I've been writing this for a while now and as I've said before, it was inspired by a column by a young Asian husband and father in the London Evening Standard.
He was discussing rules to live by and in fact, as I reflect now, at least one of the rules would probably not be able to be published for fear of offending too many people, so I’ll not repeat it here again.
And so, I've always been drawn to these things where people give us some hints and tips from their own life, which might make us think about ours or make it better and so you can imagine that on Saturday when I was reading the weekend Times, I came across an article called The 89 rules for life - according to talk Times writers and I was straight in.
I read The Times a lot (on subscription on my phone) and so, to see six of their regular contributors write down some of the lessons they've learned through long and colourful and interesting and creative lives seems to be a pretty good bet for something that would catch my attention.
So, what I thought I would do is take one or two (or a few more) of the little tips they've given us and add them here in a tiny little series.
Some of the stuff they wrote was utter garbage (in my humble opinion).
I'm at least clever enough to know never to get between two spitting llamas - yes, that was one of the pieces of advice, but some of the others were real gems and there were one or two that stopped me in my tracks and made me think for more than a minute about why I hadn't thought of that before.
The first of those is perhaps the most profound which was written by Caitlin Moran and goes a little bit like this “how someone's making you feel is probably how they feel”.
If I was you, I would read that again and perhaps a third time.
I'm on my third teenage child in terms of parenting experience, but still on my first wife,
I can't believe I've never thought of this before because I've seen it countless times at home and countless times at work.
When someone is shouting at you and it makes you feel angry or scared or distressed, it's almost certainly because that is how they feel.
Moran goes on to explain (and particularly for teenagers) that we should not try to solve their problems in those circumstances, we should ask them how we can help them to solve their problem.
This is quite a profound insight because it takes us to the situation, particularly in teenagers again, where we should not ‘snowplough parent’.
The middle class’ attitude now is to try to remove all obstacles in front of their teenagers to a large degree.
They do this through influence and money and time.
Anything that comes in the way of the teenager is swept out of the way by the more experienced, wealthier or more time rich individual who constitutes their parent or guardian.
If we do that, we're unable to teach our teenagers how to deal with their own problems and difficulties, and when they get a little bit further on and up the ladder, they’re unable to cope with it.
This rule for life, written by Moran on Saturday, made me sit back and wonder how and why I'd never thought of it before.
Probably worth passing on, probably worth reading a couple of times.
Blog Post Number - 3364
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