Images by John 'K'
Life as seen through my lens…
It’s been a while…..
Posted by on August 16, 2006
… since I’ve done one of these, so here goes for a quick update for the last couple of months…..
Work-wise things continue to go well and there’s plenty to keep me busy.
We got our green cards, so we’re now officially permanent residents of the United States of America. As such we can now get social security cards for my daughters and have them earn some money!
As mentioned in an earlier posting, one of my daughters had to do a 6 week stint in Summer School. Well she finished that, and came out with a much improved grade (just goes to show what she can do when she puts her mind to things). My wife spent a week helping at a girl scout camp in the Santa Cruz mountains, and came back with a rather funny accent!
We had my wife’s mum with us for 3 weeks – we did many trips out with her, including San Francisco, Mount Diablo, Angel Island, and we nearly killed her doing the ‘easy’ cave trail at the Pinnacles National Monument (oops…).
Despite summer school, we were able to find a week (OK – 9 days) to go on a vacation road trip around Southern California, including some time in Los Angeles (Hollywood, and Universal Studios (where the wash from a jet ski in the Waterworld show nearly wrecked my new camera)), San Diego (Zoo, Wild Animal Park, Sea World – highlights include a balloon ride over the wild animal park, and dining with Shamu), and a 2 day drive back up Highway 1 (Pacific Coast Highway, where we saw whales and elephant seals) as far as Santa Cruz. We even squeezed in a visit to one of my wife’s aunties who lives relatively close (80 miles!) to Los Angeles. All in all just over 1300 miles…….
So we’re now trying to get back into the flow of ‘normal’ life. My youngest goes back to school in a week and a half. She does her registration tomorrow. She’s still got some significant work to do to finish a homework assignment, and I feel we may have to get nasty with her to make sure she completes it. The other daughter here with us starts college next week – missed the orientation day, and has yet to plan out how best to get there. I feel she really hasn’t grasped the importance of what’s coming up. They both have a lot to do in a little time, and I’m not sure if they really appreciate the fact that the real world needs to take priority over their on-line worlds.
Back in the UK our 2nd eldest daughter has her birthday at the end of the week – this will be the first time we’ve been apart for that – even last year as we were moving we managed to be together for her birthday. It’s going to seem really strange, and I’m not quite sure how everyone will take it. One of our grandsons had minor surgery to remove some bony growths (family trait from my side) on his hand. He is recovering well.
That just about covers it for now….. Hopefully it won’t be 2 months before I do another update!
And now for the summer……
Posted by on June 17, 2006
My daughters have finished their first year of schooling in America. It’s been an interesting experience and we’ve all learned a lot.My daughters have had to change and adapt to a different schooling system, they’ve learned new subjects, and a different view on some things they thought they already new, and they’ve learned to make new friends and to enjoy their school life. In the case of one of them, she learned this a bit later than we would have liked, but she got there.
For one of my daughters, she started as a freshman, with 4 years of high school life ahead of her. She’s outgoing, mixes well, and loves sports, and so got into the freshman girls basketball team (who didn’t loose a match all year – there are some photos in an album I’ve just put up). She’s a bright kid, but can be easily distracted, which unfortunately is what happened with a couple of her subjects, so while getting good grades in most subjects, she’s now facing the start of her summer vacation with summer school in English of all things. 
For my other daughter, she took some time to get used to the system and to make new friends, and what hasn’t helped is that she was from an age perspective a year or two behind her peers in senior year. She joined the class of 2006 in its final (senior) year, so as well as adapting to a new system, learning new subjects, and making new friends, she also had all of the activities of a high school senior year to contend with – at times it looked like she’d joined a social club rather than a school. Despite a number of challenges along the way, she finished her final (and only) high school year in America with style, and proudly joined her fellow graduating classmates yesterday (also put an album up with some photos from the day).
As a parent, while our children have caused us some trials and tribulations, I feel proud of what our girls have achieved this year. Yes OK there was room for improvement, but they have both risen up to the challenges, taken/accepted responsibility for their actions, and while there are still things that need doing, they should take some time to look back on the past year and reflect with pride on exactly what they have achieved over this past year.
For one, there is the uknown path of further education ahead of her. For the other, there is the continuation of her journey through high school. I wish them both well as they face their future. Enjoy the summer break (even with summer school), and be ready to start refreshed when it ends.
Some may wonder…..
Posted by on June 16, 2006
Some may wonder why I document some of the stuff I do in a blog entry that could be read by many people, especially when the content is of a personal nature.
There are three main reasons I do this.
The first is that it’s s sort of therapy for me. If I dump it here, it makes me think about what I’m putting and stops me from ranting inappropriately at people.
The second is that in the modern world, people are more likely to pay attention to stuff put out this way (sad I know but that’s the way things are heading).
The last is that while some of the issues may seem personal, I’m sure we’re not the only family living through such problems, and if me sharing some of this with others helps someone deal better with a situation they are struggling with, then that’s a good thing.
I’d encourage anyone who reads my entries and who feels that they are inappropriate for such a forum to let me know, but until someone does, I’ll be continuing this style of entry.
Setting expectations…..
Posted by on June 16, 2006
Really wasn’t too sure how to categorise this one, as it’s in direct response to something within the family, but the underlying message has a much wider scope….
One of the things people need to learn in life is the ability and more importantly the necessity to correctly set expectations. This applies to anything. In my line of work it can apply to things like having a support engineer set the expectation that while working on a problem for a customer, they will give regular updates on progress so the customer isn’t left feeling frustrated and thinking that nothing is happening with their problem (and more importantly, making sure that they deliver on that expectation, even if the update is a ‘no change’ message). It can apply to a development engineer setting the correct expectation for what software release a fix to a problem is to be delivered in, allowing customers (and people working with them) to correctly plan for the availability of that fix. It can apply to a colleague setting the right expectations about when a requested piece of work will be delivered, as there could well be a whole host of up-stream activities dependant on the completion of that one small piece of work. There are many many other examples of how setting correct expectations is a necessity in the workplace. The important thing about setting correct expectations is that at the end of the day, there is a cost implication involved.
It’s the same thing in family life. Families operate like businesses. Not all reasons for setting correct expectations in a family situation may have an obvious direct financial implication, there is always some ‘cost’ associated with them.
Some examples of where setting ‘correct expectations’ in a family context helps to prevent problems are….
When going out, leave details of where you are going, who whom, and when you will be back.
When asked if you have homework, be honest with the answer, and if you do, make sure it gets done.
When asked how long it’ll be before you are ready to go (when others are waiting for you), give a sensible answer (rather than ‘just a minute’ when you know you’ll take at least 5).
If you say you’ll return something you’ve borrowed, actually return it when you said you would.
If you are planning a party for friends, make sure you know how many people are coming.
The reason for me writing this entry really came up as a result of the last example….
Yesterday was the birthday of one of my daughters and she graduates today, so she wanted to hold a party. Fine – we had no problem with that. She did however leave it a bit late to make this decision, and issued invitations about a week before the date of the party. Now given the time of year (end of school, graduation, etc.), it was likely that a lot of students would be holding parties at around the same time, and so attendance (especially given the late issuance of invitations) was likely to be relatively low.
We were catering for the party, and so wanted to have an idea of how much food to get in for this party – we didn’t want to get in too little, but we didn’t want to be swimming in left-overs (interesting concept) either. Money is a bit tight at the moment, and so we can’t afford to spend money on stuff that is just going to be thrown away (and even if we could, I still think that is wasteful and so would rather not do it). Some of the stuff for the party was going to be purchased in advance (stuff that can be easily stored), and some was going to be purchased fresh (the stuff not so easy to store for an extended period). Also, some of what was requested was stuff that as a family we wouldn’t normally eat. As such we wanted to be sure that we didn’t buy excessive quantities, but that we’d have enough to feed those that turned up.
The whole thing around catering for a group could spawn another entry directed at someone else (about how not everyone has my desire to eat everything in front of them, and how when putting on a buffet, not everyone will want one of everything that’s out, and how not to buy too much stuff), but putting that aside (as I don’t have the balls to write that one ), knowing how many people will attend avoids there being way more food than is needed.
So if the expectation is set that 40 will be there, that is what will be catered for. If the reality is that only 15 will be there, then the overspend is 166%. In the land of business, a product that costs more to produce than you are able to sell it for is a product that can break a company can cause it to go out of business. In a family, spending money on stuff that isn’t going to be used directly impacts the ability for that money to be used for other things. In the situation that drove me to dump all of this into a blog entry, the amount we spent on food that will now go to waste could have paid for at least 4 family trips to the cinema, 3 family meals out, or could have paid for at least 8 weeks of allowance for said daughter. Spun another way, it could have paid for drivers ed. classes and the cost of a student drivers permit, or it could have been reasonable contribution towards the cost of a pre-owned car. Instead, it’s money that has effectively been thrown away.
Now I know that we can’t hold all of this against our daughter – if people tell her that they are coming and then don’t turn up, there’s not a lot that we can do about that. Having said that however, with a little extra planning and forethought, some of the impact of this could have been negated. For example, if rather than giving an invite and just asking whether the person will turn up or not you ask them to return an RSVP slip, they are more likely to actually come. Asking them to complete an RSVP slip sets the expectation that there is an underlying reason why you want to know whether they’ll be there or not and that you need to gauge the number of people coming for some reason. Just asking them to be there sets the expectation that while it’d be nice for them to be there, there is no real impact if they don’t turn up. With this in mind, while the invitations were being designed I suggested that they have an RSVP slip, but this suggestion was not taken on-board by my daughter.
The fact that only a week was given between the invitations being given out and the date of the party meant that people would be more likely to have other commitments, but in an attempt to appear friendly, rather than saying that they can’t come were likely to say that they’ll try and be there. This is even more likely to happen if the party is pitched as a "just turn up – we don’t need to know if you are coming or not" type of event.
As such, it is really no surprise that given the time of year and the ‘last-minute’ issuing of invitations that the number of people turning up was significantly lower than the number of people who (according to our daughter) had said they were coming. A part of me also suspects that there was some inflation of the numbers in an attempt by our daughter to appear to us to have a big circle of friends given the number of times we’ve commented in the past about her reluctance to mix with strangers and the fact that she’d only been at the school for a year. If this was a contributing factor however, I don’t feel that this ‘inflation’ factor was as big as my wife believes it was.
So, while it may at face value seem unfair, I feel that there should be some sense of responsibility from our daughter, who was after all the organiser of the party. I want her to see that setting incorrect expectations has an impact, and I also want her to realise the impact that not fully thinking something through before implementing it has. Life is all about this. Every action has consequence. A well planned and implemented action with the right expectations set will have a pleasant consequence. A poorly planned and executed action with incorrect/inaccurate expectations will have an unpleasant consequence. Life is like that.
So…… especially given that funds are tight right now, I intend withholding a number of weeks of my daughter’s allowance to contribute towards the money we wasted. While this may seem harsh, this will bring home to her the financial implications of her actions and decisions. I’m not happy about doing this, as to some degree it feels like we are punishing our daughter for the actions of her friends (which is not our intent), but I do feel that with an appropriate level of thought and planning, a lot of what happened could have been avoided, and as such feel that while uncomfortable, this is appropriate. The impact to us will still be greater than the impact to her, but she is old enough that she should face the consequences of her actions, and it is time that I stop fully shielding her from the reality of life in the real world.
One of the things people need to learn in life is the ability and more importantly the necessity to correctly set expectations. This applies to anything. In my line of work it can apply to things like having a support engineer set the expectation that while working on a problem for a customer, they will give regular updates on progress so the customer isn’t left feeling frustrated and thinking that nothing is happening with their problem (and more importantly, making sure that they deliver on that expectation, even if the update is a ‘no change’ message). It can apply to a development engineer setting the correct expectation for what software release a fix to a problem is to be delivered in, allowing customers (and people working with them) to correctly plan for the availability of that fix. It can apply to a colleague setting the right expectations about when a requested piece of work will be delivered, as there could well be a whole host of up-stream activities dependant on the completion of that one small piece of work. There are many many other examples of how setting correct expectations is a necessity in the workplace. The important thing about setting correct expectations is that at the end of the day, there is a cost implication involved.
It’s the same thing in family life. Families operate like businesses. Not all reasons for setting correct expectations in a family situation may have an obvious direct financial implication, there is always some ‘cost’ associated with them.
Some examples of where setting ‘correct expectations’ in a family context helps to prevent problems are….
When going out, leave details of where you are going, who whom, and when you will be back.
When asked if you have homework, be honest with the answer, and if you do, make sure it gets done.
When asked how long it’ll be before you are ready to go (when others are waiting for you), give a sensible answer (rather than ‘just a minute’ when you know you’ll take at least 5).
If you say you’ll return something you’ve borrowed, actually return it when you said you would.
If you are planning a party for friends, make sure you know how many people are coming.
The reason for me writing this entry really came up as a result of the last example….
Yesterday was the birthday of one of my daughters and she graduates today, so she wanted to hold a party. Fine – we had no problem with that. She did however leave it a bit late to make this decision, and issued invitations about a week before the date of the party. Now given the time of year (end of school, graduation, etc.), it was likely that a lot of students would be holding parties at around the same time, and so attendance (especially given the late issuance of invitations) was likely to be relatively low.
We were catering for the party, and so wanted to have an idea of how much food to get in for this party – we didn’t want to get in too little, but we didn’t want to be swimming in left-overs (interesting concept) either. Money is a bit tight at the moment, and so we can’t afford to spend money on stuff that is just going to be thrown away (and even if we could, I still think that is wasteful and so would rather not do it). Some of the stuff for the party was going to be purchased in advance (stuff that can be easily stored), and some was going to be purchased fresh (the stuff not so easy to store for an extended period). Also, some of what was requested was stuff that as a family we wouldn’t normally eat. As such we wanted to be sure that we didn’t buy excessive quantities, but that we’d have enough to feed those that turned up.
The whole thing around catering for a group could spawn another entry directed at someone else (about how not everyone has my desire to eat everything in front of them, and how when putting on a buffet, not everyone will want one of everything that’s out, and how not to buy too much stuff), but putting that aside (as I don’t have the balls to write that one ), knowing how many people will attend avoids there being way more food than is needed.
So if the expectation is set that 40 will be there, that is what will be catered for. If the reality is that only 15 will be there, then the overspend is 166%. In the land of business, a product that costs more to produce than you are able to sell it for is a product that can break a company can cause it to go out of business. In a family, spending money on stuff that isn’t going to be used directly impacts the ability for that money to be used for other things. In the situation that drove me to dump all of this into a blog entry, the amount we spent on food that will now go to waste could have paid for at least 4 family trips to the cinema, 3 family meals out, or could have paid for at least 8 weeks of allowance for said daughter. Spun another way, it could have paid for drivers ed. classes and the cost of a student drivers permit, or it could have been reasonable contribution towards the cost of a pre-owned car. Instead, it’s money that has effectively been thrown away.
Now I know that we can’t hold all of this against our daughter – if people tell her that they are coming and then don’t turn up, there’s not a lot that we can do about that. Having said that however, with a little extra planning and forethought, some of the impact of this could have been negated. For example, if rather than giving an invite and just asking whether the person will turn up or not you ask them to return an RSVP slip, they are more likely to actually come. Asking them to complete an RSVP slip sets the expectation that there is an underlying reason why you want to know whether they’ll be there or not and that you need to gauge the number of people coming for some reason. Just asking them to be there sets the expectation that while it’d be nice for them to be there, there is no real impact if they don’t turn up. With this in mind, while the invitations were being designed I suggested that they have an RSVP slip, but this suggestion was not taken on-board by my daughter.
The fact that only a week was given between the invitations being given out and the date of the party meant that people would be more likely to have other commitments, but in an attempt to appear friendly, rather than saying that they can’t come were likely to say that they’ll try and be there. This is even more likely to happen if the party is pitched as a "just turn up – we don’t need to know if you are coming or not" type of event.
As such, it is really no surprise that given the time of year and the ‘last-minute’ issuing of invitations that the number of people turning up was significantly lower than the number of people who (according to our daughter) had said they were coming. A part of me also suspects that there was some inflation of the numbers in an attempt by our daughter to appear to us to have a big circle of friends given the number of times we’ve commented in the past about her reluctance to mix with strangers and the fact that she’d only been at the school for a year. If this was a contributing factor however, I don’t feel that this ‘inflation’ factor was as big as my wife believes it was.
So, while it may at face value seem unfair, I feel that there should be some sense of responsibility from our daughter, who was after all the organiser of the party. I want her to see that setting incorrect expectations has an impact, and I also want her to realise the impact that not fully thinking something through before implementing it has. Life is all about this. Every action has consequence. A well planned and implemented action with the right expectations set will have a pleasant consequence. A poorly planned and executed action with incorrect/inaccurate expectations will have an unpleasant consequence. Life is like that.
So…… especially given that funds are tight right now, I intend withholding a number of weeks of my daughter’s allowance to contribute towards the money we wasted. While this may seem harsh, this will bring home to her the financial implications of her actions and decisions. I’m not happy about doing this, as to some degree it feels like we are punishing our daughter for the actions of her friends (which is not our intent), but I do feel that with an appropriate level of thought and planning, a lot of what happened could have been avoided, and as such feel that while uncomfortable, this is appropriate. The impact to us will still be greater than the impact to her, but she is old enough that she should face the consequences of her actions, and it is time that I stop fully shielding her from the reality of life in the real world.
Am I really a bad parent?
Posted by on June 12, 2006
There are times when I believe I am anyway, or at least my kids make me feel like I am.
Without going into specifics, we’ve had an interesting time recently, with the taxman making demands for more of my money than I thought I’d have to give him, and as a result, the amount of available cash we have (that is not tied up in equity/property) is fairly low at the moment. In addition, the rent on the house we are living in has just been increased, and while I know I have a bonus and salary increase coming form work in the next month or so, I don’t know exactly how much it will be orexactly when this will come. We are basically living month to month, and with my wife not currently working, things are tighter than I would like.
I’ve fought for the past 20 years to come from a position where we were basically living in massive debt to a situation 2 years ago where we had no debt over and above month to month spending. When we moved to the US last year, we edged back into the world of debt, with the expense of setting up our new life costing more than we had readily available, and so we had to take out some loans (limited in number and amount, but still with an ongoing monthly impact). I also know that by the end of the year we’ll need to find a chunk of money to pay a tax bill back in the UK. We have a safety net in place to cover this, but it will leave our options limited as we move forward.
So my 2nd youngest daughter has her 17th birthday this week, and she also graduates high school at the end of the week. I’d love to give her something nice to celebrate this, and given we are in America now (which is the land of the car), I thought that she’d appreciate the gift of a car. It’d be second hand, and not the most stunning vehicle around, but it’d go, and be cheap to run, and given she’s not even driving yet, I thought a cheap and economical vehicle would be good for her as 1) she could afford to run it on her limited income, and 2) if it were to get damaged (most new drivers experience some form of accident within a short time of them taking to the roads) the impact (excuse the pun) wouldn’t be huge.
Anyway – we looked at a few options at the weekend, and it seems her expectations are much greater than I am able to deliver on. When I tried to discuss with her the reasons why things are as they are, she shut me out, and as such I get the feeling I am public enemy number 1; just because I won’t buy her the Beatle she really wants.
What she has to realise is that we are not as well off as the families of some of her friends at school, plus she is a year (age wise) below her peers graduating this year. If I had cash to spare, I’d have no problem buying her the car she wants, but I’d also do the same for my other children, and we’d be in our own house (and not renting), and I’d also have nice cars for my wife and I (whereas we are both currently in pre-owned vehicles that do what we need but that are not overly loaded with features/options).
Even getting a cheap car is going to stretch us financially, but I was prepared for that stretch, however it seems that isn’t good enough for her.
One way or another it seems I am a bad parent. Either because I can’t provide what my daughter wants, or because I’ve let my daughter grow up to a point where she can’t see what is really happening and can’t be grateful for what she gets. Either way I have failed her, so I guess yes I am a bad parent. I’d like to think however that my failure is because I haven’t prepared her properly for life in the real world, rather than because I have failed to give her what she wants. More importantly, I’d like her to see it that way.
There’s also another aspect of this, and that is what do I do about the children I have left back in England. I know we paid a lot towards various things for my eldest daughter, so while I would have some guilt there regarding not having given her a car, she’s had a lot of other help/support from us that offsets that. My 2nd eldest however hasn’t had the benefit of that, and having chosen to stay behind in the UK, has been living unsupported in the real world a lot earlier than we would otherwise have planned. I know she’s living rent free, but still has to pay her monthly bills, and hasn’t had the benefit of either what we were able to do for our eldest daughter, or of getting to start afresh like my 2 youngest daughters.
Life is never easy – is it?
<SIGH>
Images by John 'K' 