Dadding Dudes

Last night I had a dreadful nightmare, and then I woke up with a sweet smile. In my dream I was with a little boy, a vaguely familiar toddler, and he asked me if I liked crackers. “No, thank you,” I said. “Crackers are too loud.”

It went on from there. I was being silly, and the boy laughed with his whole body when I told him how each food has its own language, and only when you speak that language you can actually hear the food. “My favorite,” I said, “is Plummish. Beautiful language those plums speak, and they have a hundred names for the color purple.” The boy squealed with joy. “No they don’t!” he cried. “You are so funny, grandpa.”

And I woke up with a start.

Grandpa, he called me. And what’s worse, I loved it.

I spent a large chunk of the night awake, thinking where this came from. My waking mind never dwells on those bygone days when the boys were little; neither do I ever dream of becoming a grandpa, and yet there I was, dreaming about it.

Now, don’t get me wrong, caring for the boys when they where babies and toddlers was a fantastic experience, which I feel blessed and lucky to have had. But I don’t miss it.

Here are 10 reasons why:

 1. I knew nothing

From a functional adult, I turned over one very long night of excruciating labor into a useless klutz who couldn’t tell the difference between a Baby Bjorn and a onesie. Thankfully, my wife had the whole parenting thing figured out, while I stumbled clueless in the dark for a long time.

2. I was too old for that

Like many parents of my generation, I was in my mid to late 30′s when the dudes were born, and into my 40′s when they started crawling, and running, and falling, and climbing everything, and falling again, and never ever stopping from breakfast till Sunday. The end of the day never came, but when it did, I was as drained and lifeless as that bunny that wasn’t lucky enough to get the Energizer battery.

3. Diapers

We used cloth diapers, and we had two babies simultaneously going in their pants for a while. We did our own laundry. What’s not to miss?

4. Five years of no sleep

1:00 a.m., the baby’s crying, I crawl out of bed into the cold night, hold him and soothe him, knowing that he’d pierce my heart with a glass shattering scream if I ever dared to let him out of my arms, and put him back in bed. (Why do they do that? I still don’t know.)

5. Their helplessness

Dress them, brush their teeth, wipe their butts, feed them, read to them, play with them, undress them, put then down for a nap, dress them, wake them up, change their diaper, wipe their butts, feed them, take them out, bring them in, bed time. Repeat.

6. Constant life-guard duty

Take your eyes off for a second, and here comes that familiar THUMP! as a soft little head hits the hard floor. A second of quiet shock, another second for gasping enough air to inflate the Lindbergh balloon, and then the siren goes off. You grab him in your arms, check for blood, kiss the booboo, give him all the tender comfort that you can muster while biting yourself for failing to protect him. Again.

7. Can’t leave them home alone

Everywhere you go, first you pack: car seat, diapers, apples and bananas, wipes, toys, extra clothes. Wait, we’re forgetting something! Oh yeah. The babies.

8. Sunday, 6:00 in the morning

So what are we doing now, dad? Daddy? You awake? Daddy, I wanna play. Daddy, wake up, I’m bored.

9. Long car trips

To dude1: Don’t hit your brother, use your words! To wife: What’s that smell? Honey, we have to stop and change a diaper. To dude1: Stop hitting him or I stop right here and you’re out of the car and we leave without you! To wife: It’s not an empty threat. I mean it. To high heaven: That smell just kills me! I said, LEAVE-HIM-ALONE! Yelling at Wife: Honey, quit yelling at me, or I’m pulling over right here and you’re out of the car! Mumbling: I know I’d be doing you a favor, trust me, I know.”

10. The puke

The barf, the hurl, the throw up, the scuzzbucket… No need to describe it here. If you’re a parent, you’ve been there, and unless something deeply disturbing is wrong with you, you do not miss it.

***

But of course, it was not all bad. There were one or two good things as well, like how young and full of energy I was back then, and how I was the god of everything to my two little worshipers. They were so cute (not to mention the mommies at the playground); they thought beer was yucky, and they ate no junk, except on Halloween when their costumes were adorable and they ate all the junk they could contain, and some that they couldn’t (see # 10 above). Or how they belly-laughed when I was goofy, and then we wrestled in the living room, and I could still help with homework. I miss Where the Wild Things Are (RIP, Mr. Sendak), and Freida the Wonder Cat, and the first Harry Potter book, and how we cuddled on the couch, and they listened to us reading, before iPod replaced us.

Maybe dreaming of becoming a grandpa was my subconscious way of recreating some of that. But do I really want to be a grandpa? Only in my nightmares.

My older son, a junior in high school, is now starting his college search. A few months ago he took his practice SAT, and since then our mail box is brimming daily with glossy publications, showing happy students lounging on sunny lawns under large trees, as if college was a 4-year picnic. BYOB.

One common word in those collegiate party invitations is SUCCESS. It is followed by convincing statistics about graduates’ employment rates, income level, debt payoff: SUCCESS! Say it enough times and your eyes get glossy, your brain mesmerized. SUCCESS…

Not that I have anything against it.

A short poll: All parents who want their children to be successful in life, raise your hand. Thank you. Now those who want their children to fail, please show us your hand. Good. We have a consensus. Now let’s move on to define success. Can anybody tell me what they mean by this term?

Success is a code word. There are plenty of other code words in our culture: god, food, sex, freedom; just a few that come to mind. These code words may sound the same coming out of people’s mouths, but the intention and meaning behind those phrases may be as different as blueberries and Twinkies. In American popular culture, a successful person means a stinky rich person. Or at least a mildly odorous well-off bastard.

“He spent 10 years pumping septic tanks, then he got his own truck. Today he’s pumping shit from all over. He’s very successful.”

We live in a capitalist society, where a person’s worth is measured by her or his monetary value. They may have spent a lifetime up shit creek, but as long as they got paid well, they are a story of SUCCESS.

Not that I have anything against septic tanks; I’m a great fan, actually.Success, by definition, is a favorable outcome, a goal achieved, a desire fulfilled. Measuring a successful life by financial worth is essentially declaring that life’s goal is accumulating wealth. Most people would not define their own life goals this way, even less would admit that these are the desires they have for their children. Yet by using SUCCESS in the traditional American way, that is the exact message that we send to our children.

So how do we define success in life? And can Junior learn success in college?

I’ve mentioned before my disdain for dispensing advice. I also have an aversion to one-liners. But I know, dear reader, that you are just dying to find out my view of SUCCESS, and you will not be able to ever sleep again until you hear all about it. So let me spare you the agony of insomnia:

I see a successful life as a life lived with balance between these 3 major areas: Professional, Personal, Relational.

Professional: do work that supports you and your family; financial independence is a great source of self reliance. Have a career that has a positive impact, interests you, brings you a sense of pride, and preferably makes good use of your mind, heart, and hands.

Personal: engage in activities that make you happy, healthy, self fulfilled.

Relational: love well, be kind, generous, compassionate.

Alright, I made this as short as I could without it being a one-liner, and vague enough to not qualify as advice. I hope.

Can Junior learn these things in college?

Some colleges, maybe. The better ones I came across talk about creating T students, with the vertical line representing depth of knowledge in a subject (major), while the horizontal depicting a breadth of general education. A higher education that allows for exploration, adventure, and honest examination of what one really finds worthy, interesting and engaging, can really help a young person find the path to making a Rightful Living. This is not necessarily where Junior would make the most money, or have the best chances of finding a job straight out of school. It’s about a long-term career that is meaningful, productive, and something to be proud of.

As for relating well to others, and fulfilling the Self, these are things you learn at the University of Life. College, being part of life, may be the place where some of this learning happens, but it’s an ongoing process, a lifetime of experimenting, failing, and changing.

Dear reader, please note: Just because I’m writing about my ideas of SUCCESS does not mean that I’ve attained it. In fact, I don’t know anybody who has completely. I’m still trying. I’m getting my shit together, but there’s always more to pump out.

In the past decade, since the early stages of American military involvement in that hell we call “The conflict in the Middle East,” stories and footage continually come out, where United States troops are involved in acts of bone chilling cruelty against local fighters, or civilians.

Recent footage shows young Marines urinate on dead bodies of Taliban fighters; in other incidents US forces allegedly murdered civilians, cut their body parts and kept them as trophies; abused prisoners of war in Abu Ghraib, and humiliated locals.

Military and government officials openly condemned the acts, described them as horrific, deplorable, inconsistent with official policy, and violating core values.

Yet, during this messy decade, I’ve heard analysts and commentators try to explain this kind of behavior by claiming that those soldiers acted as stupid, misguided teenagers. “When soldiers get tired,” I heard one commentator say recently, “and they’ve been in the field a very long time and the stress begins to build without very tight supervision from small unit leaders, soldiers — remember these are 18- and 19-year-old kids with a camera — go out and do stupid things.”

Stupid things?? Are you kidding yourself?

Stupid teenagers empty a whole bottle of cheap gin and end up in the ER, stupid teens steal cars and wrap them around light posts; stupid teens smoke pot and drop out of school, photocopy their bare butts and post it on Facebook, get their girlfriend pregnant, give their boyfriend STD (not that adults don’t do that); stupid teenagers do all kinds of stupid things, but they don’t take photos of themselves smiling with the mangled legs of a suicide bomber; they don’t pose with Nazi SS flag, they don’t empty their bladders on corpses. Something way more insidious than misbehaving teens is at work here.

I’ve served in the military, I know what it’s like to be stressed, tired, scared, pissed, and confused. I’ve been around hostile civilian population, and I’ve been in battle against military forces, sometimes both at the same time. I know the hell of war, and I’m here to tell you what the military and government knows, but won’t discuss in the open:

Soldiers see the enemy as sub-human.

They have to, or reality becomes unbearable. For you to be good and right, the enemy must be bad and wrong. And the badder the enemy is, the better you are. This is more true for young, immature troops, who are more prone to a black-and-white world view.

Dehumanization happens in all wars and on-going conflicts. Human history is rife with barbaric atrocities, non of which would be possible without deeming the enemy sub-human. Our young troops in combat areas are doing it right now. The people on the other side smell bad, they are stupid and ignorant, they eat their young, they’re animals.

Makes it easier to kill them, doesn’t it?

Now, let me tell you another truth that I’m sure you already know:

When you dehumanize others, you dehumanize yourself.

Which explains all the insane footage that we watch with disbelief on our hi-def TV screens. Once you lose the sense of empathy toward other beings, you become a psychopath. In civilian life you’d be arrested, institutionalized, but now the rules are different. Thick walls of taboos collapse, years of socialization vanish, unimaginable acts of cruelty become routine. You are a citizen of Planet War.

The military is currently “waging a battle against misconduct.” It is, of course, the right thing to do. Many, if not all, of those mortifying incidents could be avoided with appropriate leadership and supervision.

But my point is that it is not enough. Our country should have an ongoing, open discussion about the devastating psychological effects of war. High chains of command, both military and civilian should  admit responsibility for these and other failures. It is not enough to blame the marine privates for displaying bad judgement. The greater responsibility is with the presidents and generals who created and maintained the situation for a long, bloody decade.

The political leaders who send those teenagers to war must internalize the true nature of violent conflicts, and realize that they are accountable for all that we lose and sacrifice as a people and as individuals, when participating in the bloodshed.

This does not mean that all wars are always wrong; a nation has the right to defend itself. But the finger on the trigger should be very heavy; violence is a last resort.

The isolated atrocities committed by US troops are a symptom of a deeper, wider disease. Our nation actively dehumanizes other peoples, and loses some of its own humanity in the process. Humanity is a dear thing to lose, so let’s be truthful about what’s really happening to our troops, as well as to our society, and let’s not put the blame for those actions on the teenage brain.

These 18 and 19-year-old kids should be punished for their crimes and misconduct, but they are also the victims of the country who sent them to hell, expecting them to behave like angels.

My blog is like a garden, to which I tend almost daily, but while in my real garden I pull out weeds,  in my blog I delete spam.

Now, dandelions I understand. They’re plants, which we designated invaluable and unwanted, but they have the same desire for life (and a much better knack for it) as the roses and hydrangeas that we covet and cultivate. They make sense.

But when it comes to spam, I don’t get the point.

Spam, for those who don’t know, are fake messages that sprout like mushrooms after the rain in the comment folder in my blog. Most are written by people who have no notion of sentence structure in the English language. I suspect that they are planted by computer programs designed for the task. Many of those verbal weeds persistently claim that I’m the best blogger who ever graced the internet. It goes something like this:

“How I praise to discover you true teaching. I find sensibilities mostly enlightenment www.BuyMoreCialis.com and you have a fantastic capacity for www.WoodLikeYouShould the most that I learn from ever http//GetHarderLonger.org”

My spam detector never fails to catch those silly things, and I kill them with the wonderfully satisfying “Delete Permanently” button. I wish I had something like that for my back yard dandelions, or some other things in life, for that matter. (No child Left Behind?  Another war in the Middle East? A hamper-full of dirty laundry? Delete permanently. Boom, gone.)

But my question is: What id up with the spam??

Is there any sense in this endless barrage of ads (do these things actually qualify as ads?) for fake watches, web hosting, male enhancement, and porn sites? Some of them are not even in English (seems like Polish to me, or maybe Spamish?); some are so freakishly long that I have to scroll down a few screens before reaching the happy “Delete”, most are incomprehensible garbage that no blogger, even the one most desperate for readers’ attention, would ever mistake for a real comment.

These things never get actually published on the site, nobody but me gets to enjoy their stink. All that time, energy, and resources spent on combing  the World Wide Web for those little boxes at the end of blog-posts, just to place a fake comment with the hope of… what exactly? Am I, and other bloggers like me, the target audience? Are they expecting me to click on those links and buy me some amazingly cheap Viagra? What gave me away? Is my style of writing so flabby?

Can anybody please explain this to me? Leave a comment at the end of this post. Make sure it’s not in Polish. You may proclaim that I’m the king of all bloggers ever, but don’t start any of your sentences with www, or it’s spam-bam-thank-you-mam.

It rained last night, the ground is wet this morning, and I’m going out back to deal with some weeds. They should pull out easy today. At least them I understand.

My youngest son is a vegetarian. He’s been one since age 3 or 4, when he realized that the chicken on a stick that was one of his favorite items in our local Chinese buffet, was once a chicken. He loves animals of all kinds (except for spiders, which he hates with a passion) and has since refused to eat anything that has had a mother, or eyes. He’s 15 now, and sticks to his potato guns more than ever.

 While my son does not eat animal meat mostly due to the yuck factor, I admire him for his principles, until it’s time to cook dinner, which in our house means cooking two dinners, one for him, one for the rest of us carnivores.

 But the real issue here is an ethical one. Is it moral to eat other living creatures? I used to be a vegetarian for years, and feel morally superior to the burger gobblers around me. I’ve since changed my diet, as well as my mind. Here’s why:

 Ethics are about distinguishing right from wrong; eating animals may be right for the eater, but it’s wrong for the animal. Since the eater has a choice of surviving by eating plants instead of animals, this ethical dilemma is seemingly settled: eat plants, leave the poor animal alone, and all wrong is righted. But is it really that simple?

 A person’s existence is unethical to lions; a lion’s existence is unethical to zebras; a zebra’s existence is unethical to the small animals it runs over as it tries to escape the pursuing lion. Of course, a lion’s gut knows nothing from ethics, but does mine? Gut feeling says no. Nature is about hierarchy and harmony, not ethics.

 I eat meat for well-being. A vegetarian for over 20 years, I feel stronger and healthier since I changed my diet. I know that factory farming is atrocious, I’ve seen the footage; I consume mostly local, free range meat. Within the hierarchy of my human existence, I go for the best humane choices I can make. The issue of meat eating is not ethical, but ecological. It’s about sustaining a balanced livestock habitat on the planet, in harmony with the environment. The act of killing to sustain life is as old as life itself. The ethical dilemmas are not in the act of eating meat, but in the plethora of wrong commercial practices that take place before that meat ends up in our gastrointestinal tract.

 If it was a realistic option, I would have preferred to hunt my own food, honestly participate in the pursuit, just like the lion, driven by hunger and survival. But instead I go to the farmers’ market, where the local piggery owner tells me that her animals had a wonderful life, and one bad day. A cold comfort for the pig, but beats the other options. Arguably, by supporting my local meat farmer, who raises her animals in harmony with nature and represents a solution to this global problem, I’m ethically superior to the vegan who eats made-in-China soy-protein products, and takes a supposedly higher moral ground.

 My next blog post: Is being vegan ethical? Confessions from the ivory tower breakfast nook.

 We all hurt the environment and kill animals by our mere existence. Humans always have. Eating meat is right, unless you’re ready to deem all carnivorous creatures on our planet wrong. The ethics are in the details.

When reading my previous humanistic parenting posts, you may get the impression that I’m strong, tall, and all-around perfect, with two boys who piously conduct their teenage affairs with the bright light of humanism as their guiding star. Wrong! I’m not that tall. I’m also no angel, the boys are no cherubs, and the only perfect being here is the dog (sorry, honey, you came close).

This post is about those times when the good moral principles are ignored, and your children cheat, steal, lie, use drugs, hurt others, or refuse to play with the dog. The issue of disciplining, drawing clear lines of dos and don’ts, and inflicting consequences (a euphemism for punishment), is at the core of parenting.

When it comes to getting help in the battle against children’s adverse behavior, humanistic parents are out of luck. We can’t call up hell fire, we can’t point up at the eyes of god that are always watching, can’t ask them what would Jesus do, no hail Marys, no atoning on Yom Kippur. We have no auxiliary units (as fictional and fantastical as it may be) to bring into the conflict as backup. For us, and our children, it’s all about the inner process, the way we think and feel about ourselves and others, and the compassionate understanding of the convoluted human psyche.

Adequate parenting involves setting clear boundaries between right and wrong. It’s true when they’re tiny toddlers, grabbing a toy from a play mate, and it’s even more true when they’re teenagers, grabbing your car keys without permission.

At age 15 & 16, I’m setting very loud and clear boundaries for the dudes: no drugs, alcohol, or cigarettes; no unsafe or illegal driving; no disrespectful behavior toward parents, each other, or anybody else. I expect them to help around the house when asked, do their school work well, and act responsibly. While I’m sure that behind my back there’s activity that shatters those rules all the time, the rules are still there, as they should be. Setting clear boundaries is part of a parent’s job.

But what to do when the rules are broken? Let’s imagine a real bad situation. Your teenage son or daughter, we’ll call her or him Junior, stole your keys, picked up a few friends in your car, drank a few beers in a nearby park, drove drunk, and showed up back home wasted in the middle of the night.

• Don’t ignore the breach, or dismiss it as typical teenage behavior. Confront Junior. Do not be afraid to show that you’re pissed. You’re human. But while It’s okay to get angry, frustrated, or sad, it’s not okay to get physically aggressive, act out of control with rage, become passive-aggressive, or go on and on about your own feelings.

• Once your first wave of anger, or shock, or whatever it is that you feel, is over, it’s time to sit down with junior and listen (in our example, this may have to wait for the next day). At the base of humanism is reasoning and understanding. You will not understand unless you listen with a true intention of hearing.

• Exercise compassion. This is not to say that you should forgive Junior for the mess, but simply use the knowledge that you have about the teen brains, and human emotions. Remember that actions like this always have a reason, they come from somewhere. Try to understand what’s going on in Junior’s life that lead to this. Remember how you were at that age. Again, this does not mean that you should justify Junior’s actions; you’re just trying to understand the subjective thought-process that led to these specific recreational activities.

• If you are lucky enough to gain a true insight into the motivation behind Junior’s actions, make sure that Junior knows it. Being seen and understood may be the first step to solving the problem.

• See if you can offer some help. This should not come from a fix-it attitude, but from the same place of compassionate listening, and learning about what’s going on in Junior’s life.

• After you learned a lesson, teach a lesson. Come up with an appropriate consequence. Even if you realize that Junior reacted to intense peer pressure, or was devastated after grandma died, or got infected by the stupid bug. Whatever understandable cause, there should be a consequence to such blatant breach of trust. In this specific case taking away driving privileges until the end of time seems an appropriate response, but it can be any other punishment that is related, and proportional to the crime.

  

Humanistic parenting is not wimpy parenting. Our parental boundaries and expectations should always remain realistic and clear. While avoiding unreasonable strictness and rigidity, we should not follow a stereotypical “anything-goes” style of child rearing. Weak and ineffectual parenting is as damaging as the stringent style, associated with some traditional cultures. Sticking to our guns is not always easy, but in the long run it makes a more peaceful household, and one happy dog.

5. Avoid drugs and intoxicants.

Take a walk around our town’s high school, and see the evidence: empty bottles of cheap booze, smashed beer cans, the usual suspects hang out by the bridge during school hours, a few steps out of school’s jurisdiction, smoking cigarettes, lighting a joint when police is not around. Once in a while you hear about a Saturday night party where things got too wild, neighbors called law enforcement, some teenagers got arrested. You breathe a sigh of relief that they’re not your kids, an even longer one if they’re not even your kids’ friends. But regardless of the details, you always ask yourself what is really going on in your teen’s life, what is he exposed to, what has he tried already, what’s going to happen next Saturday night?

When it comes to parenting, I find drugs and intoxicants a tricky issue. Am I setting the right personal example to my children? Am I sending them the wrong message?

I enjoy a good beer on occasion; I have an ongoing interest in French brandies; I rarely say no to a well-aged single-malt. Though I haven’t gotten seriously drunk in decades, I drink around my kids since forever, and there have been times, when they saw my reaction to a real thick stout or an exceptionally smooth Armagnac, that I let them have a tiny sip, just to taste what the fuss was about. They always fail to appreciate how such vile cup of burning bitterness elicits such pleasure.

In the strictest manner, I’m using drugs, and to top it off, I’m teaching my children how to use drugs. A regular parent-of-the-year. But let’s face it, coffee is quite a powerful drug, not to mention everything made by Ben & Jerry’s. As I said, it’s a tricky subject. So what’s a humanistic parent to do?

When it comes to drug consumption, I use two main guidelines, both for myself and for my children. The first principle draws the border between legal, and not legal. When I drink alcohol I brake no law. I never let my kids even smell the stuff in public; what they do at home is nobody’s business as far as I’m concerned. Staying within the boundaries of the law is important, not necessarily because the law is always just and enlightened, but because breaking the law tends to get one in all kind of trouble. I don’t really buy it that THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, is more harmful than alcohol or nicotine, but it’s illegal, so I stay away from the stuff, and I expect the dudes to do the same. It’s a simple rule, and it allows me to blame the government and be the good guy.

The second guideline that I fall back on has to do with what’s harmful and what’s safe. Tobacco is legal, but it’s so dangerous that we’ve been drilling the kids since before they were born how disgusting smoking is, and how people who smoke smell yucky. Then there are all kinds of legally dispensed drugs that fall under “medicine.” My rule of thumb is to avoid those when possible. They all come with some risk, so we use herbal medicine instead, but we take an antibiotic or a pain-killer when all else fails. Of course, being a trained herbalist with easy access to natural products helps a lot with that one.

Harmful and dangerous brings us directly to an issue that is at the core of the intoxicant dilemma: Excess.

There’s a big difference between an occasional beer, and downloading a six-pack. A glass of wine with dinner is not the same as a bottle of wine with dinner. There’s nothing wrong with loosening up and relaxing with a drink; some medical research even indicates that it’s a beneficial practice. But when loosening up turns to falling apart, and relaxation to inappropriate behavior, it is simply too much. Some adults should not drink at all, others can take in quite a bit and still keep it together. But:

When it comes to people under the age of 21, drinking alcohol is both illegal AND harmful.

Our livers simply don’t mature until that age, and the danger of acute alcohol toxicity, and chronic liver damage is much higher than with adults. I choose to let my children taste a little alcohol at home, just to take the mystery and fascination away, but it is never more than a baby sip, which their bodies can easily process. Anything more than that is excess. While the laws are different in different countries, and while it is an indisputable irony that young Americans who are deemed mature enough to go to war, kill and be killed, are not legally allowed to order a drink at a restaurant, the medical evidence is clear: Wait till you’re 21 before starting to drink.

The 5^th humanistic precept that I’m discussing here comes from the Buddhist tradition. One important goal in Buddhism is cultivating a clear and bright mind. It makes sense that people who spend their days meditating would be against drugs that cloud the mind, or alter its natural function. But is there a moral issue here from the humanistic point of view? The answer is a definite yes. Using drugs in excess, both the legal and the illegal kind, can hurt oneself, and others. It goes against that famous first precept that keeps coming up: Do not harm other beings, or yourself.

The issue of drugs and intoxicants has many more aspects that I did not touch on in this post. It’s a cultural, societal problem, with moral and political implications. Think prohibition. legalizing marijuana. Addiction to narcotic pain-killers.  But when it comes to parenting, especially of teenagers, the rules must be clear and unwavering. We should frequently bring up the subject, answer questions the best we can, and when all fails, blame the government.

4. Avoid sexual misconduct.

My mom may be reading this, so I won’t get into details, but I have done some seriously stupid things in my life while lust served as my guide. I hurt others, I was careless and crude, I hurt myself as well. It would have been easier if I had better guidance at the time.

My boys are teenagers now, and we have touched on the issue of sexual misconduct on a few occasions. Naturally, they’re not eager to discuss sex with the old man, but I think that they grasp the basics: Sexual misconduct means any sexual act that hurts, or may hurt another person.

The 4^th humanistic precept tells us this: Before following our wild instincts, we should ask ourselves if anybody may get hurt as a result. This relates directly to our sexual partners, but extends far beyond them to ours, and their families, friends, other people we or they may be involved with, and, last but not least, ourselves: Are we ready for this? May we potentially get hurt?

This definition of a wrong sexual act includes scenarios that are too many to describe, but there’s really no need to. This is simply about not committing an act that may hurt others, and it is in accordance with the first precept, which deals with not harming other beings. If you teach children from a tender age to be nice to others, avoiding sexual misconduct later in life should come naturally to them.

So the question is, why dedicating a whole rule just for sex? We probably all know the answer… but I’ll spell it out anyway, just in case: Our sex drive is a force that can overpower our better judgment, and shatter our values. It’s called a drive for a reason. It deserves its own precept.

Being a humanist involves understanding human nature, and the ways that our brain works. The powerful force that lust and passion have over us at times are not our fault, and are no sin or something to be ashamed of. We’re built this way, and it has worked so well for us as a species, that now there are over seven billions of us on this planet. (Perhaps it worked too well, but that’s a topic for another time.)

Realizing the overpowering nature of our sex drive does not, of course, give us a license to blindly follow it. Only when our actions are harmless are we to obey the call of nature.

A few words about safe sex: STD’s are harmful; unwanted/unplanned pregnancies are extremely painful and difficult, regardless of the final outcome. Practicing safe and protected sex is a health issue, but it is a moral one as well.

Parents are often encouraged to talk to their children about drugs and alcohol abuse. Discussing sex, and sexual misconduct is just as important. As uncomfortable as some people may be around these issues, the consequences of neglecting one of the most powerful internal forces that children will encounter in their lives, may be even less pleasant.

I’m no big drinker, but a few years ago I got into tasting the variety of our area’s locally made wines. One day I am at the very busy Saturday farmers’ market with Dude2, who was about 7 or 8 at the time. As I engage in sampling a new Chardonnay, the little dude blurts in his squeaky voice, “Daddy, you’ve been drinking a lot of wine lately.” Everything stops. Heads turn. I choke on my wine and cough. People nod their heads, pitying the small child who has just lost his innocence realizing that his father is a hopeless alcoholic.

As much as I want to wring his sweet little neck, I manage a convoluted smile, mumble something like, “No I don’t,” and pull him away from the crowded booth. He doesn’t understand what just happened.

The problem was that he was simply stating a fact. It was true that I’ve been drinking more wine lately. But he didn’t have the skills to not embarrass his old man in public. He didn’t know how to lie yet.

The third humanistic guideline is about the way we express ourselves verbally. It clearly states, “Do not lie,” though we all lie a lot, so there’s a need for some elaboration here. Concealing and altering the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, is something grownups do to protect their privacy, to maintain societal civility, and to be kind to others. White lies are a necessity of life, sometimes keeping our mouths shut is another.

Teaching children about the intricacies of truth-telling is complex, and takes years, but it’s easier than the other part of rule #3, which is about not using speech in a harmful manner.

“Use your words! Don’t hit your brother! Talk to him.”

How many times have you said those words to your children?

The assumption is that verbal communication is safer, kinder, and more effective than a punch in the face. And in almost all situations this is true, but it does not mean that words don’t have the power to create severe damage. In fact, when it comes to parenting, the power of words turns into a super power. A hurtful statement from a parent to a child goes deep into the darkest chambers of the heart, where it will take a team of therapists, years of treatment, and a truckload of money to extract and neutralize the poisonous messages. Most of us carry childhood hurts for the duration of our lives.

Learning how to not use speech harmfully is a big challenge in my life. I grew up in a place where quick wit, sharp sarcasm, and verbal punching were essential survival tools, and, with my shoelace physique, I became quite good at defending myself with words. Today, one of the main complaints I hear from my children and my wife, is that I express myself too harshly, pulling out the big guns when a gentle caress would do better.

The list of my verbal sins is long: sarcasm, teasing, raising my voice, mumbling disagreements under my breath, using passive-aggressive silence to express my anger, not thinking before I speak, trying too hard to be funny… There’s probably quite a few more items that my family would be happy to add, but to hell with them. This is my goddamn blog! They can start their own if they want to. MyDadSucks.com. Whatever. I don’t care.

Rightful speech is an art that I’m yet to master. Too harsh and I’m a rude ass; too controlled and I sound like a robot on Prozac. It’s an ongoing struggle for me, and an area where I may be teaching my children how to NOT be, more than how to be.

But at the core of humanism is mindfulness. I always try to be aware of my failures, come back and apologize, own my personality faults, and apologize for my shortcomings. Children are incredibly forgiving, wives not so much. My inability to shut up has gotten me into trouble with my beloved so many times, that we’ve learned how to deal with it better over the years. She still gets upset with me on occasion, but it’s nothing that a nice glass of Chardonnay can’t resolve. At least when I drink, I can’t talk.  

2. 

   
    Do not steal, or take what has not been freely offered to you: Secular Humanistic Parenting

 We all know that stealing is a no-no, yet, especially with children, the urge may sometimes seem stronger than the taboos and laws against it. I shoplifted as a kid a few times. I even got caught once. The old grocery-shop owner spotted me with my hand literally in the cookie jar, and was not amused. He grabbed me by the wrist, yelled “Get out of here, thief, and never come back!” and then tossed me out the door while the other shoppers watched and shook their heads. Not a recommended experience.

 Greed is a powerful force in us.

 If you ever watched toddlers engaged in their parallel play, you certainly noticed how they shamelessly steal from each other. Little Jane shoves little Johnny, grabs his shiny red ball, and pays no heed to his screams of protest. Mommy rushes in, red-faced, apologizing, thinking, Whats wrong with little Jane? She must be taking after her father… It takes time to develop the concept of right and wrong, mine vs. not-mine. Some people never get it.

Yet most of us eventually learn that stealing is bad, and that it comes with an unpleasant punishment, especially if you get caught. But when it comes to “What has not been freely offered to us,” the boundaries of mine and not-mine can be blurry, the rules not as clear. This is where humanistic parenting can provide some guidelines.

There are many situations in our daily lives when we are required to make decisions and judgments in a gray area, where the rules of morality can go either way. It happens when we drive in traffic, when we shop, at work, school, wherever there’s constant interaction and friction with other people.

Discussing the countless possible human conflicts and how to resolve them, would make this a long and boring post. Instead, I fall back on the Golden Rule. It is a never-failing guideline, mentioned in all major religions, stated in the Hebrew and Christian bible, Buddhist scripture, the Koran, and more. The Golden Rule is about empathy and kindness, about not doing to others what you would not like done to you, about compassion and mindfulness.

When teaching and discussing this morality with children within the Secular Humanistic context, there is, of course, no punishment from high heaven for not obeying the rule. But, since we are evolutionarily wired to function as social creatures, acting generously toward others, and without overstepping the boundaries of theirs vs. ours, rewards us with a sense of inner-calm, and helps others to trust us. Conversely, when acting unkindly, grabbing and succumbing to greed, we end up feeling bad about ourselves, and create an atmosphere of mistrust around us. Others will not like us, but even worse, we will not like ourselves.

The power of greed, when tamed and controlled, can be a very useful motivational force. We can use it to improve our situation in life, to grow, and expand, and make things better around us. But we have to be cautious and mindful to not hurt others on our way to fulfill our desires. For all the cookie jars in the world, it’s not worth it.

1. Do not knowingly and needlessly kill, or harm other beings.

 For my 12th birthday, and after begging for a long time, I got a BB gun. At first I practiced target shooting at a local hilly area near my home, but soon I moved to living things. I killed a turtle, who died quietly with a strange hiss. I killed a sparrow, and its flock dived down for some long minutes to check on it as it fluttered on the ground, until they finally gave up. I will regret these childish acts of ignorant violence for the rest of my life. Soon after the sparrow incident I put the gun away, and never touched it again.

Not harming others is a basic foundation of any moral system. In the old testament’s ten commandments it is stated as “Do not commit murder,” in the Buddhist five precepts it is the first directive on the list. It would be hard to imagine a manual of moral values that does not include a rule against harming others. But when it comes to the definition of “harm,” or that of “other beings,” there is a wide range of interpretations. As parents we should decide what we instruct our children. Since what we do is what we teach, it means we first have to decide what we stand for.

I once knew a Buddhist who would not drive his car at night on account of the bugs that are killed as they smash against the headlights. Another friend is a devout vegan, and does not eat honey because collecting it hurts the bees. The concept of not harming is complex; one can easily take it to extremes. The only way to have no negative impact on the environment is to roll over and die. And even then your decomposing body can still do some damage. Directly or indirectly, we harm the world around us every moment of our lives.

So when it comes to my own life, and to my parenting, I try to keep it reasonable, and to make up for my harmful acts by some positive ones. These are the outlines of what I’ve been teaching the boys:

Do not resort to physical violence in conflict resolution.
Avoid acts that may put others in harm’s way, even when the intention is playful.
When it comes to self-defense, try to avoid violence, but protect yourself and others when you are in danger. This goes for individuals as it does for societies and countries.
Not harming other beings includes self. This is reflected in the right for self-defense, and it is also valuable when making decisions related to one’s diet. As a species we evolved as hunters and gatherers, eating animal meat to sustain our lives. Today there are other options, and some people choose to be vegetarian or vegan, but those who don’t are not all heartless and cruel. I had been a pescetarian for many years, but recently started eating meat for health reasons; Dude2 has been a vegetarian since he realized what “chicken” meant; his older brother loves his meat. It’s all fine if you do it with mindfulness and reason.

At home we almost exclusively eat animals that were raised locally, treated humanely, and fed a proper diet. We find factory farming violent and harmful toward the animals, the environment, and the people who eat the products. This is where we draw the line.
As there is no practical way to avoid harm by our mere existence, try to make up for it by doing some good. Be kind; reduce, reuse, recycle; be mindful of the consequences of your actions.

The core of Humanism is innate human intelligence and reasoning. It is not about rigid rules, but about intention, mindfulness, and good sense. If I succeed to teach the boys to not harm themselves, other people, other beings, and the planet, then I did good. Exactly how to execute these intentions is complex, and affected by many factors that they’ll have to reevaluate and reexamine throughout their lives. I never said being a humanist was easy. May all turtles and sparrows be safe from harm.

The old saying that there are no atheists in the trenches is a load of baloney. In fact, I spent some time in a trench, which was actually more of a shallow fox hole that I dug hastily with a folding shovel, more suitable for building sand castles on the beach than protecting a man from deadly artillery fire. I burrowed in the dimple that I made in the ground, listened very carefully to the distant booms that came from the bad guys’ side of the battle field, and then eagerly anticipated the familiar whistle in the sky, which meant that the flying object of destruction has passed over my head, to touchdown elsewhere. When I didn’t hear the whistle following the exit-boom, I planted my face into the rocky soil with my arms protecting the sides of my body, my hands covering my ears, and waited for it to be over.

Sometimes it came, sometimes it didn’t, but I’m here to tell you that not even once did I plead with a divine providence to save my young soul; it didn’t even cross my terrified mind to pray. I was only 19, and probably didn’t even know the word, but I was an atheist regardless, and in a foxhole of all places.

So what does this have to do with dadding the dudes?

In the 30 odd years that have passed since my pants pissing paratrooper days, I have formed a few opinions (some would say way too many) and became more aware of what I do and don’t believe in. And when I became a father of two curious little guys who made it a habit to ask many big questions, I had to dig deeper, and come up with some answers. There are many ways I could answer the big existential questions, but the ideas that describe my life-philosophy best are those expressed in Secular Humanism.

In these posts I will try to describe the issues involved with teaching the principles of Secular Humanism to children, the ways I do it, and the challenges that it presents.

But first, a short description of my take on Secular Humanism (SH): SH takes it a step farther than atheism, which by definition is merely a rejection of a belief in the existence of a deity. SH is not only about what you do NOT believe. It sets some core moral values that provide guidance in a person’s life, not unlike all major religions do, but without the fear of hell, or the reward of heaven. To be a Secular Humanist you must be, if not an atheist, at least seriously agnostic about deities of all varieties. On the other hand, you can be a complete atheist without being a humanist. If your parents only told you that there is no god and you can do whatever the hell you want as long as you don’t get caught, then you may grow up to be a conscienceless bastard that everybody hates, and an atheist, too. I have heard many times the view that a serial killer can be an atheist on good standing. It’s probably true, and since I want the dudes to choose a better career than that, I find SH the next logical step. It talks about what to be, as opposed to what not to be.

The views on humanism and SH are many. You’d expect that from a bunch of free thinkers. I just want to touch on five basic guiding principles that I try to maintain in my life. These principles are closely related to the five Buddhist precepts, which is not surprising, as Buddhism in its purest form is not a god-based religion but a philosophy of life, where answers to the big question are found inside us humans, not within a deity. When the dudes had their (secular and humanistic) bar mitzvah celebrations, I gave them a framed print of the five principles to hang over their beds.

The five principles are:

1. Do not knowingly and needlessly kill, or harm other beings.

2. Do not steal, or take what has not been freely offered to you.

3. Do not lie, or use speech in a harmful manner.

4. Avoid sexual misconduct.

5. Avoid drugs and intoxicants.

The list is quite formidable, almost biblical. There is no way I know of discussing moral issues and behavior guidelines without overlapping with religious teachings. It’s okay. There are some wonderful aspects to religion, some wisdom and guidance that it provides, but I will keep the holy spirit out of this discussion, so help me god.

My plan is to devote a short blog post to each one of the five principles on the list, and write about how it’s relating to my version of secular parenting.