THE FOOD WAR

I was chatting to a young dad about his children. He mentioned that meal times were a bit argumentative and not very pleasurable. He and his partner had some difficulty getting the kids to eat meals. Healthy home cooked meals not purchased meals. I thought that I might write something on the topic of what my mother referred to as the Food War. Freud believed that this stage of life played an important role in how we turn out as adults. I know my Mother and Father in law embarked in a War with my husband when he was a young child over a piece of cauliflower that went for three days. My husband had a really entrenched hatred of vegetables for almost his entire adult life primarily out of spite for his parents insistence he eat them.  The mere sight of a cauliflower sent him into the recollection of the "cauliflower war". He relished in telling us all how he won that war, despite being presented with the same cauliflower for three days running and not being given any other food. He resourcefully used his pocket money to buy chips and coke, he discovered that he could sneak food from the fridge and survived nicely. He sat defiantly at the dinner table for three hours every night for three days, staring down his parents and that shriveled up piece of cauliflower, as he described it, as Clint Eastwood or John Wayne would have done in an epic showdown on the main drag of a dusty western town against the bad guy. 

My mother a former maternal and child health nurse regarded the Poo and Food wars as unwinnable battlegrounds. I'm not so sure. Perhaps viewing any interaction with your child as a war isn't the best starting place. I know Freud isn't the most popular psychologist. I do think he got at least a few things right. Freud's theory regarding defensiveness, I believe are right on the money. I think my friends kids are doing just that. They have been challenged and are countering this challenge with defensiveness. Perhaps they are building up catalogs of war stories to re-tell their own children as my husband did with the cauliflower war.

What do we know about kids. On the biological side kids taste buds are different to adult taste buds. When kids complain about food tasting bad it may very well taste horrible to them. Taste buds change as we get older. I know for example when my kids were younger my olive and blue view cheese was in no danger of being consumed by my rascals yet when they hit 20 it was a race to the olive jar. Perhaps disguising some of the more flavorsome veggies like cauliflower and broccoli in a bit of cheese sauce or as my mother did put them in spaghetti sauce chopped up so finely would never be found. I have found some great ideas on the net. It would be remiss of me not to mention Jamie Oliver's great ideas for food prepared for kids. 

One of my palliative care patients said to me while contemplating his life. "Good food and beautiful wines have bought so much joy to my life,  added to these family and friends sharing it with me...well that's it really".  This was a fellow who had traveled the world, had a brilliant career and had numerous life time successes.  When it gets down to it what gave him the most joy was a good meal accompanied with a lovely drop of wine shared with friends and family.

Food can provide such pleasure and my patient had some lovely memories which he recalled to me. Stories of sitting with his friends, on his patio on summer evenings, eating crusty bread, cheeses of all descriptions, sumptuous meals devoured with great friends washed down with red wine. All you have to do is listen to the passionate way in which foodies talk about the joy food has bought them. The preparation, the presenting of the food and the moment of consuming the food.  I wouldn't want my kids to miss out on such a great thing as the joy that food can bring. It's really worth parents putting a bit of creative effort into food presentation and encouraging kids to eat healthy foods. Getting kids involved in the cooking process can have the side benefit of creating good cooks as well as encouraging reluctant eaters to enjoy food. This is an opportunity to create lovely memories for your kids to look back on. I loved getting in the kitchen with my dad, mum and grandmother as a child. I also enjoyed cooking with my kids.

My young friends kids ate a lot of snacks of biscuits,chips and fizzy drink. I'm almost certain that if they were presented with chips, chocolate and biscuits for dinner there would be no argument. You could do that however, if you present children with a good mixture of foods including healthy food they will eat a good balance. It's the parents job to make sure their kids get that variety of foods with the outcome being that the kids learn that food is a thing of pleasure not pain. If you enter into a food war you won't win. If you enter into a food adventure you might have some fun and discover one of life's great joys together with your toddler in tow.

My father's trainer, Percy Cerutty,  would tell me when I was a kid. "Your body is the most complicated machine man has ever known, you must treat it with great respect." He was so right. I know if I am eating well, sleeping well and going for a good walk, everything else just works better. I'm not sure Percy would approve of the banana muffins and chocolate muffins I made with my son, I'm sure he would be pleased to know that we still eat his homemade cereal, when we have the cash to buy the ingredients, its a real treat.

References

Eat for Health the Government food guide

Better Health website 

LOVING A TEENAGER

Adolescence is a tough stage of life. Biologically, hormones are surging through the body effecting growth and mood. Psychologically, some of the big questions are being asked that before this time never occurred to  us. When I think about  my own teenage years and consider the teenagers who have come and gone through my life, I can't think of a more existential time in life. Concepts such as who am I, what is love, am I lovable, what will I be when I grow up and often questions of mortality arise.  Irvin Yalom, one of my favourite existentialist, describes the adolescent response to the potential for death as "getting in the face of death". Teenagers engaging in activities that tempt death is pretty common. We see it in young people driving dangerously in cars, engaging is self harm, taking copious amounts of drugs and alcohol and a host of other dangerous life threatening behaviours. Despite this appearing to be almost a bravado type mentality, scratch the surface of most teenagers behaving in this way and you may find fear of death and perhaps fear of life.

As parents we see our children struggling. Instinctively, we want to pour on the parenting, pull the reins in, lock the doors and drown our children in love, keep them on the road we've been imagining for them since their conception. That road was something we conjured up with our partners while admiring full pregnant tummies, feeling the little person inside rolling around, our great anticipation and imaginings of the life we were about to enter. I know my husband and I had images of parenthood that ended with the two of us sitting in rocking chairs surrounded by adorable well behaved grandchildren. Our children, grown adults with successful careers fitting perfectly into a society that is accepting of them in every sense of the word. We blissfully hang on to this dream for our children without a doubt in our minds that one day it will be a reality.

It's around the time our children hit adolescence that we get our first really big reality check. Perhaps, if we are lucky, we might have had a few little reality checks along the parenting road. Hints that our lovely imagined images might not be actualised. However, its when our kids are "getting in the face of death" that parents realise that maybe the conjured picture of the future might have been a little bit on the lollipops, rainbows and sunshine side  in fact may be completely and utterly removed from reality. Our adorable babies are now lanky, slightly smelly, confrontational budding adults whom are engaging in all kinds of dangerous activities that you may or may not know about.

All those sleepless nights, dealing with tantrums, assertions of being a parent, all the story telling, the walks and movies, all the discussions about life that you've had with your child up to this point were the training ground for the parenting lessons you are about to be bombarded with as your child hits adolescence. This is where you have to bring out the Big Guns of parenting. Its the roller coaster ride of your life where you get a real appreciation for your own parents. So start writing that thank you note now.

Some people are lucky and their children sail through this time. The rainbows, lollipops and sunshine picture is a reality for them.  These are the magnificent parents who have done such a great job their kids are seemingly immune to the challenges of peer pressure, fear of death, questioning life and the future. I think for most of us this is not the case. It certainly wasn't for me. There were and still are some really challenging times for me as a parent with my youngest child about to turn 17, my eldest child being 30. All four, experienced this existential time in different ways however, the big questions were still asked by all of them. There has been a degree of struggle for each of the boys as they traversed the challenges of adolescence emerging into adulthood. The existentialist will tell you that anything worth having involves some kind a epic struggle. I can tell you, without reservation, that I am immensely proud of the men my children have become, I feel privileged to have played some part in this. There were times for me that were so difficult that I had serious doubts that we would make it through the teenage years into adulthood.

 I remember going off to work one day, after one of my sons had told me he had been seriously considering suicide as an option, having a very strong animal like compulsion to follow him around the school yard and in fact everywhere he went to ensure he didn't take this option, instead of going to work. I was panicking on the inside luckily, my years of working as a community worker helped me at this point and enabled me to remain calm on the outside. The parenting instincts went to the side, counselor Sandy stood front and center. I spent hours and hours listening to how my son was despairing of life and suffering with great depression. I provided him with the support he needed such as; medical checks, getting a school counselor on board and later a psychiatrist, luckily he is alive today.

This was me bringing out the parenting big guns. It was about being there when required, allowing my children to find their own path and letting go of the pictured future I had for my kids. Letting them take the brushes, paints and stand in front of the easel and create their own picture for their own futures. They waft in and out coming for advise occasionally or to discuss the finer points. I believe it was my job all those years ago to do the ground work. To help the boys build a nice sturdy easel to provide a huge canvass for them to produce their best work, to show them the array of colours and textures available to them. Then most importantly to stand back and let them create what they will on their own. That imagined ideal my husband and I had, I see that as naive, one dimensional musings of a couple of life travelers who had no idea of the enormity of what lay ahead. My sons have created much more interesting, multifaceted and color filled vista for themselves than we could have ever imagined.

Its a natural part of life to move away from parents and family of origin to create your own place in the world. As much as I would like to keep all my children around me, as much as I love their company, their senses of humour, their wonderful take on the world around them, I know that it is a finite time we share together. The amazing sense of love and security they have created with me will always be there no matter what goes on in their life, it will always be a part of our shared history. I know that I must let go and let them create their master piece.

The rate of suicide among young people is soaring, particularly in young men. It's crucially important I feel, that parents not take a hard line in relation to control. It's a natural reaction for all humans to resist. Imagine yourself playing tug of war, if someone pulls on the rope it's your natural reaction to pull in the opposite direction to win. Adolescence is a time where parents and children can enter a war. Its definitely what happened in my family when I was a teenager. My mothers desperation to maintain control ended badly. I have seen many parents make the same mistake. One father coming to my house pleading with me to be harder on my son, in relation to cleaning his room. Their son kept telling his parents that my son cleaned his room when he wanted to clean it. It was making their control of their son harder. The poor man didn't want to adopt my approach, he didn't even consider it. He honestly thought he was helping me be a better parent by telling me to lay down the law. There can only be one captain, as far as teenagers go they need to be the captain of their ship and parents need to be very good first mates, advising, guiding and assisting with evaluations. They are after all training to be adults and making decisions regarding life directions is what adults should do. Deciding when to clean your own room is a pretty basic decision, probably a pretty safe starting point actually. There's a lot of potential for self directed learning in that one.

My experience has been that letting go a bit, negotiating with kids and asking nicely works far better than engaging in a furious tug of war. The average teenager has enough going on just on a biological cellular level to contend with alone, if you add in a war with your parents it's just going to make everything worse for them. As parents we don't want things to be worse for our children. Sometimes in life things do get worse before they get better. Adolescence, in the main, seems to be one of those times.

I read in one of the text books at university that the existentialist counselor walks along side their clients on a path of discovery, to answer the big questions, or at least realise there are no definitive answers to those big questions.Not having answers gives us great freedom to create our life as we want it to be, not what our parents want it to be. Its really through this creation that brings our children true happiness, its their life to create as they will. When I have used this approach in my parenting I have had much better results than some of my early attempts of trying to hang on for dear life and being in a constant state of panic. The big lesson for me, having successfully gotten 4 men through adolescence, has been trusting that my own parenting has provided a good enough foundation for the boys to build upon. It hasn't been easy and it is still sometimes difficult. I'm not experiencing the imagined fantasy I had with my husband when we were raising four little boys. Personally I think its a much more "meaningful", in the true existential sense of the word, reality I am experiencing. There's still plenty of sunshine and happiness while there have been times when loving the teenage hairy, slightly smelly, rebellious bearded guy standing before me has been a bit challenging love eventually wins out.

Sources:

Crooks, R., & Baur, K. (2011). Our Sexuality. Belmont, CA, USA: Wadsworth.

Gerald, D., & Gerald, K. (2001). Basic Personal Counselling. Frenchs Forest NSW: Pearson Education Australia.

Gerrig, R. J. (2009). Psychology and Life. French Forest NSW: Pearson Education Australia.

Yalom, I. D. (1980). Existential Psychotherapy. New York: Basic Books.

What Makes A Relationship Work, Sticking with the Devil You Know.

It seems that there is a formula for every kind of success. If you want to achieve success in your business, your studies, your career and your relationship is no different.  The common keys to any kind of success are having goals, good communication, respect for yourself and others and persistence. Its very easy to say the words or look for guidance to leaders in the field of relationships such as John Gottman.  However, it isn't so easy to actually pull these skills out of the bag when you are fumingly angry with your partner, tired from being up all night with a crying baby or look over toward your partner and see someone you actually don't like very much, never mind love and respect.  It's not always practical to go for a walk or wait until things calm down. In the heat of a passionate argument it's not the easiest thing in the world to stop and take a break - if only we had a pause button a mute, rewind or delete this section button, it would make things so much easier.

Real people don't talk in the way counselors and psychologist advise us to communicate.  It just isn't realistic when you've been up all night with a crying baby and your partner isn't being the most supportive person in the world to; "talk in the "I".  If you come home from work and find yourself confronted by a woman who is a shadow of the woman you married and you haven't had sex for three months, finding yourself being criticized for not doing the dishes. You are hardly going to have the presence of mind to say "when you say things like "can't you at least do the f-ing dishes" I don't feel valued as human being".

It's pretty normal in a relationship for the love to ebb and flow a bit. Its natural to have times where you feel great love for your partner and times where you don't really like them much and everything in between. Real love is not like it is on the movies, where a couple of people get together and are deliriously in love 24 hours a day. I'm sure it does happen however, I'm not sure its as common place as is represented in the media.

What can we do. At some stage in a couples past they fell madly and deeply in love. I personally love that stage of a relationship where the mere mention of the name of your beloved makes your heart skip a beat. Who wouldn't love that first flush of love.  The science proves that those initial feeling of love are actually like a drug. It triggers a chemical reaction in your body that is strong. Endorphin and a host of other powerful chemicals are charging through your brain and body. You are high on love. Those feelings don't always last and the chemical response you have when first in love do die off after the first two years. Coincidentally, around this time we start seeing the first signs of lets say "the less attractive attributes" of our partners. It must have been that high chemical reaction that made you not see him leaving the towel on the floor or her tendency to leave her personal hygiene products in the most unattractive places in the bathroom. This is where unconditional love becomes more important than physical attraction.

My brother says "Stick with the devil you know, just be extremely careful about the devil you pick". I agree whole heartily with this theory. In my family my picking skills are somewhat of a joke. While my brother picked extremely well marrying one of my friends.  Most experts also agree that we learn more about ourselves by working through our problems with our partners rather than running at the first sign of trouble. How do we translate that to the couple arguing about the dishes with the crying baby, who have stopped having sex and also are sleep deprived. They choose each other, if a couple have also chosen to have a child there must be some very strong feelings of love either now or in the past. Its possible to tap right back into that love perhaps not right at the point when the swear words are flying and sleep deprivation is affecting your thinking processes. Maybe later it will kick in.

If our couple off load the baby to the grandparents, uncle or aunt or best mates who have been dying to have some alone time with that screaming sleepless kid and are just waiting to be asked. The couple might stand a chance. It's really a good thing for kids to have as many loving relationships as possible growing up. These are the relationships that will later become a resource of advise and support. I got awesome advise and support from my Grandmother, my step mother and my aunt and uncles growing up. Advise that I often didn't take in regards to partner choice. It's nice to have more than your parents and your teenage friends to get advise from. Regular visits with these people at the baby stage and throughout life are the foundations for great social support later on in life.

Going on a date with your partner while the screaming kid is off building relationships, is great motivation to dress up and look nice while at the same time is fun and positively gold to the long term happiness of your relationship. One of my best friends has date nights with her husband once a week no matter what is going on they have their date. One week he decides what to do, the following week it's her turn. The rule is, you go even if it is a chick flick or gangster movie that you wouldn't normally see. My friend has said she is often surprised how much she has enjoyed the action movies she thought she would hate.

One of the keys that John Gottman mentions in what sets aside the "masters" of relationships from the "disasters" is the ability to repair the damage of comments like "Do the F...ing dishes".  My brother is definitely a master, being married for 30 years. He uses humour to repair he's failures in communication and lack of house work prowess.  My partner, also can instantly defuse my bad mood and tiredness by making a joke, usually directed at me, or playing a practical joke like leaving very realistic looking fake spiders in all the draws and hanging off the door jams so that when I open the door a spider falls on my head.  Its hard to be mad when you're laughing your head off. Its a good idea to be asking yourself "what can I do to make this relationship a great place to be" rather than looking at all the things that are wrong with your partner and considering how much more superior you are.

It does take work. Some of that work can turn out to be fun. Doing some kind of hobby together, playing a few jokes on each other.  It is a good idea to try to talk to each other in a way that is loving and respectful even if it isn't as well thought out as your psychologist had hoped it would be. It is worth sticking it out with the devil you know. If you happen to have chosen the wrong devil and you've made every effort to maintain the relationship. If you find yourself at the point where neither of you can go on. Make it like a band-aide removal, do it quickly and don't play the blame game. That person may find love with someone else and you are holding them back from finding that person.  My Grandmother use to say "Love is Everything" she in fact wrote a poem about how much she loved my grandfather which, I will post at a later date. If you can't commit to making the relationship work, through the bad times as well as the good times, at least have the decencies to let the other person know and move on without making them feel like they are a failure.  I would lay bets that if you are at this stage you'll be nit picking that persons character to pieces looking for an excuse to get out of there. It's not their fault that you've found them to be, not the best devil for you, so don't punish yourself or them for something neither of you can change.

I believe having a loving relationship even if it's a loving relationship that is outside of what we consider to be "normal" can bring great joy to peoples lives. I suggest that it can be whatever you want it to be. Don't let social pressure determine how your relationship looks, Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracey had a very loving relationship and never lived in the same house together. It's your relationship it's up to the people in the relationship to decide what works. Letting go of the standard model of relationship led me to finding happiness in a bit of an unconventional relationship, I wasted a lot of time trying to conform to something that didn't really suit me. Your relationship can provide so many benefits for example longer life expectancy and better communication skills just to name a few, its worth putting effort into it and being creative.  Here's to finding an appropriate devil and sticking with them.

Puppy Love 

Sources

Berrison, G. (2007). Making Relationships Work. A conversation with Psychologist John M. Gottman. Harvard Business Review, 45-50.

Crooks, R., & Baur, K. (2011). Our Sexuality. Belmont, CA, USA: Wadsworth.

Gottman, J. (1994). Why Marriages Succeed or Fail and how you can make yours last. NY: Simon & Schuster Paperback.