“I thought I just heard something I couldn’t have heard.”
When Alex was seven, we went out for pizza. Without realizing it, I sat in a seat he had picked, and he said, “Move!” Seriously.
The absurd humor in that one word inspired me immediately to start a comedy monologue. “Oh, the funniest thing—but it couldn’t be—I just heard—that would make no sense—a voice sounding like yours but rude—a kid snapping at me or any adult with disrespect—and yet I would be more than happy to move my seat if asked politely, whenever that should happen.” Total silence on his end, and that tone was never heard again for 10 years.
Guerilla Tip: Whatever we accept, we encourage. A single word can be important enough to cut off at the pass.
Friends have copied the technique in their own words on their own habitually fresh kids, and it worked very well for them, too.
As a young adult, Shevy had a quip that spoofed the schoolyard classic, "You're Immature!" Here is the setup for the quip: First, listen for an odd word applied as a complaint, like “Why is this flour bromated, anyway?” Then, using Shevy’s format, shoot back with the same word, accusing the speaker, “You’re bromated!”
To be original, the accusation has to be snapped out as though it is a putdown, like so-there. To avoid any disrespect, it should make no logical sense to apply it to the person you are accusing—hence the joke, “You’re bromated!”
- It has been said you can only be young once, but you can be immature forever. For me, there is no pride in acting childish, but childlike, yes.
Guerilla Tip: Being childish means being self-centered, petty, unreasonable and competitive when it matters least.
For example, a classic kiddie contest forms a metaphor when adults waste time proving they are best at something meaningless. The activity is childish, since reaching the farthest doesn’t matter at any age. Maybe at six, it might have been fun making sticky mud with the other boys, so it mattered for something then.
Guerilla Tip: Being childlike means a lifetime of staying filled with enthusiasm and wonder, greeting the bright-eyed world freshly each day, savoring little pleasures anew, appreciating the beautiful sunset, exploring your own creativity and appreciating it in others, asking “Why not?” more often than “Is that allowed?”
- Beth B. of Highland Park, NJ asks her kids to remind her why she had kids. It is not for everyone, but it works in her setting. With her playful tone, no harm is done. Her kids are sophisticated for their ages, and as long as it’s understood as loving, it is received as loving. In fact, there is a lot more going on: A running joke, a private joke, a family understanding, mutual trust, permission to tease with love.
Guerilla Tip: Find your own ways to express love.
As long as the general mood was good, and my kids said something out of line, my version was “Useless,” or “You’re a menace to society.” Again, such a message only works because of context and tone.
- When George W. of Plainfield, NJ, a junior high school teacher and learning specialist, is annoyed and not seriously angry at his students, he tells them he will “Sell you down the river and throw you under the bus.” He readily admits that he lives right on the line each day, and sometimes temporarily crosses the line. Since he has built his rapport through mutual trust, there is no misunderstanding.
His class loves his humor, and there is never a question of who runs the show, so what happens in Mr. W’s room stays in Mr. W’s room. However, he has his alibi ready should an administrator confront him, “It’s all about teaching idiomatic expressions. Since English is filled with them, the class needs to know when they do and don’t fit the situation.”
- A few years ago, a beautiful all-leather sofa in cherry red called out for me to buy it. After it was delivered, Alex, 15, told he could not figure out how it opened as a sleeper, my main priority for the sofa purchase. However, my priorities had changed at the sight of a red leather sofa that did not come as a sleeper. “Okay, sorry,” he summed it up, “but you are the worst vegetarian I know.” Although Alex did not care about the sleeper, he questioned what happened to my professed priorities. The teasing comment was okay because it was rare, tempered with humor and understood with love. If you build trust within your family, your kids can be a little fresh and you can let it go, if they are selective and respectful.
It would be the same for a teacher who accepts an occasional student answer that is called out without raising a hand. If the serenity is unbroken, where is the harm? Has a law been broken?
Guerilla Tip: The ideal for the serene home is having the kids neither wild nor stifled. There’s a lot of room in between.
It was the red leather for under $1,000 that seduced me. The devil made me do it. There was no shame since I was not harming my kids, but indulging myself, part of the good life.
Guerilla Tip: If you cannot be noble, own up to being human. You can hardly pretend to be otherwise, and it gives you a solid alibi.
- There are many ways to spread joy, none better than singing. When Nietzsche wrote he could not “distinguish tears from music,” wasn’t he referring to emotions expressed in song? Sing with your kids, sing without them.
Singing is both a gift from above and a gift right back to heaven. Almost everyone can sing, some much sweeter than others. Although you may not be doing math if you do it badly, you are still singing if you sing badly. Not everyone can win a Nobel Prize, but we can, every single one of us, spread joy.
- Guerilla Tip: Humor and joy are infectiously spread.
If you live in joy, your kids will learn by example from what they see and what you experience together. Especially if the action does not involve them, but they can see that joy is pure giving and giving, pure joy, they will follow your lead.
There are countless ways you can spread joy:
◘ Baking from scratch or ordering pizza for the family◘ Being an appreciative guest when the cook does a good job or not◘ Holding hands with a stranger who is in a hospital bed◘ Smiling at an old lady sitting alone on her front stoop◘ Asking a blind man first if he wants help before lending a hand◘ Noticing the name of the cashier at the checkout counter◘ Pronouncing people’s names the way they do themselves◘ Remembering a detail in a neighbor’s life◘ Really listening and taking it in◘ Forgiving◘ Always being honest unless the truth would be unkind◘ Accepting yourself for who you are◘ Showing you are fallible◘ Being silly sometimes (My mother once saw a sign for irregular underwear and asked what you have to have to need that.)
- When encouraging creativity, especially if you think you are not the creative type yourself, do not dismiss flights of fancy as a waste of time.
Guerilla Tip: You are always free to say any creative idea is just talk, but talk is exactly how all inventions get started—First exploring with the imagination, then giving shape to the idea and talking it out, and finally giving it life and presenting it to the world.
Before you give these very ideas in parenting life in your home, for example, you first imagine how they might fit and whether you want to put them in your own words. Right? Same with a kid’s ideas.
Want to rain on your kid’s parade? Sorry, but why? All kids grow up with feelings of inferiority due to being inferior to adults in many ways. It is not a complex; it is reality. Your job is to get them past it, not to keep them stuck.
The Buddha said, “An idea developed and put into action lives longer than an idea that lives only as an idea.” Give it the weight you want, but my fortune cookie last night said, “Live by your imagination more than your memory.” Why is this good? Because you always have your memory whether you live by it or not, while your imagination will not have wings unless you grant it some air time. Why do people brainstorm? Because one imaginative idea begets another, and eventually a practical idea emerges worth carrying out.
- Tangents and Creativity If you go off on a tangent, you usually have a thread to trace your way back on track. But if you don’t follow the tangent, how can you be sure you ever find that special thread exploring out ever again?
Guerilla Tip: A tangent is out-of-the-box thinking. The lack of obvious connection is precisely what makes the tangent a creative thought. If kids go off, follow with delight. When they are done, you can bring them back on track.
For example, ever find yourself entering a room and wondering why you went there in the first place? Go back to the place you started and the same trigger will remind you again.
- Humor is easy to misunderstand, so it may backfire if it looks like you are laughing at kids, not with them.
Guerilla Tip: Withhold humor when you are talking to anyone who is very angry. With anger, comes clouded judgment along with a search for the guilty party to blame. Do not volunteer for the party.
Since your intentions can be misinterpreted, having fun can look like you are making fun and not being serious about the sensitive issue at hand.
- In the year I drove a taxicab, occasionally a fare from Kennedy Airport would claim he needed to get to Penn Station, an hour away, to catch a train in 30 minutes. Softening the news with humor, my tone would wax philosophical, “We all have our hopes and dreams. What is the train after that?”
Guerilla Tip: Before someone’s panic sets in, ask what is plan B.
- There is a tradition that Mohammed said living in the service of God is expressed as humility, warmth and hospitality to the stranger.
Guerilla Tip: Greet everyone you meet, not just your friends.
Since people are wary of strangers, you change the dynamic when you are the first to offer a simple, sincere greeting. This is just too powerful to miss, so try it. There are reasons that the world’s spiritual leaders have followers.
Whenever singles new in town complain they are not getting invited for holiday meals, it makes me wonder if they are asking for something they themselves never provide. To introduce my idea, I ask if they are doing any inviting themselves. What would Mohammed do? His saying must mean to go ahead and do the inviting—don’t wait to be invited.
Guerilla Tip: If you believe in receiving hospitality, offer it sometimes.
The beloved sage Hillel, way past the title of Rabbi, agreed with singer-songwriter King David, who said it is hardly enough to love peace, you have to get up and run after it (Psalms 34:15).
Guerilla Tip: Don’t sit on your fat, lazy assets with armchair ideals. Get out and make good things happen. Go get ‘em tiger!
That part was mine, modernizing the wording, but no complaints yet from Hillel or David.
- In my father’s last year, he was living on a pacemaker and had a live-in practical nurse. Besides her, he got an intensive visit three times a week from a male traveling nurse who shaved him, showered him and gave him the deep massage he loved and taught us. My father’s strength was improving when in early March he read the morning news and died. During the week of mourning that followed, his visiting nurse paid his respects. He seemed quite surprised when I told him, “I’m sorry for you, too. You lost a patient and a friend, so you also had a loss.”
Guerilla Tip: Empathy can be an overwhelming gift.
- In the Jewish tradition, we love a saying from the Hasidic master nicknamed The Baal Shem Tov. His name even derives from his saying, Gam zu letova, “Even this is good.”
Guerilla Tip: Every moment has something good hidden inside it.
Also, we are obliged to always assume people’s intentions are pure (Sayings of our Sages, also translated as Chapters for Parents, “Dan lekav zechut.”)
- Rebbe Zev Wolf of Zbarazh, when told of two of his Hasidim who were spending nights in a gambling joint, rejoiced, “Good that they’re learning persistence. Stay up and focus all night. Everyone wants to turn to God, but nobody knows how. When ready to turn, will they be magnificent!” Translation: Every rebellious act grows out of a sane, fundamental drive.
The rebbe’s starting point is that everyone wants a spiritual life, not just the blessed few. Since many are unsure how to find it, the urge can come out in odd ways like gambling or making friends quickly. The essential urge is still holy. Rejoicing in the news is no Pollyanna pretty talk. It is seeing past the clutter, through to the good, and loving it.
- The Buddha said, “Let us rise up and be thankful: For if we didn’t learn a lot today, at least we learned a little. And if we didn’t learn a little, at least we didn’t get sick. And if we got sick, at least we didn’t die. So, let us all be thankful.”
- Listen with your whole self when you ask your kid a question. If you hear no response, that may be your answer. When you want to say, “You never responded,” listen for your kid’s unspoken explanation, “Yes I did, that was it; my answer is that I can't explain, I just didn’t use words.”
Guerilla Tip: You have to be sharp to recognize when silence speaks volumes.
- A game of mine was telling the kids that something of theirs was really mine, to challenge them to take a stand and stand up for themselves even in play.
Guerilla Tip: Teach kids how to defend their boundaries.
Specifically, I would point to toys in their hands and say, “That frog is mine.” If they could, they would argue that the frog was not mine but theirs, which was the stand I was looking for. In play, I would fight back, “No, it’s mine!” and so on.
This is not only fun, it trains kids that they have full permission to say no, even to adults, at the right time. This is a homemade self-defense class. It works for other people’s kids, too, but it is smart to ask first if the parents don’t mind.
Guerilla Tip: The earlier kids fully believe they own their belongings and they own their body, the safer they will be at six or 16 when they are challenged on just such questions of personal boundaries.
My kids knew that if a teacher would forbid a bathroom break when they felt that their bladder is bursting, they were permitted to walk right up and say, “My father told me to see the principal and say I need the toilet.” Especially in the early years of toilet use, it is not the teacher’s place to decide how often a kid needs the bathroom, whether for physical reasons or something less tangible.
Guerilla Tip: It is an adult skill to take a bathroom break when it is not the bathroom but the break that is needed. Why shouldn’t kids use the very same, very civilized technique? If asked politely, isn’t a needed break probably well granted?
As far as being responsible for their own toys, if a kid asked where a certain toy was, it was my pleasure to say, “Exactly where you left it last time!”
My uncle Yehuda showed me a similar game with my toddlers: Build a tower of blocks, let the kid knock it down, then you complain, “I worked SO HARD!” Permission to destroy, who could ask for anything more?
- Driving in Italy if you’re a tourist already makes you certifiable. On vacation with the kids in their preteens, I drove a rental car on the superhighway connecting Rome with Florence. You know, when in Rome, drive as the Romans do, so my car kept gravitating towards the left lane. Speed limit signs arbitrarily posted 90 kilometers per hour, about 55MPH, but carried no meaning to local drivers. Eventually, my speedometer read 140 KPM, almost 90 MPH, to keep up with the flow of traffic. Very smooth roadway.
Nonetheless, at one point, there was a driver tailgating me—at that speed. I could not get out of the lane fast enough to let him pass. As he switched lanes and came up along my right side, he offered a universal gesture. Not that one. He rested his cheek on his left hand and raised his eyebrows to ask, unforgettably at that breakneck speed, “Fell asleep at the wheel?” It wasn’t that he was angry at his fellow traveler; he thought the tourist was ridiculous. Maybe the stranger was ridiculous to think he could fit in.
Okay, the joke was on me. It gave me a better perspective on the attitude of the local drivers. In the end, the lesson of not slowing down traffic by driving 90MPH was easier to learn with humor than with horn blowing or tailgating.
Guerilla Tip: Don’t teach anyone a lesson by blowing your horn or tailgating. It’s called showing compassion.
