When I think back to my life, the worst years I had were from ages 13-15.  When I was in primary school, I was very popular and everybody liked me.  I did well in school and all was good.  When I showed up to 7^th grade, for no apparent reason, I became the lowest of the low, a loser even amongst “losers.”  I didn’t change any, I was the same person I always was, but everything around me had suddenly changed, and it was awful.  Nobody would talk to me for fear of associating with me and being ‘tainted’ by how uncool I was.  People would literally spit on me as I walked down the hall.  I remember there was this one guy, Bret, who literally took great delight in tormenting me and leading his friends to do the same.  I would go home crying very often.  Nobody had any good advice to give me.  I was lucky, though, in that there was one friend who stuck by me.  He didn’t care what others thought, and if it weren’t for Ben, I don’t know how I would have survived (metaphorically, not actually).  The sad thing is this:  my experience is not all that uncommon.  I sometimes wonder if Buddha had been around in modern times whether he would have said there are four lower realms (instead of three), one of which being Middle School!

These middle years are awful – we want to still be a kid, but we are scorned if we do.  We try to be an adult, but we have no idea how and everything is ackward.  We start to have a billion hormones rage through us in countless directions, and we have no idea how to deal with them.  We don’t feel like we can turn to anyone reliable – we don’t dare turn to our parents because they are just so embarrassing and they still think and relate to us as a kid, we can’t turn to our teachers because then we are a brown-noser.  We can only turn to our friends, but they are just as lost as us.  We are not allowed to like anything, because doing so is a sign of weakness – we are somehow twisted into believing we have to hate everything that is good as a sign that we are not a kid anymore.  But above all, we are completely obsessed with what other people think of us.  We would sacrifice anything on the alter of getting people to like us, but the more we do so the more we become entwined in pain and endless drama.  Many kids turn to cigarettes, drugs, alcohol or sex in a desperate effort to “fit in” and “not be a kid anymore.”  It is at this age where being ‘cool’ becomes much more important socially than being successful in school, sports or activities.

And here is the really sad and scary thing:  it is all starting much earlier now for our kids.  11 is the new 13.  All of our kids are going to have to go through this stage of their life, there is simply no way around it.  Some might be lucky and get by OK, it does happen, but many more will find these early teen years to be the worst of their lives.  So what are we as parents supposed to do to help?

Probably the most important thing you can do is make yourself somebody they feel free to come to for advice.  If they don’t come to you, you become directly useless to them.  You can still set a good example for them (and never underestimate the importance of this), but our ability to directly help them becomes very limited.  So how do we become somebody they want to come to?  There are four keys to this:

1. Wait for them to come to you.  This is so hard to do, but it is vitally important.  When others give us unsolicited advice, what do we do?  We reject it and we become defensive.  Our kids are the same.  But when they come to you on their own, then they are open to what you have to say.  You may wind up saying less, but what you do say will stick and be well received.  A great time for this is when you put your kids to bed.  We have a policy of “you can ask one questions before you go to bed.”  Since they want to stay up, they get in the habit of asking you questions, then when things bother them and they trust you, they ask questions about how to deal with the problems in their life.  Your first instinct may be to say, ‘we will talk about it in the morning’ because you want to get on with your own evening, but these times with our kids are precious and we should not waste them.
2. Don’t judge them. When people judge us, do we feel like going to them for advice?  Of course not, so why would our kids be any different?  We should never judge, but instead be an understanding advisor who has traveled this path before and can offer some friendly advice.
3. Respect that their actions are their choice.  This too is vital.  When others try to control or manipulate us, what do we do?  We rebel and do the opposite of what they want just to show them whose in charge.  Well teenagers do this doubly so!  We genuinely need to respect the fact that they have to make their own choices and decisions.  We tell them, “you have to decide what to do, I can’t do it for you.  I can only help you make your own decision.”  The interesting thing is the more we put the responsibility for making decisions onto them, the more responsible they become with the decisions they make.  And it is true, it is their choice.  We can’t control them even if we tried.  Yes, we can blackmail them but we can’t control them.  The sooner we accept this truth, the sooner we start helping our kids become responsible for themselves.  There is a huge difference between lecturing our kids and helping them solve their own problems.
4. Don’t get mad at them regardless of what they come to you with.  Establish early on a policy which says “if you come to me first with something you have done, I promise you won’t get in trouble.”  This is very important.  If they know that they won’t get in trouble, then they will come to you.  But if they do get in trouble when they do come to you, then they will hide everything from you and you will enter into a dysfunctional game of cat and mouse with them.

Finally, let’s examine some parenting strategies during this challenging period of our children’s lives.

1. Start preparing our kids early.  Start identifying and working on what will be their greatest weaknesses.  After a kid turns 8, they become more or less self-sufficient.  From 8 to about 12, you can still work with them.  You should view this entire period as laying the foundation for what is to come.  It is like preparing for battle.  You need to think about what middle school will be like for them, and how they are likely to get themselves into trouble, and start working on those things now.
2. It seems to me the number one common weakness to most middle school kids is attachment to what other people think.  So when you see early signs of this, you need to repeat thousands of times, “it doesn’t matter what other people think, you need to form your own opinion.”  Every occasion we have to transmit this idea, we should use it.  It does not matter if it becomes obnoxiously repetitive for them where they are repeating it back to us in a mocking way everytime we say it.  Keep saying it.  By doing so, we will drive it deep within them and we can only hope that it will echo within their minds when they are lost in their darkest hours.
3. Another common pitfall for middle school kids is to go to the other extreme of completely isolating themselves from everybody else.  From one perspective, we might think this is a good thing, but how many of us are strong enough to not get lost with no healthy support network around us?  We all know people who isolated themselves in these years and never really recovered – they remain people who really have no life and don’t know how to relate to other people at all.  So if we see those tendencies in our child, then we need to apply effort to get them out of the house, off of the video games, or their nose out of their books.  Obviously books and video games are not all bad, but if we notice that our kid is using them as an escape to avoid having to deal with people then this is an early warning sign for trouble down the road.
4. It is likewise very important to start preparing them early for what is to come.  Sometimes we think it is best to not talk about things that are coming, but I disagree.  Within reason, of course, I think it is very important to prepare our kids in advance for the challenges we know they will face, such as bullies, quickly turning friendships, drugs, alcohol, porn, sex, etc.  Yes, all of these are very difficult subjects, but if we don’t educate our kids early about these things then their friends will do the job for us later on.  They first start hearing about these things around 8 or 9.  They will often even ask you about them.  The conventional wisdom is to tell them they are too young to think about these things, but I think this is when we should be talking to them about.  Tell them straight up, in a forthright manner, what these subjects are all about and how people get themselves into trouble with these things.  They will ask lots of questions that make you uncomfortable, but don’t hold back.  Answer them honestly.  Your doing so will earn their trust and respect, and with that they will listen to your advice about how to deal with these things.  Explain to them what are the healthy ways of dealing with these things so that they know.  Tell them the truth about where these things lead if taken to extremes, and how easy it is to start doing these things in an effort to fit in, but then how easy it is to become sucked in by them where we find it difficult or impossible to stop.  Don’t be afraid to make them scared, because frankly, they should be.  Don’t moralize about these things, just try equip them so that they can make responsible choices.  It is helpful if we ourselves do not drink, smoke or do any drugs.  If they see us doing it, we are implicitly giving our kids permission to do the same.
5. Help your kids know that there is something on the other side.  While I know it appeals to not the best part of me, my father always used to tell me that “in the end, the nerds rule the world.”  How many “Kings of High School” wind up lost in life?  Many.  We need to help our kids see through the shroud of the middle school years to what lies on the other side.  When they can see this, it will act as a compass for what is important and help them not get swept away.
6. Adopt a policy of “you have discretion within a box.”  Kids naturally want the freedom to make their own choices.  So we tell them, I too want you to be free.  I will give you as much freedom as you can use responsibly.  So you define for them a box within which they have the freedom and discretion to do as they wish.  Then, the deal you make with them is if they use that freedom in a responsible way then you will expand the box of their freedom; but that if they use it in an irresponsible way, you will shrink the box.  It won’t take long before they understand the dynamic – they will get their freedom, you will get your responsible kid.
7. Don’t be bothered by them spewing venom towards you.  Our kids will say all sorts of hurtful things towards us about how we are ruining their lives, they hate us, they can’t wait to get out of the house, etc., etc., etc.  If we allow such comments to bother us, then we give our rebellious teenager power.  Think “water off a duck’s back.”  When a patient in a psychiatric ward verbally assaults their doctors, the doctors remain unphased because they understand that it is the person’s mental sickness talking, not the person.  In the same way, during the teenager years, our children are possessed by the host of delusions of the middle years, and so it is their delusions talking, not them.  Don’t let it bother you.  If you do let it bother you, you feed the dynamic and it will only get worse.
8. Hold your breath (and pray)!  A very experienced friend once told me you have until about 12 to shape a kids personality.  But after that, for the next 6-12 years all you can really do is hold your breath and hope they come out OK on the other side.   During these times, all you can do is accept and pray.  Your acceptance protects you from developing attachment to your kids making certain choices (this is important because if you are attached to them making certain choices, then you will start to manipulate them into making these choices, which, as we saw above, just leads to rebellion).  And your prayers protect them internally.  You have a very close karmic connection with your kids, and you also have a close karmic connection with the Buddhas, so you are in many ways a bridge between the Buddhas and your children.  Buddhas have the power to bestow blessings.  The function of a blessing is to turn somebody’s mind towards correct paths.  This is exactly what our kids need.  The power of our prayers is entirely dependent upon three things:  our faith in the Buddhas, the purity of our compassion (free from attachment) towards our children, and the depth of our karmic connections with both the Buddhas and our children.  We need to actively develop all three so our prayers have maximum effect.  A deep understanding of emptiness is also a very powerful way of increasing the power of our prayers.

Just as these years are some of the most difficult for our children, they are also some of the most difficult for us as parents.  In the movie “the Weatherman”, Nicholas Cage has a very famous line, “easy is not part of the adult vocabulary.”  It is not easy, but spiritually speaking it will be a time of tremendous growth for us.  Ultimately, we have no control over what happens, and learning to accept that is a huge part of our spiritual path.

Your turn:  What is your worst memory from middle school?  What spiritual lesson can you learn from it now?

I have a “theory” that before they turn three, our children are not yet “human beings”!  I am not quite sure what they are, but you certainly can’t reason with them, you can’t expect them to be able to do anything, and you can be guarranteed they will do the opposite of whatever you want them to do!  Of course I am joking, but sometimes I do wonder…  Before our kids turn one, they are just babies and don’t get into too much trouble.  But from the time they can crawl around until about three, three and a half, kids are at their most difficult (until the teenage years, of course).  Once you get past three, it generally gets easier and easier.

During the early toddler years, our kids have a very well developed sense of “no-dar”, meaning they head straight for whatever is the most dangerous thing in whatever room you find yourself in!  I remember when my first child was 18 months old, and she thought it was really funny to climb up on top of my desk everytime I would turn my back and then start jumping up and down on it like a monkey going “yeahn yeahn yeahn yeahn”!  By the end of this period, our homes are virtual fortresses, with baby gates, security clips and barricades everywhere.  Anything of value, well frankly everything we own, is put up on shelves beyond their reach.  There is just no deterring them, they are like the Energizer Bunny!  So for about a year, all the hear is “no” as they head for the wires, the knives, the garbage, etc.

It is no surprise then that between ages two and three we have what are affectionately known as “the terrible twos” where they only know one word – “NO”.  But this time, it is them telling us no!  Everytime we try elicit their cooperation for basically anything, they are pre-programmed with one response – “NO”.  By this age, they have discovered our weaknesses.  When we go out in public, they know we will do anything so they don’t throw a fit and embarrass us, so what do they do?  They threaten to throw a fit everytime we don’t give them what they want.  For example when we go to the store, if at any point we made the mistake of buying them something they asked for at the store, then from that point forward everytime we go to the store they will ask us to buy them something and threaten to throw a fit if we don’t.  Stores know this which is why there is so much candy and little kid plastic crap toys in the checkout lanes!  (Note for any future parents:  a good rule is “we only buy things we decided to buy before we got to the store”.  If you never say yes once, then you avoid this dynamic).  They also know we are at our most vulnerable when we get on the phone or when we have guests over.  Look out!

So what is a parent to do during these difficult toddler years?  The following are the things that have helped me:

1. Accept this age as purification for your own past toddler years.  When we were toddlers, in all of our countless past lives, we too did the same things.  So we happily accept this as purification.
2. We remind ourselves that this is entirely normal.  Especially for first time parents, these years can be terrifying – oh dear, I am raising a monster!  But don’t worry, every parent has gone through the same things, probably even Ghandi’s mother.  It passes, so don’t worry.
3. Don’t feed the behavior by responding to it in an animated way.  If you show that the behavior bothers you, then you can 100% guarrantee you will get more of it.  Remember, at this stage of their development they are trying to figure out how the world works.  If I push this red button, Elmo sings a song.  If I go digging in the garbage, mommy freaks out.  Look, how fun!  We need to maintain total equanimity with respect to everything they do, not freaking out, just dealing with the situation calmly.
4. Just accept that your house will have to be completely baby proofed for several years.  Some parents think they can somehow teach their kids to not keep pushing the power button on the TV.  Maybe some succeed, but I have yet to meet any myself…  And even if they do, at what emotional and mental cost?  Not just for our own sanity, but actually for the child’s development, I think it is better to create giant “safe to go” zones, where they can roam around freely and do anything without exposing themselves to danger or breaking anything valuable.
5. The less words you use the better.  It is useless to try lecture them or reason with them.  In general, the more we talk to our kids, the more it becomes an endless “blah blah blah blah” to them and they learn early on to just tune us out.  As the proverb goes, actions speak louder than words.  If they are putting their hand in the blender, don’t talk, just act – physically remove them from the area.  They will kick, they will scream, but you just act – clearly and decisively, without hesitation (if they smell the slighest hesitation in you, they will exploit it to the end).
6. Primarily tell them what they can and should do, not what they can’t and shouldn’t do, “the DVDs are for watching movies, not plates for your dolls” or “the silverware is for eating, not banging on things.”  In particular, it is good to start developing “wisdom power words” that in one word communicate everything they need to do.  For example, many of the problems come when our toddlers have to wait for us to be able to help them because we are doing something else.  When they start to smolder, say “patience” in a loving way.  At first they will have no idea what you are talking about, but when done again and again they will start to understand, and then with just one word you help them know what they should be doing with their own minds.  Other good examples are, “calm” or “calmly” or “share” or “gentle”.  Doing this early and often helps lay the foundation for later when you use wisdom phrases which are more complex (I will do a future post on this).
7. Redirect to try minimize the times you need to say no.  Generally, at this age they are programmed to explore.  So you have to find something more interesting than what they are currently looking at and redirect them towards that instead.
8. First time gets a “pass”, second time gets a pre-explained “natural consequence.”  Very often our kids will do something wrong, and then we punish them.  But they didn’t even know it was wrong to begin with, so it seems very unfair to them.  Instead, the first time they do something wrong, you should say, “what you did is not correct for X reason.  That object should be used in Y way.  If you do that again, then I will apply Z natural consequence.  Then verify that they agree.”  A real life example was “hitting your brother on the head with your dolly is not correct because that hurts him.  Dollies should be loved, not used to hit people.  If you hit your bother again with the dolly then I will take the dolly away for the rest of the evening.  Do you agree?”  Then, have them acknowledge what you say and agree in advance to the consequence.  Then, if they hit their brother again with the dolly, without saying a single word, just take the dolly away and put it some place beyond their reach.  If they protest and scream, which they will, you just remind them that they agreed.  Then you let them cry and throw their fit, but don’t give in.
9. When they are out of control, be prepared to put them in their room or crib until they calm down.  Toddlers throw fits.  That is what they do.  How we respond is our choice.  Sometimes they get themselves so worked up that there is really no talking them down.  At such times, it is generally best to just give them a time out in their room.  First, you should give them a warning, “if you don’t calm down, then you will need to go to your room to calm down.”  If they still don’t calm down, then again, without saying a single word, you pick them up and take them to their room.  When you put them in their room, tell them in a loving voice, “once you are calm and once you are ready to say sorry, then you can come out.”  When you leave the room, they will FREAK OUT.  You need to accept this and let them cry and scream.  This is harder to do if you have neighbors who can hear your kids screams.  To deal with that problem, you can do two things:  let go of your attachment to what other people think and in a non-crisis time go have a talk with your neighbors letting them know that your kid is a toddler and you are not beating them, but just giving them a time out until they calm down and are ready to say sorry.  It is a training, and you are sorry for the noise, but you just wanted to let them know.  Most will understand and when they do scream, you will not worry so much.  You can’t really do this for kids under 20 months, but after 20 months you can.  In terms of how long to leave them crying, the rule of thumb we use is we check back in with them avery 3 to 5 minutes.  When we check in, we say, “are you calm yet?”  Obviously they are not since they are still screaming, but asking the question gives them a chance to say yes and then they calm down.  If they don’t say yes, then you go back out for another 3-5 minutes and repeat the cycle.  Once they say yes, they are calm now (and they actually start calming down), then you ask, “are you ready to say sorry?” Remember, these were your two conditions for letting them out.  They might not be, so you go back out and start over until they answer yes to both questions.  Then you pick them up, give them a big hug and lots of love and have them sit on your lap for awhile cuddling, so you can recharge them with your love.  Then you ask, are you ready to go back out now?  Then off they go!  The first couple of times you do this, it will take a long time, but once they learn the pattern, it will get quicker and more and more effective.  Just stick with it.

The key spiritual lesson of all of this is to realize it is because we love our kids that we need to set and enforce realistic limits for them.  Sometimes we feel so cruel when we let our kids cry, but that is compassion without any wisdom.  Our kids need and in fact want clear (but fair) limits because it actually simplifies their life.  Our attachment to their being happy (something quite different than compassion) prevents us from living up to our responsibility of actually being a parent for them.

Your turn:  Describe some challenging/funny situation you have had with a toddler and what spiritual lessons you learned from that situation.

Just before I was to get married I was at the Summer Festival in England.  I went up to what was then the Protector Gompa (a special meditation room dedicated to the Dharma Protector).  I felt like getting married was the right thing to do for my spiritual practice, but I still had doubts.  So I made as sincere of a request as I could that my path be revealed to me.  What happened next was the only time something like this has ever happened to me.  I was meditating, my eyes were closed, but in my mind a Buddha who I understood to be Tara approached me.  She was made of a silvery metalic liquid, but very much alive.  In her hands was a baby – in normal flesh and bones that I could see as clearly as I could see any person out of meditation.  She then handed me the baby and said, “this is where you will find your heart.”  And then everything vanished.  I can still vividly remember and see this within my mind.  All doubt was then dispelled and I knew what my path was to be.  Thirteen years later, I now have five kids!

Prior to my being a parent, I was very much a Vulcan – heart-felt emotion wasn’t really part of my personality, and I was very intellectual in my approach to the Dharma (I still am, unfortunately, but it is slowly changing…).  I really struggled with feeling any Dharma realizations like love and compassion in my heart, and as a result I tended to shy away from such meditations and instead to focus on emptiness and other philosophical or technical topics.  “Finding my heart” was (and still is), in many respects, my greatest spiritual challenge.

To my surprise, the love I have for my children is not some sappy, mushy sort of thing, but is rather very active.  It can best be described as “there is nothing I wouldn’t do for them.”  It is a feeling of a fortunate assuming of personal responsibility for their welfare – I am glad it is me who is responsible for them, because I wouldn’t trust that anybody else would look after them the way I would and I very much want them to be taken care of.  It is a love that ‘knows them’, in many ways better than they know themselves.  I know and understand how they work and think, so I am always sensitive to what is best for them.  It is a love that happily works for their benefit.  It is a love that would rather me have the hardest tasks or the worst things so that they can have the best.  It is a love that somehow can see past all of their faults and understand where those faults are coming from and develop compassion wishing to protect them.  It is a love that literally laughs out loud when I see their summer portraits and the unique goofiness in each of their expressions!

And here’s the thing:  all of this comes naturally.  I haven’t worked to develop this love, I just naturally feel it.  Venerable Geshe-la explains the reason for this is because we have special karmic connections with these particular beings from our previous lives where we now spontaneously feel a pure love towards them.  Of course there are times when our minds are full of delusions towards our kids, but compared to everyone else we feel the most natural love for our kids.  It is thanks to my kids that I ‘found’ my heart, I realized what it means to feel an active love for somebody.

The work and spiritual training of a Kadampa parent is to learn to extend and replicate this feeling we naturally have towards our children with everybody else.   I had a very good friend who once said, “I only need two things to attain enlightenment, my son and my Spiritual Guide.  On my son, I impute all living beings, so by caring for and loving him, I am caring for and loving all living beings.  On my Spiritual Guide, I impute all of the Buddhas, and by relying upon and receiving blessings from him, I am relying upon and receiving blessings from all the Buddhas.”  There is actually tremendous wisdom in this statement.  Practicing in this way is really the doorway for extending our love to others.

Then, when we see others, the trick is to impute “this is my child too, so therefore I should love them as I love my own kids.”  How can we understand this to be true?  We all know the meditation of all living beings are our mothers.  Well, by extension, this also means that all living beings are our children.  If our child died, would we think the person is no longer our child?  Of course not.  In the same way, all of our children have died but they have all been reborn as the beings around us.  So we can correctly say that each and every person we meet not only was our child, but still is our child.  Therefore, we should cherish them as we do our own children.

Another more profound way we can consider all living beings to be our children is to consider their emptiness.  The teachings on emptiness explain that everything is a mere appearance to mind arising from our karma, including others.  Basically, emptiness says that everything we see is all a dream.  If we dreamt of having a family and children, where do these children come from?  Likewise, where do the various people we encounter in our dream come from?  They all come from our own mind (and karma).  In the same way, if our waking reality is simply the dream of our waking mind, if we are ‘dreaming’ our current family and we likewise are ‘dreaming’ of the other beings we encounter in our world.  Where do all of these beings come from?  Our own mind (and karma).  They are all, quite literally, the offspring of our karma and the nature of our own mind.  What is our child if not our offspring?  Seen in this way, we can understand Venerable Tharchin’s statement that “all beings are our spiritual children.”

By training in the recognition that all beings are in fact our children, and recalling the love we have and actions we engage in for our children, we then apply effort to do the same for others.  In the beginning, yes, it is a bit artificial, but with training it becomes habit and more and more natural.  Gen Losang said, “What is natural is simply what is familiar.”  With effort, we make it familiar, and then it feels and becomes natural.

When we understand all of this we will feel so lucky to have our children.  We will cease to view them as obstacles to our spiritual practice.  Yes, it is harder to go to festivals and teachings when you have kids, but every day is a spiritual training.  We see how they are a stepping stone for our enlightenment and how without them it would be impossible for us to really progress along the spiritual path.  Our feeling lucky to have them will then increase our love even further, creating a virtuous circle of greater and greater love and progress along the spiritual path.  Fantastic!

And this is not even to speak of how we can use the love we have for our children in the context of our Tantric practice.  We train to be the Vajra Father (or Mother as the case may be) of all living beings.  We can bring all of our parenting experience into our self-generation practice.  This will not only help our self-generation practice, but it also creates a virtuous feedback into becoming a better parent too.

Your turn:  Take the most difficult person in your life right now.  How does viewing them as your child change your mind towards them?