{"id":519,"date":"2012-02-20T18:56:43","date_gmt":"2012-02-21T02:56:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/?p=519"},"modified":"2012-02-20T18:56:43","modified_gmt":"2012-02-21T02:56:43","slug":"observing-what-not-to-do-can-it-help","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2012\/02\/20\/observing-what-not-to-do-can-it-help\/","title":{"rendered":"Observing what not to do – can it help?"},"content":{"rendered":"

We’ve just spent an amazing weekend on the shores of Capitola, CA<\/a>. It’s a really great, quiet, little beach town in Santa Cruz County.<\/p>\n

We made a full weekend of it. On Saturday, we swung by the Monterey Bay aquarium<\/a>. While we were there, I heard a mother screaming at her child about the value of a bottle of soda, and why she asked for it if she wasn’t going to drink it. It was a horribly adult conversation, and the 8-year old had no idea how to react. There was no framework for the kid to understand a budget, the value of a dollar, or even why they shouldn’t consume frivolously. There was just a mom yelling at her daughter.<\/p>\n

It was just a horrible experience for everyone involved. The mother and the daughter yelling at each other. The two friends who were awkwardly stuck at the table. And me for eavesdropping, wishing I hadn’t, and then not being able to break away to see how it all ended.<\/p>\n

It made me mentally note to never have that fight with my kids.<\/p>\n

From there, we made our way back up to Capitola to check-in to our little beach house. Our next door neighbors were having a massive 35-person birthday party, and it was quite fun to watch all the kids run around. You notice kids, and their behavior, a lot more after having kids.<\/p>\n

I kept thinking to myself, holy shit how do I prevent Amelia and #2 from being like that one over there? Or, wow, that girl is so kind, I wonder how to make sure my kids are kind? The one I kept coming back to that proves I’m officially an old man is, there’s no way in hell she’s ever wearing anything that looks like that!<\/p>\n

I’m not great at a lot of things, but I will give myself credit as a strong pattern matcher and observer. I’ve learned the value of listening over the years, and have found that a large part of the equation of being a strong listener is being strong with your eyes as well. With all of that said, I still can’t find the pattern that distinguishes the girl getting yelled at for buying a soda she wouldn’t drink, and the kind girl on the beach who helped her sister\/cousin when she bumped her head.<\/p>\n

I think it’s going to take a lot more pattern matching before I can figure this one out :-\/<\/p>\n

\"Enhanced<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We’ve just spent an amazing weekend on the shores of Capitola, CA. It’s a really great, quiet, little beach town in Santa Cruz County. We made a full weekend of it. On Saturday, we swung by the Monterey Bay aquarium. While we were there, I heard a mother screaming at her child about the value […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[64,1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQyAq-8n","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1519,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2015\/04\/05\/lent-update-happy-easter\/","url_meta":{"origin":519,"position":0},"title":"Lent update & happy Easter","date":"April 5, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"I failed at both of my lent tasks this year. I did way too much yelling, and I only dropped to 190 lbs :-\/Oh well.\u00a0Here's a picture from our Easter trip to get tomatoes and strawberries for the garden. \u00a0As you can see we're excited, and ready to grow! The\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Life Updates"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1488,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2015\/02\/27\/that-look-in-her-eyes\/","url_meta":{"origin":519,"position":1},"title":"That look in her eyes...","date":"February 27, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"I really need to dig into this whole no yelling thing. But they don't sleep. And then work is just a bear right now. And we have no nanny. And it just feels as if there have been, and will be coming up, a ton of solo parent days\/nights. But\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Fatherhood"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1192,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2014\/05\/20\/luka-climbs-out-of-his-crib\/","url_meta":{"origin":519,"position":2},"title":"Luka climbs out of his crib","date":"May 20, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Today is my half birthday. The last one of my third decade of life. That's right... I'll be 30 in November. And so it was quite fitting that so many fun things happened today. First... Micky got me a subscription to National Geographic magazine! When we went up the North\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Fatherhood"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1481,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2015\/02\/17\/what-im-doing-for-lent-2015\/","url_meta":{"origin":519,"position":3},"title":"What I'm doing for Lent 2015","date":"February 17, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Happy Fat Tuesday everyone! This year for Lent I'm going to focus on 2 things: Not yelling at the kids - This has been a bad trend lately... Luka is being a pain in the ass. Amelia is acting like she's six months old at times. And all I want\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "just thinking out loud"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":742,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2014\/01\/05\/this-week-in-review\/","url_meta":{"origin":519,"position":4},"title":"This week in review","date":"January 5, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Every Sunday night, I'll do a weekly update of life because it's too hard to keep up otherwise. This was a week of family bonding. Over last weekend, we took advantage of not having any kid's activities to head south. We hit up Costanoa (we love this place) for elephant\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "just thinking out loud"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":58,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2007\/06\/08\/water-aerobics-and-more\/","url_meta":{"origin":519,"position":5},"title":"Water Aerobics and more","date":"June 8, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Laugh if you want, but it's true. I'm doing water aerobics to help stay in shape this summer. I just don't think anyone understands how hard it is unless they try it. Especially when you are as conducive to floating as I am, which essentially means you sink. The real\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Summer of Zimbra"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}