Images by John 'K'

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.

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.

 

 

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>

My two youngest daughters moved to California with my wife last August. They’ve now been through pretty much a full school year. Back in the UK, one of them had just finished mainstream education (and would have been coming to the end of her first year in college), and the other was mid-way through her mainstream senior education. The education system in the UK, while being ahead of the US in terms of what is covered at certain ages, is very heavily focused on the results of examinations sat at the end of the education process, whereas the American system is focused much more on an ongoing assessment of progress throughout the time children are being educated.

Let’s focus on the elder of the two first….

She’s good at some stuff, not so good at others, and unfortunately personality clashes with teachers get the better of her and interfere with her performance in certain classes. She can be a fairly moody person, and tends to switch off in the face of criticism. This tends to mean that when she’s good at something, she revels in the attention and will continue to do well, but when she’s not so good at something, any criticism or attempt to point out what she did wrong (so she can do it right next time) is met with a front of negative attitude and a lack of willingness to listen and learn, and so she continues to do badly (and in some cases subsequently does worse).

When we moved here, she had a chance to either skip high-school altogether and instead jump straight into college (with an age gap between her and her peers), or she could re-enter school with 1 or 2 years of high-school to complete before going on to college with people who would be closer to her own age. This is because the UK school system is 2 years ahead of that in the US, and by assessing her UK school transcript, she had all the relevant credits to have met a high-school education. For various reasons, we ended up with her choosing to enter high-school as a senior. The net result of this being that in order for her to graduate, she now needs to complete the necessary credits for her senior year.

As is typically the case, she did well at some subjects, and not so well at others, and those where she had been doing not so well were at least in part because of the previously mentioned reasons. The net result being that her ability to graduate now hangs on a few percentage points in one subject, and what worries me is that 1) I’m not sure she has really taken on-board how important it is for her to pull out all the stops to make sure she gets the results to graduate, and 2) what impact that an ‘average’ set of grades will make on her future employability.

How she finishes high-school is going to shape her future, and graduating is key to that future. Without graduating with a high-school diploma, she’s going to find it difficult to get on the college courses she wants, and will subsequently limit her career choices.  She needs to realize that her education is still vitally important to her future, and that she can’t just ride through life on what she’s achieved in the UK. In order to succeed in the US, her US education is vital to her future, and she needs to pull out all the stops to ensure she does the best she can between now and graduation, in ALL subjects, or her graduation, and her future, hangs in the balance.

Now to the youngest one….

As she was only part way through her UK senior education, she joined the US education system as a high-school freshman with peers of the same age. In the UK, she was getting good grades, was enjoying the work, was in with a good group of kids who all seemed to work well  together, and as a result of her progress had even been placed on a ‘talented children’ watch-list from one of the local universities.

As she started in the US, things looked to be going well. She was getting good grades, was integrating well, got on the school basketball team, and all looked good. Over the course of the year however, grades in subjects where she should be doing really well started to drop. I suspect there are a number of reasons for this – some valid, some not, but she needs to realize that the system here works differently. For a start, if she wants to continue to be a member of the basketball team (which she does), she needs to keep up a good level of overall academic performance. 

We’ve seen that when she makes an effort, she can get great grades here, but we’ve also seen that when she doesn’t make an effort, she gets really bad grades. What she doesn’t seem to have taken on board is that for the times she doesn’t make an effort, her overall grade suffers badly, and as such, her ability to continue to play the sport she seems to love, and her potential to go on to a good college placement and a good career are at risk. Unlike in the UK where she could pull things back by doing well in final exams, her final grade here is dependant on how she does in assignments and projects through the year, and failure to complete these will seriously limit her future options. She needs to realize that certain things need to take priority, and that some effort and sacrifice now will save her a LOT of effort and sacrifice later.

… so, hindsight?

The reason I say all of this is that I’ve been there. I’ve gone form being a bright student getting good grades, to letting things slide at the end of my school time, and have paid the consequences. Rather than finding the right balance, I let my personal life get in the way of my education in the two years where it mattered the most, and as a result found my future options severely limited. Whereas I could have gone on to university, majored in computer science or some related area, and gone into a really good job in an emerging industry, I ended up leaving 6th form college (sort of hybrid between high-school and community college) with some pretty average grade ‘A’-level exams (sort of the equivalent of a 2 year college degree), and spent a year working in a department store before starting at a fairly low level in the emerging computer industry.

It is only thanks to timing and my ability to study hard and learn new things on the fly that I have managed to progress to where I am now, which while not a particularly bad place, could have been much better with the right start on my working life, and I’m only where I am now because I have had to work extra hard to compensate for the lack of a proper college/university education and the resultant credentials.

My two youngest daughters are both at key points in their lives and what they do now (and in the next few weeks) will shape their future in ways that they really can’t imagine. It is this thought more than anything else that causes my wife and I to react the way we do when we see signs of things going bad for them. For my elder daughter, if things are caught now, she can salvage things such that her prospects for the future can be a bit more open that they might otherwise be. For my youngest daughter, if she turns things around now and pulls herself back on track, she can still have the sort of future ahead of her that I can now only dream about.

As parents, we want the best future for our children. Unfortunately, like a lot of parents who get no training in the skills of life needed to bring up children, we’re not the best at communicating this to our children. As such, our desire to see them do the best they can often comes across as us being harsh, authoritarian, overly willing to criticize, and all in all ends up with us looking like enemy number 1 to our children. In reality though, all we want is for them to have the best opportunity they can to reach their full potential in their future lives. 

Coming from an upbringing in a country where people tend to criticize the bad rather than praise the good, nurturing the potential of our children in a land where achievements (no matter how small) are celebrated and people are encouraged for what they can do rather than discouraged because of what they can’t do is a hard change for us, and one that we haven’t mastered yet. I hope we don’t discover that skill too late for the sake of our children’s future, but at the same time, I hope that our children can realize that what we are doing is not out of spite, but is rather out of love and a desire to see our children do the best they can to have the best possible life in their future.

One of the character traits of a Libran is that they like balance and will tend to try and see fair play for all. Well that typically fits me to a tee, and at times it gets me into trouble.

 

Take today for example. Without going into too many specifics, my wife said something (tongue in cheek) to one of my daughters that was taken the wrong way. My daughter, as she usually does when something like that happens started stropping around, and my wife started telling her off for it. Now with these two there is a clash of personality, and things started to quickly get out of hand, and as a result I voiced an opinion that I though my wife was getting heavy handed, and that unfortunately led to the first big arguement that we have had since we got here.

 

Now I don’t know how much of it was just reaction to me voicing that opinion (note that I didn’t think that my daughter shouldn’t have been told off), or how much of it might have been compounded by the fact that she feels she’s been uprooted from everything she loved in England and brought to a strange place (the same might be said for my daughter), or whether the fact that she’s had to leave some stuff behind thyat she wanted to bring, or whether recent events in the house have contributed, but a lot of stuff was brought up at me and all I could really do was bite my tongue and listen, knowing that if I said anything of significance back it’d make things 10 times worse. I know this because I’ve made that mistake before, and the few comments I did make back would have been better left unsaid.

 

So I’m stuck in a hard place. I know the way my daughter was acting wasn’t right (and I’ve subsequently had quieter words with her about that, and we’ll see what happens there). I also feel that the way my wife reacted was a little excessive (but I understand why she did), but trying to do what I thought was the right thing has made matters worse for all concerned.

 

Now I know that my wife needs to let off steam occasionally, and if interrupted she is a lot worse than if she’s allowed to just vent her frustrations, but each time we have one of these ‘one way arguements’, I end up bottling a lot of stuff up that I’m sure one day will spill over into a very unhealthy mess, and because I have no way to let off steam, I’m left feeling like everything is stacked against me. I daren’t comment back for fear of making things worse, but not being able to comment back builds a feeling of resentment inside that I hate feeling but have no safe release for.

 

So to my wife I say sorry for saying what I did and sparking that arguement, and for giving the impression that I’m sticking up for the wrong things that our daughter does because that’s not the case.

 

To my daughter I say please remember to show respect for others, your posessions, and your surroundings, and if you can do this consistently others will react better towards you. If you can’t treat others the way you would like to be treated, you can’t expect them to treat you the way you would like.

 

To myself I say keep your mouth shut when your instincts tell you to do so.

 

Now please lets put this behind us and move forward as a family.

 

Now if I could just get my PC back up and running and vent some of my frustrations with a few well placed rockets in a nice violent game of multi-player Halo I’d be a much happier person! 🙂