Monthly Archives: May 2024

Parenting and Understanding Oneself

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When I was a kid, I was always restless and clumsy. I loved running and feeling the wind on my face as I ran. I ran until my sides hurt. I enjoyed climbing fences and trees and then jumping down from the fence. I often made my mother angry when I came home with bruises on my legs and knees because I hurt myself whenever I played outside.

Many times my father got annoyed with me because I was always breaking a plate or a glass and ruining my shoes. I was very, very clumsy. They would buy me a new pair of shoes, and the shoes would last only a few months. My father once said I needed a pair of steel shoes!

That may sound like I had terrible parents, but they weren’t. They were quite good to me and my sisters and raised us the best way they knew how. And I loved them both and still miss them very much.

But now, as a parent of a 13-year old in the Autism Spectrum, I am beginning to understand some of the quirkiness I had as a child as I see some of them in my son.

My son can be very restless; he can pace for a long time until someone watching him gets dizzy. He likes watching me do my dance workouts and tries to copy my movements but he has very poor coordination and can look like a worm trying to get out of a knot. He slams doors, moves quickly with jerky movements and speaks quickly, oftentimes skipping words which he probably thinks he has already uttered.

Like my son, I also spoke quickly and had poor eye-hand coordination as a kid. I liked dancing but my mother laughed at my movements, saying I was not a graceful dancer. Nevertheless, growing up, my sisters, cousins and I always had dance numbers at our Christmas parties. Even though I wasn’t a good dancer, I joined them. Wonderful memories.

Even when I was already in my 20s, I was still clumsy. I realized this when I was getting out of a friend’s car one day, and he told me I didn’t have to “move so quickly,” like, I could open the door “more gently.” That made me pause. He was right, and to this day I am grateful to him for pointing that out to me. I tried to control and learned to control my movements. It wasn’t long after that when I took Latin dance lessons, and Taebo and Zumba, and those lessons helped me so much with my coordination.

My parents did not have the knowledge that I now have about how and why some kids behave the way they do. Though I find my son’s movements funny, I try to help him improve them. We do the same thing over and over until he gets them right.

I have hope that the exercise I do with him will improve his coordination, and one day, we will be able to dance together.

Kindness and the Power of the Pause

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“A pause may give way to understanding; it may silence hurtful words; it may avert a broken heart.”

Cameron, Donna. A Year of Living Kindly: Choices That Will Change Your Life and the World Around You . She Writes Press. Kindle Edition.

It was only last week that I discovered Donna Cameron’s book is available on Kindle, so I bought it right away and read it. It’s interesting how reading about kindness can be very relaxing and actually want you to become a kinder person.

The chapter on “The Power of the Pause” came to mind yesterday when I saw an unfortunate incident at the mall. I was in one store when I heard a woman yelling at a little boy, must be 3 or 4 years old. He was running around, and the woman who was probably the mother, kept yelling at him. I was thinking to myself, why does she have to keep yelling? At one point, the boy hid under the clothes hanging in a rack, after which the woman grabbed him so hard that he was lifted off the ground. Then she hit his head a couple of times. I let out a cry and covered my mouth, and the other customers who saw the same thing looked at me and looked at the woman. The woman also looked at me, and walked away still yelling at the now crying boy.

I know better than to get involved and speak in a language they do not understand. I know she would only be yelling at me in a language I do not understand very well. It’s a different language in a different country with a different culture.

I was shaken. I felt so sorry for the boy. I was ready to condemn the woman for being so violent and irresponsible — why have a baby when you do not have patience dealing with growing children? But I also got to see the look in the woman’s face which was filled with anger. It made me think, surely it was not just the boy’s naughtiness that made her angry? She must be going through something that made her have that evil look on her face while watching a little boy who was only playing happily?

I left the store praying for that little boy and the woman. People may think I should have done something more than just pray for them –if I were in my country, I would, without a doubt. But in another country, I am grateful for the pause.

May we all learn to pause, not only when we feel anger building in us, but also when we are tempted to judge others for what they do.

Nothing New

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“One of the things that’s really striking about philosophy is how interesting and insightful some of the philosophers of the past still are for the present, so it’s still interesting to look at Aristotle, still interesting to look at Rousseau, or Nietzsche today and think about despite the internet, despite the social changes, how many things they said still resonate …. I don’t think it’s obvious we’ve progressed, i just think we’re responding to a different situation.” — Nigel Warburton, Philosophy Bites podcast

I was listening to an old episode of Philosophy Bites last night, when Nigel Warburton, who was being interviewed by David Edmonds about his book, said the words quoted above. My ears perked up, simply because I think it is so true. Plato already covered everything , especially in political philosophy. As Alfred North Whitehead said, “All of Western philosophy is but a footnote to Plato.”

And it made me think about how there’s really nothing new in how we respond to current situations. For sometime now people have been complaining and/or worrying about how smartphones and social media are making humans less social. Time will tell if they truly make us less social, but remember when many articles were written about television ruining family relationships as each member had their own TV and were not talking as much as before they had the TV? The TV is still around, and there are still families who are together. Although it is true that people are always on their phone, they still find time to hang out with families and friends. People still try to reach out and meet in person — at least my family, friends, relatives, co-workers do. And judging from the photos in my social media, there are many people who enjoy spending time with other people.

Going back farther in time, Socrates thought writing was not good for the memory. But now people actually think that writing by hand helps us remember better than typing does. Maybe in the not so distant future, somebody will argue that typing is better than dictation, and dictation is better than the next invention.

I used to worry a lot about what the world would be like when the younger generation have become so self-absorbed and apathetic about certain things. But then I remember my mother’s generation and how worried they were about the same things, observing my generation. Of course they thought they were better than my generation. And now my generation think we are better than the current generation. And this current generation will think they are better than the next one.

So there’s nothing new. No new ideas, no new reactions. Just a different setting with characters who are under the illusion that they and their experiences are unique.

As Robert Browning famously said, “God’s in his Heaven,/All’s right with the world.”

Maybe not everything is alright in your world right now, but that will come to an end, for sure. Though good things come to an end, the good news is that bad things come to an end, too.

Blessings.

T.

Numbers: A Poem

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What if each life holds a number

Our mortality, on this code, depends?

A sequence of numbers, an algorithm

Dictates our fate —

How long one lives, how short one’s life,

Who goes first and when?

Who lives longer and till when?

And if our math geniuses crack the code,

Could we cheat death, retain our place?

I submitted this poem to a journal, and the editor was nice enough to email me back saying, “Although it wasn’t accepted for publication, we enjoyed reading your work.” I thanked him for letting me know.

But it really made me wonder what he meant by “we enjoyed reading your work.” Did he mean they thought it was funny? Hehehe.

Anyway, it’s fine. I can always post my poems here, and hopefully someone, somewhere will read it and think about life and reality.

This poem came to me when I woke up in the middle of the night and realized the podcast I was listening to was still on — the host was talking about Pythagoras and numbers. I wasn’t fully awake when the thought came to me.

Anyway, when I showed the poem to my husband he said sarcastically, “Are you Catholic? You think we’re just programs? You think God is a programmer?” 😛

Have a lovely week! 🌹

T.