My Parenting Answers on Quora (What's a Quora?)

I haven't been blogging a lot lately because life has been incredibly busy. I've also been spending a lot of time on Quora, so much so that within about a year 500,000 people have read my answers.

What's a Quora?  It's a question and answer site. Mostly I answer questions about parenting, teaching and judo because I consider myself to know a bit about these topics. Just in case you are not on Quora, here are a few of my answers on parenting.

WHAT ARE YOUR SECRETS TO RAISING SUCCESSFUL KIDS?

Wow, I wish I had secrets. The best advice anyone ever gave me was “Ask yourself if you are dong this for yourself or for your kid. If you can honestly answer you are doing it for your kid, you won’t go wrong.”

The second best advice came from a coach who said, “AnnMaria, I’m 53 years old. I don’t need a 15-year-old friend.”

I have gone through some hardships in my life - juvenile hall, foster care, divorce, the death of my husband. After you’ve been beaten, had someone take you to court and try to get custody of your child and had the person you love most die, there isn’t much people can threaten you with. As a result, I really don’t give a fuck what anyone thinks about my parenting or what the neighbors or relatives thought when I let Jenn drop out of high school at 16 and go to community college or let Julia go to boarding school at 14 or let Ronda move across the country to train for judo or let Maria start school a year early.

Often, I hear parents give lip service to how important their kids are but then they put up with an awful coach or won’t switch their child’s school because they care what the other adults will think about them.

I think education is important and it is one thing you can give your child that will help them their whole lives, so I made sacrifices to give them the best possible education, from working 2 or 3 jobs to pay for NYU to moving to Minot so Ronda could get speech therapy.

I believe in that Greek ideal of a sound mind in a sound body and tried to get all of my children involved with sports, although they weren’t all equally on board with that, none of them entered adulthood obese or unhealthy.
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What are some good parenting tips you can give me (a teen who is looking forward to being a parent) that I can use in the future?

Never hit your child unless you’d hit an adult under the same circumstances. I have four children and I have hit them a total of 4 times (one of them twice and one of them never). I hit one for running into the street so she would never do that again. I hit one when she was trying to wash her little sister’s hair with bleach. She didn’t know any better but she never tried that again.

Experiences  > stuff. I spent a lot of money on private schools and training camps for my children, but none of them had a new car until they made enough money to buy their own.

Do parents ever look at their teen/adult child and just stop to appreciate that they raised an amazing person and brought them into the world? Like, "That's my child. Look how great they turned out". 

Yes. Just about every day. I tell my children whenever they get down on themselves, “Just because you’re not perfect, doesn’t mean you’re not great.” They are great.

How to raise your children to be good people

The title of this blog is deceptive because it implies an answer.

 Anyone who claims to know how to raise children to be good men and women is lying. Most parents do the best they can. Then, there are a few people who are living proof that a parenting license test should be implemented. Hell, the damage you can do in a car accident is minor compared to how bad parenting can wreak havoc.

The marvelously talented Hans Gutknecht took this picture today of Ronda, Justin Flores, who is coaching her  in judo leading up to her world title defense, and Josh Ramirez who was training with her.



It occurred to me that I remember when everyone in it was born (except me) and I was very happy today seeing what fine people they had grown up to be.

My four wonderful children are doing wonderfully well at the moment so people ask me for advice. To quote Shayna Baszler,

I will not share with you the answers that I have not got.

I asked Jake (Justin's dad) what he thought, and he said,

I tried my best. 

Which sounds a lot like Shayna's answer.

 Today, I was driving by a huge billboard advertising Special Olympics and I thought to myself,

I'm so achievement-oriented, I don't think I would be a good parent for a child with a disability.

It was several miles down the road before it occurred to me that I had one child who had epilepsy and another who had developmental delays and required years of speech therapy. Never for one second did I consider either of them to have a disability. I just wasn't having it.  This makes it sound like I thought things through, but not really.

 It just never occurred to me that my children were anything short of amazing in every way. That is one thing that I know Justin's parents, Josh's parents and I did have in common.

If you think all parents think that way, I can assure you that they do not.

Punching the bitch card

Before anyone gets their panties in a bunch, no this is not due to any specific thing Ronda or anyone else did. It just happened to be what I was thinking about today. In fact, I was really thinking about what great people my three friends, Dawn Beers, Becky Scott and Laura Brown were for putting up with all of my shit all of those years.

When someone is getting ready to compete in the Olympics, for a world title or other super-fight type of event, you need to cut them a little slack. Let me give you my own perspective:

I have been training all of my life for this moment. Yes, there have been other events, national championships, other international events, but those are in the past. As my coach always said, you're only as good as your last match. At that moment, that's how I feel. The world as we know it is going to end - at least for me - if I don't win. It's the first thing I think about when I wake up at 5:30 in the morning and run sprints up that God damn hill, combine two of the things I hate most, getting up early and running sprints. It's the last thing I think about before my head hits the pillow after three workouts - God, I'm sore and tired and I have to win. All one thought without a breath. And I'm hungry. It's been so long since I had ice cream, I've forgotten what it tastes like. To hell with ice cream, I'd like to be able to just sit down and eat a meal without worrying about how much weight I'll have to run off at the last minute. I've got it all planned out in my head, what I need to weigh when, how much I can sweat off in the sauna. I've watched videos of my competition until I know her game plan better than she does. One more workout for the day and then I'm going to drink some water and go to bed ...

And then some cheery voice says .. .

Hey, do you want to go the mall and get frozen yogurt with me?

And I reply

What are you crazy? Fuck, no, I don't want to go to the mall and get frozen yogurt with you!

or

Hey, are these your nasty, sweaty shirt and sports bra on the floor?

And I yell back,

Who the fuck do you think they belong to? Do you see anybody else sweating their ass off in here?

The fact is that super-competitive elite athletes, as a general rule, are at the absolute heightened edge of anxiety in the few weeks before they compete. Coaches or parents who point to that one person who is calm as can be before their match are not helpful. That person is no more normal than someone who eats all they want, never exercises and is skinny as a rail. Good for them but don't plan your training by their experience.

No, I say that you have to give athletes a bitch card to punch, like those things you get when you buy lots of yogurt. After the tenth you get a free one. Except this is the opposite. You get so many punches on your bitch pass. When the match is over, you have used them all up.

To people who say this is treating athletes by special rules, I say, not so much. Look at it this way, if your spouse or child was about to go into an interview for a terrific job, is that the point when you would ask him or her to stop and pick up the milk on the way? No, you'd give them a pass. If your child has the SAT tomorrow, do you make them clean their room? No. You're not spoiling them. You are recognizing that doing well on the SAT is probably more important than giving them a life lesson in responsibility at that precise moment.

If you understand this, you and the athlete in your life will both be a lot less stressed. You will also understand why, when 17-year-old Ronda walked in the door, back from the Olympics in Athens, her sister, Jenn didn't even get  up off the couch and instead said, 

"I don't care where you've been or what you've done. It is SO-O your turn to change the cat litter."

Her bitch card was full. 

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Judo player uses for parents

I am in China this week. Julia helpfully (?) filmed this episode of Sneakerdoodle Zebra Judo with me in advance.

You're Not so Tough! (And I love you for it)

"Your children and, in fact, all of the young people you coach, need to believe you love them." - Dr. Jacob Flores, San Shi Dojo

"For a dad to spend time together with his daughter is very special. To spend it together doing Judo is a very special bonding time for the both of us." Paul Nogaki, Temecula Valley Judo

"To get to go on the mat and coach your kids is precious time. You go in the car together and have time to talk to one another, you are on the mat together, you travel together to tournaments. There is no real down side." Maurice Allan, Sport Judo

"It doesn’t matter if my child never goes anywhere in judo. My youngest is eight and if she gets to being a stronger, more productive more confident young lady out of judo and never becomes the national champion, that is fine with me." Gerald Lafon, Judo America

"What made me feel good is that I did something that mattered to the kids and not just something for myself. They feel that way about me, too." Jack Wade, Gardena Dojo

"I want what is best for my kids, not what makes me look good." Jim Pedro, Sr., Pedro's Judo Center

Fine bunch of tough guys you are! The coaches quoted above between them have represented the U.S., Japan and Great Britain in international competition. They have coached their own children to medals in Greece, England, Finland, Germany, Belgium, Brazil, Korea and all over the U.S.

When I decided to interview coaches for a special issue of Growing Judo magazine on coaching your own kids, I expected to run into those demonized Little League parents we are all always reading about. Funny thing, though, after teaching judo for decades myself, I have run into very few of those parents. Surely, though, parents who have coached their children who are now no longer doing judo, who have chosen some other activity or who are being coached by someone else now have their regrets. Right?

Couldn't be more wrong. As Jack Wada said,
"You know, as coaches, we never talk about these things, what judo had done for us, how we feel about it. We just talk about techniques and strategies for competition."

It turns out that these coaches all look back on their experiences fondly - and so do their kids. Those kids that quit judo were not their parents' failures but their successes. They are succeeding in other areas of life - working full-time, attending medical school full-time, succeeding in top music programs. None of their parents considered the years spent coaching their child in judo as wasted but rather as something that paid off then in time they enjoyed spending with their child and is paying off now in their child's success in life.

Did former super-star athletes, like Maurice Allan, shown above, named the Scottish wrestler of the century, ever feel as if their children needed to achieve to a certain standard?

"Not a t'all. I considered it a privilege to coach me daughter."

It often seems that the national past-time is putting people down, and that attitude hasn't left judo untouched. I hear comments all the time that people in judo are 'cheap', 'untrustworthy' and a host of other negatives. There are people like that in judo, just like there are in every other area of life. Most of the people in judo, though, are caring, giving, thought-provoking, insightful - and tough.

That's why I love them.