The Center for Parenting Education

It takes a village to raise a child.
~African Proverb

Experts agree that bullying is a serious issue. It involves not only the bully and the victim, but also all the children who are aware that bullying is occurring but are not directly involved with the situation. What is the responsibility of these “bystanders”? It takes a confident child to stand up to a bully when they witness one in action. I asked two experts about the role and responsibility of the bystander and they said a sense of community coupled with strong role models seem to be an effective strategy to help the bystander take action.

Susan Robison, a local psychologist for adolescents says, “Kids need to get the message from role models such as teachers, administrators, parents, etc. that bullying will not be tolerated, and that it is safe to discuss bullying with us.” She continues, “If youth are held to a high standard of bringing bullying to the attention of an authority figure, and are given full anonymity to do so, they are much more likely to disclose these events, especially if they are praised by authority for doing so.”

Margaret Preston, a psychotherapist with offices in Erdenheim, PA, agrees. She says, “educate these youngsters to be on the alert for bullying and inform them of several options that may be reasonable such as, reporting the bullying to a parent or a teacher, befriending the victim, and building support networks around the victim. [There is] strength in numbers.”

Parents need to instill in their children that bullying will never be tolerated and open a dialogue about what role they both can play in a bullying situation. Parents also need to get involved in any anti-bullying programs their schools might initiate. Adults play a vital role in empowering the bystander. It’s all part of the “village” that helps to end bullying.

by Claire Gawinowicz, Certified Parenting Educator

My daughter was heading to high school. Most parents that I knew were fretting about the transition from middle school, and all the various concerns that accompany that type of change. I was obsessed with just one thought, I only had four years left with my precious child and she would be gone. I felt like I was living in my own personal ticking time bomb.

Four years passed with a million different reasons to celebrate and some very challenging hurdles to overcome. Normal life in every family. Always in my mind, the time bomb ticked. It was a quiet ticking, not one that took away pleasure or that drowned out everyday life. Just a constant nagging in the recesses of my mind.

College preparations were in full swing, the search for schools, the applications, complicated by the fact that she was pursuing playing a sport in college. The process, of course, is all consuming. I had watched others navigate and had promised myself that I wouldn’t let it be so difficult. I failed, it consumed our family. In a way, I relished the distraction from the ticking time bomb.

I remember thinking that if only you had a crystal ball and knew the outcome, you could actually sit back and enjoy the process. The hardest part, I think, is that you can’t rush it, can’t control it, can’t do anything but just put one foot in front of the other. I realized early on that it can be a very stressful time for a teenager and was determined to focus on how to eliminate any excess stress that I could from the process. For our family, that meant sharing the college visitation process with my husband, when I really wanted to do it all myself. After all, the ticking caused me to strive to savor every precious moment that was left.

Flash back a decade or so and I remembered struggling with a similar process when my daughter was in pre-school – the public school/private school dilemma. Tortured to make the right choice for her, I studied the options, made criteria for the selection, made pro and con lists, talked to anyone that would listen. Then one day, a wise friend said, “You know, you really can’t make a bad choice. Your daughter will be fine in either school”.

She was right. She was fine.

Would the same be true for college? She had good choices. She could handle change. She could make new friends.  Worst case scenario, she doesn’t like it, and she transfers elsewhere. Everyone said when she finds the right fit, she will know it. So, that day came and sure enough she said, “This is it, Mom. I am sure.”

Finally, a decision. We could all relax. But, not me. It felt like the end was getting closer. Why was I so distraught? How would I ever survive seeing her off? What would life be like without her? I loved my husband dearly, but did I still like him? Did he like me?

Two dear friends called one day and said let’s make scrapbooks for the kids’ graduation. I said, “You have got to be kidding me. Hot pokers to my eyeballs!” They convinced me we should do it, coercing me with the idea that we would have dinner together once a week. Working full-time, I thought that I just couldn’t fit it into my life, but they pestered me into saying yes. For about nine months, we met weekly and ate dinner while we scrapbooked 18 years of our daughter’s lives. We laughed at the top of our lungs, we cried, at times we sobbed. And, we told stories that we had long since forgotten about our children. We cherished the memories, captured some of it on the pages, and presented the gifts at graduation. And shortly thereafter, off she went.

Her absence was huge, like a gaping hole in our hearts and the adjustment was not easy. But, my husband and I learned some important lessons along the way. First and foremost, we survived the transition because our daughter survived the transition. I like to believe that she thrived, in some small part, because of the foundation that began at home. The changes were enormous for her and for us. Communication was critical. When she needed us, we talked; when she needed space, we managed. At home, we found that we had new-found time. We made lists of things we loved to do and for 18 years didn’t have time to do. My husband and I were joyous when we discovered that we actually did still like each other. We learned that our relationship with our daughter was even better than it had been in high school. She was more mature, more responsible, more grateful, more understanding and the time that we had together on breaks and during the summer months was even more precious.

Junior year of college, she brought her boyfriend home with her to meet us. He is from Chicago and she wanted him to meet everyone, spend time in Philadelphia and go to the beach for a weekend. The first thing she did when they arrived at our home was to show him around the house, and then things were quiet. I wondered where they had gone. I heard voices in our den and ventured in to talk. Sitting comfortably on the sofa together, my daughter was showing him the scrapbook of her life, telling stories much like the ones my friends and I had shared. And he was listening.

Now I sit, about one week before the momentous next mountain to hurdle. My daughter will graduate from college. We’ll all go half-way across country to her university to celebrate – my mom, my sister, my step- daughter, my husband and me. We will all cry, I am sure, as we share our pride and we anticipate the next chapter. She’s headed to Chicago, with a wonderful job waiting, her boyfriend headed there as well. And the difference this time around, I don’t hear the ticking time bomb. I know that we’ll all adjust just fine.

By Beth Ann Neill, parent of a young adult

I am very sympathetic to new parents of Downs kids.  It is traumatic and frightening, but the kids are so wonderful, and every inch of progress makes for grand celebration!  You only can appreciate their beauty once you relax and realize they are just kids, and they remain kids a lot longer than “normal” kids (whatever that is).

We had kids because we wanted kids and with Cara that turned out to be a kid for a life time. Cara is now 40 years old, in some ways she is about 9 years old and some ways she is 40. But overall Cara is a lot more mature than me, she is rock solid in her convictions, right is right, and wrong is wrong, all the time. Never any exceptions. Cara is extremely moral, committed to her loyalty.  She simply loves everybody she meets.

When Cara was born in Burlington Vermont (on April 1, 1971, how’s that for ironic?) we were scared stiff and had no idea what to expect. People back then were uncomfortable around us, and the sometimes said some awkward things, including one guy I worked with who blurted out, “well you’re not going to keep her are you?”

We had a wonderful old family doctor who simply said, “take this beautiful child home and love her.”  We asked questions of what could we expect, like would she be able to walk? She was so double jointed and flexible it seemed like there was no way she could walk.  He assured her she would be fine, but it wasn’t enough.  We heard of a clinic in Cherry Hill NJ that was doing super progressive work with Downs kids.  We made an appointment for an evaluation.  They spent the day with us and tested Cara in many ways; there was a very detailed technical report that said she would be pretty much what she is today.  She is fairly high functioning to start with but the big thing we learned that became our whole recipe for raising a Downs person.  If you treat her normal she will be normal, if you treat her special, you will create a special person.  We had to learn to be consistent. Yes, and no, must be the same every time in every situation. If you are not allowed to climb on the coffee table today, you cannot climb on it tomorrow, or ever. It takes more discipline for the parent s than it does for the child.  And this applies to all kids, not just downs. My wife became the disciplinarian and I tried to be the “Daddy.”  I was not as good as my wife was at being firm. I just wanted to protect her from anything or anybody who would be unkind in any way.  Time passed and our family grew with the birth of Cara’s brother Derek. They are about three years apart, and grew up learning about life and love together.

When Cara was less than two we moved to Massachusetts. Their school system was highly advanced and the Federal Education Mandation laws were just being enacted. It was mandated that all kids be educated to their fullest potential, no matter of their physical or mental capacities. But Mass was really already doing that.  Cara went off to school where they developed an education plan to work primarily on her social skills, Cara was potty trained by the time she was 18 months old, and going to school in a taxi cab!

Cara was a bright penny in our family and with her school teachers.  She was always outgoing, charming, interesting, and very precocious. She stayed in public school until she was 21. In the later years of high school she was a social butterfly, working for the teachers, counselors, and the school office secretaries, she had the run of her high school, and virtually everybody knew her. She did copying, collating, and distribution of tests and handouts, and mail, around the school. Cara went on to work in our local sheltered workshop, and also from there did volunteer work at the local hospital. At the hospital she worked in the women’s health unit, and again became well known and very social.  She made friends throughout the hospital, the sheltered workshop, and high school that she communicates with still today.  It wasn’t all roses, the workshop had a social network of all different types of disabilities, some of the people were more physically challenged than mental and there was a lot of gossip, and manipulating of weaker personalities. At one point Cara became involved with a group of very undesirable clients who were pushy, aggressive, and down right nasty.  I never knew exactly what Cara’s role was in that click but it was not nice.

We got past that phase, but shortly after that Cara’s health really deteriorated, she had gained an awful lot of weight and was often sick, and hospitalized with a lot of upper respiratory problems.  At 305 pounds she was sent home from the hospital with congestive heart failure, and pneumonia, on oxygen, and with visiting nurses tending to an IV of antibiotics.  We explained to Cara that she could not live this way, sitting and eating and watching TV and that the doctors had told us there was nothing more they could do for her. We out right told her she would die if she didn’t get up and move.  She got that through her head and started walking the hall way of our home between TV commercials.  That seemed to work, so to encourage her, my wife got her a pedometer to track her progress. She logged countless miles in the house!  Cara saw her weight drop a couple pounds and that encouraged her to expand her own exercise program over the following years until she was doing exercise tapes, Sweating to the Oldies with Richard Simmons, and Walk away the Pounds. She became obsessed with health and got down to 125 pounds, virtually on her own. Her story was better than many you see on Oprah. That weight loss was probably 10 years ago, and although Cara still fights the weight battle, she has gained back some of her weight but is no longer  morbidly obese. Cara slept with oxygen and we traveled with portable bottles for maybe four years but eventually she got rid of all that stuff and she has not returned to the hospital since. 

Today at forty years old Cara will tell you she is retired, but she works very hard in our home.  She does most of the laundry, takes care of all the kitchen cleanup, and dishes, vacuums, waxes furniture and dusting.  She loves her TV programs, soap operas, Country music and Ben Roethlisberger of the Pittsburg Steelers.   She prowls the internet constantly, on her own computer, researching characters on her soaps, and following stars like Roethlisberger, Wynonna Judd and Alan Jackson.  She talks on the phone regularly to her friends, but her social life is mostly interacting with her niece, and nephews, and family members.   Some of Cara’s friends live in group homes, but Cara has always wanted to live at home. She never wanted to discuss living in a group home.  She loves her life here with her family, she has her room, and her stuff, and that’s all she really wants.  She takes care of her grandma, who at 87 needs Cara’s reminders to take her pills. When grandma spends the winters in our home she and grandma are together constantly, and when grandma goes home for the summer Cara talks to grandma at least twice a day every day.

People throw around the word “retard” like it is a descriptive color or shape.  When some one says it once around me I usually disregard it and hope they just slipped up.  The next time I hear that same person say it I embarrass them and explain how hurtful it is.  The third time they say it I am inclined to take action, like when it happened in the work place or some place I can take it to a management’s attention.  I usually would shun anyone like that but sometimes you are forced to associate with people who are rude and ignorant.

We wanted kids when we were young, and one of our kids still lives with us.  And I wonder what was it that I was afraid of when she was born.  

I met an old friend for dinner last week whom I hadn’t seen in thirteen years. As we were catching up, she asked me why I wasn’t using the degrees I earned (BA in English and a Master’s in Secondary Education) to work outside the home. She asked me if it was my choice to stay at home, or if it was my husband’s idea. She said that I was so “into education” that she couldn’t believe I wasn’t using my degrees. For that matter, come to think of it, neither could I!

Motherhood was not something I initially embraced, nor was it an easy role for me to succumb to. In fact, having one child rocked my world so completely that I decided I wouldn’t have another. It took me some time and intense struggling to see its rewards. At first I stayed home because I couldn’t figure out how to manage working outside the home, being a mom and a wife, and maintaining a home all at once. These were tasks that I most certainly didn’t learn how to do in school. I soon realized, however, that I was the pivot upon which my family rested, and came to embrace parenting my ten-year-old son Max. I even bought a mini-van and volunteered to be classroom mom, surrendering to my fate! I love being Max’s mom now and am proud of it.

I am here for my boy when he wakes up and goes to bed. I am here for him when he comes home from school to hear about his day. I am here for him to drive him to baseball, and Hebrew school and to hear him practice piano. I am here to pack his lunch and walk him to school every morning. I am here to read Harry Potter books with him and watch the movies. I am his biggest advocate (and am here to cheer him on) and his harshest critic (and sternly discipline him when he does something wrong). I am here to teach him how to be a good person.

But he has taught me so much more. My son has taught me about responsibility and how to be a grown-up. He has taught me about trust and kindness and sharing, and not yelling (which I still do at times). He has taught me how to rediscover the joy in boogie boarding, sledding, roller-coaster riding and just plain silliness that only a ten-year-old can conjure. Mostly, he has taught me how to give and receive a type of unconditional love that I never knew or thought was possible. He has taught me the importance of keeping myself well so that I can be the kind of me and mother that he deserves. He has taught me how to be the best person I can be. For that, I am truly grateful and wouldn’t change a thing. The degrees will still be there when he is grown!

By Judy Kroll

“One must know not just how to accept a gift, but with what grace to share it.”

~Maya Angelou

I once told my sister that my 4-year-old daughter loved to pour lots and lots of maple syrup on her pancakes. So my sister, who is known in our family for giving odd gifts, gave my daughter a bottle of maple syrup for her next birthday. Bless my sister’s heart – she thought she was doing a good thing. But my daughter burst into tears when she opened the gift; probably out of disappointment, shock, and embarrassment that her maple syrup infatuation was exposed. It was not pretty.

So I used the occasion, after the party, to teach my daughter how to accept an unwelcome gift. I told her that it is always a good idea to just say “thank you for thinking of me” and then graciously move on to the next present. After the gift-giver has gone home, your child can then express his true feelings. Even though my daughter loved maple syrup, she didn’t want to ever use that particular bottle, so not long after the party we gave it to a food drive.

During the holidays, if kids are ungrateful of the gifts they receive, it can be a good time for parents to teach grace and appreciation and then share the unwanted gifts with others who may need them. It’s a couple of life lessons all wrapped up in one.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
By Claire Gawinowicz, Certified Parenting Educator