Welcome to our blog

Before starting this blog, we googled the word “parenting”; the number of websites, forums, and blogs devoted to the topic of parenting and parent-children relationships was truly enormous – just one this search produced 83,400,000 hits. Why, then, start another one? Is it really possible to say anything new on the topic? Well, browsing through several of the discussion forums and parenting advice websites, we discovered several things. First, parents are as confused as ever about relationships with their kids, and second, most of the advices found on “professional” parenting websites did not have any real value for those who need most help: parents of teenage kids. Isn’t it ironic? We, as a civilization, developed mind-blowing technologies, sent people to the Moon, understood the structure of atom, cloned complex living organisms, but as far as relationships between parents and children we are as much in the dark as people were in the Dark Ages. In fact, we are probably at even worse situation than families living hundreds years ago. As societies became more complex, as modern pedagogical ideas of children having rights of their own became prevalent, the nature of parent-children relationship changed profoundly, and we, the parents, are still struggling to adapt.
Another observation I made while visiting parenting websites was the absence of children as equal partners in the discussion. This struck me as a contradiction; we talk about our teenage kids as full-fledged human beings with rights and obligations, and at the same time they are missing from our adult discussions of how to achieve peaceful coexistence with them. So, we thought that it would be a good idea to encourage on-line dialog between parents and teenagers, where everybody could present their thoughts in an intelligent and honest way without being afraid of getting frown upon or grounded. We asked our own sons, if they would be interested in contributing to such discussion and presenting their side of the parent-children equation. To our surprise they agreed, and promised full support to our efforts.
Also, we believe that each family has its own unique experience and regardless of how many web sites are out there, any extra voice can bring something new and useful to the discussion. Uniqueness of our situation is that we are a family of first generation immigrants from Eastern Europe; we raised our children partly in our home country, and partly in New York. We have been looking for harmony in our relationships with our sons in many places and walked many roads and our outlook on parenting might contain some new, for American families, ideas. Of course, one might think of our experience as of something completely foreign and alien, but we hope that there will also be other, who might find our ideas and discoveries interesting and fresh.
As a way to introduce ourselves we would like to mention that we arrived in New York about some years ago and established ourselves in America. We are a family of professionals (one of us is a bookkeeper, another is a college professor, and our sons are aspiring film maker and a classical pianist) with a decent educational background and rich life experience. We invite everybody to share your discoveries on the road to peaceful and fulfilling family life; we especially invite kids to tell what they think about their relationships with parents, and we are certain that they can say something smarter than “I-hate-you” movie cliché. Let’s talk, may be together we can find a way to the parenting without wars.