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See your lover more clearly this Valentines day

Jan 232012

THE Relationship Blog

Yes, the gift of vision. There is no better gift on Valentine’s Day. I say this only half-jokingly. As we age, our vision is slowly getting a little tricky. The TV set is getting farther and farther away. Our arms are a little too short to read a book. And the writing on the back of the kid’s fever medicine is completely impossible to read. So for Valentine’s Day, glasses are an appropriate gift. They get even better if you can get $6.95 prescription eyeglasses as opposed to spending a bunch of money for the glasses.

Valentine’s Day is odd for us. As relationship bloggers, we have many, many opinions on celebrations of love in general and Valentine’s Day in specific. We believe that devoting one day to say the things that you should be saying on a daily basis is silly. On the other hand, missing out on an opportunity to declare your love is unconscionable. So we make Valentine’s Day a day of love for the whole family with a beautiful meal that we call “fancy meal” which comes with dessert, of course. If there are presents, they need to truly address the love and intimacy that we have with our family.

Goals And Discipline

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Jan 212012

THE Relationship Blog

We started looking at this chore chart for kids and teens. The bottom line answer is that this is wonderful but there is a lot of discussion before we can get to the bottom line. First we need to be on the same page with the idea of discipline. Discipline is not punishment. When we talk about discipline and children, we are using the Webster’s definition of training and creation of routine. Also, when we talk about discipline, we are not just talking about the children.

So now we can jump to the bottom line. We love the idea because it disciplines the parents and the child gains from it. This might get us into trouble but the best thing about these charts is the routine is solidified in both the minds of the parents and the child. Imagine a drill sergeant trying to teach his underlings when he does not have a consistent routine. The reason that a drill sergeant in effective is because he is highly disciplined.

Now you might say, ‘I’m disciplined’. We say, ‘probably not’. This is not an attack on you. Most people are not disciplined. Let’s face it, if everyone was disciplined, the gyms would be full, we would not need diet pills, and the snacky cake industry would go out of business.

Once you put up a chart like this, be prepared to show your children your organizer, whether it is in your phone or a book or your computer. Remember that what we are teaching the kids is that this routine applies to everyone. It makes it a lot easier for the family to understand that this is a lifetime project.

There you go. We think that the charts are great. We think that they apply to the whole family and anything that gets the whole family on the same page has to be good.

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Animals And People Together

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Jan 112012

We are animal people. Specifically, Lee and I are dog people but, as a family, we are animal folk. Our daughter is a zoology major. We have written about our daughter before. She is on the autism spectrum. One of the miraculous things about our daughter is that she is gifted with animals. When I say gifted, I mean in the magical sense. When she was seven, we had an Amazon parrot that was mean as heck. It would walk around on the floor and, if I put out a finger to ask it to climb up, it would bit me…hard. As I am looking at Lee with my ‘I don’t know what to do with this evil bird’ look, our daughter rolls her eyes and grabs the bird by the back and sticks it on her shoulder where the thing nuzzles her neck and plays with her earring.

She has become our animal expert. I have seen her flip a goat into a pen then lecture us on how to do this (as if I would ever be goat flipping). If we need to know about AKC standards, we ask her. If we need to know about Frontline Plus for our dogs, we ask her. She is our in house expert.

If you have ever looked at Temple Grandin’s writings on autism, she is an advocate of the concept that people with autism are not broken but neurologically diverse. Seeing my daughter work with animals is the greatest proof of this. There is a huge amount of documentation on the benefits of animals in therapy especially in autism. As I become more and more educated on this, I no longer see it as a therapeutic mechanism as much as I see it as a gift or, more precisely, part of a new synthesis of human and animal interaction.