Peaceability-Part 2

In my last post I started a topic from Richard and Linda Eyre's column in the Deseret News supplement, Mormon Times. They define Peaceability further as 'Essentially the opposite of anger, losing one's temper, impatience and irritation.'

There are a lot of ways to be un-peacable, such as the things described in this quote. I would add also, sulking and holding a grudge, put-downs, criticism, and what I've heard called 'stirring the pot' where someone is doing things to get other folks upset about a third person, or to get someone else upset...'Mommy he's LOOKING at me!'

This doesn't mean we have to eliminate negative emotions and go around intoning a mantra with an invisible halo floating over our heads. We will still have negative emotions, but being peacable will mean that we will control those negative emotions and keep them from hurting another person.

How can we accomplish this? First we need to decide that a peaceful, calm atmosphere in our homes is something we value enough to make a priority. That atmosphere won't happen without our committment and effort.  Children feel more secure in a calm atmosphere. A calm home is one that is not puctuated with angry and irritated outbursts. Valuing peace and the control of temper helps us create a home atmosphere of calmness. The foundation of this is love. We love our family (yes, I know, there are times when we could cheerfully pitch those loved ones out the door and lock it, at least for awhile..but underneath we do still love the aggravating little critters-or big ones, if we include our spouse!)

If love is the foundation, understanding is the key (go ahead, unlock the door and let them back in..) You are less likely to lose your temper when you are trying to understand. It makes a difference if we stop to try to find out why someone is causing a problem before we break out into temper mode.

 For example, I once suspected one of my children had stolen some money from a sibling. The money even had a mark on it that his brother recognized. He steadfastly denied doing it and insisted a kid on the bus (whose name he couldn't remember) had given him the five dollar bill. Knowing how much he loved shopping for new toys, I suspected the temptation had been too much for him, so I started talking about how hard it is not to have enough money to buy things with and how we don't like to admit doing something wrong and the like. As I talked and questioned him gently, saying things like, "I can see how you might wish you had more money", he said, "Well, I 90% remember getting it from my friend and I 10% remember taking it from my brother..." He tested my reaction with these statements, and as I continued to express understanding of being tempted to take things and then lie about it, his percentages changed 10 percent at a time until he got to 90% remembering taking it. We then talked about ways he could get money for things he wanted to buy without taking it and what he needed to do to make things right-returning the money with an apology. One nice thing, his math skills were really solid!

This was so much more peacable than the inquisitions and punishments I used at other times when the children wouldn't admit to wrongdoing. A side note to that is that children who feel secure and understood are less likely to lie about wrongdoing.

This applies to all kinds of situations. Be curious before dealing with or reacting to a problem.
Like:
Why did she come home so cranky from school today? (Could something have happened today?)
Why does he always take his shoes off?  (Are they too small or uncomfortable in some way?)
Why is she cranky and not eating anything at dinner? (Could be she's sick)

Usually we will ask the person why, but many times children don't know why and we have to do detective work to figure out the causes and possible solutions for behaviors. One of my daugthers discovered her son was having difficulties with many things because of a sensory integration issue. She was able to be more patient when she knew why he was contrary about so many things. He was suffering discomforts that weren't obvious and that he didn't have the language to express.

The Eyres tell us that 'Calmness and Peacability are values because they help others as well as ourselves to feel better and to function better."  They add that they are also contagious qualities. The more we are able to be calm and peaceful, even under stress, the  more they are 'caught' by others around us, especially our children!

Teaching Children Values-Peaceability Part One

I want to do a series of posts discussing the column Linda and Richard Eyre write for the Deseret News Mormon Times section. They are doing a series on teaching values to children featuring a different value every month. I thought it would be worthwhile to share highlights of these articles with some commentary from my own thoughts and experience. I would love for any readers to add discussion and thoughts of their own.

They say, "These 12 values will be universal values that all parents everywhere accept and wish to teach to their children. They are values that unite us as families, yet they are anything but easy to teach to our children.

Those of us, (me included) who had the chance to participate in a year of the Eyre's Joy School program for parent run home preschool programs, know that their program is based on monthly themes teaching values, Joy being one of them. They have a lot of experience with this, including with their own large family.

The material they share is drawn from their number one New York Times best-selling book, "Teaching Your Children Values.  For online content from the Eyers on this series go to www.valuesparenting.com and click on 'Value of the month'.

The Value they started with in September was Peaceability. They define Peaceability in one word: 'Calmness'. "It is peacefulness, serenity and the tendency to try to accommodate rather than argue. Peacability is the understanding that differences are seldom resolved through conflict and that meanness in others is an indication of their problem or insecurity and thus their need for your understanding. It is the ability to understand how others feel rather than simply reacting to them.'

I love this definition. If we can raise peaceable children into peaceable adults, that is a contribution to their happiness and a positive impact on those who associate with them in any way.

As just a personal disclaimer to this description I want to say that while it is worthwhile to be peaceable in our interactions at all times, when we are being mistreated being peaceable should not mean that we are obligated to allow ourselves to continue to be mistreated. There are peaceable ways to set and enforce boundaries with any kind of abuse. We might understand the abuser's feelings, but that does not mean we have to allow ourselves to be harmed in any way. In reality, those with a controlling, abusive nature act out of their thoughts and values, not their feelings. That is one reason that teaching Peaceability as a value is so important. Anyone who really values Peaceability will not be abusive towards others.

For the next post, Ways of being 'un-peaceable', and some benefits of teaching and modeling Peaceability

Hearst Castle

We had a great time visiting Hearst Castle on our quick spring break weekend trip to California. We went just to tour Hearst castle, which we've set out to do twice before on longer trips and then balked at the price or the lack of available tours that we wanted to take. Last summer we were there on Labor Day weekend and discovered that making reservations is the way to go to actually get to tour.

What made this time even better was that since we were going just for the castle, it didn't make sense to miss anything, so we took all three daytime tours. That ran up the cost higher than touring the Biltmore mansion, but we felt like we got our money's worth.

We started Friday morning, and after a few stops, (like to see Sara and the kids and drop some things off) we got down to some serious driving and made it to Red Bluff by 8:30pm. Besides reading and napping, I made some use of my time by downloading as many batches of indexing as they would let me and working offline on my little net book on indexing pages of the 1940 census. That doesn't use a lot of power, so the net book was good for as many hours as I could stand to do it. At night before sleeping I used the hotel Internet connection to submit my finished batches and download more in their places. By the time we got home I'd done over 700 names!

We got up early Saturday morning and south to the coast and San Simeon where the castle is. It is north of LA and south of Monterey on the rugged coastline that includes Big Sur. We got there around lunch time and ate and got into our motel, then headed over to the visitor's center. Along the way, shortly before reaching San Simeon I was amazed to see several zebras clustered together, grazing on a hillside. Harry thought I'd mistaken something else for zebras, but there isn't anything you can mistake for a zebra!  Later we heard on tour that there were still zebras grazing the ranch with the cattle, left over from when Hearst used to have all kinds of zoo animals there. So there!

We had reservations for the Grand Rooms Tour at four pm and got to the visitor's center in plenty of time to have a pastry before heading up on our designated bus. Rather than describing, I'll share a few photos:

Front door, embellished with European stonework.

Main Room where guests gathered to visit for Happy Hour



The dining room, the only place meals were served

Hearst called his estate "The ranch at San Simeon" He decided he was too old to keep camping in tents here as he had done since childhood and decided to 'build a little something' so he could visit more comfortably.







He still considered it a camp, even with the lavish surroundings and insisted on general informality. The dishes were his mother's pattern of willow ware stoneware and the ketchup and mustard were served in their jars on the table as they were when he used to camp there.

The billiards room, like every other room, was decorated with beautiful tapestries, art objects, and contained a hundreds of years old ceiling taken from a grand house in Europe. The walls and doorways featured middle eastern tiles.

After seeing the rooms where guests relaxed after dinner with their smokes, we finished up in the full sized theatre where Hearst showed first run movies to his guests, who were comfortable seated in overstuffed armchairs.  We watched a short film of home movies taken of guests enjoying the estate, 'back in the day'.   Next post, The Grounds and gardens.

So Yummy I just had to share

The other night I pulled out whatever veggies I had on hand to put together as a stir fry with some sliced barbecued beef leftover from one of Harry's efforts on his new pellet fed grill. The result was so colorful and fresh, and tasted so good, I just had to grab the camera and make a record of it. This is the start with the veggies, a package of Birdseye stir fry I got free with a coupon, mushrooms and fresh red bell pepper. I'm sauteeing in a little high oleic safflower oil.

Here I'm adding the meat.

Finishing off with a cup of brown rice and some teriyaki sauce, since the rice and meat were pre-cooked and the veggies were either frozen or quick cooking, this went together really fast. There were no leftovers.

Food can be soooo fun!

I saw this, and thought it looked like a lot of fun. I don't do this kind of thing ever, and I really admire those creative women out there that come up with stuff like this.

Hunger Games

We saw the hunger games tonight, and loved every minute. They did the best job on it, set it in Western North Carolina, which matched perfectly to what I visualized reading the book. I loved the choice of actress for Katniss. I recognized her from the picture in my mind from reading the book. The movie stayed really true to the book, and they did a good job of including what was needed and being careful with what they had to leave out, like condensing the relationships with her team down to one member of the team to really portray. I liked the music too, and might want the soundtrack.. Harry loved it too. It was one of those we talked about all through dinner afterward.
Here's a few more photos I found that I liked.

News Reporting-Fact or Fiction?

When you tune in to the evening news, do you usually pretty much assume that what you hear is the truth of the story? How would you know if you are hearing the truth? If you're like me, you tune in to your favorite station and feel comfortable quoting the 'facts' you hear there in the break room the next day. I mean, don't the reporters go to the source and get the facts? Don't they have to check the facts? Would they broadcast as facts things without checking, or even worse, the speculations of the reporter?

Granted, when news is breaking I'm not surprised to hear things reported by witnesses that later turn out to not be true, like the man who was interviewed on the scene of school shooting. His wife was the teacher in the classroom where it happened and he said that his wife had told him that the boy got out the gun, aimed deliberately at the girl and shot her in the stomach on. Later news reports clarified that the gun was in a backpack, cocked and went off when the boy bumped the backpack on a desk.

So, when my daughter found herself privy to some of the inside information of a tragedy that happened to close friends, I started switching from station to station to get as many of the stories as I could. I was surprised when I noticed how the details varied in the stories being reported by the different stations. The tragedy involved the drowning deaths of a father and his small son. One station reported the canoe had capsized and neither of the victims were wearing life jackets. Another station said that neither of them were wearing life jackets, but that two jackets were found in the canoe.  How could they be in the canoe if the canoe was capsized?

The child's body was found right away, but his father's wasn't found until a week later. Meanwhile, the news quickly turned to other, more violent happenings, but when the body was found, the story at the one station about the canoe capsizing still contained that detail when they reported the discovery of the body.

I was thinking about writing this post about the varied inaccuracies when my daughter called and said that there were so many inaccuracies in all the different news sources, that she found it really upsetting and wanted to let me know what they knew there on the scene as the friends of the victims. It was interesting that she was noticing the same thing I was.

What it seemed like was that it was considered a minor story and so whatever they got as 'facts' at the beginning was good enough. When the follow-up story was written, the earlier report was rehashed. I guess it doesn't matter to most viewers if the canoe capsized or not, any more than any of the other inaccuracies seemed to detract from the center of the story that a father and son had drowned and that it was an accident.  It is only disturbing to those who are closest to the story and would like to see the facts reported accurately, and maybe also to those of us once removed, as I am who would really like to know what actually happened.

So, the moral of the post is to remember when watching/listening to the news that while the major facts of the story may be mostly accurate, you are probably only hearing an approximation otherwise, particularly for something that is a breaking story, and even if it's an old story, there's a likelihood that old inaccuracies are being rehashed along with the new information that brings the story to the front of the news again.  My husband suggests checking to see which station reported it most accurately. That may be the station to watch for the closest approximation to the truth...

Missing that Bahama Sunshine

Gold Beach, Freeport, Bahamas

Well, it wasn't sunny the whole time, but even the cloudy parts were as warm as our normal summer days, so it was all good. Even the brief time we got caught in the pouring down rain the rain was so warm that sloshing through ankle deep puddles in my flip flops felt wonderful as the warm clear water flowed over my feet.  In Freeport we spent several hours at beautiful Gold Beach in our bathing suits and in and out of the water, with never a chill in spite of the storm clouds piling up across the water. (Same day we got rained on later)

 Gold Beach, Freeport, Bahamas

Yesterday I was looking at a photo of the beach at Fort Zachary Taylor State Park, Key West,

 Fort Zachary Taylor State Park Beach

and the memory was so vivid at that moment, I felt like I could step back into it. I was listening to the rain outside and then it seemed like that world was so far away, and i wished I could go back there. It seems so funny that when you're somewhere like that it is so intense and almost feels timeless while you're there, but then you move on and it's done, and you can't just step back into it, maybe ever with some places. I guess that's one reason I want to take so many photos and post and write about these experiences, so I can hang on to them in some way.

Anyway, dreaming of the beaches from a few weeks ago are such a contrast to the nasty weather we're currently enduring, it's a good mental escape while we move closer to summer again.

 Fort Taylor State Park beach

 Nassau- Junkanoo Beach

Junkanoo beach