How to Prevent Your Kids From Getting Bullied

Last week I ran across a news story about Rebecca Sedgewick, the 12-year-old from Florida who ended her own life on September 10th of this year, after enduring over a year of brutal bullying - some in person, a lot online - by a group of at least 15 girls. She is one of the youngest, but the list of these terrible tragedies is only getting longer.

This brings back memories of Amanda Todd, a 15-year-old girl from British Columbia who ended her own life last year, having been bullied online since Grade 8. 

Tragic deaths. These were still children! The suffering they endured can be likened to being locked up in a Nazi concentration camp, forever at the mercy of the ruthless guards, with everyone else too afraid to help you. It is indeed despair-evoking, especially since children (including teens) do not yet have the maturity to see beyond their situation and have limited capacity to deal with this kind of irrational hatred and rejection aimed at themselves. 

As a parent now, I wonder how to stop this from happening to my kids. As a former victim of bullying myself, I do think I've learned a few lessons. Perhaps the most important thing that parents can do to minimize their children's chances of this happening to them is the following:

Hold On To Your Kids

This talk by Dr. Gordon Neufeld might be almost 2 hours long, but it should be required viewing for all parents. The talk is entitled "Kids Need Us More Than Friends" and it elaborates on his book, entitled Hold On To Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers.

He talks about the peer-orientation of today's children, which is different from how things used to be back when children used to spend their day in mixed-age groups and have more interaction with their extended families and close community networks of friends and acquaintances.

Today, children are herded into classrooms with their own age-group all day, and then keep in contact with this peer group through social media at all other times of day. They are attached to their peer group rather than to adults. They are so consumed with what their own peer-group thinks, and thinks of them, that they no longer give a hoot about what their own parents are telling them. It's hard to reach your kids when they get to that point. 

• Click here to view another excellent talk on this topic by Dr. Gabor Mate, co-author of the Hold On To Your Kids book. If you're short of time, start at minute 35:50. At around minute 46:00 Dr. Mate starts to talk about bullying. A very important point he makes: bullying is not a behavior (moral) problem, it's a relationship (attachment) problem.
• Click here to view another really good talk by Dr. Neufeld, entitled "On Raising Children in a Digital World.
• Click here to view another video by Dr. Mate on the topic of parenting.

Peer-orientation has lots of negative effects that can easily lead to bullying, which Dr. Neufeld and Dr. Mate very persuasively elaborate.

Holding on to your kids means staying close to them emotionally and psychologically - it means, having a close relationship that outweighs their relationship to their peer group.

This is very hard to do for parents who are already swamped with so many things to do in their free time outside of work, at a time when everyone is so over-scheduled and over-burdened, at a time when children disappear into their rooms every night to do mountains of homework, when families hardly eat together, play together, or even talk.

Holding on to your kids is the key. Not just because you will be more likely to find out if they are being bullied, but most of all, because you will reduce their likelihood of succumbing to bullies in the first place.

Are Bloggers Like Snowflake Bentley?

The last post I wrote, about bloggers as narcissists, explores the truth from a rather harsh angle. It is akin to aiming the most unflattering light on a person, who then comes out in the photo with black witch-like shadows painted all across the face.

The shadows are real, just like the concerns I expressed were real. But they are still exaggerated by the angle and the ultrabright fluorescent light, and the resulting portrait is a caricature of the person involved.

Today I want to shine a different light on the same phenomenon of blogging and social networking participation in general. I want to talk this time about snowflakes, and about being in love with the world.

There is no question that the world, with all its incredible detail in everything from the smallest snowflake to the towering mountains, is breathtakingly beautiful. There is so much to explore and discover in this vast world, so much beauty, intricacy and uniqueness. And all we can manage before our frail candle finally burns out is to imperfectly savour but the tiniest fraction of this grand and entrancing display.

The first-ever photographs of snowflakes were taken by Wilson A. Bentley, a self-educated farmer in rural Vermont. After years of trial and error he developed a technique that allowed him to use a camera together with his microscope, thus revolutionizing the art of microscopic photography. "Snowflake" Bentley also clearly fell in love with his subject matter, and went on to take photos of more than 5000 snowflakes during his lifetime. He never found two that were alike. He said:

"Under the microscope, I found that snowflakes were miracles of beauty; and it seemed a shame that this beauty should not be seen and appreciated by others. Every crystal was a masterpiece of design and no one design was ever repeated., When a snowflake melted, that design was forever lost. Just that much beauty was gone, without leaving any record behind."

Looking at our wonderful world, these words by Bentley can easily be applied to almost everything else we find around us, and modern technology has allowed each of us to become a Bentley. We can now capture and share images so effortlessly that it is almost a shame not to do so! There is so much beauty out there for us to appreciate in the innumerable big and little things that we encounter in our every day life.

Have you ever taken a vacation alone? I never have, but I imagine it must be a rather incomplete experience. One of the best things about travelling with someone is that you get to point at the marvels you encounter and shout "wow, look over there!" Human beings are social beings, and sharing our discoveries is like eating our meals twice; we get to savour them alone, but we appreciate them perhaps even more when we see them through the other person's eyes. We derive joy from bringing joy to others in the form of newly discovered beauty.

Each of our lives is itself like a snowflake. Everything around us is unique to our own experience, and it is often breathtaking. Every day is a wonder that we cannot possibly begin to explain, and which we can only be grateful for and yes, fall in love with. Oh, it is not difficult to fall in love with the world, full of the beauty stamped on it by its Creator! And just like Bentley, we are filled with the urge to share it all with others.

Thus, from the moment our breakfast table is set with rustic red plates laden with steaming waffles strewn with sugar-powdered blueberries, to the next moment when our giggly little daughter descends down the stairs in her PJs with her bedhead hair adorably fluffled around her face, to the next moment when the sun magically shimmers on the new bright cushions on our patio set, to the next moment when...it is all entrancingly worth taking photos of and sharing.

Hence, the photo blogs. Is it narcissism, meaning love for the self? Or is it us being Bentley, and being in love with the beauty found in everything and everyone around us?

Personally I believe that there is truth in both viewpoints.

The complication to being Bentley is that human beings have the unfortunate tendency to become so entranced with the most beautiful thing (to us) of all - namely, ourselves - that we can become rather unsocially self-centered.

Imagine for a moment that you visit five different blogs:

• Blog 1 posts 30 images per day of some natural object, such as landscapes, flowers, or wild animals. 
• Blog 2 posts 30 images a day of things like food, fashions, jewelry, cars, etc.
• Blog 3 posts 30 images a day of people such as models or movie stars.
• Blog 4 posts 30 images a day of the blogger's own family, especially the children. 
• Blog 5 posts 30 images a day of the blogger in different poses and close-ups.

My Reactions

Blog 1 clearly says to me that the blogger is simply being Bentley. I could be wrong of course, since it is possible to become unhealthily obsessed with just about anything, but I would still have few concerns about this person.

Blog 2 would probably evoke a similar reaction - not much concern for the blogger in terms of narcissism, though hedonism or consumerism might start to cross to mind.

Blog 3 would start to raise a few red flags, because this blogger might be objectifying other people, and we know that is not a good thing.

Blog 5 would probably remind me of Narcissus himself, who could not tear his eyes away from his own image. Being Bentley with oneself tends to lead to that...

Would Blog 4 make me think "Bentley"?

Well, children are quite possibly the most beautiful part of all of creation. Forget for a moment the actual difficulties of everyday life raising them. If we look solely at the visual, then what can possibly outdo their most adorable, carefree and innocent, fresh-as-rosebuds beauty? Every gorgeous smile cries out to be memorialized in photos and shared with the world!

And yet, going all Bentley on our children is really less than kosher for at least two reasons:

1. While it's okay to look at snowflakes as beautiful objects, because that is what they are, people are not mere beautiful objects, and it is not right to objectify children down to the level of snowflakes. Feels unhealthy and somehow not right...


2. Perhaps most importantly, we parents love our children to such an extent that our self-love extends to them. Each child is in effect our little "Mini-Me". So in some ways, one gets the feeling that there is not necessarily much difference between Blog 5 and Blog 4. 

So there you have it. What is your own take on this?


photo credit: CaptPiper via photopin cc

Me Media: Are Bloggers Turning Into Narcissists?

All you bloggers, especially you mom bloggers, this post is for you. I am also speaking to those of us, myself included, who have an online presence in other social media. By that I mean: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, MySpace, Pinterest, Youtube videos, etc.

Ever since I entered the world of blogging, which is a mere couple of months ago, that annoying little voice within has been tapping on my shoulder a lot, and I've been swatting it away while typing my posts, distractedly saying "not now, I'm busy!"

Today my persevering conscience finally got my attention by drawing my eyes to an article entitled "Raising a nation of narcissists" (Ottawa Citizen, Oct. 12, 2013 - unfortunately not available online). There, author Suzanne Harrington points out some very disturbing features of our society. She writes:

By definition, we are all narcissists now, entranced with our own every move.

We document everything we do. We photograph, record, upload, download, tweet our breakfast, Instagram our lunch, Facebook our dinner, Google ourselves, blog our every thought, leave comments, invite comments, review whatever bits of the culture we are into, post selfies...Got a cat that likes hiding in boxes? Film it and upload. Play guitar? Get yourself on MySpace or SoundCloud...

Every aspect of your life can be exhibited...We have gone from texting our friends that we are on the bus to minutely documenting every teeny aspect of our lives - ostensibly to share with everyone online, but really, is anyone interested? Apart from, of course, ourselves?

We'll never know because we are all too busy watching ourselves.

This article caught me like a kid with my paw in the candy jar because in fairness, I see that my blog has already started contributing to the problem of narcissism rather than helping to eradicate it.

Until recently, my Facebook account had been dormant for many months because of precisely this issue. Every time I went on Facebook, I couldn't help but find myself rather disgusted by all the cheerful, gorgeous photos and the five-miles-thick sludge of what appeared to be self-loving snippets. I just couldn't make myself "Like" them all, instead I just wanted to gag. It was a relief to ignore Facebook.

(This is a rather strong reaction to Facebook, I admit. If I had never had any adverse circumstances in my life, then perhaps I would just be joining the party and posting tons of photos of our three adorable dumplings. But my former struggle with infertility taught me many things, and compassion is one of them. Sometimes compassion means toning down our public display of personal happiness, out of respect for the difficulties of others.

Facebook is a great place for those with perfect, happy families. All of your enviable family pics will get a truckful of "Likes" and you can feel like you just won the Family of the Year award. But the attention-seeking exhibitionism can definitely get out of hand and feel like a crusty salt rub on the wounds of those who are less fortunate in their life circumstances.)

Then I started a blog. At first I thought I was doing something radically different. Having a website and blog appears to be a requirement these days for authors, as many agents will tell you. So I thought I would get on that, as someone who wants to publish one day.

But over the last couple of months, I've discovered that keeping a blog has the potential to turn into something far, far worse than the mild self-obsession of Facebook. A blog can very easily morph into your very own reality show, complete with all the agonizing self-interviews, the glossy photo shots, and daily close encounters with the minutia of your gloriously mundane and yet incredibly interesting and consuming life.

I have now seen many of these reality shows all over the blogosphere. In fact, I would even go so far as to say that "reality show" is the most prevalent and widely accepted template for the "mom blogger." I can't even count how many blogs I have come across where posts regularly consist of any of the following:

• Detailed accounts of the blogger's (or children's) daily events or mishaps (readers seem to appreciate it when we spotlight our ordinary lives in an amusing and mildly self-deprecating manner); 
• Tons of close-up photos of the blogger's children, as if every day were a National Geographic feature;
• Long introspective monologues that pretty much resemble what people used to write in diaries and stuff under their pillows. Now such content is aired out for the public to comment on and "like".

Many bloggers seem to have slipped into roles where they are small-time entertainers, turning into Kardashians, Oprahs and Rachel Rays with their own "Keeping Up With" show or their own "O" and "Every Day" magazines.

Disturbingly, I see this phenomenon happening on blogs in every corner of the blogosphere, whether secular, Christian or even Catholic. And yet, we Catholics should know better, shouldn't we? We are taught a lot about the importance of humility, about the dangers of vanity, pride and self-love, about the sin of evoking envy in others. Why is it that many Catholic blogs also tend to veer in the direction of self-adulation? (and while we are on the topic, why are so many people drawn to these blogs as commenters and apparent readers? It appears that we are often happy victims of reality shows - living vicariously is seductive entertainment.)

Part of it may be the nature of the medium. Just like Facebook, blogs almost invite us to develop a sanitized, glamorized persona, and to weave together the best (if unreal) version of our lives, as much for our own pleasure as for public consumption. Blogging about an airbrushed version of our life perhaps helps us to believe that we actually do have that kind of life, and I have a lingering suspicion that there is some kind of doping effect going on here. 

It is so easy to fall into the trap, right? We have good reasons for blogging about our family life. We justify sharing the good moments of our lives for far-away relatives and friends, etc. But no one wants to share the crappy parts, or sometimes we just can't share them, because they involve the privacy of others. The result is that if we blog about personal and family matters, it is almost inevitable that our posts will become a collection of the best/cutest/funniest moments of our lives, seen through the pink glasses of our self-love. Hardly honesty in action. And hello, if you take a second look at your blog, it is now a classic example of the narcissist obsession currently prevalent in our society. How is this helpful to anyone?   

The fact that technology has allowed us to bring our natural inclinations towards self-centeredness to a whole new level has not gone unnoticed by psychologists. Dr. Karyl McBride, an expert on narcissism at Psychology Today, said in an article from 2012: “I do think we live in a very narcissistic culture today, with an ‘all about me’ mentality.  The new technology, the celebrity focus, and the on-going attention to ‘how we look’ and ‘what we do’ being strong messages."

How do we buck the trend while staying plugged in? How do I keep a blog or any social media account that is not just a gross Public Display of Affection with myself (and my children), a big smooch to my interesting personality, important thoughts, and wonderful life?

At this point, I'm thinking it is not possible to completely avoid the impression of self-absorption if our posts focus on ourselves, our families and our lives. As much as we may try to tone down the lovefest, it will still come across that way to others. Whatever good, important reasons we may have for posting about Dear Daughter's cutest moment or the most crazy thing that happened to us today, in the end we are also kissing ourselves in public and others might watch in fascination even as they are rightfully also grossed out.

The best way to avoid becoming a narcissist statistic is to avoid blogging about these matters altogether. If we want to keep our friends and family in the loop about what are essentially private matters, then perhaps the old medium of mass emails is the best way to send the information only to those who might truly care because they know us. That way, we are not seducing the public into wanting lives they do not have, thus contributing to public discontent and the phenomenon of voyeuristic couch-potato lives.

I do think it is legitimate to post our thoughts on public matters in order to contribute to the debate in the public square. Matters of religion, politics, even current affairs are fair topics. Parenting, cooking, crafts, and pretty much anything other than ourselves are fair topics too, depending on we handle these. If the subject matter is just a thinly veiled celebration of ourselves then we are still contributing to the problem rather than the solution.

We should approach writing posts like writing magazine articles or newspaper columns, because a blog is a self-published periodical, not a private space, and it should not be kept in the belief that is a mere record for ourselves or our friends and families. If you want to keep a record, fine, but keep in on a CD. If everyone in the whole world can see it, from the staff at McMurdo in Antarctica to the prison convicts in Australia, then it cannot possibly qualify as your family's private record of events and milestones!

So here are my tips. They may sound simple but they are not easy to put into practice:

• Try to avoid placing ourselves and our cleverness into the spotlight;
• Attempt to present information that will genuinely aid others in whatever subject areas we choose, without any ulterior motive;
• If we do blog about ourselves, it's important to be honest and to have a benevolent motive, such as helping others deal with similar issues. This often involves blogging about the less glitzy parts of life, such as coping with depression, loss, life with a zillion allergies, parenting children with ADHD, or any other difficulty. I believe that this kind of blogging does have value because it can help others who are going through similar issues. Others may feel less alone as a result, and they might also pick up some tips on how to cope with these situations.

After all, if helping others is not the aim of our social media participation, then how social are we being?

More Reading
Am I just a grumpy and disgruntled party pooper?
Or is there really something to the idea that bloggers are narcissistic? To get at the bottom of that question I did what everyone who seeks the truth must do, and I googled it. Now I know that this post is not alone, and at least some people have observed similar things. Check out these articles and blogs:

• Surprise, surprise! Narcissism Linked to Frequent Facebook and Twitter Use (TIME, June 12, 2013)
• Bloggers and Narcissism (Stephanie O'Dea, July 18, 3013)
• Narcissism and Blogging. Connected? (Deo Volente, April 27, 2013)
• Finally, here is a link to a page on Psychology Today entitled the Narcissism Epidemic. It seems that Narcissism is on the rise in our culture overall, in many different areas.

Final Note

This post has a very strong viewpoint that may appear very black-and-white. The truth is usually far more complicated, and I acknowledge that. People blog for many different reasons, and many of them are valid and good. Blogging is a great way to make connections and gain or maintain friendships. Blogging is a good way to feel less alone in your own struggles. There are many other reasons to blog, and many of them are good.  Blogging can be a really great thing. It can be like having your own magazine in a very positive way. It's great to build a connection with an audience.

But intentions are one thing, and public perception is another. Even good intentions can produce results that look to the world like an exhibition of narcissism. So we bloggers should continually check ourselves, because it is far too easy these days to go overboard in the wrong direction. People might not tell you what they really think, but it might still be true.


photo credit: Lotus Carroll via photopin cc 

Seven Quick Takes About Sinead O'Connor, Defeating Monsters, and the Dentist

 

 — Modern Kids —

 

The other day, Hannah and Sophia were examining a picture in which a little girl was looking down at something. "What is she looking at?" asked Sophia. "She's checking her iphone," said Hannah. 

Hannah also made herself a little book this week, and filled some of the pages with random letters. "What do these letters spell?" I asked her. She waved her hand dismissively, "Oh, that's just advertising."

Jonah was "talking" on his toy phone while Hannah spilled her water all over the table. Immediately Jonah lunged forward, phone stretched out towards the water. "Wait, I have to take a picture of that!" And he proceeded very realistically to "take a picture". Then he "checked" his photo, and said with disappointment, "Oh, it's a bad photo." 

 

   — Defeating the Vent Monster —

A few weeks ago, Jonah developed a new fear. It all started when he came to me asking "Mama, could we cover the vents?" I asked him why, and he said something about how the "fire" lives there and he hears it sometimes, and it wants to come out.

At first I tried to ignore his fear and brush it off with things like "don't be afraid, there's nothing there," and explanations about the furnace and how it is a machine that makes noise and blows the warm air. But his fear persisted. Once he started crying at night, and when I came to check on him, he was talking about the vent and shaking with fear. That's when I knew it was a real fear, and I had better take it seriously.

After that we lived with some of our vents covered, especially the one in his room, the dining room and the kitchen. But he was still clearly afraid, and needed to be with someone every time he went to the washrooms, where the vents were uncovered.

One morning he asked me: "Mama, does the guy in the vent warm our air?"

The guy in the vent??
I went with it, and Venti was born.

Venti, the funny guy who lives in our vent, the machine operator of our furnace. He crawled in there long ago, and his job is to push the red and blue buttons that make the hot air come or stop. Over the years, Venti has gotten really big and can't come out anymore, he is stuck in the pipes. He loves to eat bacon, and can often be heard frying it up. He has a pet spider, a kitten that goes to visit him, and most recently also a puppy in there with him. He has a whole, funny life of his own, and he is quite a hilarious character. Sometimes he bangs the walls and sings when he is bored. Occasionally he can be heard scratching his back. 

The children loved it. They asked me for story after story about Venti, and I was getting worried I would run out of ideas. They bent over and shouted questions to Venti into the vents, and made up his responses. They started imagining their own pieces of the story. That night, Jonah asked me to be quiet so that Venti could sleep.

They have been talking about Venti ever since.

The best part is, Jonah seems to have forgotten all about his fear of the vents.

 

 — Sinead O'Connor to Miley —

I never did watch the Miley Cyrus performance that started it all. But I did read Sinead O'Connor's letter to Miley, where she very clearly spells out how acting like an object for men's pleasure is a female performer's sure way to lose the respect of others, shorten her career success, and end up in therapy.

Sinead, now 47, clearly speaks from a lot of personal experience, and kudos to her for having gained such wisdom. I don't agree with her on everything; in a further exchange she had with Miley on Twitter, she stands by her infamous act where she ripped up the Pope's photograph (however, she explains that she did this as a protest against sexual abuse in the Church).

On the exploitation of women performers by the music industry and its executives, as well as by the many men who are in the audience, Sinead could not be more right. She writes:

"The music business... will prostitute you for all you are worth, and cleverly make you think its what YOU wanted … and when you end up in rehab as a result of being prostituted, ‘they’ will be sunning themselves on their yachts in Antigua, which they bought by selling your body and you will find yourself very alone.

None of the men ogling you give a [****] about you either, do not be fooled. Many’s the woman mistook lust for love. ...No one who cares about you could support your being pimped … and that includes you yourself. Yes, I’m suggesting you don’t care for yourself. That has to change."

Too bad that Miley, who is 20 years old and still a mere child on today's mental maturation scale, has been so completely brainwashed that she is incapable of recognizing help when she gets it. Instead, she returned the favour by attacking and ridiculing Sinead as a formerly suicidal and mentally ill woman. Over Twitter and on talk shows, Miley has been snickering and rolling her eyes without ever addressing the actual points made in Sinead's letter.

Regrettably, it appears that Miley's juvenille tactics have worked to at least some extent, and in her 4th letter to Miley, where she demands a sweeping apology, O'Connor refers to "the types of e mails and communications I have had for the last few days urging that I should kill myself...[and] the type of ‘net abuse’ I have had to endure as a result of what you did."

One day, when she burns out her own candle, Miley will finally see the flaming truth in O'Connor's words. But what about the rest of the music industry? What about the fans who are writing to Sinead, urging her to kill herself? Those ordinary guys (and perhaps women) who live in our own neighbourhoods? Will they ever get it?

When, I wonder, will our culture finally recognize that it's not empowering for women to turn themselves into objects for men's lust and pleasure?

 

  — Serial Moving  —   

My mom surprised me the other day by saying that repeated moving from place to place is a traumatic experience, the losses are too high most of the time, and people should just settle down wherever they are and stop moving around. Life has clearly taught its hard lessons.

I can't say I disagree with my mom. In fact, I completely agree with her. I have been uprooted so many times in my life that for decades, living with my roots up in the air was basically my permanent state of being. But for my children, I wish a different kind of future. I want to give them the stability that comes with rootedness in one particular place, with a particular group of people (especially family).

  — Alice Munro  —

 

Go Alice Munro! Wow. I am so proud of this Canadian writer, who truly does have great talent. And I am relieved that the Nobel Prize did NOT go to Margaret Atwood, who is usually far more visible here in Canada.

 

   — Surprise at the Dentist's Office — 

 

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Yesterday the children had their dental appointments, and I was getting ready for the worst. Last year when we took Jonah to the dentist, we left the office covered in sweat and tears, so this year I enlisted my mother to come with me, as extra manpower in a looming battle of wills. I expected emergency-room-worthy screaming, lobster claws on the handles of patient's chairs, locked jaws.

What I got instead was the total opposite: as if under the influence of a magic spell (could it be the many muttered prayers...), Jonah and Hannah were both incredible embodiments of decorum and obedience. Hannah especially was completely at home, happily chatting with the assistant and the dentist. At one point she even counted to one hundred, number by number, while the dentist patiently waited until the end (why I don't know, I think maybe they asked her how high she can count). Jonah was basically mute but entirely obedient.

The dentist was apparently impressed: they both got to choose not one but two prizes out of the children's treasure box. But the biggest prize was the one for me: I got to feel proud of my children at a moment when I had expected to be embarrassed and frustrated. Words cannot describe my relief and joy at this unlikely turn of events, which totally made my day.

 — Rediscovering the Forest — 

 

We live at the edge of the city and we have beautiful nature close to us in the form of Ottawa's Greenbelt, an area that is essentially a nature preserve of forests and wetlands that are immune to development.

We don't take enough advantage of this treasure so close to our house, but this week we did. My parents organized the trip and we visited a nearby forest trail that winds its way through to one of the wetland areas.

What an amazing time we had. The children loved it, and I did too. It's incredible how much the forest had changed since the time we visited in the summer. Instead of the lush greenery that had been all around us last time, we crunched piles of brown leaves underfoot. There was more light and visibility, the same old broken trees and logs strewn in all directions, and huge rocky formations jutting out of the ground.

This time around we had little birds sitting on our outstretched hands, pecking at sunflower seeds in our palms. We also spotted all kinds of other little critters, including a forest mouse, ducks (they too love sunflower seeds), and huge dragonflies that circled the wetland like helicopters. The crown of it all was the large black woodpecker, sighted by Jonah, who continued in his work of drumming on the tree even as we were just a few meters away. I had never seen a woodpecker up that close, and it was a magical moment.

Going to the forest possibly qualifies as the best spent 2 hours of the entire week. The children learned and experienced so much there, even museums are not nearly as educational. This is true learning through living! So now I want to plan the forest into our weekly outings.

For more 7 Quick Takes from across the blogosphere, visit Jennifer Fuller's blog Conversion Diary.

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Immigrants Going Full Circle: Friends Returning to the Old Home

Czechoslovak postage stamp with Prague castle.

A long time ago under Communism, one of my parents' friends scored the equivalent of winning the Lotto Max: she met a Belgian man and moved to Belgium to become his bride, her one-way ticket to prosperity.

Recently, we learned that this friend's Belgian-raised daughter will be moving from her home in Belgium to live with her new Czech husband in the Czech Republic.

For us this turn of events is bittersweet, even as it perfectly symbolizes the way that tides have turned over the last twenty-odd years since the fall of Communism.

Back when my parents escaped Czechoslovakia for a better life, they were fleeing a world that was coloured in different shades of grey. Looking back at life under Communism, it seems almost unbelievable, as if it were a bad movie and not reality. Now I am thankful that I got to experience some of it before we left, so I could have concrete memories of that strange existence and know for a fact that up until the Iron Curtain fell in 1989, Europe was truly divided into darkness and light.

It was a brave decision by my parents to leave behind everything and everyone, knowing that a return was impossible without being arrested. I am still awed that they made that decision.

They had spent their entire lives locked inside the borders of Communist Czechoslovakia; even Vienna, a mere two-hour drive from where they lived in Brno, had been a mythical fantasy they had never been allowed to see. When their permits were granted for the first-ever trip outside, to the pseudo-Communist Yugoslavia, they bolted for the Austrian border and irrevocably jumped ship. It was a clean break with their entire known world; the price paid for freedom and opportunity for a better life.

The mysterious country of Canada accepted our application for asylum as political refugees, and we were assigned to be settled in Edmonton. I remember our arrival at the airport, where we disembarked the plane in the depth of winter. Never having seen a northern city before, we had no idea what to expect; thankfully, we were given donated coats, hats, scarves, mittens and boots to wear. Then, like moonwalkers we stepped out into the -30 degree day.

It was a surreal experience walking down the utterly foreign-looking streets for the first time. We stared at the low shoebox-like buildings, freezing wind gusting into our faces, everything covered in white. We felt as if we were at the North Pole.

Life as new immigrants proved to be, in the words of Langston Hughes, no crystal stair for my parents. They did whatever they could to make ends meet, taking on jobs that were well beneath their Czech work experiences and qualifications. Back in Czechoslovakia people probably imagined my parents as having "made it", but the reality was that we were poor for a long time before my parents managed to build up their small nest.

Now after many years, my parents are finally able to enjoy their lives in relative comfort. Their hard work has paid off.  

Or has it?

What my parents couldn't have known in 1985 was that less than five years after their dash for freedom, the Berlin Wall would crumble and Communism in Czechoslovakia would be swept away by the Velvet Revolution.

Once the floodgates were opened, people came pouring out and Western goods came pouring in. In 2004 the Czech Republic became a member of the European Union, and it is now considered “one of the most stable and prosperous of the post-Communist states of Central and Eastern Europe”.

When we visit the Czech Republic these days, we witness that prosperity everywhere. Family members and friends enjoy material luxuries that we once only dreamed of, and many even surpass our own standards of living. They shop at IKEA just like we do, they watch the same TV shows, and they casually hop all over Europe on their frequent vacations.

Now, those of us who left the mother country and survived through decades of hardship in foreign lands are left with the question: was immigration really worth it?

For my parents, the answer is complicated. Aside from their years of hard work, they will always have other losses that they cannot recover; mainly, their permanent separation from the families and friends they left behind, and their lingering sense of being different here in Canada. Their accents, their humour, their tastes and even interests are still different from those mainstream "Canadians" among whom we live.

Even I feel somewhat culturally detached, though I see this as a positive - it has allowed me to weave my own path through life.

But there is no doubt for me that my parents made the right decision. It was a wild and dangerous gamble, but they could not have made any other decision at the time: they chose freedom over submission, opportunity over wasted lives.

Immigration may not have radically benefited us in tangible ways, but it was the ultimate life adventure, and it provided me with my greatest life lessons. As a family we went through so much, and experienced such a diversity of life conditions, that we could each have lived two whole lives. And if experience brings wisdom, then we have hopefully become more wise about the important things in life.

Many of our old countrymen in the Czech Republic are now dizzy with delight at the materialist fruits of freedom; they are living the capitalist dream and chasing the latest and greatest gadget, car and other indulgence, comfort or entertainment.

We watch their world as outsiders; we don't fit into that scene either. My parents laid everything on the line for our freedom, and for me growing up, that was the lesson that stuck the most: there are far more important things in life than material pleasures, there are real values worth fighting for, worth giving everything for, such as freedom, truth, and goodness. I want my life to be focused on striving towards those ideals, rather than sinking into the pursuit of fleeting material pleasures.

Mami, Tati, thank you for your courage - you could not have foretold the future, but you are still my heroes.

Photo courtesy of Nicolas Raymond at stockvault

If You Really Want To Be Feminist, Keep Your Shirt On

My temperature rises every time I see reports like this one.  Today at the Quebec Legislature, three "feminist" protesters barged into the public gallery topless, chanting that the crucifix be removed from the chamber wall.

Spare me. Nude protests are so yesterday. Do these women really still believe that going bare is somehow blazing the way forward for women's rights?

What rights might those be, I wonder? Perhaps they believe it is feminist to transform themselves into objects for male gratification.

Let me guess, they just want to get attention, and this sure gets it for them. But I've got news for you ladies: if you take your shirt off while you chant your slogans, you are all but guaranteeing that no one will even remember what you were talking about. All the eyes will be elsewhere, and all the ears will be shut. We are a very visual species, and men are a very visual bunch. If you want to get your point across, talk with your mouths, not your private parts.

In an age when pornography has captured the minds of so many of our men of all ages, when men struggle just to make it through their daily commute without being drawn to the half-clad bodies leaning suggestively toward them from billboards, how does it help the cause of women to strut around without our shirts on? Women are already so over-objectified that our culture can hardly sink any lower. Prancing nude in the Legislature just confirms that we do indeed have to undress in order to get men to listen to us.

Come on ladies. Grow up, and if you really want to become examples of women's power, then do something truly counter-cultural and keep your clothes on.

photo credit: david_shankbone via photopin cc