Part 1:
My poor kids have a Yogi-Buddhist-Pacifist (and Christian leaning) Mom. This does not bode well if you are a 15-year old boy who loves video games. Have you ever tried to find non-violent video games for your kids? There are not a lot out there, even the E-rated games can lean heavy on the brute force. But this week, I made an exception.
My six-year old daughter came into my room sporting a doo-rag and started to pose menacingly in front of the mirror. She burst into tears. I went over to try to help her, “How do you want the bandana to look?” I asked, while tightening it up in the back. “I don’t look like a boy!” she lamented, stomping her feet. I worked with her, trying to get her doo-rag just so, but she kept repeating, “I still don’t look like a boy!”
After loads of tears and a bit of talking, I figured out that she wanted to look like a boy because there are no “cool” girls in the video games she plays with her two big brothers. “All the girls are lame. Even Peach on Super Mario doesn’t get to DO anything.” My heart sank into my stomach. She was right, Peach IS lame. (Insert a black and white image of a girl tied to the railroad tracks yelling softly, “help!, help!”)
So, I did something I would have never done with my boys. I “you-tubed” Laura Croft. Drew and I watched Laura Croft clad in fatigues and combat boots climb ropes, do a back-flip, run through burning rubble, and yes — even shoot a gun. My daughter took off her bandana and left happily, resting assured that there was still hope for her to “kick butt” in the universe yet.
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I felt both relief to show her another model other than the princess who needs saving, and I also felt defeated by showing her a girl kicking a** to prove my point. It brings me back again to the surroundings of our culture — both the culture we live in here in our little corner of the US, and also the culture I’ve created in my family. Which brings me to:
Part 2:
My two little kids have been fighting like cats and dogs lately. Make that feral cats and rabid dogs, with constant verbal pushing, bossing around, and screaming – with me yelling up the stairs after them, “I’ve had ENOUGH yelling and screaming!!!”
The irony of my own yelling and screaming to end their yelling and screaming finally caught up with me and I decided that, as it often is, this situation was more about me than them. I decided to do what I’d been telling them to do; stay calm, express my feelings, use my “powerful voice” to ask for what I want clearly.
I pulled them together and told them that the house feels terrible when we yell, I apologized for yelling, and asked them to stop. I told them what Jesus suggested, that when someone strikes you across the cheek, you should turn and give the other one. That really seemed to get their attention. We talked about metaphor and what it really meant to “turn the other cheek”. Is Jesus really saying we should let people slap us around? What does he mean by that?
In the end, the kids seemed to understand what turning the other cheek meant. They understood the radical approach of not fighting back, even when it seems so natural and justified to do so. We talked about what it meant to be reactive, and what it meant to be thoughtful. We talked about how even words and tone of voice can be violent, and how we always have options other than violence.
Part 3:
Violence is certainly not a black and white issue. There are times when pacifism takes too much patience, or the costs of doing nothing are too high to employ. Yet, I want my kids to feel totally comfortable questioning the knee-jerk reaction to fight back, the ingrained defensiveness of our western culture, and the glorified violence that swims all around us, every day.
I often feel alone when trying to teach these principles of non-violence. It is the norm to shoot-em-up for entertainment value. There is so much defensiveness and separateness in our immediate daily world. There is brutal killing and war happening in our global world. How can I expect my kids to find creative solutions to violence when there are so few examples of it around us?
I struggle to know how to find that balance. The last thing I want to do is raise my kids in a dogmatic, black-and-white home where nuance and reality are not investigated. (Even on the pacifist end of things.) All I know, is that it starts small. I can’t begin in the global realm of things. I can’t change the world, but I can start closer to home. In the Upanishads, it says:
As is the human body, so is the cosmic body.
As is the human mind, so is the cosmic mind.
As is the microcosm, so is the macrocosm.
As is the atom, so is the universe.
And so it is with my family – what I can do is start with myself. I can start by pulling back judgmental thoughts of others. I can stop yelling at my kids. I can catch myself when I feel like the world is against me and question it. I can work diligently to help my kids feel loved and calm and supported. I can go against the norm and decide not to have first-person shooters playing daily in the white noise of our house. I can be devoted to finding creative solutions for frustrating problems. I can work to create an environment where the default mode for my family is one of kindness, awareness and sensitivity to others. A default mode that alerts them to pay attention when they are out in the world experiencing something that seems foreign to them. And, perhaps the biggest thing I can do create big change, is to no longer fight the kids’ fighting. I can see their constant bickering as a spiritual training course for myself, an opportunity to practice patience and tolerance throughout the day. The word pacifist seems a bit ironic, in reality. Ain’t nothing passive about it.
One thing is for sure — I have a long way to go before I become a truly peaceful person with a peaceful house, and peaceful kids living in a peaceful world. For some strange reason though, I don’t for one second think that it’s a lost cause. As is the atom, so is the universe. . …
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How about you? What works to keep the peace in your homes?
Oh, I don’t have any advice to give here, but I can surely commiserate. I hate it when my kids fight. And I’m definitely not (wo)man enough to think of their fighting as a spiritual training course for myself. It feels more like a medieval torture process.
So I’d love to hear what other people do . . .
Ooh, I love the “no longer fight the kids fighting.” I’ve been looking at these situations lately and asking myself, am I creating more suffering? How can we respect people’s feelings and anger without creating more suffering? Not easy, but I can definitely relate to that disconnect between the ideal of less fighting and the reality of me yelling at them to stop yelling (and I can definitely fall into the trap of being one of those patient, patient, patient — EXPLODE people).
I normally have the luxury of being the wage-earner for our family. This weekend when my wife needed a break to go to the gym and a wedding shower, I had this very problem on my hands. I think my kids are beginning to suspect that my plan for behavior-modification doesn’t go beyond the “time-out”. Maybe I could plant a garden, solely for the purpose of weeding/punishment?
I love how you mentioned that our culture provides very few creative alternatives to violence. It’s so true. Unfortunately drama (which I guess is just a manifestation of suffering) is considered great entertainment and our entertainment overlaps with our education (especially for children). It’s definitely a challenge to provide good entertainment for our kids that doesn’t send some hidden destructive message.
My son made this comment once – “Why won’t Peach save Mario for once? She just sits around waiting for him to do all the work. Sometimes he probably wants someone to save him.” Maybe Nintendo can update the line!
Thanks for that verse … very inspiring!