For Me; A book I Should Have Read a Long time Ago

    I've just read Nonviolent Communication a Language of Life by Marshall Rosenberg. This is a book I should have read many years ago but I couldn't because it just came out in 2003. There are many excellent books on good communication. Many cover the same territory as Rosenberg covers but Rosenberg has made the message more concise and practical. After you read this book you will have some practical things you can use.

    Rosenberg covers four areas: Giving form the heart, Compassion, observing without evaluating and identifying and expressing feelings.

    I was a teacher and every day I saw how important good communication was. The more accurate and particular you were the more successful things were.. 

    You had to watch your students for cues from them as to how they were feeling and how they were reacting. Sometimes missing a clue could make a big difference. I asked all my classes to watch what I did when I first came in the classroom. They really didn't know so after some prompting they saw what I was doing. I made sure that I looked at every student to see if there were any clues I should pick up from them. This made sense to the kids. I also suggested that they do the same for me. Check me out. Am I in a bad mood? 

   Sometimes dealing with parents  required care or you could end up in a nasty conversation. Looking back at some difficult interviews usually showed that I missed something.

    So Rosenberg's book puts things in a format the is practical. If you follow his ideas you can avoid some nasty communications problems and solve problems once you're in them. He gives examples with students, couples, staffs and street groups. 

    So if you like books on communication, this is a good one.

When You're Wrong, You're Wrong.

   I usually don't comment on Canadian current events because followers outside Canada aren't interested and don't know much about it. 

    A few days ago we had well known academic and  politically active mouth piece, Tom Flanagan, make a very unfortunate statement. He wondered out loud if people should be put in jail because of pictures they look at. He was referring to pornographic material and in particular pictures of children. He had made a similar statement three years ago but this time it was videoed and put on you tube. It went viral. He was dropped as a commentator from CBC. He was dropped by the Wild Rose Party from being an advisor. The Conservative party of Canada dropped him from any activity. At one time he was prime minister Harper's chief of staff.

    Now such a statement is just wrong in many ways. People should go to jail for looking at pornographic pictures involving children as children have to be harmed in order to get the pictures.

    Now some academics have jumped to Tom Flanagan's defence trying to say that  he was raising the topic to bring about discussion of the issue. Not on this one . It's just completely illogical. 

    Professors and teachers use the procedure of throwing  out challenging ideas to get their students to think about issues. This was the wrong topic to be used for discussion stimulation.

    What is really sad is that Tom Flanagan has written a very strong article defending himself. 

    I hope we've seen the last of Tom Flanagan and that others will think twice about opening their mouths with similar unthinkable ideas. 

Snow Visits Me Again.

     
    Last night I knew the forecast was for snow. The wind blew from the east all night. I was up a couple of times but it wasn't snowing. When I got up this morning there was heavy snow falling. There was a strong north east wind and visibility was limited. It was one of those storms where you say, "I hope this doesn't last long!"  By about 11:30 AM the snow had stopped but it left lots for me to shovel. 

    We are approaching spring equinox. Days are lengthening. The sun rose at 7:16 this morning and set at 6:17 tonight so it's giving us about 11 hours of sunlight. Some of you have had your last snow of the winter. I will get lots more snows. Our snow should melt by April 1 but there will be snow fall after that.

Shoveling this kept me out of trouble for a while!

I took a quick peak around the neighborhood.

Perspectives Gained by Searching

    Sometimes I start an aimless Internet search when I'm feeling curious. I was born about 5 miles from the village of Esk,  Sask. In it's hay day Esk had a peak population of 50. Now it's population is probably zero. I Googled this village last night because I knew there were several websites about it. None of these sites had much information because no one has contributed to them.

    My search did lead to a link on cemeteries. There were two cemeteries for the village. Think about it ? Two cemeteries for a village of 50 people. First , I went though the list  in the Baptist cemetery. It's a walk threw history. There were people who were elderly when I was a child and those who have  died since I left the area. One thing I noticed was that an Aunt and uncle were not buried there so now I will have to look for them.

    The Lutheran cemetery is larger and that's where my relatives are buried. My Great Grandpa donated the plot of land for the cemetery. Again, I was just going through the names and not concentrating.   All of a sudden a name popped out at me and it was my Mom. Why did the name pop out? I haven't heard my Mom referred to by her name for a very long time as we always talk about "Mom" and her friends who would use her first name are not here anymore. By this time I was awake and I knew what name would be coming next...my sister who passed away when she was eleven yeas old. 

   So coming across these two names got me thinking. Mom died in 1973, My sister died in 1953. So this year there are two anniversaries. My Mom passed away 40 years ago and my sister passed away 60 years ago. I started to wonder how these family members will be remembered. There aren't very many people who are living who knew my sister. Her memory is carried by very few people. My Mom is in a similar situation. If my Mom was living, next year she would have been 100. Very few of her acquaintances are left. Very few people are left who knew her. 

   So time rolls on and generations spend their time here and pass away. Grave markers will remind people of who was here. Slowly over time the markers will also disintegrate and we will be forgotten. 

Communication With Children on Health Issues.

     So my previous post on communication with children was setting the stage for talking to children about their health conditions. Most of the time we do a good job of communicating with our children. Sometimes we could do better. When it comes to health issues it is crucial that we get it right.

     My story is this.   It happened a long time ago...in the late forties. The world was a different place. When I was seven or eight years old I began having "spells" as my mother called them. I was taken in to the old country doctor and he diagnosed my condition as epilepsy. I'm not sure if he explained to my mother what the condition was . I'm not sure if my mother understood what was going on. I certainly didn't understand and had many misconceptions that frightened me. I thought I had something that I would die from! My mother was warned to watch that I didn't swallow my tongue. I thought the condition I had related to my heart and even little kids knew that heart attacks kill people. I also sensed that there was a great stigma related to this condition. People had strange ideas about it and thought those who had epilepsy were somewhat deranged. This adds to a kid's anxiety.

    I was given medication. I was given responsibility for taking the medication. Often I didn't take the medication so had more seizures. 

    So my example illustrates what I have to say. It is extremely important that we explain to children what medical condition they have. Children understand much more than we give them credit for. Sometimes the child's anxiety and loneliness is worse than the condition itself. Yet, people still do not take the time to fully explain conditions to children.

    Fortunately I had what is known as juvenile epilepsy and when I hit puberty the epilepsy stopped. 

   Now three years ago I was diagnosed with seizures again! Of course, I thought the diagnosis was wrong because after all I had experience with seizures and these seizures were not remotely the same as what I had as a child. So I came home and immediately went on the Internet and found that my specialist was right. 

    It's now known that in many situations a seniors forgetfulness and confusion is caused by senior epilepsy.

   So maybe communication has to be carefully done with older people too or at least with this elderly person.

   I am doing well. I do not have any seizures. I take my medication but the medication has side effects. It bothers my balance.

Communication with Children

    Since all the years of my career were spent with children , communication with children is extremely important. There's no one right or wrong way to talk to children...there are many ways. Each child is different as each adult is unique and so there will automatically be variations. 

    Basically all we have to do is focus attention on the child and make sure that we are speaking to the individual. We are talking to a human being so just because the person happens to be a child doesn't mean we have to change from our normal pattern of speech. Sometimes we see people using exaggerated baby talk to communicate with little kids . It may be cute and fun but the kid doesn't learn much when things are dumbed down.

    One of my favorite short stories was about a boy who went to the store with his Dad to buy a pair of shoes. The clerk talked to the Dad and the Dad relayed the clerk's message to the kid. When the kid answered he spoke to his Dad and his Dad relayed the message to the clerk. It's a well told story and is a good illustration of what not to do. If anybody knows this story , tell me the author and a title as I can not remember them. 

    We don't have to over simplify our speech. Speak to the kid's level. Kids know when we're dumbing things down and we lose some credibility 

     Sometimes we have to catch a kid's attention. Most people yell and they do get the kid's attention but the yelling raises the stress level so, you have the kid's attention but have increased the stress. A stressed conversation usually doesn't go well. Patience helps. Take a deep breath. Lower your voice an octave. It usually catches their attention and doesn't cause any side effects. 

    Talking to kids is sometimes a challenge that increases our stress and things can get complicated in a hurry. I know. I've been there. I just know that if you can discipline yourself the conversation can be beneficial and fun. I like talking to kids on our street. It's always a pleasant part of my day and I usually learn something in a very interesting way.

My Last Request

    A few days ago I attended a small memorial for Joseph. I first met Joseph more than thirty years ago when his children attended the school I taught in. When I retired and started volunteering at the Nature Center Joseph was working there in maintenance so I got to know him quite well.

     The memorial was a simple family run affair. A eulogy was given and prayers read. Prayers ran seamlessly from Christian to aboriginal. I'm cool with that as I've experienced it many times before. Many people told of their experiences with Joseph and you learned much more about him from his family and friends. Many times they referred to Joseph being in heaven to reunite with his parents and some siblings.

     Listening to this I began thinking about the place and journey my spirit might take when my life is over. I began to wonder about things. I wondered if my spirit could go to several different places. Could part of my spirit go to heaven and I could be reunited with my parents and little sister? Could part of my spirit be released in the Great Sand Hills where many other spirits roam. Since I like being in the peaks of the Rockies could part of my spirit forever roam among to lofty peaks?  That would be my last request. 

    I'm not sure if I make this request to those who send me on journey or wait until I get to some other more appropriate place.

    Now I don't know what I've achieved with this post. Have I established a new genre of fiction? Have I succeeded in embarrassing myself again?  Have I ostracized myself from my relatives again? How many rigid religious rules have I broken?

    Well, am I worried? Of course not! If my readers have not already closed their eyes and put their hands over their ears and gone off to another blog, I will get interpretations guidance and opinions from my followers.  After all, I have to trust my blog  followers.