By Allen Johnson, Ph.D.

Chapter One: Sex

And then their eyes met. Jack was quite certain that he had never seen a woman quite so lovely. Her name was Farah. The grace of her ankles, the elegance of her long, alabaster neck, the ever-so-slight overbite, leaving her soft, full lips perpetually pursed-it was all too, too intoxicating. Jack wanted to kiss those lips. No, that’s not right; he wanted to devour them. He was only sixteen, and his hormones were not saving up for retirement.

Chapter Two: Affection

Jack is much older now. There are other women in his life, including Clara, who works in the same office. They have known each other for seven years. Although there isn’t much that Jack and Clara don’t know about one another, they are not lovers. They are just good friends; you can tell that in the way they treat each other. They share a smile, a funny story about home, a pat on the arm. There is a lot of comfort there, a lot of affection.

Chapter Three: Love

Jack is not without love. He met Sarah at his first job out of college. Within six months they were married; that was twenty years ago.

Over the years they have had their share of struggles and disappointments-unemployment, escalating bills, quarrelsome in-laws-but through it all they always maintained a sense of commitment to each other. Yes, there was sex; and, yes, there was affection; but at the heart, there was love. I chose to introduce Jack and his three women to make a point. Sex, affection, and love are not synonymous. I know it seems obvious, but many get the words jumbled in their heads. Let’s see if we can untangle their meaning.

Confusion about sex. When Jack met Farah, he thought he was in love. His reasoning was simple. If kissing her felt that good, it must be love. Jack is not alone; many people confuse runaway passion with true love. The fact is sex and love serve separate needs. Sex serves the primitive and instinctual sex-need. It is internally regulated in the same way we control for hunger and thirst. Although the drive is enormously powerful, any single urge can be satisfied in a matter of minutes.

Love, on the other hand, serves a higher more social love-need. It is about how we connect with the world. The desire is on-going. Those who attempt to satisfy their love-need with casual sex are destined to feel empty and used. The morning after, when the passion has subsided, they wonder, “What was that all about?” Fooled again, and no wonder. The mass media have programmed us to believe that sex buys permanent love. How can you look at those smiling, vibrant faces and not believe that lasting happiness is just a pair of blue jeans away?

Confusion about affection. Jack and his co-worker, Clara, remain affectionate without being sexual. There is no confusion about their intentions. They simply take time to recognize each other as people-quite a departure from treating the other as an object: a typewriter or a staple machine. In the realm of marriage, some spouses offer affection only as an overture to sex. It doesn’t take a partner long to recognize and resent the routine. The gesture is soon viewed as cheap and manipulative.

In time sex may be withheld or granted dispassionately out of some sense of obligation.

Confusion about love. Jack and his wife Sarah know what makes love last: work. They are affectionate and their sex is good, but at the core they are busy keeping their love fresh. How do they do that? They practice perceiving one another positively. They see the good in each other; they are sensitive to the fine qualities that often go unnoticed by outsiders. When they can’t be positive, when the actions of the other are too hard to swallow, they practice perceiving the event with indifference. Why? Because it is abundantly less damaging to the relationship than negative criticism. A marriage would never abide constant indifference, but if used prudently, it can be healthy.

Jack and Sarah are also committed to each other. That commitment was sealed in their decision to marry. They have said, “Yes, we are willing to take the risk. We are committed to making our marriage work. We will not run at the first hint of a crisis; we will see it through-together.”

Sex, affection, and love. If Jack can manage to keep the differences straight, he will realize a lot more happiness and a lot less heartache. If he cannot, the final chapter in the book of love could turn into a horror story.

Chapter Four: The Encounter

Unbeknown to Jack, Farah, Clara, and Sarah arrived at the same dinner party. Jack had no choice but to make the introductions. “Farah, Clara. Clara, Sarah. Sarah, Farah. Clara I like. Farah I want. Sarah I like, want, and need. Or was it Clara that I want and Sarah that I like and Farah that I need. Or maybe it was . . .” And with that Jack O’Hara turned and slipped into the night and was never seen or heard of again-except once . . . on the highway to Santa Clara. But that’s another story.

By Allen Johnson, Ph.D.

SOMETIMES I’M SENTIMENTAL about my cars. Take my Lexus sedan. Nita accuses me of giving it a papa-bear hug before I go to bed. That’s an outrageous lie; I only hug it in the morning. So when Nita spilled chocolate-flavored cappuccino into what she called “the gearshift thingy,” making it impossible to shift out of park, I was, well, concerned. I knew that how I responded in the next few moments could change the course of the world as we know it. So in the time it takes to tip over a cup of cappuccino, I was lost for a moment in the fog of a frightening fantasy:

. . . I can feel my blood leave the starting gate. I’m going to enjoy getting even, I say to myself. She’s not going to get away with this-not this time. I walk over to her with the look of the Grim Reaper and rail on her until she is trembling with emotion.

“Stop it,” she finally says. “Who do you love more, anyway, me

or that stupid car?”

One thing leads to another, and all of a sudden I’m packing my bags.

I bunk at a hotel in the sleazy part of town. The pungent smell of beer and urine permeates the hallways. The hours turn into days, but I cannot sleep. I get into the habit of wandering through the back alleys of the naked city. I don’t know, maybe it’s a death wish.

One night, a drunk sneaks up from behind and grabs my sleeve. He startles me, and I instinctively backhand him across the side of the head. The raggedy man falls down in a heap, his skull striking the edge of a concrete step. I check his pulse; it is silent. As I stand there in disbelieve, I light snaps on overhead. In a moment there is the sound of sirens. I start to run down a dark alley, crashing into garbage cans and wine bottles. I hear a shout from behind.

“POLICE. STOP OR I’LL SHOOT.” But I can’t stop. I’m running away from it all, from the drunk, the lonely hotel, the broken marriage-and especially from the chocolate cappuccino in the gearshift thingy. A warning shot zings overhead. I ignore it.

Suddenly there is a 10-foot, chain-link fence between me and freedom. I start climbing. I’m almost over the top when the hot lead slams into my back. My fingers uncurl and I fall like a Saturday night drunk. Everything goes to black. The next thing I know, I’m flat on my back; I’m looking straight up at a white, caged light. There’s a sheet over my body. I look at my bare feet exposed V-shaped from under the sheet. My God, there’s a tag attached to my right, big toes. I’M DEAD. I’m laid out on a cold, steal slab in the city morgue!

It’s then that I realize my wife is standing next to me. She’s wearing a yellow, wide-brim hat and a nondescript smile. Her hand is grasping the arm of a tall man in a navy, double-breasted suit and a gray fedora. I see the bulge on his left side and I know he’s a dick.

“Is that him, ma’am?” the gumshoe asks.

“Yep, that’s him,” my wife says. “He needs a shave, doesn’t he?”

The detective slides my body back into the deep freeze. There is nothing-not a sound, not an image, only complete emptiness.

And then, sweet rapture, I suddenly have the sensation of leaving my body. I see a warm, glorious light at the end of a long corridor. I realize the light is love. More than anything I want to be washed in the tender arms of that blessed beam-to be saved by the light. I am leaving my body-up, up, ever closer to the light . . . until my head bumps into the slab of the poor slob above me, and I tumble back down into my breathless shell. And all the while I am thinking, “Damn, maybe I should have just kissed her and said that everything was all right . . . .”

It was no big deal. Bob, my magician mechanic, took care of the problem for less than 50 bucks. And when the job was done and Nita looked at me with those brown puppy dog eyes of hers, I knew exactly what to do. I held her, I told her I loved her, and we made jokes about the epoxy nature of chocolate-flavored cappuccino. And all the time I was thinking: Were it not for discretion, I could be collecting frost in a steel drawer at the city morgue; I could be fertilizing daisies.

By Allen Johnson, Ph.D.

IN THE SUMMER OF 1969, I was 23 years old. I had it all: a wife, a job, and a brand new, baby blue, two-seater, convertible 850 Fiat Spider. That car was my mechanical offspring-I used to dental floss the wire spokes, for Pete’s sake. It was also my nemesis.

That summer my wife and I decided to drive across the United States, from the Pacific to the Atlantic-from the mountains, to the prairies, to the ocean white with foam,”-the ultimate test of man and machine! The car blew up just outside of Denver.

There we were with a cracked block in a one-pump town and a mechanic who thought a Fiat Spider was an imported insect. Sure, there was a dealership in Denver, but we were determined to go east-no spineless turning back for us. Only the nearest easterly dealership was Omaha, Nebraska, some 500 miles away. The question was, how to get there. Being on a tight budget, our first attempt was to hitch a ride on an empty, eastbound semi. No go; “Insurance companies wouldn’t buy it,” they told us.

Our next idea was to rent a truck and transport the car ourselves. So we hitchhiked 35 miles to the nearest U-Haul dealership and picked out the biggest truck they had. But when it came time to pay for the rental, I realized I had left my traveler’s checks locked in the Fiat.

“Look,” I said to the attendant, “I forgot my checks. Will you let me take the truck, load up the car, come back here, and pay you off?”

“I can’t do that,” he said matter-of-factly. “Besides, it’s almost quittin’ time. You’d never get back in time.”

“Okay,” I said, taking off my wrist watch, “this is a Rolex. My father gave it to me for high school graduation. Look, it’s even engraved with my name. Keep it until I come back with your truck.”

“I don’t want your watch,” he said blankly.

I looked at my wife. I was running out of ideas. I turned back to him. “Take my wife.”

“Huh?”

“You know I’m going to come back for my wife. We’ve only been married for six months; I’m not ready to give her up yet.”

For some reason that seemed to do it. He agreed to keep my wife until I returned with the loaded U-Haul. Now, when I think about what I did, offering my wife to a strange man for collateral, I can hardly believe it. But we were young, and it seemed like the right thing to do at the time.

I used a cattle ramp to load the Fiat-I still don’t know how I did that. It was in, but not all the way in; it stuck out in the back by about six inches. So I let out half the air in all four tires, pulled up the emergency brake to the last possible click, and roped off the back.

“No fast starts,” I kept telling myself. It was 10 o’clock by the time I returned to the U-Haul dealership. As it turned out, my wife had shared dinner with the attendant’s family; the conversation had been polite, but a little strained. That was all right; we were on the road again.

That night we slept at a rest stop, my wife in the cab of the truck, I in the back alongside the stupid Fiat. The next morning we drove directly to the dealership in Omaha. The entire staff came out from cluttered desks and ailing cars to see the strange couple from Washington with their 850 Spider in the back end of a U-Haul truck. They looked amused, the way you look at a friend’s baby who just broke wind. “Isn’t that the cutest thing?”

They unloaded the car and put it on the rack. Yep, it was a cracked block, all right. They could fix it, but it would take two weeks to get the parts.

“Two weeks!” I squawked. “What are we going to do in Omaha, Nebraska, for two weeks?”

The mechanic stared back at me with that same amused look. “I don’t rightly know,” he said helpfully.

My wife and I walked to the showroom and plopped down. We wondered how we were going to survive for half a month in a strange town. We didn’t have enough money for a hotel and meals, unless we wanted to hole up at the town mission. Our budget was precise; we had just enough cash to get from the home of one relative to the next. A two-week layover was not in our financial portfolio.

Then a strange thing happened. A tall, middle-aged man walked over to where we were huddled.

“Excuse me,” he said. “My name is John. I overheard your predicament, and I wondered if I could help out. I’d be happy to have you stay with us while you’re waiting to have your car repaired.”

I didn’t know what to say. “But-but it won’t be fixed for two weeks,” I finally stammered.

“So I understand,” he said. “That’s why I’d like to help.”

I looked at my wife. “What do you think, honey?”

“It’s fine with me,” she said turning to John. “Are you sure it’ll be okay with your wife?”

He smiled as though tickled by her concern. “Well, almost sure. But I’ll call just in case.”

A few minutes later, John came back. “Everything’s cleared,” he announced. “Shall we go?”

I felt somehow easier when we got into John’s car, a charcoal gray Mercedes sedan. We drove for about 10 minutes. The conversation was pleasant and natural; I liked him right away. John’s home was a showplace. It was a modern, two-story house with lots of glass and vaulted ceilings. The back porch overlooked a virgin forest. I glanced at my wife who pursed her lips and whistled silently.

The next two weeks were a wonderful holiday. John was an artist; the walls of his home were lined with his abstract paintings. But primarily, he was a jeweler, a master at crafting beautiful, bold rings and pendants out of silver and gold.

John’s wife, Linda, was equally talented, a sculptor with a fondness for clay and multi-colored glazes. She was also a teacher. In fact, while we were there, she prepared for a showing of her students’ brightly-colored, three-dimensional collages. They looked like giant cutouts of Picasso paintings.

We covered a lot of ground in those 14 days. We tinkered at making jewelry; we went to the movies; we did a little gardening around the house. Then we talked late into the night about great books and art and the mystery of life. When our car was finally repaired, we were actually disappointed.

The morning we left, I asked John why he had invited us-why he had taken the risk.

“For selfish reasons,” he said smiling. “You seemed like an interesting couple, and I wanted the chance to get to know you.”

That’s all he said; it was that simple: “For selfish reasons.” I now understand the meaning of that statement. Kindness is a self-serving virtue. It nourishes our spiritual lives. Moreover, it is the antidote to depression. When counseling people with the blues, one of my first questions is this: “What are you doing now to help another human being.” Their answer is always the same: “nothing” (otherwise they wouldn’t be miserable). In fact, it is emotionally impossible to serve another in need and still remain depressed. The two states-service and depression-are absolutely incongruent. Mother Teresa put it succinctly:

The fruit of silence is prayer,

The fruit of prayer is love,

The fruit of love is service,

The fruit of service is peace.

Our friends, John and Linda, understood that wisdom. They have-by example-left an enduring legacy. For 33 years later, they are still remembered. We recall their kindness, their vitality, their passion for people. After all the years, they still make perfect sense.

By Allen Johnson, Ph.D.

JIM WAS A CUT ABOVE THE REST OF US. He was bright, athletic, and likeable. So by the time we graduated from high school, no one was surprised when Jim decided to go to the University of Washington as a pre-med student. He had the goods.

Mid-way through Jim’s undergraduate work, something happened: he had what he called a born-again conversion. The event was an epiphany for Jim-a spiritual turning point. He decided to study for the ministry.

A decade later, Jim held two positions: one as a senior pastor in a church in Oregon, the second as a seminary professor of religion. He was married with three children. He was on top of the world. Then the roof fell in: without warning, his wife walked out on him. Jim was devastated and totally bewildered. Little did he know that his wife had been having an affair over the last year. The marriage ended in an agonizing divorce.

The divorce was Jim’s undoing. Incredibly, the church withdrew its support and dismissed Jim from his posts as pastor and professor. In less than a month Jim was single, unemployed, and the sole guardian of three children.

When I finally caught up with Jim a couple of years later, he was hauling sides of meat on his back for a wholesale meat company. His confidence was, at best, shaky, and his spirit nil. I invited him to my home for the afternoon to catch up on the years that had raced by. It was then that Jim told me his story. I listen closely. When Jim had finished, I laid into him with all the grace and charm of an annoyed pit bull. “Well, you know, Jim,” I started, “you were always one of my heroes growing up. You had it all. You were athletic, funny-not to mention as smart as a whip. As much as I wanted to, I could never compete with you. And you know what? Someday you’ll be your old self again. You can do it, I know you can.”

As beaten down as Jim was, he still had the strength to tell me off. He looked me straight in the eyes and said in a hushed voice with a small pause between each word for emphasis, “Allen, I’m doing just fine. Get off of it.”

“Of course you are,” I blathered, frantically backpedaling. It was too late; the damage was done. Well intended or not, I had managed to slam my old friend with the heavy gospel of life according to the reverend Allen Johnson.

Years later (no thanks to me), Jim was on his feet again. He was a senior pastor now-writing books, conducting seminars, and doing what he loves most: sharing his faith with others.

Recently, I reminded Jim of how I had treated him.

“That’s okay, Allen,” Jim said. “There’s a happy ending to the story.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You’re right. I was beaten down back then. But a family took me in. They let me live in their basement. And then, for the next six months, all they did was listen. They didn’t preach to me; they didn’t offer advice. They just listened.”

“They just listened,” I repeated, trying to emboss the phrase on my brain. “And they loved me,” Jim added.

I thought for a moment. “Isn’t that the same thing?” I offered.

Jim just smiled his old confident, knowing smile.

By J. Bailey Molineux

Some men may disagree with what I am about to write, but I suspect most women will say I'm accurate in my view.

Guys, I believe we men are more emotionally dependent than woman but less able to express our needs for nurturing. I know this contradicts the stereotype that men tend to be more independent and women more dependent, but I base my conclusion on two facts: the research which suggests unmarried men don't do as well psychologically as unmarried women and the differing experiences of the sexes during childhood.

Traditionally, both males and females first bond with their mothers. Around age five or six, however, males must begin to weaken this bond to identify with father. It's okay for a girl to be a Tomboy or to be Daddy's girl, but it's definitely not acceptable for a boy to be a Momma's boy. Those apron strings have to be loosened for a male child to find his masculine identity. By contrast, a girl can remain close to her mother throughout her youth.

But father may be physically absent or psychologically distant. The man with whom the boy must identify often does not have as strong a bond with his son as a mother does.

These different histories then produce two effects in males:

• Our emotional needs for nurturing are not as well met as girls during childhood. We're close to our mothers initially but then have to create some distance from her.
• We're not as secure in our psychosexual identities as women are. Our first bond is with an opposite-sexed parent and we then have to identify with a role model who's usually not as available as Mom.

This insecurity often results in behaviors opposite to what we're really feeling, however. We may act tough, macho, independent, etc. - the classic, John Wayne, go-it-alone profile - because we're afraid to express our dependent longings. We exaggerate the so-called masculine traits to hide our deepest needs.

As more fathers become involved in caring for their young children, this scenario will probably change in the years ahead. Children who are well parented by both Mom and Dad are more secure than children parented primarily or only by one parent.

Another false stereotype is that men are more rational and women more emotional. We men feel emotions just as strongly as women but don't express them as easily. Sometimes, the only emotion which is acceptable to men is anger, beneath which reside loneliness, hurt, fear and sadness. Ironically, our anger just drive others away, so we're even less likely to have our emotional needs met.

It should be obvious by now how all this affects our marriages. Most wives want us to be emotionally intimate with them, to share our feelings as easily as they do with their female friends. Research shows the more a man can be comfortable with his emotions, the more satisfaction his mate expresses in the marriage.

So loosen up, guys. It's okay to feel sad, scared or lonely, and to want your wife to comfort you at times, just as you went to Mom for comfort a long time ago. Real psychological strength lies not in the rigid control of emotions, or in expressing anger only, but in letting our emotions our in a safe and appropriate manner.

As I sometimes ask my male patients, "Are you man enough to cry?"

---

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

J. Bailey Molineux, Ph.D. is a licensed Clinical Psychologist and author of the book Loving Isn't Easy
Copyright 2002 J. Bailey Molineux and Selfhelpbooks.com, all rights reserved. This article maybe reprinted but must include author's copyright and website hyperlinks to SelfHelpBooks.com.

On Mentors and Mentoring

By Allen Johnson, Ph.D.

THIS IS A STORY ABOUT TWO MEN who made a difference in my life: one as my opponent, the other as my mentor. Although they never met, each man possessed what the other lacked.

One summer between my sophomore and junior year in college, I landed a job at the local paper mill. I was thrilled. I don’t remember what my salary was, but it beat anything I could earn at Gene and Jules Grocery Store.

My first day I rode out to the plant with a few of the old timers. They talked about their weekend.

“Hell,” one of them said, “I got so drunk Friday night I puked all over Sally May.”

The others laughed. I managed to work up a half smile; I hoped it suggested that I was something of a hoochhound myself. In truth I had always thought Dr. Pepper had a little too much bite. I wondered what Sally May looked like. I pictured a plump, bleached blond with stop-sign-red lipstick and a proclivity for cleavage.

The morning of that first day I worked with a group that bound and stacked broken-down cardboard boxes onto wooden pallets. The load was hauled away by a fork lift and restacked on the other side of the warehouse. It was not fun. Almost immediately I envied the man who drove the fork lift; criminy, it was the guy who barfed on Sally May. I breathed a long languished sigh. I didn’t think it was the kind of assignment they gave to a kid who couldn’t handle a Dr. Pepper. After lunch there was a small miracle. The foreman, a swarthy middle-aged biker with bad teeth, tapped me on the shoulder.

“Johnson, follow me.”

I was ecstatic.

“You see that press,” he said. It looked like a giant waffle iron with raised, one-inch-high letters laid out in mirror image across the cast-iron surface. “Yes, sir,” I sang out. Could I have already advanced to the print shop?

“Take this bucket of solvent, see, and scrub out all the old ink from the letters. Make ‘em shine.”

I loved my new job. I wanted to be the best letter cleaner in the whole plant. I twisted the corner of a rag like I was preparing to clean out my ears and dipped the tip into the solvent. I wiped the excess off on the lip of the bucket; I didn’t want to get sloppy. Then I worked the nubbin of cloth around each crevice of each character. Forty-five minutes later I had finished six letters. I stepped back to admire my work. “Fine, really fine.”

Just then the foreman returned. “Hey, Johnson, what the deuce are you doin’?” he shouted. “I’ve got six letters done,” I announced with pride as if I had just lost my virginity.

“You college know-it-alls.”

I could tell by his tone of voice that he was not paying homage to my scholastic savvy.

“Gimme that rag,” he said. The foreman dunked cloth and fist into the solvent and then sloshed the rag across the press like a maniac. Solvent, sweat, and spit splattered like shrapnel. It was awesome. In three strokes the entire press was glistening. He turned, looked at me with disgust, and made a disparaging choo-choo sound. Three days later I was fired. I don’t know; was it my fault? My intentions were honorable, but my knowledge was lacking. I think what I needed at the time was a mentor, a wise and loyal adviser to get me over the hump. After all, even the most self-sufficient of us can benefit from the guidance of a good friend-someone like Murray.

Years later-long after my short stint at the paper mill-I was teaching at a community college in Oregon. Murray was one of the first people I met; we became friends almost immediately. I was intrigued by his devotion to the fine arts. He loved Shakespeare, the Romantic poets, and the purest of classical music, particularly Brahms. It was this latter interest that captivated me. I had always been drawn to classical music but had little understanding of it. There were a few pieces I liked: Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries,” Debussy’s “Clair de Lune,” Chopin’s “Prelude in E minor”-all selections which were immediately appealing. But I can’t say that I understood them. I knew nothing about the periods, the structure of music, and even less about the composers. But I wanted to learn.

One day I asked Murray if he would share his knowledge of classical music with me. Right away I knew that I had struck a chord. His eyes widened with delight. “I would like that very much,” he said. We agreed to meet at his home once a week. On each occasion we discussed a period of music, the key composers, and the most influential works. Then Murray would play several recordings, explaining the structure and innovations of each piece.

Those sessions were wonderful. All week I looked forward to that time when Murray and I would explore the magic of another musical masterpiece. I will never forget those evenings. Murray had become my musical mentor, introducing me to the world of Bach, Beethoven, and, of course, Brahms. What a gift to be a mentor-to share one’s knowledge of the world with a novice. The joy is reciprocal: the mentor reaps the pleasure of contribution, while the apprentice revels in newfound understanding. How can mentoring be wrong? Shame on the old-timers who clutch their knowledge like a money purse in a hostile land. For when you think about it, if we did not have our share of patient mentors, we would incessantly be relearning how to build a fire.

To this day, whenever I listen to the power of a Mahler symphony or the gentleness of a Chopin nocturne, I think to myself, “Thank you, Murray; you were the best.”

Whenever I think about the foreman at the paper mill, I think of . . . something else.

---

About the Author:

Allen Johnson, Ph.D. is the author of THIS SIDE OF CRAZY: 54 LESSONS ON LIVING FROM SOMEONE WHO SHOULD KNOW BETTER BUT KEEPS MESSING UP ANYWAY available through Selfhelpbooks.com.

© Copyright 2003 by Allen Johnson and Selfhelpbooks.com. All rights reserved. This article may be reprinted but must include the author’s copyright and website hyperlinks.

Say “I love You” Any Way You Can

By Allen Johnson, Ph.D.

IN THE DAYS between my freshman and sophomore years in college, I led the summer youth program at a large Presbyterian church in West Seattle. It was there that I met Mr. Bailey. Mr. Bailey was a short, husky man with enough dryness in his humor to crease your pants. I could tell that he liked me. In fact, I suspect it was he who slipped a twenty-dollar bill in the church offering one Sunday for the “Allen Johnson Memorial Fund.” That would be like him.

That fall I returned to school; I did not see Mr. Bailey for two years. It was during that time that he suffered a paralyzing stroke. He still got around with the aid of a wheelchair, but he was never quite the same again. The most dramatic change was in his language. Before the stroke, profanity was never in Mr. Bailey’s vocabulary. Strangely, after the stroke, the few expressions he could utter were all combinations of swear words.

I will never forget the first time I saw Mr. Bailey after his stroke. I had accepted an invitation to work at the church for another summer.

On that first Sunday I was asked to sing a solo in the evening service. When I stood to sing, Mr. Bailey recognized me. Tears filled his eyes. He could not say my name; he could not wish me God’s blessings. So he did the only thing he could do. He pointed his finger at me and said in a trembling voice, “Son-of-a-bitch.”

I think it was the sweetest greeting I have ever received. My friend recognized me with the only resources he had at his disposal. Understanding his condition, the indiscretion in church is forgiven, even relished.

I elect Mr. Bailey as spokesman for all the people in the world who have trouble expressing their affection-the people who choke up when they want to say, “I like you; will you be my friend?”; the hardy who resort to a slap-on-the-back or a slug-to-the-arm, as if to say, “Hey old buddy, old pal, how you doin’ anyway?”; the awkward who hint at their affection through “funny” putdowns, teasing the people they like; the painfully shy who offer their praise to somebody else and hope it gets back to the right person. The approaches may be clumsy and sometimes misunderstood, but the intent is warm-hearted, and who can fault that?

Mr. Bailey is my kind of guy-fighting with all his might to salute an old friend. And if he must defame my birthright to do it, that’s okay. I’ve been called worse; I just haven’t enjoyed it as much.

---

About the Author:

Allen Johnson, Ph.D. is the author of THIS SIDE OF CRAZY: 54 LESSONS ON LIVING FROM SOMEONE WHO SHOULD KNOW BETTER BUT KEEPS MESSING UP ANYWAY available through Selfhelpbooks.com.

© Copyright 2003 by Allen Johnson and Selfhelpbooks.com. All rights reserved. This article may be reprinted but must include the author’s copyright and website hyperlinks.

The Past Influences the Present

By J. Bailey Molineux

You're an adult now. You're married, have a good job and own your own home.

No longer are you dependent upon your parents for financial and emotional support. No longer can Mom and Dad tell you what to do or influence your behavior. You're completely on your own, a free, independent, self-directed person.

Or are you?

Maybe there are ways you behave today that were determined by your past relationship with your parents. Perhaps there are problems you had with them back then that you are still trying to work out now, indirectly, unconsciously or symbolically with others.

Sigmund Freud thought this was so. A pioneer in the study of unconscious forces in emotional life, he found in his work with psychiatric patients that over the long course of therapy, they would respond to him in unrealistic, inappropriate ways not related in any logical, concrete way to the therapeutic situation.

Some would become too dependent or submissive; others would become overly aggressive or hostile despite the fact that Freud was trying to help them.

Freud concluded that these patients were reacting towards him as they had reacted, or had wanted to react, towards their parents. In the safe, permissive atmosphere of therapy, in which they were encouraged to talk about anything that came to their minds, his patients began to act out many of their problems from the past.

Freud coined a fancy name for this common occurrence: repetition compulsion. We are compelled to repeat or relive those problems from childhood we were unable to solve or overcome back then. We may act them out with therapists, bosses and friends but mostly with our spouses and even our children.

Our parents were the most important people in our lives at a time when we were most impressionable and acquiring more information than we will ever learn in a lifetime. They had effects upon us which we may reenact over and over again.

Not that we should blame our parents for the mistakes they made with us. That would be fruitless.

Besides, they did their best.

Nor should we assume there is nothing we can do about our present emotional pain because of past experiences over which we had no control. We are products of our past, granted, but as adults, only we are fully responsible for our present thoughts, feelings and behaviors.

The best way we can begin to overcome some of our emotional problems is by taking complete responsibility for them, learning how our pasts have effected us or caused our problems, and not blame them on someone else, past or present.

In other words, we have no control over what happened to us as children, but we can change or mitigate the effects of those childhood experiences by becoming aware of them. Self-knowledge gives us more control over our lives, our relations and our behaviors.

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About the Author: J. Bailey Molineux, a psychologist with Adult and Child Counseling, has incorporated many of his articles in a book, Loving Isn't Easy, Isbn 1587410419, sold through bookstores everywhere or available directly from Selfhelpbooks.com. Copyright 2002, J. Bailey Molineux and Selfhelpbooks.com, all rights reserved. This article may be reprinted but must include authors copyright and website hyperlinks.

The Power of Encouragement

By Allen Johnson, Ph.D.

I LIKE TO THINK OF MYSELF as a fairly collected guy. I have no glaring faults to speak of (other than the occasional misguided compulsion to spackle the world with my unsolicited opinions). I pay my taxes, I wave to my neighbors, I even shell out ten bucks whenever a kid comes to the door selling raffle tickets to the annual Sausage Fest. I’d say I’m a kind-hearted soul-happily squared away with the world. And, yet, I just learned a thing or two from a 16-year-old venture crewmember. I’m semi-retired now, which means that I work when I want to work-not a bad gig if you can get it. It does not mean that I stop making a contribution-that would be a shame, to live half a century and then bury the lessons learned. So, one of the things I have determined to do is to volunteer my services from time to time to Venture Crew 190 in my hometown.

Last August, the crew leaders decided to take on a four-day, 35-mile hike into the Wenatchee National Forest. I agreed to join the team.

The first day the weather was beautiful, but the trail was grueling: a 9.5-mile marathon up a mountainside. When we finally reached our destination, Buck Creek Pass, I was done in. I unloaded my 45-pound backpack and lay down in the grass of the alpine meadow like a Chinese noodle rag doll. I closed my eyes and fantasized about my glorious bed back home: clean, cool, crisp sheets and an overstuffed down pillow under my head. I wondered what it would cost me to hire a helicopter to airlift me home. “I love this meadow,” I said. “If she were a woman, I’d take her home to Momma.”

“Hmm, you’ve bonked,” Dick said. Dick is a couple of years younger than I am and nearly as slow. In fact he had a reputation of consistently pulling up the rear. I have usurped that title. “What do you mean, I’ve bonked?” I asked, the words barely dribbling over my chin. “You’ve bonked,” he repeated. “You didn’t drink enough water or eat enough gorp. You’ve bonked.”

“Oh,” I said.

Doug, the crew leader, took pity on me. After we staked our tents and refilled our water bottles, Doug treated me to a hot rice and TVP (texturized vegetable protein) casserole. Although I spooned the meal out of a plastic oven sac, it was the most elegant, most delicious repas I have ever eaten. Doug followed up the entrée with cup after cup of hot chocolate. I started to feel better; at least, I thought I would live to see another sunrise.

In fact, I was the first to see the new day-not because I was anxious to start hiking, but because my incredible shrinking bladder has a mind of its own. The sky was clear except for a few pink, cotton candy clouds in the west. A mule deer pranced across the meadow, not 20 yards away. The serenity was surreal. I was beginning to think that I was getting the hang of this hiking thing. I was mistaken.

We started the day trekking down the other side of the mountain. I couldn’t help but wonder why we were traveling down what we had just climbed up. In my naive, suburban mind, it just didn’t seem fair. We found an unmaintained trail that snaked down the mountainside. Just for the record, an unmaintained trail is a euphemism for “death by walking.”

Trees of every dimension-some older than Christopher Columbus-reposed like pick-up-sticks across the trail. Not one had the good manners of failing away from the trail. We climbed over, under, and around these patriarchal behemoths-snagging our backpacks on spiked branches.

When we finally arrived at the river below, we, you guessed it, started climbing, once again, up another mountainside. But this time, there was no trail at all; the boys called it bushwhacking. I called it insanity.

After I was stung behind by left knee by a peevish hornet (what did I ever do to him?), I began to grumble out loud.

“We’ll have no negative talk on this trip,” the crew leader chirped. I can’t tell you how much I hate people who chirp when I’m in misery.

“Yes, sir,” I said, as I dropped my polypro long johns to inspect my inflamed knee. “Happy talk here, boss.”

Four hours later we emerge out of the woods and onto a new river, Chocolate Creek, so named for its distinct chocolate brown color, the residue of tons of glacier water grinding sand and stone into buckwheat flour. We setup camp.

The next day the clouds rolled in above us, turned charcoal gray, and then pelted us with slanting rain. We donned our rain gear, forged a stream, and marched into the woods for protection. It was then that I was beginning to feel again the weight of my pack. With every step I seemed to grow a little more weary. Doug was pulling up the rear-looking after me really.

“Allen,” he said, “we’re going to have to lighten your load a bit. We’re traveling at one mile an hour. At this rate we’ll never get into camp.”

I felt the rage swell in my throat. “No,” I said. “No one is taking my load.”

“It may be best for the crew,” Doug said.

“I said, ‘no.’” And with that I quicken my pace. We were all exhausted. I was not about to let someone else carry my load.

We caught up to the rest of the team this side of the last river crossing. The crew was having a bite to eat before the last assault. I stuffed a granola bar into my mouth and choked it down dry. “I’m going ahead,” I announced to Doug, trying to control my voice, “so that I don’t slow the group down.” I climbed onto the mossy log that formed a bridge across the stream and began to scramble up the unmaintained trail on the other side. I was still enraged. “Keep moving,” I told myself.

“Faster, faster.” And then, in my haste, I missed a switchback. At first, I thought the trail was broken down and that it would pick up again just beyond the next ridge. I was wrong. I was off the trail. I looked back to see if anyway had followed me. Kris, a strong 16-year-old crewmember was 20 yards behind me. “Kris,” I shouted, “I think I’ve lost the trail.”

“Uh huh,” Kris said matter-of-factly. “It’s over here.” Then he added, almost as an afterthought, but with the unmistakable authority of a veteran field sergeant, “Follow me.”

I tried to retrace my steps, but the constant rain had turned the forest into a greased slide. Suddenly my feet were out from under me. I grabbed a tree and embraced it like a lover. My pack shifted to one side, and then the other. As I tried to right myself and traverse the mountainside, I realized that everything had become blurry. I had lost my glasses. I backtracked and, miraculously, managed to recoup the spectacles. “Wait for me,” I shouted to Kris.

“I’m right here,” he said, “be careful. Stay on the right of this log; the footing is better.”

By the time I rejoined Kris on the trail, the rest of the crew had passed by. For all my hot blood, I was still exactly where I had begun-at the back of the crew. “I’m so sorry for leading you on that wild goose chase,” I said to Kris, my head slumped like a dead manikin.

And then this 16-year-old crewmember, this baby-face cherub, placed his hand on my shoulder and said with all the wisdom and compassion of an ancient sage, “Allen, you’re doing just great.”

I looked at Kris and his eyes were smiling. I could have kissed him. Those few words supplied a shot of adrenaline that sustained me the rest of the long haul back to the trailhead.

Two days later I was home again-warm, dry, and cozy-but never have I forgotten the quiet gentleness and power of a young man’s encouragement when, lost in a primeval wilderness, my feet sloshed, my back ached, and a small voice at the back of my head pleaded for relief from the death march of Buck Creek Pass.

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About the Author:

Allen Johnson, Ph.D. is the author of THIS SIDE OF CRAZY: 54 LESSONS ON LIVING FROM SOMEONE WHO SHOULD KNOW BETTER BUT KEEPS MESSING UP ANYWAY available through Selfhelpbooks.com.

© Copyright 2003 by Allen Johnson and Selfhelpbooks.com. All rights reserved. This article may be reprinted but must include the author’s copyright and website hyperlinks.

The Psychologically Healthy Family

By J. Bailey Molineux

All families have psychological problems. It's not easy to grow up without any emotional scars, make and sustain a satisfactory marriage for forty to fifty years and rear children to be healthy, independent adults.

What follows is a checklist of questions to gauge the psychological health of your family. Any questions you answer negatively will suggest what areas you may need to strengthen.

How do you and your spouse - or ex-spouse, if you're divorced - feel about yourselves? Do you have high self-esteem and enjoy what you are doing? The psychological health of children is often a reflection of the psychological health of their parents.

Does your marriage provide you with more satisfaction than problems? Are many of your emotional, psychological and sexual needs being met by your spouse, and vice versa?

Since all marriages have problems, are you and your spouse able to communicate and compromise to solve them? These are the two abilities which are most critical for the success of relationships.

Is decision-making power between you and your spouse equally shared? Can you either agree on major decisions or comfortably divide spheres of decision-making responsibility? Marriages in which one spouse is too much "the boss" can be strained.

If you're divorced, are you and your ex-spouse still involved with your children in loving, committed ways? Are you able to communicate and cooperate with each other for their sake? You're no longer lovers but you're still parents to the same children.

Is discipline in your family firm, fair and flexible? Are the family rules clearly spelled out and consistently backed up by predictable rewards and penalties?

Do you use more rewards than punishments in controlling your children? Rewards are a more effective way to discipline youngsters and better instills self-esteem in them.

As they grow older, can your children have more of a voice in formulating rules and consequences? The more you can share rule-making authority about negotiable items such as chores, hours and grades, the more willing your offspring may be to follow the family rules.

Is affection freely expressed in your family so that all members feel securely loved? Are you all able to liberally hug, praise and support each other? The need for supportive love is perhaps the most important need the family should meet.

If they're still alive, do you maintain a good relationship with your parents? Have you resolved most of your past conflicts and hurts as much as you can? In troubled families, there are often strained, hurtful or broken relationships between the parents and grandparents which may need some mending before immediate family problems can be resolved.

My questions have been designed to describe an ideally healthy family, which probably doesn't exist in the real world. So if you didn't answer Yes to all the questions, don't worry. You're like the rest of us.

But do think about what you can do to reduce the problems in your family with which all families struggle.

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About the Author: J. Bailey Molineux, a psychologist with Adult and Child Counseling, has incorporated many of his articles in a book, Loving Isn't Easy, Isbn 1587410419, sold through bookstores everywhere or available directly from Selfhelpbooks.com. Copyright 2002, J. Bailey Molineux and Selfhelpbooks.com, all rights reserved. This article may be reprinted but must include authors copyright and website hyperlinks.

The Two Worlds of the Sexes

By J. Bailey Molineux

At best, communication between two people can be difficult. Because of different worldviews and relationship styles, clear communication between a man and a woman can be even more difficult. Add the intense emotions that can be engendered in a marriage and clear communication between spouses may become nearly impossible.

Research has found a number of differences in the ways each sex views the world and relationships. Specifically, men think more in terms of status and power while women are more concerned about intimacy and relationships. Women prefer symmetrical relations with no one having power over another while men perceive asymmetrical, hierarchical relations between people. And men are more competitive while women are more cooperative.

These different views then lead to different ways of relating to others which may cause problems in a marriage. As examples, men talk more about facts (report talk). Women talk more about emotions (rapport talk).

When they're in emotional pain, women prefer to affiliate, to be with others. When they're hurting, men want to isolate, to be alone. The more she may want comfort, the more he may retreat which forces her to push harder for affiliation.

In helping another with a problem, women either give direct empathy or talk about their own, similar problems as a way to empathize. Men want to be practical and give advice about how to solve the problem. Each may then feel the other is not being helpful when each believes she or he is helping.

Men are usually silent when listening to another. Women tend to interrupt with questions or comments, or to encourage further talking by comments such as "Uh-uh" or Um-um." Each may then believe the other is not listening.

Men ask for favors directly. Women, wanting to avoid conflict, make requests indirectly which men may then misperceive as manipulative.

Women express their needs for intimacy through talking, especially about feelings. Men express their intimacy needs more through sex, shared activities or just being together. Women frequently complain about a lack of emotional intimacy whereas men are more likely to be dissatisfied with the frequency of sex.

A women believes the relationship is doing well if the partners can talk about it. A man worries it's not doing well if they have to talk about it!

It is as if women and men live in two different worlds with different rules for relating. Both may be unaware of these differences and believe the other operates according to the same rules he or she does. How maddening when this does not prove to be the case!

Neither set of rules should predominate to the exclusion of the other. Instead, improved communication can result not from the use of one set of rules over the other, but from a recognition of these differences.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

J. Bailey Molineux, Ph.D. is a licensed Clinical Psychologist and author of the book Loving Isn't Easy
Copyright 2002 J. Bailey Molineux and Selfhelpbooks.com, all rights reserved. This article maybe reprinted but must include author's copyright and website hyperlinks to SelfHelpBooks.com.

Unhealthy Competitive

By Allen Johnson, Ph.D.

I USED TO GO TO A HEALTH CLUB to work out with weights. That was my Rocky Balboa period. I wore a tank top undershirt, gray sweat pants, and a navy stocking cap. I thought a real man should smell like stale gym socks and talk without moving his lips.

“Yo, make it burn.”

That didn’t last long; I never felt that I really fit in. I was always afraid a bodybuilder with muscular lips would punch me out for taking up too much oxygen.

“Hey, you. Breathe shallow.”

That never happened; bodybuilders are not very talkative.

One day I was doing my five-pound curls in a quiet corner of the club. Between sets I made muscles in the full-length mirror; you always want to check out your progress-just in case you blew out a biceps or something.

Suddenly, I noticed a guy pumping out deep knee bends with a truck axle on his back. He was a perfect specimen. I made him out to be in his early 20’s, six-foot-two, and about 190 pounds. All my life I wanted to be six-two. I got to five-foot-ten and my hormones went into retirement. I figure they own a condo in Miami Beach somewhere.

I sneaked another glimpse at Mr. Wonderful. He had a perfect physique. His stomach looked like linked sausages; you could play banjo on that gut. When it comes right down to it, he was real irritating. I was comparing myself to him, and I was losing-by about 50 pounds of sinewy muscle. Now, believe me, I know this isn’t pretty, but I decided no one should look that good. More than anything, I wanted to find a flaw-maybe a diamond in his front tooth, or a full-color tattoo of Gracie Slick on the inside of his thigh. So I decided to talk to him. I expanded my chest to its full 38-inch limit and swaggered across the room.

“Yo,” I said cleverly in my best radio voice, “You must workout quite a bit.”

Then it happened. This Greek god, this gift to womankind, turned to me and said, “Huh? Oh, yeah. Well, gee, I, uh, like workout, uh, like four, five times a week.” >He sounded like Gomer Pyle with a hangover.

When I heard that, I just stepped back and smiled. Suddenly-in my warped sense of competitive and petty justice-I was in control again.

My behavior on that day still embarrasses me. The sad truth is that competition is one of our time-honored national pastimes. We compare, we contrast, we measure our worth against another. What a monumental waste of human energy. In fact, I think of competition as a bloodthirsty vampire who bites you on the throat and sucks out all the humanity from your body and leaves you lying on the floor in a puddle of protoplasm. Centuries later people point to the stain on the carpet and ask, “Jeepers, what was that?”

And the tour guide says, “Oh, nothing really. Just a another smudge spot.”

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About the Author:

Allen Johnson, Ph.D. is the author of THIS SIDE OF CRAZY: 54 LESSONS ON LIVING FROM SOMEONE WHO SHOULD KNOW BETTER BUT KEEPS MESSING UP ANYWAY available through Selfhelpbooks.com.

© Copyright 2003 by Allen Johnson and Selfhelpbooks.com. All rights reserved. This article may be reprinted but must include the author’s copyright and website hyperlinks.

Welcome Life’s Passages

By Allen Johnson, Ph.D.

AT MY 25TH HIGH SCHOOL REUNION I solved what was then a 32-year-old mystery. Thirty-two years earlier my best friend had walked out on me. His name was David. Both of us were 12 years old.

David and I were inseparable. My mother used to call us “Mutt and Jeff.” When I decided to be a little league pitcher, David trained to be a catcher. When David delivered the Tri-City Herald after school, I tagged along and practiced my sinker, chucking the news in the general direction of the customer’s front door. The two of us were blood brothers-literally; we sealed our friendship with a hunting knife, a slice of thumb, and the intermingling of blood. We did that the same night I got caught with my pants down. It was midsummer. David and I had decided to camp out in his back yard. There we were in our sleeping bags, side by side, staring at the underbelly of the moon and stars. It was a night for adventure.

“I dare you,” David said again.

“You can’t dare me. I dared you first.”

“Yeah, but you’re the oldest.”

“What does that have to do with it?”

“I dunno; it just seems important.”

There was a certain logic to his argument, so I decided to go for it. I slipped off my tee-shirt, squirmed out of my shorts and blasted out of my bag like a wild badger on the attack.

“GeRRRonimo!” I shouted, bolting around the neighbor’s house in a thin cloak of goose bumps and sweat, my arms and legs pumping for home. I rounded the last corner and executed the perfect baseball slide into the sack.

David was next. He also shouted “Geronimo.” I think it’s the universal battle cry for careening around a neighbor’s house in the buff. I also think it was our undoing.

The next morning David’s mom-a stalwart of the Baptist church-called us into the kitchen. She did not raise her voice, but her words cut to the heart. “Allen, I’m disappointed in you. I thought you were better than that.”

It was years before I could look the woman in the eyes again. I always had the unsettling feeling that she was picturing my little dingus twirling in the breeze.

Such misadventures could only happen with David. You don’t think up stuff like that with a casual friend-only with a blood brother.

But then something happened. In the fall of seventh grade, David disappeared. Oh, he still lived in the same house just down the street, but I never saw him any more. We no longer walked to school in the morning, played catch in the afternoon, or did our homework at night. Those days were gone. I felt a great emptiness that fall. I felt like someone had reached into my body, grabbed my heart, and squeezed the blood out of it.

Still, I did not know why.

The mystery was unsolved until I saw David at our 25th high school reunion. I swear, he looked the same: blond, boyish, with that same winning smile.

“I want to talk to you,” he said.

“Me too.”

The music was blaring so we stepped out of the hotel banquet room and into the hall.

“Allen,” he said, “I want you to know what happened when we were kids-why I drifted away.”

I felt my heart quicken.

“You remember both of us were pretty religious in those days, going to church services three times a week.”

“I remember.”

“At that time you were a symbol of everything that was holy for me, a kind of beacon for the church.”

“I never felt much like a beacon,” I thought to myself.

“But I wanted to experiment. I wanted to see what the other side was like, the worldly side. I could only do that by divorcing myself from you. Of course, I could never walk away from the church, it was too much a part of me, but I didn’t know that then. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I said, my eyes filling with tears. “I had no idea.”

“I know that. What I did was cruel. I just cut you off. I knew that hurt, but I didn’t know any other way to do it. Allen, I’m sorry. I’m truly, truly sorry.”

“Give me a hug, David. I could really use a hug right now.”

And the two of us embraced-two old little leaguers, grabbing hold of each other with the passion of 32 years of separation.

It was tough being a 12-year-old with a yearning for the ways of the world, but David handled that passage, and many others, with indisputable success-learning to welcome each transition as a signpost that he was maturing as a compassionate human being.

Life serves us all many passages on the path to personal autonomy. Those passages are natural transitions-even sacred rights-and deserve to be recognized as stepping-stones to spiritual and intellectual competency. As parents, teachers, mangers, it is our duty to welcome those transitions-to be patient enough, wise enough to allow the other the freedom to grow.

To my old friend David, you have made the transition beautifully. You’re looking good blood brother. (You want to take a naked dash around the neighbor’s house?)

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About the Author:

Allen Johnson, Ph.D. is the author of THIS SIDE OF CRAZY: 54 LESSONS ON LIVING FROM SOMEONE WHO SHOULD KNOW BETTER BUT KEEPS MESSING UP ANYWAY

available through Selfhelpbooks.com.

© Copyright 2003 by Allen Johnson and Selfhelpbooks.com. All rights reserved. This article may be reprinted but must include the author’s copyright and website hyperlinks

What Is Appropriate Fan Behavior?

By Keith Levick, Ph. D.

The championship hockey game was exciting - a 2-2 tie going into the second overtime. The players were fatigued but skating hard as the fans remained on the edge of their seats. Five minutes in, a player scored to end the game. Some fans cheered, others jeered. Standing near me was a man who yelled and pointed to the goalie, "I can't believe you allowed three goals. You stink!" Was this a NHL game? No. Was it a collegiate championship game? No. These were eight- and nine-year-old children playing, and it was the goalie's father yelling!

Unfortunately, this happens far too often. Unruly and inappropriate fans have become a major problem in today's athletics. The focus of this article, however, is not the fans who watch pro sports (although a problem), rather, the behavior of parents watching their children.

As the Little League baseball season approaches, I'm reminded of numerous stories in the newspaper and events I've witnessed over the year. "Gun-toting Dad Unnerves Coach" and "Parent Sues League After A Bad Call By Umpire" are just some of the abhorrent headlines. The lunatic parent who confronts the coach after the game or yells disparaging remarks during the game is equally to blame. I often scratch my head and wonder how these people ever became parents.

Getting involved in the excitement of the game is fun. Yell, scream, or do whatever is necessary to be part of the moment. Once you exhibit negative behavior - booing at a call by the umpire, chastising the other team, or any other negative behavior, you've crossed the line. You have now become the perfect negative model.

The child is consistently evaluating the parent's behavior. What you do and say sends a message that tells the child it's okay to behave in that particular manner. Think about the times you watch your child play a game. As she hits the ball and safely makes it to first base, what is the first thing she does? She glances to the stands for your approval. Although this fraction of a moment may seem unimportant, this feedback is crucial to her emotional development. The smile (frown), fist raised high with excitement (pointed fingers), and/or words of encouragement (ridicule), greatly contribute to the child's self esteem.

Spectators are not always in agreement with an umpire's call or the coach's decision. Just as in all aspects of life, how (the manner in which ) you voice your opinion is important, particularly in front of children. This is not a time to vent your frustrations, yet many do. Why do many parents become so agitated and behave inappropriately?

For many, the need to win is an integral part of their self esteem. The focus is not on the enjoyment of the game; rather, it's how well they perform. Children, therefore, become an extension of the parent's ego. "If the child is successful, I'm successful, so the child better play well and I'll make sure no one impedes their chances for success." In the end, the child, coach or umpire unfortunately becomes the target of this parent's weak ego.

The next time you become frustrated during your child's game, keep in mind the following rules of sportsfanship:

1. Cheer, cheer, cheer, but never yell/scream at your child, coach, umpire or visiting team.
2. If you have nothing positive to say - zip it - say nothing at all.
3. Always support the activity - this includes practices, etc.
4. If you have a concern regarding your child, speak to the coach privately.
5. No matter how it feels to you, people don't purposely make errors. When they do, they already feel bad, and don't need reminders - they need support.
6. Get your ego out of it - this is a time for fun and enjoyment!

Remember, as a role model your behavior will be imitated by your child. And, as always, we need to demonstrate responsible behavior.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Keith Levick, Ph.D., is a health psychologist who has been in practice for 20 years and is an Adjunct Professor at Central Michigan University. He is the founder and director of the Center for Childhood Weight Management, a unique treatment program designed for overweight children, located in Farmington Hills, MI, and in YMCA'S throughout Michigan. Dr. Levick is also the President of Goren and Associates, a training and development company. Some of their clients include GM, DaimlerChrysler, Detroit Diesel, AT&T and other Fortune 500 companies. Dr. Levick serves on the Executive Board for the American Heart Association and is well published in the area of health and wellness.

Dr. Levick is author of a new book entitled, Why Is My Child So Overweight? A Parent's Guide to a Fit & Healthy Child, designed to help the entire family become more aware of eating behaviors and help create lifestyle changes. This book is available through SelfHelpBooks.com.