Teachable Tuesday

This! Is what I learned from Grace this past week!

Starbucks is a cooler place to hang out with your friends than McDonald's is. You can beg your parents every time you get in the car, "can we go to McDonald's?" You can say after two weeks of complaining about camp food that all you want is McDonald's. But don't ever, don't even think about it, don't suggest to your friends that you go to McDonald's and just get a snack and hang out. That would be geeky. And it would make you a loser. You should suggest Starbucks.

Speaking for my generation, I see Starbucks as this generation's version of McDonald's. One on every corner, the same in every location all across the globe, cookie cutter ideas that pale in comparison to really good refreshments. And now that McDonald's has changed its image to take on a more 'coffee shop' like feel, the two franchises have become almost indistinguishable to me. If you sat me down in one of the establishments, I'd have to take a good look around and search for the 'signature' architectural features (like the red ovate lamps at Starbucks) in order to figure out where I was.

And just in case you think that this little lesson I learned would only be useful to a teenager, think again. Apparently adults who go to McDonald's instead of Starbucks, in the humble opinion of my daughter, are making a poor choice. Starbucks is definitely superior for this purpose.

My only question is, what was the ad campaign that Starbucks used to target teenagers?

Teachable Tuesday

This! Is what I have learned from Grace lately!

In the last few weeks, I have learned something from Grace over and over. She didn't overtly teach me this something; she just demonstrated it over and over for me until I had an 'a-ha' moment.

Grace is confident. I admire her confidence. It's not that she never gets scared, or that she doesn't get her feelings hurt. She does get scared. She does get her feelings hurt. It is more that she doesn't let fear of rejection, or fear itself, prevent her from doing what she wants to do.

If she wants to be in a play, she will audition whether or not she's been prepped on what to sing and how to dance. If she wants to sing a solo in front of her school, she will. If she wants to go somewhere on her own, she will figure out how to do it and try everything she can do to go for it, whether this means by city bus, cross-country flight, or international visa. If she wants to work at her favorite store in the mall, she will walk right into the store and ask if they hire 14-year-olds.

Like I said, confidence.

I find myself so often not having this quality. When I was her age, I would avoided so many things rather than risk that someone would embarrass me or tease me. What I wore, what music I listened to, who I was friends with, what television shows I watched, I carefully monitored my peers' opinions to make sure I wasn't risking rejection or ostracizing by my choices. Of course I am more confident as an adult than I was as a teenager. But I think that for my age group I still fall on the less confident side. I think that I look for a long time before being willing to leap. I avoid risk. Actually, it's not so much that I avoid it; it's that confronting change makes me uncomfortable.

Grace is not like this. She views change as opportunity. When she started 6th grade, she moved from our neighborhood school to a fine arts magnet school 10 miles away. She knew one other student at the entire school. And another thing -- she was in the racial minority. More than 98% of the school population was black. When she and I discussed the change and why she wanted to go, she said that starting at a new school gives you a new chance to start over. She said, 'what you do that first defines who you are forever.' And she jumped in without looking back.

When she starts a new situation, she makes friends immediately. She doesn't cling to the walls or keep to herself. In fact, even if she's in a situation with two or three people she knows, she will still jump out there and meet other people.

I have been learning from Grace, in so many different ways, that being confident to try something, and not letting fear of rejection or failure stand as a hurdle to what you want, is probably 90% of the battle of getting what you want.

I've been learning...

Teachable Tuesday took a bit of a hiatus. Grace and I weren't together for a week and I haven't been able to write as much as I like. This coming Tuesday, July 1st, Teachable Tuesday will return.

In the meantime, enjoy your weekend. I wish you good weather from wherever you are reading. Whether this is midsummer or midwinter for you, take a moment to breathe deeply and smile. I have slowly been realizing that I only get one lifetime. One. Also, I only get to have this part of my life once. It seems like I miss the awesomeness of simply being alive too often.

Teachable Tuesday

This! Is what I learned from Grace this past week!


I was reminded that being teenager is a place of subordination and (some) lack of control over your world. Because of this situation, Grace taught me that it is better to hold fast to your opinions, your desires, your hopes, but not necessarily argue for them or debate with those who have control over your environment. 

This is going to require some explanation, no? I decided when Grace was about 6 or 7 years old that I no longer wanted to be part of an organized religion. Once this decision was made, the question I then faced was how I should parent my daughter in growing into her spiritual identity. I decided that I would be fair-minded and open, allowing her to see what various religions entailed. I would make available to her various viewpoints, and give her my view if she asked for it. This is all well and good, except that there are very few (read: no) people in her family who don't regularly attend church. In fact, a good portion of her father's family make their living off evangelism and Christian proselytizing in non-western countries. She has an aunt and uncle who are both theologians. And then there are her grandmothers... 

Both grandmothers are not happy that Grace does not attend church. They cannot figure out how a child learns to be moral and ethical outside of a belief in God and Jesus Christ. AND by attending church regularly to receive that teaching. They both have sat Grace down and asked her if she has asked Jesus to be her personal savior. At the arrangement of each of her grandmothers, Grace has met with pastors and small groups leaders who ask her about the condition of her soul. 

I have responded like this -- as long as this isn't hurting her, this is fine. If Grace decides tomorrow that the world is coming to an end and consequently that she has to move to Iran and start converting Muslims to Christianity, I'll intervene because that would not be safe. And if I saw her making choices that lessened her as a woman, I would ask her about it. But ultimately, her spiritual identity is her own. If there is one part of our identity that is ours and ours alone, it is our soul. What right have I (or anyone else) to question Grace about what she believes? 

While discussing the topic of Christianity and church and how this is something she disagrees on with many of her "superiors" in her family, Grace explained something important to me. She doesn't argue with pastors or grandparents or others who want to convert her to a religious belief. She just lets them talk. Her rationale for this (in)action is that if she argues, they would be revved up and 'lecture' (her word) longer. She has learned (and taught me) that when things are out of your control, sometimes the best thing to do is just to wait and be still. You may not have control now, but no one can change who you are and what you believe. She taught me that knowing who you are and being confident and comfortable with that is much more important than arguing with someone who will never change their mind.

My daughter is one smart cookie. I am amazed by how much I am learning from her.

Teachable Tuesday

This! Is what I have learned from Grace this week!

A few weeks ago I wrote about how Grace doesn't like to have music on her iPod that she doesn't intend to listen to. I thought, what difference does it make? Just don't listen to those playlists if you don't want to hear it.

I thought, it is too much work and maintenance for me to update three iPods manually on a semi-regular basis -- GIVEN THAT IT IS MY MACBOOK that contains the comprehensive iTunes library. If everyone could just tell me what songs they want, I'll just manually add those. But until we have a family computer where each person can customize their own updates, it is too much trouble for me to also delete tracks you don't listen to anymore.

My increasingly tech-savvy daughter explained to me why it is worth updating your iPod with only those songs and playlists that you want at that time. She told me that if there are songs on there she doesn't want, she can't just set the iPod to shuffle. She keeps hitting songs that she doesn't want to hear, and then she has to skip through them, and that interrupts her listening pleasure, and the battery has a shorter life due to all the manual skipping about.

Ah, oh, yes. That makes sense. Funny how this compulsion of mine to upload the entire iTunes library onto my iPod makes me steer away from using the shuffle function. I've actually considered before that the shuffle function would be a cool way for me to listen to music on long trips or drives without getting bored of the same old playlists shuffled over and over. But then I realized that this would be really bothersome because the shuffle would include songs that I don't care for. Like Fergie and Rodney Atkins. So I never use the shuffle function, despite my wish that it would shuffle only through the songs I like and play them randomly.

Grace in essence taught me how iPods are supposed to be used. iPods are designed to be temporarily customized, not to serve as a portable version of your entire library. Duh.

I also learned from this that it would be the most useful if each iPod user had access to the iTunes library so that they could create their own playlists and preferences.

On a separate note, I noticed that lately ratings for songs have been showing up on the library that I did not put there. I asked Grace if she had done this ranking on my computer. She said, she had done it on her iPod and the rankings must have overwritten onto the library. I thought that the hard drive on the iPod would not write to the iTunes directory, only the other way around. But I don't really keep up on these things because I'm just a humble user. Does anyone know if this is true? What happens if both she and I have the same songs on our iPods and update them on the same computer? If she changes something on her iPod, will it rewrite the file on computer and then additionally rewrite it on my iPod at my next update? I know her On-The-Go playlists get written to the iTunes library. Hmmm...

Teachable Tuesday

This! Is what I have learned from Grace this past week!

I used to play cello when I was in middle school. By the end of 9th grade, I gave it up. I never performed a solo, I never competed in a competition, I only once auditioned for a seat in my school orchestra. Looking back on it, I can't remember a time in which I understood what it was supposed to feel like to play that instrument.

Grace plays her viola loudly and with emotion. She has confidence. And you know what? She knows that playing this way gets her attention. She does it on purpose. She knows that if she plays a piece with passion and a few wrong notes that people may not even notice the wrong notes. This is definitely not the school of thought I was trained in. But now that I've seen her in action, I think she is right. Sure, yeah, it's the best if you play with passion and you get the notes all correct. But if you have to sacrifice one or the other, it's better to play with passion.

I so never got this before.

Another thing. Grace told me this week that she likes playing viola, but she hates practicing. Is this possible? Apparently so. You can love doing something but hate what it takes to be good at it. Huh! Who woulda thunk it?

Teachable Tuesday

'member when you thought it was a good idea to braid your hair and sleep on it overnight? You thought, when I take out these braids in the morning, I will look so awesome! (or maybe so groovy! or so swell! depending on your age.)

My hair is thin and straight. I do NOT look good in long, thin, straight hair. When I have the income to support the line item in my budget, I keep my hair short and get it cut every 4-5 weeks. I do this because it is a waste of time, effort, and money to try and get my hair to be anything but thin and straight. When I tried the braiding stunt in middle school, it went badly. Very badly. I thought this was due to the obvious shortcomings of my mane.

This week I learned that even if you have the most beautiful, thick, naturally curly hair in the world (read: Grace's hair), the braiding thing will still backfire. 

I even did the braiding for her. She asked me to do it, and I put in evenly spaced braids throughout her scalp. No deal. Not a good idea. 

Here's something we both learned from the experiment: If you are braiding your hair and sleeping on it overnight with visions of lovely waviness in your head, be sure to leave enough time to remedy the situation should things go awry. Grace waited to take the braids out until she had exactly 7 minutes left before leaving to catch the bus. Those 7 minutes quickly turned panicky as she realized that Plan A had not gone as she had planned. 

She said, as most of us will find unsurprising, 'I am never doing that again.'

Teachable Tuesday

THIS! is what I've learned from Grace lately!

Auditioning is really really hard, especially when you want something badly and you're being watched by a lot of people. Grace auditioned this week for a talent show and sang a solo piece by herself. The auditions took place in front of everyone else auditioning.

Every time you audition, you get nervous and you do things worse than you think you will. You forget things that you were going to do. While you are planning for the audition, you imagine the way it will go. But when you get there and actually do it, everything it different. The difference makes you nervous, and then you mess up. Sometimes you are so nervous that you just sing and you forget to move around or act or be animated.

In there anything worse than messing up the audition? Yes. You could actually make the cut and have to do it again in front of a bigger audience. Ouch. I hadn't thought of that.

Here's a toast to always learning and always being teachable! Cheers!

Teachable Tuesday - coming soon

It seems to me that since my daughter is now fourteen years old, I should be learning from her. Not the content stuff, like how to use some computer application; more importantly, I should be learning from her about life. She's had a lot of it. I think that this is why I started this blog. I was spending a lot of my time revisiting my own childhood and past trying to make sense of what life is all about. Mostly I was dredging up those memories by trying to understand my daughter. As I have remarked many times here, one thing I learned as I started this blog is that Grace is not me. Therefore she has a different way of handling life than I do (or did in the past). It stands to reason that sometimes she makes better choices than I would have.

I have been learning to listen to her. She is able to express herself well if given the space to do so. She can express her feelings, desires, fears, motivations, and joys. She's pretty much a grown person at this point, and needs only experience of life to continue to shape her. It's not like she doesn't know most of the essentials of life, like if you eat too much junk food you will regret it. And if you procrastinate, you will not do your best work in the end. And saving money is many times better than spending it as soon as you get it. I could go on. The point is, she's pretty much like a grown person in that now she makes decisions each day on her own and learns from the results what to do the next time.

I hereby instigate "Teachable Tuesday" in which I reflect and articulate what I learned from the fantastic teenager who is becoming a woman of the future before my very eyes. The first installment will be next Tuesday, May 13th. This might be a bit of a doozy, since I am going in for a medical procedure that day. But it should also provide me with some nice fodder for the first edition.

Stay Tuned!