 19, 2007 at 11:32PM

Today was a day that reminds me why I’ve always worked harder than the next guy. We took off in the middle of the day to go play tennis with the kids, grab a fresh deli pizza on the way home, watch a movie and eat some watermelon on a 95°F day.

It was hot, exhausting and simply perfect.

Can you image taking 5 kids (9 years to 2 months) to play tennis? I know from experience that most people cringe when hearing me say things like that. “What?! You go out in public?” Yes. And we play tennis. And we go to the movies and parks and museums and, yes sometimes we go crazy.

But here’s the image. Now, let me preface this for those of you who don’t know me – I am a very loving father. I say ‘I love you’, I say ‘you are an important part of this family’, I say ‘man, I really appreciate the person you are becoming and I enjoy your personality’. I’m a Teddy Bear, ok? But Teddy Bear goes commando (not the underwear kind, the military kind of commando.) And then I start saying things like ‘Get it done – NOW!’, ‘Move it, I’m not waiting 20 minutes to load the car’, and ‘Cry and you’ll get another.’ Yeah, I’m a regular ole softy-kinda-hardass. When I’m loving, I am doting. When I am upset, toe the line and face the consequences cause here comes your own little mini-version of hell.

So, when we play tennis, there’s plenty of ‘Great shot!’s but there’s plenty of ‘What? There’s no crying in tennis! Run to the corner and back and let’s see how your attitude is.’ I do that with the girls too. ;) In fact, Jonathan threw a temper and smarted off once today – once. He didn’t realize Daddy had ‘skills’ until a green fuzzy object gave him a new crew at 60mph from 80 feet. Yeah, I still got game. And his reflexes are pretty darn good – of course, he gets ‘practice’, so they should be good.

We ran 1 lap to warm-up, 2 to warm down – as a family. Even 2-year old Olivia. But don’t think it was all militant. There was plenty of laughter when someone hit a ball over the fence or buzzed the tower of someone looking the other way.

But, guess what? At the end of the day, we circled up, hands in the middle, hoorah! Everyone is tired, everyone feels like a tight member of the team and everyone feels like they did something pretty rewarding. In two days of playing, Lauren and Nicole are drop hitting shots into the server’s box and Jonathan is hitting long volleys. Nicole – the youngest player at 5½ is even maneuvering to hit (though not successful yet) backhand shots. Wow.

So what’s the takeaway here:

Find the middle road
Be a Commando, kids need to respect their parents, but only use that personality to reel everyone back into established boundaries, be a Teddy Bear most of the time and let them know the difference. There’s no problem in telling a child he/she is not meeting expectations or not pulling their expected weight – it IS a problem however if you are degrading them or deflating their spirits in attempt to ‘motivate’ change – won’t happen so don’t do it.

Push your child’s limits in a supportive way and stick with it despite unknowledgeable opposition
Don’t praise them when they suck. They know they suck and they know you suck when you tell them that they don’t. Trust me – I’ve coached kids and I am raising quite a brew. When kids experience ‘real’ success and overcome a ‘real’ challenge, they appreciate the times they sucked and they appreciate the accomplishment. But mostly, they’ll appreciate that you noticed the difference and made a big deal over it. If I were to put together a Top Ten list to raise great children, appropriate praise would be #2 only to #1 security. (I’m probably going to write on that this week FYI).

When our 2nd grade tackle football team started 0-2, the parents realized and appreciated the lessons and the teaching that was going on. But they were probably starting to prepare, as I would have as a ‘parent-only’, a big ‘you sucked, but you tried your best’ speech for what looked like an 0-5 season. To make matters worse, I had an assistant coach who was adamant that we needed to change our plan.

My 2-word response to his lengthy plea started with ‘No’ and ended with ‘change’. We then went 3-0 to finish and moved into the top playoff bracket in which we mopped up the team that bullied us for our first loss, tied the league’s 2nd place team and lost to the #1 team to finish 3rd in a league of 12. I assure you, had we implemented change just as the kids were getting used to their blocking assignments, we would have gone 0-5.

And trust me, those kids, those parents, those coaches felt achievement. It wasn’t a BS end of season party – we were celebrating hard work, a few practices that required headlights and we were basking in accomplishment. And that accomplishment was real and it was valid only because we had the good fortune to start off sucking. :) We should all be so fortunate!

If your job keeps you from spending that kind of quality time, quit
I have two businesses and we’re doing work on 4 continents – I ‘get’ job satisfaction, I ‘get’ career motivation and I ‘get’ cash flow. And from time to time, I’ve had to push and ask my wife and children to sacrifice emotionally, physically and financially. But if those sacrifices are not short-term and sporadic (3-6 months, no more than once a year) and if our kids are hating life and learning values, morals and priorities from someone other than me and my wife – then who cares?

Chase the carrot with your spouse and kids and let them have a say in which carrot from time to time. After all, you’re not the only one sacrificing and you damn well should not be the only one enjoying the spoils. But, don’t be the parent who forever chases that carrot only to find at the end of the race, there was no reward worth the sacrifice. I’ve seen that happen first-hand and it’s not pretty. The only acceptable thing you can say after many wasted years is “I’m sorry. My priorities were wrong. I would not make the same choices again and I won’t from now on.” But for too many parents and adult children, that comes too little and too late.

Go – work hard, play hard and have fun. As we say at LifeMAPP - Life’s too short for trial and error.™

Dave Darby |

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Friday

04May2007

The Thinking Process: Why Do You Think That Way?

Friday, May 4, 2007 at 03:14PM

Wednesday it was HOW. Today is WHY.

So random thinking or sequential thinking - if you read Wednesday, then you’ve given thought as to which you are and probably psychoanalyzed everyone around you - good!

As I showed you, being left-brain or right-brain dominant has both advantages and disadvantages.

But what makes one person left-brain dominant (sequential/logical - 80-90% of the population) or right-brain dominant (random/creative - 10-20% of the population)?

Training.

I know, you were expecting me to give a creative, intangible idea like ‘genetics’ weren’t you? Sorry. It’s time to bust the genetic bubble for what it is - ignorance run amok. Scientists are laughing in their little labs - “People want answers - this is the 21st century. But, we don’t know the answers. Well, just tell them it’s genetic - they won’t know what the hell that means and they will give us more money to research and leave us alone for awhile.”

It’s this simple:

physical traits = genetics
social/emotional traits = conditioning/learned behavior

For example: scientists love to tell us that obesity is genetic. And we fall for it because, well, it makes us feel better to believe that it’s ‘one of those things’ we cannot control.

I am overweight - hell, technically I am obese as I pack 225lb onto a 6 foot, broad frame. I should be a buck-85. That’s 40lbs overweight. Do I look 40lbs overweight? No. I have a broad chest and can get away with an extra 20. But do I look 20lbs overweight? Hell yes. Why?

The mass majority of people who are overweight or obese will tell you - they eat a lot of food and have very little physcial activity. They’re not obese because they eat salads and have plenty of physical activity. They’re obese, and they will almost always tell you this, because they are bored, depressed or unmotivated. That’s learned behavior/conditioning - not genetics. Parents with bad habits (say little excerise and heavy eating in this example) - teach, here’s a surprise - BAD HABITS. That’s not genetics, that’s influence.

I would love to see the exception to the rule: the person labeled as having a thyroid problem who does not wrestle with depression, motivation and social starvation. I’m sure it exists, but that surely is not representative of the vast majority of overweight people in this country. So, let’s stop pretending and going with the easy labeling of genetics. And hey, if I’m wrong, tell me this: why with all of these medical advances (snake oils) are we as a society more miserable, more overweight, more depressed, more ADD, more on and on and on that we ever have been in the history of homosapiens?

Personally, I am not one to overeat. However, I work 80 hours a week - I don’t give enough time to excersice. Whenever I do get out and sweat with the kids or work around the yard, I drop weight. But, I don’t keep it off. Not because of genetics. Because I get back into my low-metabolic routine. And the point - I don’t care right now. Building a national reputation and helping the masses is our life. I justify that trade out, my ideal health for the extra time, to get LifeMAPP on the map.

So, back on track. Obviously, in the Nature vs Nurture debate, I see the formula as 95% Nurture.

Jul is and I are both right-brain random/creatives. Our goal is to raise balanced-brain children. To do that, you have to begin with training them to be right-brain/creative - it’s much harder to teach creativity than it is logic - so we teach and train our children to be creative, then we mix in logic. We have 5 kids who at this point have 3 distinct personalities. All 3 so far are right-brain dominant and I fully expect the other 2 to be as well. Because that is how we are conditioning/training them to be.

Why? How?

It is actually simple (remember Ockham’s Razor?). Left-brained individuals tend to be realists just as right-brained individuals tend to be intuitives. The difference between realists and intuitives? Seeing and being open to the possibilities that exist.

In real life terms? When our first-born started climbing the stairs at 14 months old, we let him. I’ve watched many parents cringe at that idea. Had we protected Jonathan, he would have had a different reality. He would have seen stairs as a utility to get from one floor to the next and focused on the potential for danger.

Instead, we (meaning I) let him explore. I encouraged Jul to stand back and watch rather than hover and protect. Stand back enough to let him fall, but close enough that he never tumbled more than a few stairs. Because of this, Jonathan saw the stairs as an adventure with many possibilities and saw (and felt) the inherent dangers of being careless. He saw the possibilities AND the reality of pain.

Now, like any parent, I didn’t like to walk out into the foyer and see my 2 year old climbing up the stairs - on the outside. He was undaunted that he had nothing between him and the wood floor 12 feet below. Rather than panic and squash his enthusiasm, I assumed the catch position while letting him work his way back down. Then, we sat down and talked about risks - and gravity. After a few of those talks (and a few gray hairs for Mommy) he stopped doing that.

Same thing on the playground.

You see, if done properly, kids can learn to see possibilities and because of those possibilities, see a greater reality. If you teach kids reality alone, they not only miss the possibilities, but their reality is skewed and distorted.

It’s easy to spot the brain preference of kids (and adults for that matter). If you see a child playing with a fire truck and that fire truck goes forwards, backwards and rushes to the scene to put out fires - left-brained/sequential/logical. If however, you see a child playing with a fire truck that, at 88mph reaches warp speed, achieves lift off, spiraling through space - right-brained/random/creative.

Tonka truck - created by a sequential thinker. Transformers, well you get it.

How much you wanna bet that the inventor of the gabillion dollar seller of transformers was told at some point by a logical - ‘why, that’s ridiculous, why can’t a truck just be a truck for God’s sake!’

Righhhhht! Or is it left?

Dave Darby |

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