Category: psychology

Fighting Coyotes

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“I had a mean case of the coyotes,” Riley Frandsen said to explain his unorthodox, yet natural means of protecting his property. I didn’t need a guide or interpreter to tell me what that meant, but Riley was so stacked with anger and frustration that I felt compelled to provide him a launching point:

“What does that mean?”  

“They were going to the bathroom in my yard, all over my yard. It was so disgusting. They ripped my garbage apart and threw it everywhere, and they were scaring the hell out of Murphy,” Riley said, stressing the latter point as if it was the most important. “Murphy, here, was afraid of going out in the backyard,” he added patting his nearly 100lb. setter while holding my gaze. “I’m serious. When he left this little patio, he did so only to go to the bathroom, and then he wanted back in quick. He got to the point that he was going on the patio, because, I think, he didn’t want to leave the lighted area. He used to love the backyard, staying out for hours, running around, barking at non-existent matters, like any good dog will. Then it was, one to two minutes, and he’s scratching at the door to get back in. It’s sad is what it was.”       

I wasn’t paying too much attention. I’m normally a pretty decent listener, but a story about a man living in a relatively remote location, having problems with coyotes, didn’t captivate my attention. I had a whopper of an unrelated story all locked and loaded, and I couldn’t wait to start it. As such, I was committing the mortal sin of all good listeners: I was waiting for him to finish his story, so I could start mine. 

“What does a man do when coyotes start peeing all over his land?” Riley asked himself when I forgot to ask. “You pee right back is what you do. You reclaim your land.” If I was rudely half-listening up to that point, those lines brought me back in. My story was gone.

“You pee right back?” I asked, guessing where he was headed, but I wanted to hear him say it. “What does that mean?”

“How does a dog mark their territory?” Riley asked. “They urinate on it, right? They were marking my territory as their own, and I didn’t know where they were marking, of course, but they obviously did such a thorough job on my lawn that my buddy, Murphy, was afraid to leave the patio after a while. So, I started urinating back, around the perimeter of my land, as a way of taking my land back.

“So, anytime you have to pee, you run out here and do it on your lawn?”I asked

“I started out doing that,” he said, “but I did some research on it, and experts say that morning urine is the most concentrated and potent.” 

“I’ve also heard that beer urine is some of the most concentrated and potent,” I said. “Is that true?” 

“I wouldn’t know, because I have no control group … My morning urine has had at least some beer in it since I was fifteen. And to answer the question every one else asks, I have to do it again after every rain.” As Riley and I went silent, with a beer in hand, looking out at Riley’s backyard, I broke:

“I am sorry. I know this isn’t funny, but it kind of is.”

“Oh, I know it is,” he admitted with a smile. “I’ve taken this story into town, and they laugh just as hard as you do, because it’s funny, but I’ve tried everything as you can see. I put up that privacy fence, an eight-foot privacy fence, and I saw one jump it one night, scared the hell out of me. I grabbed my rifle and scared it off, and guess what he did. He jumped it again a couple nights later. They’re not scared off by gunshot, not long-term anyway. They’ve not afraid of motion detection lights, and the name brand coyote repellents don’t scare them off either, not long-term. Nothing did, until I began marking my territory. I have to protect my dog, and my property right? I see it as marking my territory in the way any other animal would. I see it as informing them that this is my land in their language, and they respond better to that message than any of the other ones I tried. I don’t know why it works so well, but I think it has something to do with their fear of humans. Our urine is also very high in ammonia, which most animals hate. I still hear them, off in the distance, but I haven’t seen them once since I started doing this. They appear to consider the smell unbearable. It is an olfactory repellent to most mid-level predators. It can also be used as a pesticide. The scent of human urine can be used to confuse and deter rabbits, squirrels, and unintelligent people.

“Not all predators are repelled by the scent of human urine however,” he continued in a matter-of-fact manner, as we sipped on his beer. “The debate on whether bears are detracted or attracted to human urine is ongoing. Some say larger bears, like grizzlies, might actually approach a camp lined with pee that campers put there to detract bears. They say that bears now so associate humans with food that any sign of humans will attract desperately hungry bears, and they know the scent of our urine. Others claim that bears are naturally curious creatures, and the smell is so foreign to them that they investigate. They’re just in our campsite to see what the smell is, in other words, but when we start screaming and running away, their other instincts and impulses cause them to do the things they do to us. 

“Reindeer, apparently, go nuts for our pee,” he continued. “And yes, I did some research on that too. I didn’t specifically search this out, but it was an offshoot of an offshoot, a rabbit hole that I followed, until I ended up learning that reindeer have a natural salt-deficiency, and our urine is high in salt, so they crave it, like we do Ruffles. The Inupiat people of Alaska found that all they have to do is pee in a reindeer trap, and they’ll have a nice meal at the end of the night. Imagine all of the trial and error that went into that finding. The Tozhu people of Tuva in Russia like to keep reindeer around for whatever reason. I assume they occasionally kill and eat them, but they’ve found that if they offer a reindeer a bowl of urine every once in a while, the reindeer will hang around their homes, waiting for the next bowl to arrive. The Tozhu say that the salt-deficient reindeer crave our urine so much that they’ve learned our patterns, and when they see a man who they think is about to pee they will all rush up on him and jockey for pole position, for lack of a better term.

“I know it’s funny,” he said. “I knew that before I told my neighbor, who was trying everything he could think up to free his home from the coyote invasion. He thought it was hilarious, and he told everyone he knows, and I know they were all laughing their heads off, but you know what happened don’t you? You know the end of this story don’t you? You can see it coming. That’s right, they kept laughing at the image of me peeing around my property line while they went through all of the prescribed fixes, and now everyone in town is peeing out their own property line. It’s funny, and it’s the only thing that works.” 

Race Potty: The 4th Stage of Potty Training

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First Rule of Race Potty: Don’t talk about Race Potty. Don’t sit your son down and tell him the pros and cons of doing it. Don’t analyze it with him in anyway. Second Rule of Race Potty: Don’t talk about Race Potty. If you decide to try it, just do it. Third Rule of Race Potty: Don’t talk about Race Potty. Just announce that it’s on. Say, “Race Potty!”, jump out of your couch and race him to the bathroom.  

As with all parents, we started with The Potty Chair and all the prescriptions laid out in parent guides to help us through the 1-3 stages of potty training. His mom had some experience with potty training, but she forgot most of it over the course of decades. So, we read some books on the subject, watched some YouTube videos, and sought advice from friends, family, and his physician. Their advice progressed us to stage four, an arbitrary description we’ve developed to describe the luxury boys have of urinating in the toilet while standing up. By completing the first three stages, our son was completely potty trained, except he preferred to sit. While standing to urinate is not a mandatory stage of child development, in general, or potty training, every man wants his son to take advantage of the biological luxury of standing while peeing. As such, the focus of this article will be limited to the fourth stage of potty training procedures for males.

The three of us found ourselves so mired in this agonizingly repetitious stage that we felt helpless. Our son knew what to do, how to do it, and when, but he just couldn’t put them altogether. 

One of the best ways to teach a two-to-three-year-old anything complex is to talk to them. The more we talk to them, the more they understand. They probably won’t understand 3/4ths of what we’re saying, but it might be a tone that suggests that there are reasons for everything we do, and it might help lay the foundation with them. Regardless our approach, parents are going to make a ton of mistakes, and the best antidote to making mistakes is time. If we spend enough time with your child, and talk to them while we’re there, we’ll round off the corners of any mistakes we make. In these areas, it doesn’t hurt to try to sympathize with our child. We might try to empathize, but we can’t remember how difficult it was to learn all of this at once. If we take a step back and think about how overwhelming learning this overflow of information must be, in such a small space, it might help us relate to them better and focus our lesson plans. My lesson plan has always been to KISS (Keep It Simple and Silly) it. I probably overestimate and underestimate him, alternately, three times a day, but I don’t obsess about that near as much as other parents do. I correct myself accordingly, and I try to keep his learning grade gradual.  

We don’t need to talk about everything though. Some matters require tactical maneuvers through the maze of their limited psychology, and any discussion of such tactics only undermines whatever results they might achieve. Even when they get disappointed by losing the
Potty Race, don’t say, “I’m only doing this because we are desperate to find something to aid you in this stage of potty training.” By keeping my intentions unspoken, I might have overestimated my two-to-three-year-old, but I thought if I discussed it, he might see Race Potty as the tactic it was. 

After we successfully completed those mandatory stages, we began whooping and hollering, and plying him with the treats experts prescribe. Our enthusiasm was genuine, because it was exciting to watch the learning process. He wanted to learn, he wanted to succeed, and he showed how much it meant to him by celebrating his accomplishment with us. A problem arose in stage four. He stood once, and a microscopic amount fell out. When he was done he was done, he thought he was done. It was one of the best days of his young life, and he hadn’t heard such praise since he first learned how to talk and walk.   

“What an accomplishment, am I right?” his beaming-with-pride expression said. “I’ll be honest with you guys, I’m glad that’s over, so I can go back to the more comfortable routine of sitting down when I go.” 

If you have a child, you know this reaction well. You spend countless hours repeating the process in the hopes that you might eventually help him establish some sort of routine. You don’t expect instant success, and you learn how vital patience is in stage four, but at some point you reach the “He isn’t getting it, and I’m not sure he ever will” level of frustration. You don’t show your disappointment to him, and you don’t say it to anyone but your spouse, but you feel it. The repetition becomes second nature to him, but he has his fallbacks. Those stuck in this stage also know the shrug you get from friends, family, and physicians when their advice doesn’t work, “Every kid is different. What do you want me to say?”   

I don’t know how to potty train your child, and you don’t know how to potty train mine. No one knows. It’s a guessing game. Did my guess work, or did I use it at a time when he was finally ready to learn and anything would’ve worked at that point? I don’t know, you don’t know. So the next time an author writes a piece, such as this one, and they suggest they’ve discovered the foolproof, take it to the bank, works every time method of potty training, symbolically place it in the trash bin right next to the heaping pile of diapers you’ve accrued since you started employing their method.

Is it about stubbornness, intelligence, or some sort of behavioral issue? We don’t know, because every kid is different. Every complex, little brain full of mush tackles complex tasks in such unique, individualistic ways that one of the best methods involves learning what makes your child tick. What makes him smile with pride? My little fella showed an ambitious nature pretty early on, and to try to turn the repetition into routine, I keyed in on my son’s competitive nature. I found a trick that might only apply to my son, but it worked so well for us that my wife began dropping it at work to parents who were having their own trouble with their kids in stage four. 

Prior to Race Potty, we tried everything. We went nuts on the microscopic dribbles that fell into the water. We tried standing him in front of the toilet for an extended period of time. We tried having him watch me so often that we hoped something might click. It didn’t. A friend of ours suggested putting Froot Loops in the water and telling him to sink them. That seemed like a fantastic idea. It sounded fun. I showed him how. He cheered me on. He told me what colors he wanted me to sink. “Why don’t you try to sink a few?” I asked him. He gave me a devilish grin that led me to believe he was in on my dastardly plan. He wasn’t. Nothing worked, until I developed Race Potty.

It plays out like this. It’s potty time. You know it, and he knows it, but he doesn’t know what to do with it. “Potty time!” you yell spontaneously, the more spontaneous the better, and you race him to the bathroom. He’s running with you, but he doesn’t know why. The only thing he knows is he wants to do is win. Some parents might not want to do this, because they fear instilling or fostering a competitive nature in their son, but as I said my son was very competitive early on, and I encouraged that in every way I could. 

Race Potty is not a mean method, as you’ll read, but you do have to move past the nice stage. Being supportive and whooping and hollering work great in stages 1-3, but their effectiveness begins to wane in stage four. There are, however, some details of Potty Race that might make some parents squeamish. 

Once at the toilet, you have him whip it out with you, as we’ve done probably a hundred times before at this point. This time, however, you issue a challenge: “Let’s see who can hit the water first.” 

This is the point where some fathers might grow squeamish, for I prescribe a touchdown dance once victory is secured. The more obnoxious the better. Which touchdown dance is appropriate? For that answer, we might want to consult NFL rules. We should not get in the face of our child, for that might draw a taunting penalty, and we shouldn’t celebrate in groups. We also shouldn’t engage in a lewd dance, otherwise known as twerking. Most fathers don’t want to do a touchdown dance after beating their two-to-three-year-old son at anything. It feels weird, and you’re sure that some pointy-headed child psychologist will frown at you for doing such a thing, but there’s a reason you’re desperately stuck in stage four, and it has everything to do with that frustrating “Every kid is different” phrase. The touchdown celebration stokes the fire. 

He almost beat me on a Tuesday, but I refrained from celebrating his accomplishment. I celebrated mine instead. He was frustrated. It stoked his fire. It stoked his ire. On Wednesday, he came closer, and he was frustrated that I no longer celebrated him hitting the water.

When the pain of his disappointment hits us, our inclination is to soothe him. We might want to tell him that it’s just a game, or that you’re just joking around. My advice, change the subject. Don’t let him grow despondent, wallow in the misery of his frustration, or let him cry. Change the subject to something he beats you in. Do whatever you can to avoid negative connotations and build up his pride, but don’t give up the game, and don’t talk about Potty Race. Just do it. 

My patience and diligence paid off on Thursday, when he beat me, and it was glorious … for him. I feigned the agony of defeat. My inclination was to share the victory with him, but I refrained from doing so, knowing that I had to stoke that competitive fire to keep it bright orange. I was inconsolable in defeat, and he loved every minute of it. 

He was almost undefeated from that point forward, and whatever wounds he experienced in the early stages of Potty Race were healed. To show how healed they were, he would shout, “Potty Race!” and I would have to chase him down the hall to pointlessly try to defeat him.

He still sat to pee, particularly when I wasn’t around to race him, but the repetition of potty race eventually established the routine in ways my wife couldn’t believe.

She didn’t care for potty race when it began, of course, and she all but bit her tongue as I continued to employ it. She didn’t appreciate the philosophy behind it, the methodology, or the lack of results. She had particular disdain for the touchdown dances, as she didn’t see them as constructive. Potty Race did not work in the beginning, but what does with a two-to-three-year-old? “We’ve tried everything else,” I said. “I say we try something else.” She conceded the point, but I could tell she didn’t think my idea would ever work, until it did. She’s such a convert now that she’s spreading the gospel even though I told her you don’t talk about Potty Race. 

I Give You Permission to Read This 

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“We have two choices in our culture today,” the “theys” who appear on our devices tell us. “We can either feel guilty about doing what we do, or we can give ourselves permission to do them.” The only asterisk in this Faustian Dilemma is celebrital dispensation. Similar to Papal Dispensation, if a celebrity says, or more importantly wears, something on the red carpet, it gives us commoners the permission to be who we are, “who we really are.” To listen to the theys of celebrity adoration, celebrital dispensation is far more powerful than Papal Dispensation in that it doesn’t just offer a specific relaxation of rules in one particular case, it offers us a wholesale abrogation of rules of social decorum, social contracts, moral and ethical principles, and presumably constitutions and foundational documents. The theoretical extension of the rules and policies of celebrital dispensation are not clear, but from what the theys suggest, a song lyric, a line in a movie or show, and any dietary decision celebrities bestow upon us can lead us to the brink of a guilt-free life.

In order for the celebrital dispensation to have power, however, we have to violate a special tenet permission-oriented types have embedded in their personal constitution: Thou shalt not grant another power over one’s life. Aren’t we all supposed to be self-empowered? Aren’t we all supposed to say, “I’m not going to give you that power over me.” Isn’t it all about autonomy, independence and strength to achieve comfort? It depends, and it’s conditional. If the celebrity is hot, superficially and/or professionally, they don’t just wield power in Billboard or the box office, they can influence our daily lives. 

Is this all a collective wink-and-a-nod joke, I missed, or does the woman I see twerking on stage in a corseted bodysuit draped with strands of silver fabric, over-the-knee fringe boots wield as much power over her congregation as the Pope does his? How many successful albums, movies, and TV shows does a person have to have before they can start granting us permission on how to live our lives, and what happens if her next album doesn’t fare as well? Does her sway over the culture ebb and flow with sales, and do we need to keep a ledger on how much power a celebrity wields, before giving them permission to give us permission? How beautiful, handsome, funny, or serious do they have to be before they’re allowed to grant us permission to put a little cheese on our broccoli before eating it? What happens when they eventually age out of their beauty and/or handsomeness, do they grant us permission to age, or do their powers diminish? It probably depends on how gracefully they age. Is there a bottom line qualifier they must continually meet before we continue to grant them ourselves permission to grant them permission to grant us permission to do what we want to do?

***

“So, you don’t just do something or avoid doing it?” is a question I ask of those who seek and grant permission to themselves. “So, you don’t just do something or avoid doing it?” is a question I ask of those who seek and grant permission to themselves. “You add the extra step of asking yourself permission first before doing it?” If that’s the case, the logical conclusion is that there’s another part of us that grants permission. Is that other part of us ruling in a fair, objective, and unbiased manner? Are all of our rulings always reached with our best interests in mind? If you commit to a regular practice of asking yourself permission to do things, how often do you say no? Has your rejection ever surprised you? If so, how did you react? Did you disagree with the basis of your judgement so much that it frustrated you, because you thought you didn’t consider some of the mitigating factors in your request? Did you ever end up eating that piece of chocolate cake regardless of the judgment? We’ve all been subject to unfair, foul, and draconian rulings from the various authority figures in our lives, and we’ve all rebelled against them accordingly. Have you ever eaten that piece of chocolate cake regardless if permission was granted or not, and how did that affect your relationship with yourself going forward? Have you ever stopped asking yourself permission for a time and just did it, because you began to believe that you could be a bit of a tyrant at times, and do you adjust some of your behaviors in the hopes that you might notice a run of good behavior that deserved some reward? You know you’ve been good, but have you had this feeling that you didn’t notice it, and you feel that you should start rewarding yourself with some chocolate cake here and there, until you start acting up again?”  

One definition of giving yourself permission involves the practice of allowing “You to disconnect WHO you are from your opinions, ideas and practices. Instead, placing that identity in your values. As long as you are acting in line with your core values, it opens up space to be wrong about decisions in the past, and how you will choose to translate your values in the future, without losing sight of your personal integrity or ability to be 100% whole and worthy.” 

If I ever fall prey to this nonsense, I know my first series of layoffs will involve middle management, as I will know, without poring through the numbers, that I’m probably overstaffed.  

***  

“I have so earned this,” we say as we lower onto a piece of soft and juicy chocolate cake, “and I deserve a reward.” Is a piece of chocolate cake ever that rewarding? How long does that sense of reward last? Do we go for another piece to reward ourselves more when we’ve been especially good? No, because that might prove punishing. The single piece of chocolate cake represents a reward at the end of the maze of good and healthy living, and we always announce our path to it? “I’ve been good.” 

I guess I’m a stranger in a strange land, because I just eat the piece of chocolate cake, or I don’t. I make decisions without disconnecting WHO I am from my opinions, ideas and practices. There are no trumpets in my land, signaling a dietary path that has been a quality one up to this point, or one that is so bad that I don’t dare approach the bench. 

We let our trumpets blare, because we want external validation and societal validation. Somewhere along the way, we glommed onto the complicated world of self-acceptance and self-actualization, and the rise of self-help literature, social media, and mental health awareness tangled and mangled this into people talking about their personal struggles and growth journeys, until we started seeking permission and granting it to ourselves based on past and present behaviors. 

“I am refraining from eating that piece of soft and juicy chocolate, because I’m on a diet.” We say this even though no one brought it up, and some part of us knows that no one cares, one way or another, but we want someone else to validate our discipline. Even a lifted eyebrow will do. Eating that single piece of soft and juicy chocolate cake gives us a naughty violation to punctuate the streak of good and healthy living that no one cared about when it went live. These are all decisions and choices we make, and they’re all fine, but how many times have we gone a solid month without a slice of chocolate cake? “Yeah, I deserve a reward for that.” What’s the difference between deserve and earn? Who cares, let me have cake. 

When we involve ourselves in the idea of granting permission to ourselves, I think there’s a super-secret part of us that kind of misses having a controlling authority in our lives. “I can’t wait until I’m an adult,” kids often say, “because I’ll then get to finally do everything I want to do.” We all know that there is a psychological push and pull to authority in our youth, as we push back on authoritative constraints, until they’re not there. When they’re not there, we feel the need for borders and guidance in a strange way that makes us feel uncomfortable. We didn’t miss it in our 20s, because we were all about luxuriating in the newfound powers of freedom of adulthood that can feel so fresh and liberating. When we hit our 30s, the idea of freedom became more established, routine, and a little boring, and if we lived to our 40s, we became the powers that be. No one notices when the idea of unadulterated freedom begins to wear off, but we eventually start to take it for granted, and we begin to miss the rewards and punishments that flowed from authoritarian control, so we began establishing our own. 

The logical response to those who deserve a reward is do they ever punish themselves for bad living? Have you ever tried canned beets? If not, then you don’t truly know the extent of quality punishments. WebMD.com suggests that beets “Don’t just reduce inflammation, they also improve heart health. The nitrates in beets have been shown to reduce high blood pressure. Beets are also naturally low in cholesterol and fat, which makes them a good option for people concerned about heart disease or stroke.” Are beets a quality punishment we sentence we pass down for falling off track regarding good and healthy living? Why else would someone eat a beet? If someone told me that they granted themselves permission to eat a piece of chocolate cake, because “I deserve it,” I would ignore them as much as I ignore anyone who publicly grants themselves permission to do anything. If however, they added, “I just ate a whole can of those wet, slimy vegetables,” I might consider my own form of a one-time dispensation. 

“Did they have that purplish color that comes from betalain pigments?”

“Yes.”

“Today, I tell you,” I would say with a permissive wave of my hand, “that you shall enjoy paradise.”

I realize that granting ourselves permission to do what we want to do is not some kind of new-age novelty, as the research suggests this practice has gone through a long and winding road. As a young ‘un who received unprecedented freedoms, unprecedented among my peers, perhaps I went through the traditional push and pull relationship with authority prematurely, but I don’t understand the unnecessarily complicated, and very public, steps some people include in their decision-making process. I don’t understand the process of inventing an imaginary, controlling authority to adhere to, abide by, and rebel against. Perhaps, it has something to do with filling a void that nature forced me to fill so early on that I don’t understand others struggle with it. 

I also don’t understand turning to celebrities to grant us permission to do things, unless it’s an admission on our part that we don’t have the confidence necessary to fill that void, because we fear our rulings, on consequential, pressing matters, are not as objective as we previously thought. To fill that void, we turn to the uncommonly attractive types who attract fame and fortune for some kind of authority on the way to live. Yet, if we were to hold them to the same standard we hold ourselves, we’d find they’re just making it up as they go along too. They do look beautiful doing it though, and we cannot deny that, but does that give us permission to look beautiful while we’re doing it too? If that ever happens to, or for me, I hope someone will come along and explain to me what just happened.