Happy Spring—I think! March has entered the Pacific Northwest like a lion and so we shall see how she leaves. The wild hail, swirling snow, and grey blasts of rain make marked contrast against bright yellow daffodils, new green tree buds, and creamy pink cherry blossoms—Mother Nature at her most energized.

This month we feature a discussion guide for parents who are taking their preteens and young teens to see The Hunger Games. I respect this disturbing dystopian story. Now that’s it a film, let’s hope they kept the modulated violence of the book intact. The premise is horrific enough—children required by law to kill other children on national television. Many parents I work with wanted to make the movie a meaningful experience for their children and have asked me such questions as “What different reactions do kids have to seeing images of violence, rather than reading about them?” and “How do I prepare my child for dealing emotionally with the movie’s theme—no adults are there to protect you?”

So I wrote a Discussion Guide that gives a range of questions parents can ask before or after seeing the movie. I strongly suggest some prep questions before, such as: “Consider how the violence is depicted. Is it sensational or sensitive? Are you connecting with the victims or does the film want you to get thrills and pleasure from watching murder?”

Like the dichotomies in nature, our children are part of life and can understand human complexities, especially with our guidance.

If you do see The Hunger Games with your child, let me know how it went at Gloria@ThePCI.org!

Gloria DeGaetano, Founder,  The Parent Coaching Institute

From:  http://www.thepci.org/articles/DeGaetano_HungerGamesDiscussionGuide.htm

The Parent Coaching Institute’s Discussion Guide for The Hunger Games
by Gloria DeGaetano
Note to Parents:
I saw the movie, The Help recently with my husband. He liked it vey much and said, “It was a solid movie.” I thought it OK. Since I had read the book beforehand, the richness of the characters, the details of their lives, and the narrative of the heroine were sadly lacking in the movie, in my opinion. But that’s what usually happens in translating great books into movies—something is lost—and often a lot is lost.
Books get inside characters’ heads in ways film cannot. And while film gives us stimulating visual displays and an engaging narrative, it can’t reproduce or relate the narrator’s experience like words can. When your child reads The Hunger Games, there are always two points of view—what is happening around Katniss and how Katniss is interpreting these situations. Humanity in all it’s complexity lies in the narrator’s interpretations. These give your child a full spectrum of thoughts and emotions about the experiences, helping your child attune to important concepts and how he or she may be thinking about them. If Katniss is feeling this, then maybe I am, too? If Katniss thinks something, I as the reader, have the opportunity to consider an opposing view as well as aligning with her thoughts. The book gives time for your child to sort through ideas and deep feelings, to ponder and consider, in a way that a two-hour, action-packed movie cannot.
If your child has read The Hunger Games and then sees the movie with you, these questions can spur interesting discussion. (Or after seeing the movie, your child can read the book—works both ways, except the film’s images will stay in her mind while reading—most likely.) Find out what images were like the one’s in your child’s head after s/he read the book and which movie images just didn’t quite make it. And be sure to discuss how Katniss makes sense of her horrific experiences and how she might grow and learn from them.

1. What kind of person is Katniss? Consider her feelings toward her oppressors, her sister Prim, Gale, and Petta. What are Katniss’ strengths and qualities? What are her weaknesses? How did she change and grow over the course of the story? What did she learn about herself by the end? Do you think her decision at the end of the games to ingest the poisonous berries was a good decision, why or why not?
2. What kind of people find bloody murder and human suffering entertaining? Think about the lives of the people in Panem. Do you think the watching of the Hunger Games was a substitute “life” for them? Why or why not?

1. Katniss trained herself to kill animals for her and her family’s survival. Early in the story, she made this statement to Gale: “The awful thing is that if I can forget they’re people, it will be no different at all.” What does this say about the dilemma Katniss was about to face? What does it say about the reality of her life? Katniss describes her inability to act to save the red-haired girl as, “Just like I was watching the games.” Do you think a lifetime of watching the games has deadened her to empathy? Why or why not? Do you think she regrets what watching the games has done to her? Why or why not?
2. “It’s all a show,” Haymitch says at one point. How do Katniss and Peeta adjust who they are to adapt to who their audience wants them to be? In our times, we have shows likeSurvivor, The Bachelor, and The Bachelorette that play on people’s feelings of fear, love, betrayal “for the audience.” Do you see any parallels between shows like these and The Hunger Games? For instance, how is the show, After the Final Rose like the interview show Katniss and Peeta participated in that showed highlights of the “games?” How do you define voyeurism? What does it say about the quality of people’s lives when someone else’s suffering or someone’s else love life is “the final word in entertainment?” Remember when Katniss buries her face in the hood of her sweatshirt so none of the audience can see her face? She wants to be alone to say good-bye to Thresh. What does this show about her ability to be aware of and express her feelings to herself, with the audience always watching her?
3. Katniss says that she “hates the Capitol” and not the boy she killed at one point, then soon later, she is hating her enemies violently and wanting revenge for what they did to Rue. Do you understand her roller coaster emotions? Why or why not?
4. If you would have written this story what would you have done differently? Would you have pitted Rue against Katniss at the end? Why or why not? Would you have left Cato to suffer as long as he did? Why or why not? Would you have had Katniss kill Peeta? Why or why not?
5. Katniss and Peeta are forever changed as a result of this horrible experience. Katniss says, “I’ll spend the rest of my life in this arena trying to think my way out.” What did she mean by that?
6. The Gamemakers keep changing the rules. Katniss and all the tributes are virtually slaves, imprisoned and entirely at their mercy. In order to survive, they have to follow the rules and do what is demanded of them. Do think Katniss and Peeta held a sense of their individual integrity amid this very difficult circumstance? Why or why not?
7. In Panem, the poor are also like slaves. What indicators do you have by the end of the story that Katniss has changed and now she no longer can tolerate this injustice as she did at the beginning of the story?
8. If you read the book and saw the movie, which do you like better, the book or the movie, why? Did the movie display the violence in a meaningful way? Or was it overdone—glorified so that audiences would be titillated—much like the audiences in The Hunger Games? How do you distinguish between gratuitous violence and sensitive portrayals of violence?
9. The Hunger Games is an implicit critique of a culture that is based on disturbing elements that already exist in our own society. Do you come out of the movie (or after reading the book) ready to understand these baser elements of our own culture in a different way?

 

Is It Better to Stay In or To Move Out?

Depending on how the argument is framed, it can seem far better to be courageous and leave than timid and stay. Better an eagle soaring beyond the bounds of the garden than a lamb willingly penned in. But is choosing to stay such a bad thing and leaving always a noble and desired act of independence? Are those who follow teachings passed down from generation to generation unwise and gullible?

Not necessarily. It all depends on two things. The first is knowing who or what created the Garden of Eden in which you are asked to live. As we all know from events of recent years, there is no shortage of spiritual leaders who claim to be the creators and guardians of unique gardens, systems of beliefs that contain the only tree to knowledge of good and evil. Fundamentalists of every persuasion, cults, self-styled gurus and New Age charlatans abound. (See Does Your Spiritual Compass Point in the Direction You Want to Go?)

The second factor that determines whether staying in the garden or leaving and striking out on your own is wise arises from how and why the choice is made. If you stay with full awareness that you are choosing to remain within the hallowed confines of an organized religion, that you want to follow, to be a disciple and to obey, then staying can be a freeing experience. After all, self-empowerment comes from making choices with awareness. You can remain inside without becoming a non-thinking zombie. There are wise, compassionate, forgiving, loving, radiant, generous and joyful individuals in every temple, synagogue, mosque and church. Religious institutions can transform lives.

On the other hand, you may want to follow the advice of the person who said something to the effect that, “Seek not what wise men found. Seek instead what wise men sought.” You maychoose to live outside an organized set of beliefs. But be aware that this is no easy task. As you begin your search for the meaning of life and spirit, you have to start somewhere. Even experience is not accomplished in a vacuum. You interpret your experience based on what you sense is true from friends, books, websites (including this one), lectures, therapists, counselors, and religious leaders of all stripes. Each offers some degree of truth. They all present what they believe — through their own experience or through acceptance of what they’ve been told by others — would be good for you to know. Though you many only take a piece of this advice and a bit of that and fashion a philosophy that is uniquely ours, sorting out whom to trust and whom not to trust can take a very long time.

My challenge to you in this article is that you decide whether you want to stay within a set of beliefs given you by others, in which case I challenge you to make that decision meaningful in all areas of your life — OR decide to set out on your own spiritual quest and actually DO the work it takes to make that decision a meaningful one.

BY ARLENE HARDER, MA, MFT

Author of Ask Yourself Questions and Change Your Life and Healing Relationships is an Inside Job

 

In expanding your search for spiritual awareness, how can you be sure you are heading in a direction that is best for you?  The story of the Garden of Eden is considered by many as evidence of man’s fall from grace and need for forgiveness because he dared seek knowledge of good and evil, taking upon himself a privilege the powerful, all-knowing God didn’t want him to have. Taken a step farther, however, you can also view the story as a metaphor for a basic conflict of the human condition.

You can choose to remain in the garden in obedience to the rules of the house, so to speak, maintain your innocence, and the authorities will give you the gift of happiness and immortality. No work required. No need to struggle with questions of what to believe. No troublesome working through of complex issues.

But what happens if you want to question authority and decide issues of right and wrong for yourself? Ah, then you get what you want — the ability to judge good and evil for yourself. HOWEVER you lose a few important perks. You won’t be taken care of, beginning with banishment from a plentiful source of food and comfort. Now you’ll have to survive by the sweat of your brow. You will have to live with the awareness you’ll die.

Quite a dilemma. And it’s something that people have struggled with for countless ages. You can live within the boundary of a garden created by religious dogma and creed set down (often with the best of intentions) by those who want to take care of you. You can accept their demand that you follow their teaching and not decide what is right and wrong by yourself. OR you can decide to judge your life through our own experience, to find your own source of meaning in life, to solve the puzzle of being human, and to follow your spiritual instincts where they will take you.

BY ARLENE HARDER, MA, MFT

Author of Healing Relationships is an Inside Job (Personhood Press) and Ask Yourself Questions and Change Your Life (Personhood Press)

What is your narrative? What story do you tell to explain who you are and what your life has been like?

If we’re given a choice, the style of door we select and the color we paint it says a lot about us. A house with a glass door without shades or curtains presents the owners as people who aren’t afraid to show others what the inside of their house looks like.

I think this particular house is more welcoming than a house where a solid door stands between windows where all the curtains are drawn. Of course, since it is the door to my house, I am not an impartial judge.

In any case, we can only guess what lies behind most closed doors, for a closed door primarily symbolizes our right to determine who will be allowed to enter and who is excluded from our personal, physical space—as well as being an attempt to keep out mosquitoes in the summer and cold in the winter.

Similarly, the clothes we choose to wear once we leave our house, assuming we aren’t clothed in our birthday suit (which would certainly speak volumes), offer clues as to how we want others to see us.

Further, when we interact with other people, we automatically expose some of our thoughts and emotions, although we may try to keep as much of that inner space protected as possible. Even if we don’t say anything, we’re sending a message. When we do talk, what we say and how we say it can open a door to our true selves or hide some part of who we are that we don’t want others to see.

In the words and gestures we use to tell it, every story we tell expresses a purpose, or at least tries to. One story is meant to let others know that we are a victim. Another story shows how smart and accomplished we are. We fudge the truth because we’re afraid others will not like us, will not think we are as smart as we want them to believe we are, will not give us the benefit of the doubt we give our own actions, and so forth.

I am not suggesting that you have to be totally honest and open about every aspect of your life with every person you meet. There are legitimate reasons to hold back some parts of you from the scrutiny of others.

It is important, however, if you are to understand yourself, that you pay attention to what you want others to know about you—and whether or not you are willing to be open and honest in your stories.

Virginia Woolf once said that, “If you do not tell the truth about yourself, you cannot tell it about other people.” I might paraphrase it a little to say, if you can’t tell an honest story about yourself, you aren’t likely to recognize truth in the stories of others.

Here are some questions about expressing who you truthfully are:

If someone at a social event asks you who you are, what is your answer?

If you tell someone about your life, what do you choose to tell, and what is it about you that you want to promote by responding that way?

Here’s a question to put this topic in action:

When you next tell a story about yourself, will you pay attention to the effect you want that story to have on your listeners — and notice how truthful you are?

By Arlene Harder, Author “Ask Yourself Questions and Change Your Life” and “Healing Relationships is an Inside Job”

July 11, 2011 post on Support4Change Blog        

www.support4change.com

Do we criticize those on the global stage for not setting aside their differences and making peace when we, ourselves, remain separated from people with whom we share much more than they do?

Have you ever wondered what a space alien would think if he were to observe our world with a highly sensitive telescope and listening device