The premise is MTV's version of "The Biggest Loser", only that the hour focuses on troubled teen who has had a life full of tortuous eating patterns and enabling parents that seem to not know exactly how to have a positive relationship with their children. Just like "T.B.L.", MTV throws a personal trainer into the life of the teen, in an unrealistic and unsustainable environment where training takes place almost every day of their summertime. In the previous 2 episodes, I've seen some of the biggest examples of parents caring more about being friends with their children rather than actually guiding them through their first 18 years of life. Let's focus on last night's episode: Dominic.
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| Google Search "Italian Family" and 75% of the images come up with this. |
Dominic comes from a food-addicted Italian family that loves to eat for comfort and for reasons of bringing the family together. It seems like there wasn't a scene that the elderly grandmother (insert stereotypical Italian vision of a sergeant leading it's younger troops), was walking in the door, instantly helping to prepare some type of food while simultaneously complaining about something. At one point in the show, the grandmother exclaims "What!!?? Why do I have to change my diet now!?" You get the point.
Dominic's mother plays the buffer role. She is trying to appease her traditional mother while also trying to stick up for her "routine-breaking" son. This is where the "friendship" role is taken a little too far. The most notable moment of the show was not seeing Dom losing all of his weight, or throwing up during his first ever workout, or even learning how to stick up for himself to his family. Nope, none of those ground breaking moments did it for me as much as what I'm going to say next.
While cleaning out their pantry at the beginning of the episode, the mother's level of focus on being friends with her children instead of being a leader shone through. Out comes a box of cookies from the pantry, and after discussing that the cookies were originally bought for Dom's sister, the mother begins to cry with the task of throwing them away, saying "This is really tough for me. I know that my daughter loves the cookies, and buying them for her is my way of showing that I really care about her and that I want to make her happy."
Hmmmmmmm.....This is where I have the issue with the "friend vs parent" role. My feelings about a parent are quite simple. They should be the tribe leader. The tribe leader is responsible for maintaining the health, safety, and well-being of the tribe, making decisions that are sometimes very difficult to ensure the livelihood of the family. Back at the beginning of our country's existence, when Native Americans were roaming freely, they went where the food was. Meaning that no matter how comfortable they got in a certain area, when it was time to move due to lack of food, or because invasion from a neighboring tribe was looming in the near future, the tribe leader made the tough call of unsettling the reservation, not focusing on their initial comfort and happiness, but looking more towards their long term health and benefit of safety.
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| The Tribe Leader always knows what's best for his people. |
In the world of "I want everything right now!" and "What I do now won't affect me 5 years from now", how can we teach the parents of today that creating an atmosphere of long term health is the more important role that they should play, rather than letting the child have whatever they want, not thinking that their actions now will probably create a landslide of negative choices in the near and far future. Here are a few ideas of how we can create a more healthy family structure:
1. Exercise together - building a relationship with your spouse, family, or just your children at a young age shows them the importance that you "the tribe leader" puts on exercise. Children are impressionable and pick up on the stuff that the parent deems important or even necessary.
2. Grocery Shopping as a Tribe - take a monthly trip to the grocery store as a family, learning how to read the labels on items, and deciding together if certain things are healthy enough to make it into the cart or not.
3. Plan Park Days - As a tribe, meet up in the kitchen on a Saturday morning, dole out responsibility to each of the family members to pack up a picnic basket. Take the basket, a frisbee, and a deck of cards or board game, head out to your local park and have a nice, active day together as a family unit.
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| Families that play together, stay together! |
These are just a few ideas that a parent can connect with their children on, to better improve the health of the family, and the structural role of the parent as the "decision making tribe leader" and the child as the "learner that follows the positive lead of the parent". Help change your community and its outlook on family structure and health. Don't be afraid to step outside the box and hang out as a family!
Finish With Action,
Bill
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