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lifestyle THURSDAY, JULY 2, 2015 Features New sports uniforms level the playing field for Muslim girls In this June 10, 2015 photo, a woman looks at design drawings for Muslim Ramla Ali, left, and Amira Ali, on Ramia’s right, help celebrate a basket at an East African Muslim girls practiced basketball in their new uniforms in girls’ athletic wear before a fashion show in Minneapolis. Muslim girls who East African Muslim girls basketball practice. Minneapolis. play sports have challenges that go beyond the sporting. They worry about tripping on a long, flowing dress, or having a loosely wrapped hijab come undone during a crucial play. — AP photos New book takes on the culture of kids bullying their parents here’s a difference in parenting AP: Are these behaviors out of con- between a little backtalk and kids trol? Tactually bullying their grown-ups. Grover: What has changed are the par- Yes, you heard that right. Parent and family enting models, how people are responding therapist Sean Grover writes in a new book, to their children. A lot of parents come to “When Kids Call the Shots,” that a genera- me burned out, or their relationships are tion or two ago, it would have been really on the rocks. They begin to relive unthinkable for children to bully their par- their own childhood in some way, so it’s a ents without consequences, yet today mess of internal space that’s hard to navi- everyone knows a parent who is bullied. By gate. The difference is not that child devel- that he means the terrible twos that turn opment has changed but the evolution of into the terrible tweens that turn into the parenting. terrible teens that become the terrible col- lege years. AP: So there’s more guilt-prone, anxi- Turning that around, he said in a recent ety-fueled, fix-everything parenting interview, means coming up with new today? Are we failing by allowing our- strategies but also unpacking your own selves to be bullied? baggage in the esteem, resentment, Grover: Absolutely there’s more. I think shame, fear and anxiety compartments of we may be stumbling. I’m not sure about your past. It ain’t pretty but letting go of failing. You get into a strange situation old tactics - surrendering, punishing, nego- where the less parents provide things like This photo released by Universal Pictures shows, This photo released by Universal Pictures shows, This photo released by Universal Pictures shows, tiating - is a positive step. structure and boundaries, like in the past, Michael J Fox, as Marty McFly, in a scene from Christopher Lloyd as Dr Emmett Brown, in a Michael J Fox, as Marty McFly, in a scene from Grover, in Manhattan, offers readable the more kids begin to act up. They’re the 1985 film, “Back to the Future.” — AP photos scene from the 1985 film, “Back to the Future.” the 1985 film, “Back to the Future.” bites of advice, case studies from his 20 unconsciously waving flags: ‘Will you do years working with families and personal something over here, please?’ It’s this crazy stories of his own trials as the father of two dance where kids will push their parents girls, now 12 and 15. While parent bullying until they set a limit and once they do, can occur at younger ages, he focuses on things settle down quickly. 30th anniversary of ‘Future’ adolescents as he urges parents to end patterns of unhealthy conflict, caving to AP: How do we reclaim our parent bullying or bullying back. His tips cover power? both parents and their kids, including bet- Grover: So often we treat parenting as celebrated at Hollywood Bowl ter vigilance of possible auditory process- one size fits all. Strategies usually begin by ing disorders, dyslexia and other undiag- going backward. Rather than trying to nosed issues that may affect learning and snuff out the problem, what’s causing the housands went back in time as one of the largest movie behavior, and may up anxiety, frustration problem? Rather than trying to control a audiences ever in one place gathered to watch “Back to and anger all around. The book, from AMA- conflict or control a situation, look at the the Future” at the Hollywood Bowl in a celebration of the whole child and find what’s missing. T film’s 30th anniversary. The Bowl was just shy of its 17,000-per- son capacity for the Tuesday night event marking the 1985 AP: You’ve spoken about your own release of the Michael J Fox time-travel blockbuster. As the film struggles as a parent. played on the Bowl’s various screens, composer Alan Silvestri’s Grover: When my oldest daughter was score was performed live by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, about 6 she’d have these horrific temper conducted by David Newman. “Back to the Future” opened in tantrums, meltdowns, screaming. I was at a North American on July 3, 1985, and went on to become the New Year’s Day celebration and she was top-grossing release of that year, amassing close to $400 mil- making such a scene. Being a therapist, I lion worldwide. was dying a million deaths. She was Among those from the movie in attendance Tuesday night screaming, running away from me, telling were Lea Thompson and Christopher Lloyd, whose scientist me to shut up. And when I went home, I Doc Brown sends teenager Marty McFly (Fox) back 30 years to looked at my parenting books and I just 1955. There, he meets his future parents in high school and wanted to throw all of them out the win- accidentally becomes a romantic interest of his own mother dow. They were just so generic. It was as if (Thompson). “It really is an amazing event,” Thompson said one parenting script fits all cultures. backstage before the screening. “It’s very lovely that people In my book, really I’m asking parents to still want to celebrate our work and this movie.” consider their history, their culture, their Fox, who is based on the East Coast and has long battled upbringing. What kind of parenting did Parkinson’s disease, did not attend the Bowl event, but organ- they get, what were their parents’ light izers hoped Fox would be able to attend one of the anniversary qualities, what were their dark qualities? To celebrations planned for New York later this year. “Michael and I crawl inside that and have them come to had an automatic chemistry all the way through (the making some realization of where they come from, of the film) ... that was constantly alive, and it was wonderful,” where they are and where they want to go recalled Lloyd. Bob Gale, who co-wrote and co-produced “Back as a parent. I went to go see a parenting to the Future,” hinted there’d be a flurry of anniversary activity specialist and paid him a lot of money. We around Oct. 21, 2015, the date to which Marty is sent in “Back Christopher Lloyd, left, and Lea Thompson, cast Bob Gale, producer and co-writer of the had been doing all the usual parent things, to the Future Part II.” “October is going to be a great month if members in the 1985 film “Back to the Future,” 1985 film “Back to the Future,” mugs for you know, punishments, consequences, you’re a ‘Back to the Future’ fan,” Gale said. — AP pose together backstage before the “Back to photographers backstage. making lists, and it was like running a the Future - In Concert 30th Anniversary” event. prison. It was so miserable. The parenting expert said I want you to have breakfast with your daughter three times a week. I was like what? And he said during that time you do not talk about yourself, you do not offer any advice, criti- COM, the publishing arm of the American cisms, you don’t tell stories. You just give Management Association, was released in yourself completely to her. early June. A conversation with Sean I was so desperate at that point and we Grover: went to a restaurant and she just devoured that level of attention. She was a pure AP: How does this kind of bullying delight to be with. It triggered a maturing begin? process. So on a trip later to Maine she had Grover: It’s been around a long time in a meltdown and we talked and finally it child development, really, but it just didn’t came out. She bursts out crying: ‘You love have that name. The prime reason for it is a my sister more than me.’ I always shudder backlash against the authoritative parent- to think, had I not taken this route, if I ing of the past. People make these vows would have gone through punishing and that they’re never going to be that punish- consequences, I probably would have won ing or that way with their kids. Today par- the battle but I would have lost my daugh- ents go too far in the other direction. They ter. — AP want to be their kids’ friends, they’re afraid of their children, of losing their child’s affection. It’s not unusual for a guidance coun- selor or a school psychologist to take me aside when I’m doing a workshop and say, ‘This is a huge problem we don’t know how to address.’ Children are bullying their parents and they bring that culture into the classroom with their peers or their Christopher Lloyd, left, and Lea Thompson, cast members in the 1985 film This photo released by Universal Pictures shows, Michael J Fox, left, as teacher.

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