It's the third or fourth ninety-something-degree day in a row this morning, so I quit trying to do anything productive (press releases, piano concert promotion, articles due, email) and declare that we're going to the pool. On the way there, Annie, per usual, is both looking at a library book and chatting up a storm.
" . . . And then in book 22 of Cam Jansen, the teacher gets arrested!"
Me: "Hmmm."
Annie: "But then I bet they find out that someone else is the thief."
Me: "Mmmmm-hmmmmmm."
Annie: "Because a teacher wouldn't ever do anything bad like that, right?"
Me, stalling: "Hmmm?"
Annie: "RIGHT?"
Me, brightly: "Not any teacher that I've ever known!"
*****
When Jason and I were gone last month, I left behind a four-page, single-spaced Microsoft Word document to instruct the grandparents on how to live our life at our house. It included exciting details such as how much to feed the cats, library card pin numbers, pediatrician phone numbers, when to put out the trash, how to get to tennis camp, how to leave the washing machine door ajar so as to avoid mildew on the seal, and where to find spare toilet paper (in the "Costco pantry" in the basement, obviously). It also included a paragraph that went something like:
"The girls may watch cartoons on PBS or Nick Jr. on demand, usually for no more than an hour at a time. They both know how to get to math and typing games on the computer, but no computers in bedrooms. Please don't have the news on while they're awake or around; we don't watch the news around them."
My parents came over for the afternoon a week or so before we were scheduled to leave, so they could look over the instructions and get familiar with the various machines and procedures, and my mom stopped abruptly when she read this section of the document.
"You don't let them see the news?" she asked.
"Nope. Not really," I said.
"Well, why not?" she said.
"Well, we actually don't watch it, anyway - never really have - and there's a lot of stuff on there that we don't especially want to explain to them yet, at ages six and eight," I said.
My mom made a face. "Well, they have to learn about the world eventually," she said, and it was clear that she disagreed with our policy.
The reason I gave her is partially true: Jason and I really don't watch the news, nightly, cable, morning or otherwise. I remember watching CNN in college during the Clinton scandal, and I actually like to catch the occasional "Meet the Press" or newsy roundtable on the treadmill from time to time, but most news these days seems like sensationalistic fear-mongering and incomplete sound-bytes. It raises my anxiety level and makes me feel helpless and depressed, and we don't turn it on. So our television-news-free house would probably be television-news-free even if we were also child-free.
I do, however, consume news. I read it online, and I listen to it on NPR. I like the longer, nuanced, in-depth perspectives that those formats provide, and sometimes I'll even take the time to read the comments on an article (though never, ever on MLive, where the commenters make you lose your faith in humanity), because they can poke holes in or confirm the conclusion of an article. And even when I do those things, I still shield the kids from it. I minimize the website when they come in the room. I turn off NPR when they're in the car on the way to the pool, asking their mostly-innocent questions about teachers and morality.
Why? I suppose I want to tell them the truth ("No teacher I've ever known!") but not the whole truth ("Some teachers would."). I suppose I want them to just BE KIDS for a bit longer, to let them make fairy houses and read mysteries and cannonball into the pool without letting them worry about a Florida teenager shot by a neighborhood watch patrol, without explaining bankruptcy or celebrity drug use or armed robbery or protests in Egypt.
Later, after we returned from our trip, I surveyed a few friends: Did they let their kids watch the news? The answer, resoundingly, was no. They didn't. Why, asked one mom, give them information that they can't do anything about? Why, asked another, fuel an anxiety-prone child by providing video footage of real-life nightmares? I decidedly don't want to shelter my girls from the reality of the world. But I don't want to push them too quickly into it, either, and I don't think I'm alone.
I can't remember, exactly, when I learned about the world and all the events on the nightly news. Based on my mom's reaction, I think I'm correct in remembering that the 6:00 news was always on in our living room after dinner, though I don't have any concrete memories of it beyond being shushed during the weather report. I remember watching The Challenger explode at takeoff in third or fourth grade, and then I remember watching the first Gulf War begin at some point during middle school. Between those two events, it's static, nothing.
Rationally, I know that there's a time, just around the proverbial corner, when Annie - and, later, Jemma - will deserve to know what's happening, and will need my help in interpreting it all. I just can't quite find the conviction that it needs to happen yet. Maybe next year, I think as we pull into the pool parking lot. Or the next.
Showing posts with label Parenting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Parenting. Show all posts
Thursday, July 18, 2013
Monday, May 27, 2013
In the Middle
Our Memorial Day weekend was the perfect mix of doing things and not-doing things: biking, having friends over for dinner, celebrating my dad's birthday, going to a graduation open house, gardening, reading, running, lounging in jammies, cooking and baking, relaxing. And though today's chilly rain wasn't the perfect end to the weekend, weather-wise, I think we're all heading into the week relaxed and refreshed.
At the graduation open house - our babysitter's, the first I've been to in years - I realized while talking with her mom that Annie has lived with us now for about half of the total time she'll likely live with us - a little punch to the gut on a gorgeous spring day. She's right in the middle of her life as a child growing up in our house. I stood in a big backyard near a white tent as I said it, patting Annie's sun-kissed head, but I thought about it off and on for the rest of the weekend, as she and Jemma both did things that seemed both "big-kid" and "little-kid," proving that they really are in that in-between sweet spot of childhood.
Sometimes, they're still little ones. On Friday afternoon, they walked home from school to find us unpacking some new patio furniture and they immediately seized on the big cardboard box it had come in. Before I knew it, they'd constructed a functional door with a jump rope, cut windows, decorated it with markers, and spent time eating snacks and blowing bubbles in it with friends for the rest of the night. On Sunday morning, Jemma squirmed and whined and laid her body over me like a noodle all throughout church, and on Sunday afternoon my brother hung her upside down by her feet and made her helpless with laughter. Tonight, Annie asked me to paint her toenails before dinner and both girls danced a self-choreographed modern dance for us before their showers, complete with matching costumes, fans, and lighting. Jemma cried over a broken keychain and over gum. Annie threw a fit about going to the garden store and brought a stuffed animal along in the car. They constructed an outdoor fairy garden and can still fully immerse themselves in the world of magic. A million little moments of being little.
But then sometimes I can hardly believe how big they are. Jemma helped Jason string up patio lights - holding the ladder, fetching tools, genuinely helping instead of "helping" the way a toddler would. She read three Ivy & Bean books this weekend. Annie helped make dinner on Saturday. They clear their plates after a meal, spread cream cheese on their own bagels, put away their own laundry. When we stopped into the brewery for Jason and Trevor to play a couple quick guitar songs together Sunday night, Annie said she wanted to play, too - and she calmly blew the whole place away with Styx while Jason sang along. We can take long family bike rides now - no training wheels, no bike trailer, just the four of us pedaling around town to smell the lilacs and play at the playground and get ice cream.
They have two weeks left of this school year, and I'm in denial. I'd like for them to stay in third grade and kindergarten for a long time. I'd like for them to live at our house with us for zillions more years, instead of just ten or so. As we kick off this summer, though, I'm going to try to keep them right here in the middle for just a while longer.
At the graduation open house - our babysitter's, the first I've been to in years - I realized while talking with her mom that Annie has lived with us now for about half of the total time she'll likely live with us - a little punch to the gut on a gorgeous spring day. She's right in the middle of her life as a child growing up in our house. I stood in a big backyard near a white tent as I said it, patting Annie's sun-kissed head, but I thought about it off and on for the rest of the weekend, as she and Jemma both did things that seemed both "big-kid" and "little-kid," proving that they really are in that in-between sweet spot of childhood.
Sometimes, they're still little ones. On Friday afternoon, they walked home from school to find us unpacking some new patio furniture and they immediately seized on the big cardboard box it had come in. Before I knew it, they'd constructed a functional door with a jump rope, cut windows, decorated it with markers, and spent time eating snacks and blowing bubbles in it with friends for the rest of the night. On Sunday morning, Jemma squirmed and whined and laid her body over me like a noodle all throughout church, and on Sunday afternoon my brother hung her upside down by her feet and made her helpless with laughter. Tonight, Annie asked me to paint her toenails before dinner and both girls danced a self-choreographed modern dance for us before their showers, complete with matching costumes, fans, and lighting. Jemma cried over a broken keychain and over gum. Annie threw a fit about going to the garden store and brought a stuffed animal along in the car. They constructed an outdoor fairy garden and can still fully immerse themselves in the world of magic. A million little moments of being little.
But then sometimes I can hardly believe how big they are. Jemma helped Jason string up patio lights - holding the ladder, fetching tools, genuinely helping instead of "helping" the way a toddler would. She read three Ivy & Bean books this weekend. Annie helped make dinner on Saturday. They clear their plates after a meal, spread cream cheese on their own bagels, put away their own laundry. When we stopped into the brewery for Jason and Trevor to play a couple quick guitar songs together Sunday night, Annie said she wanted to play, too - and she calmly blew the whole place away with Styx while Jason sang along. We can take long family bike rides now - no training wheels, no bike trailer, just the four of us pedaling around town to smell the lilacs and play at the playground and get ice cream.
They have two weeks left of this school year, and I'm in denial. I'd like for them to stay in third grade and kindergarten for a long time. I'd like for them to live at our house with us for zillions more years, instead of just ten or so. As we kick off this summer, though, I'm going to try to keep them right here in the middle for just a while longer.
Friday, May 17, 2013
The Best Moment of My Day
Admired writer Shauna Niequist recently wrote a post about the best moment of her day and invited readers to share their own. I'm not sure I've ever really thought about it. I love the first sip of coffee in the morning, my morning run, praying before dinner when all four of us are there together, almost-daily phone calls with a certain friend, kissing Jason when he gets home from work. But if I had to choose a favorite, it'd be this:
The girls, freshly showered and be-jammied, snuggled next to me while I read to them before bed. Our family, together again at the end of the day. A book (The Secret Garden, Amelia Bedelia, anything by Kate Di Camillo) holding our attention. The promise of a glass of wine on the couch or the back patio in fifteen minutes. The knowledge that we're all home safe for the night.
I don't particularly enjoy the lead-up to this moment (hurry, take a shower, brush your teeth, stop petting the cat, brush more, fill your water bottle, choose a book, leave the cat alone), but it's awfully hard to top those few precious minutes when the three (sometimes four) of us are huddled together over a book on that darn couch Jason and I bought from a used furniture store in Ann Arbor in 1999. It's right where I want to be, at least six out of seven nights of the week. It's the best moment of my day.
 |
| Bedtime stories, Mother's Day 2013 |
The girls, freshly showered and be-jammied, snuggled next to me while I read to them before bed. Our family, together again at the end of the day. A book (The Secret Garden, Amelia Bedelia, anything by Kate Di Camillo) holding our attention. The promise of a glass of wine on the couch or the back patio in fifteen minutes. The knowledge that we're all home safe for the night.
I don't particularly enjoy the lead-up to this moment (hurry, take a shower, brush your teeth, stop petting the cat, brush more, fill your water bottle, choose a book, leave the cat alone), but it's awfully hard to top those few precious minutes when the three (sometimes four) of us are huddled together over a book on that darn couch Jason and I bought from a used furniture store in Ann Arbor in 1999. It's right where I want to be, at least six out of seven nights of the week. It's the best moment of my day.
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
Of Brave Knights and Heroic Courage
"Since it is so likely children will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage." - C.S. Lewis
I couldn't be more glad that it's finally May. This April really, truly was "the cruelest month," just like T.S. Eliot said, and I kept starting post after post here listing and lamenting all the small injustices of the wet, cold, cruel spring. Jason's car died and needed to be jumped, repeatedly, on the most monsoon-like day ever; every few days, big, fat snowflakes would blanket the lawn with white before turning to sloppy raindrops; one of the cats peed on Jemma's backpack and raincoat and I sent her to school without realizing what had happened; Annie's soccer practice schedule has been changed eleventy billion times due to weather/whims/seasons of the moon; family dinners have been few and far between; Jason's been working long days at the office and bringing work home each night; I fell while running and hurt my hand and leg; we ran out of things to do on what felt like the hundredth cold, rainy weekend; I wanted to get in bed with a stack of books and some simple carbohydrates and get out when it was June.
Eventually, of course, the spring actually came. Today it was 85 and sunny: doors open, turkey burgers on the grill, hula-hoops and bikes, pineapple mojitos, sitting outside amid the daffodils and sunshine to catch up on email. But just before the season changed, amidst all those petty annoyances, one other cruel thing happened that made me see my parenting in a whole new light.
Two weeks ago, two brothers set off bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. It's obviously not the first act of terrorism that's happened on American soil in my lifetime, and it's not even the first violent calamity of the last twelve months. On the anniversary of 9/11, I wrote about my thoughts on bringing children into this kind of world, and I stand by them, particularly:
In the aftermath of the attacks, I remember hearing the sentiment that this was a world (so dark, so evil) into which it might be foolish to bring children. I never agreed with that. I remember thinking that there was nothing new under the sun, that there would always be darkness and death and heartbreak but also love and triumph and goodness. It was never a question of bringing them into the world, but now that they are here, it is a question of how to tell them about the darkness. It is a question of how to explain the death. It is a question of how much to shield them from the heartbreak. It is a question of how to raise them to love, triumph, and contribute to the good.
And that's the question that I faced this past month, because this month was the first time Annie knew full well what had happened, and wanted to know why. It's not a milestone I was looking forward to. I tend to err on the side of cautious conservatism when it comes to what I want to expose my kids to, and when. We avoid commercials, the news, lots of movies and music and shows that I'm not eager to have influence their innocent little minds. I juuuuuuust finally pulled out the ol' "It's Not the Stork!" book after literally months of sidestepping pointed questions - not because I was embarrassed or wanted to hide information, but because I'm so aware that, once information is known, it can never be un-known.
We sat, folding laundry together up in her bedroom on the day after the Boston bombings, and she asked, "Why would someone want to make a bomb go off to hurt strangers?"
"I know, it's sad and confusing, isn't it?" I asked.
"Are the people bad who did it?" she wondered.
This was before we knew who did anything, so I told her that we didn't really know who, or why, or know how to understand this kind of thing ever, even as grown-ups. And somehow, even as I was talking to her, I had a strong sense that this was the important stuff of parenting, that the silly debates over millions of parenting decisions melt away when you're in the kind of conversation that has the potential to shape a person's worldview. So I ventured a little further, and said I thought that every human being has the potential for great good and great evil, and that people can change, and wondered what she thought about that, if she could think of any stories about people who had done bad things and then changed.
"Like . . . Zacchaeus?" she said.
"Yes! Like Zacchaeus. Do you remember what he did?"
She frowned at me. "Mom, I remember the story," she said pertly, then told it to me in its entirety, ending with " . . . and he gave back FOUR TIMES MORE than he had stolen!"
My Bible story memory is not what it once was, so I took her word for it, but I was mostly glad we'd had the conversation in spite of my selfish wish that she and her sister could be kept in the dark about evil, bombs, cancer, injustice, racism, poverty, and every single sad and horrible situation on this planet forever. That would be easier, more comfortable, less tricky for sure, but it would also never get at the question of "how to raise them to love, triumph, and contribute to the good."
So April of 2013, that cruel, cold month, ushered in a new phase of parenting for me. Since the door to the world has creaked open - the information, if you will, can't be unknown - it's reminded me that it's ultimately what our kids see us do in the face of the darkness that will teach them how to be the light.
I can wish that cancer didn't exist (and that my kids didn't know about it), but since that wish won't come true, I can let my kids see me run to raise money for their school principal who has been battling it this school year. I can wish that homelessness and hunger didn't exist in our community (and that my kids didn't know about it), but since that wish won't come true, I can be glad that the girls have seen their parents pull the car over to give away boxes of granola bars and jars of peanut butter at an intersection. I can wish that we didn't have to ask the community to help save crucial and dear programs like art and language and social workers at our schools, but since that wish won't come true, I can stand at a table at the library and knock on doors and write checks. I can wish that acts of terrorism and bombings never happened in our country (and that my kids didn't know about them), but since that wish can't come true, I can share stories about the bravery and courage of the responders and the helpers in those scenarios.
I know there's that lovely Fred Rogers quote about looking for the helpers, and I do like it, but I don't think it goes quite far enough. Forget just looking for the helpers. BE the helpers. And let your kids see you do it.
I couldn't be more glad that it's finally May. This April really, truly was "the cruelest month," just like T.S. Eliot said, and I kept starting post after post here listing and lamenting all the small injustices of the wet, cold, cruel spring. Jason's car died and needed to be jumped, repeatedly, on the most monsoon-like day ever; every few days, big, fat snowflakes would blanket the lawn with white before turning to sloppy raindrops; one of the cats peed on Jemma's backpack and raincoat and I sent her to school without realizing what had happened; Annie's soccer practice schedule has been changed eleventy billion times due to weather/whims/seasons of the moon; family dinners have been few and far between; Jason's been working long days at the office and bringing work home each night; I fell while running and hurt my hand and leg; we ran out of things to do on what felt like the hundredth cold, rainy weekend; I wanted to get in bed with a stack of books and some simple carbohydrates and get out when it was June.
Eventually, of course, the spring actually came. Today it was 85 and sunny: doors open, turkey burgers on the grill, hula-hoops and bikes, pineapple mojitos, sitting outside amid the daffodils and sunshine to catch up on email. But just before the season changed, amidst all those petty annoyances, one other cruel thing happened that made me see my parenting in a whole new light.
Two weeks ago, two brothers set off bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. It's obviously not the first act of terrorism that's happened on American soil in my lifetime, and it's not even the first violent calamity of the last twelve months. On the anniversary of 9/11, I wrote about my thoughts on bringing children into this kind of world, and I stand by them, particularly:
In the aftermath of the attacks, I remember hearing the sentiment that this was a world (so dark, so evil) into which it might be foolish to bring children. I never agreed with that. I remember thinking that there was nothing new under the sun, that there would always be darkness and death and heartbreak but also love and triumph and goodness. It was never a question of bringing them into the world, but now that they are here, it is a question of how to tell them about the darkness. It is a question of how to explain the death. It is a question of how much to shield them from the heartbreak. It is a question of how to raise them to love, triumph, and contribute to the good.
And that's the question that I faced this past month, because this month was the first time Annie knew full well what had happened, and wanted to know why. It's not a milestone I was looking forward to. I tend to err on the side of cautious conservatism when it comes to what I want to expose my kids to, and when. We avoid commercials, the news, lots of movies and music and shows that I'm not eager to have influence their innocent little minds. I juuuuuuust finally pulled out the ol' "It's Not the Stork!" book after literally months of sidestepping pointed questions - not because I was embarrassed or wanted to hide information, but because I'm so aware that, once information is known, it can never be un-known.
We sat, folding laundry together up in her bedroom on the day after the Boston bombings, and she asked, "Why would someone want to make a bomb go off to hurt strangers?"
"I know, it's sad and confusing, isn't it?" I asked.
"Are the people bad who did it?" she wondered.
This was before we knew who did anything, so I told her that we didn't really know who, or why, or know how to understand this kind of thing ever, even as grown-ups. And somehow, even as I was talking to her, I had a strong sense that this was the important stuff of parenting, that the silly debates over millions of parenting decisions melt away when you're in the kind of conversation that has the potential to shape a person's worldview. So I ventured a little further, and said I thought that every human being has the potential for great good and great evil, and that people can change, and wondered what she thought about that, if she could think of any stories about people who had done bad things and then changed.
"Like . . . Zacchaeus?" she said.
"Yes! Like Zacchaeus. Do you remember what he did?"
She frowned at me. "Mom, I remember the story," she said pertly, then told it to me in its entirety, ending with " . . . and he gave back FOUR TIMES MORE than he had stolen!"
My Bible story memory is not what it once was, so I took her word for it, but I was mostly glad we'd had the conversation in spite of my selfish wish that she and her sister could be kept in the dark about evil, bombs, cancer, injustice, racism, poverty, and every single sad and horrible situation on this planet forever. That would be easier, more comfortable, less tricky for sure, but it would also never get at the question of "how to raise them to love, triumph, and contribute to the good."
So April of 2013, that cruel, cold month, ushered in a new phase of parenting for me. Since the door to the world has creaked open - the information, if you will, can't be unknown - it's reminded me that it's ultimately what our kids see us do in the face of the darkness that will teach them how to be the light.
I can wish that cancer didn't exist (and that my kids didn't know about it), but since that wish won't come true, I can let my kids see me run to raise money for their school principal who has been battling it this school year. I can wish that homelessness and hunger didn't exist in our community (and that my kids didn't know about it), but since that wish won't come true, I can be glad that the girls have seen their parents pull the car over to give away boxes of granola bars and jars of peanut butter at an intersection. I can wish that we didn't have to ask the community to help save crucial and dear programs like art and language and social workers at our schools, but since that wish won't come true, I can stand at a table at the library and knock on doors and write checks. I can wish that acts of terrorism and bombings never happened in our country (and that my kids didn't know about them), but since that wish can't come true, I can share stories about the bravery and courage of the responders and the helpers in those scenarios.
I know there's that lovely Fred Rogers quote about looking for the helpers, and I do like it, but I don't think it goes quite far enough. Forget just looking for the helpers. BE the helpers. And let your kids see you do it.
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Read Elsewhere: How Children Succeed
I devoured Paul Tough's book, How Children Succeed, on vacation, dog-earing so many pages that it's clear I need to go ahead and return this copy to the library, then buy one for myself. Before I do, though, a few of my favorite excerpts:
"When we consider the impact of parenting on children, we tend to think that the dramatic effects are going to appear at one end or the other of the parenting-quality spectrum. A child who is physically abused is going to fare far worse, we assume, than a child who is simply ignored or discouraged. And the child of a supermom who gets lots of extra tutoring and one-on-one support is going to do way better than an average well-loved child. But what Blair's and Evans's research suggests is that regular good parenting - being helpful and attentive during a game of Jenga - can make a profound difference for a child's future prospects."
"The most critical missing piece, Randolph explained, is character. 'Whether it's the pioneer in the Conestoga wagon or someone coming here in the 1920s from southern Italy, there was always the idea in America that if you worked hard and you showed real grit, that you could be successful,' he said. 'Strangely, we've now forgotten that. People who have an easy time of things, who get eight hundreds on their SATs, I worry that those people get feedback that everything they're doing is great. And I think as a result, we are actually setting them up for long-term failure. When that person suddenly has to face up to a difficult moment, then I think they're screwed, to be honest. I don't think they've grown the capacities to be able to handle that.'"
"It is a central paradox of contemporary parenting, in fact: we have an acute, almost biological impulse to provide for our children, to give them everything they want and need, to protect them from dangers and discomforts both large and small. And yet we know - one some level, at least - that what kids need more than anything is a little hardship: some challenge, some deprivation that they can overcome, even if just to prove to themselves that they can. As a parent, you struggle with these thorny questions every day, and if you make the right call even half the time, you're lucky."
"When we consider the impact of parenting on children, we tend to think that the dramatic effects are going to appear at one end or the other of the parenting-quality spectrum. A child who is physically abused is going to fare far worse, we assume, than a child who is simply ignored or discouraged. And the child of a supermom who gets lots of extra tutoring and one-on-one support is going to do way better than an average well-loved child. But what Blair's and Evans's research suggests is that regular good parenting - being helpful and attentive during a game of Jenga - can make a profound difference for a child's future prospects."
"The most critical missing piece, Randolph explained, is character. 'Whether it's the pioneer in the Conestoga wagon or someone coming here in the 1920s from southern Italy, there was always the idea in America that if you worked hard and you showed real grit, that you could be successful,' he said. 'Strangely, we've now forgotten that. People who have an easy time of things, who get eight hundreds on their SATs, I worry that those people get feedback that everything they're doing is great. And I think as a result, we are actually setting them up for long-term failure. When that person suddenly has to face up to a difficult moment, then I think they're screwed, to be honest. I don't think they've grown the capacities to be able to handle that.'"
"It is a central paradox of contemporary parenting, in fact: we have an acute, almost biological impulse to provide for our children, to give them everything they want and need, to protect them from dangers and discomforts both large and small. And yet we know - one some level, at least - that what kids need more than anything is a little hardship: some challenge, some deprivation that they can overcome, even if just to prove to themselves that they can. As a parent, you struggle with these thorny questions every day, and if you make the right call even half the time, you're lucky."
Saturday, February 23, 2013
On Finding Your Passion
I read somewhere (and I really, really wish I could remember where) that if you get stuck trying to figure out what to "be" when you're a grown-up, you should look back and see what you did for fun when you were nine or ten years old. Not what your hobbies were, or which sports you played, or which subjects you were best at in school (though those might play a part), but the thing you did on a winter afternoon when all your friends were doing other things and your mom was taking a nap. (Ahem.) The thing you did when you were supposed to be doing your homework. The thing you woke up early to do during summer vacation. The thing you loved, when nobody was watching and there was no reward for doing it.
When I was nine or ten, I read a lot and I wrote elaborate stories. I invented whole families of sisters (five or more usually - the better to use all my favorite names), and then I invented their lives. I sat with my best friend on my living room floor, and we went through the gigantic J.C. Penny catalog that came twice a year, choosing page by page what my characters would wear and which bedspreads would decorate their fictional bedrooms. Then I wrote about it in small, neat cursive. I still have a few of these stories. They're terrible, full of gratuitous detail and lacking any sort of a plot. But they represent my childhood passion, and so I keep them.
I did other things, too: played t-ball and soccer, went to catechism and piano lessons, went camping and rode my bike, had sleepovers, swam in my pool, played by the creek across the street. But writing was the thing I turned to when there was "nothing to do," and these days I still get a small thrill when I see the word "writer" attached to my name. On a good week, I have a few moments where I catch myself submitting an article I wrote or meeting an interesting person for an interview and I can't believe my good fortune, and I haven't stopped feeling grateful for it yet.
That best friend, the one who spent parts of her childhood cutting things out of the J.C. Penny catalog? She took those ideas - furniture, fabrics, colors - and drew and designed elaborate houses with them - the settings for my childish novels, if you will. These days? She's a de-facto interior designer, that friend that everyone calls to choose paint colors or put together their mudroom or re-do the baby's nursery. Another friend admits she logged hours in her childhood basement making up silly songs, putting on "shows" for her family, and getting voted class clown; she's getting paid for her work as a stand-up comedian and has an agent booking her events.
Annie's been spending hours and hours lately setting up elaborate tableaus of tiny toys and figures. These last few days, she's been on break from school, and she can occupy herself indefinitely putting together outfits out of fabric scraps for her dolls and animals, creating entire wardrobes out of ribbons, ponytail holders, string, clips, and sequins. Sometimes this involves her entire bedroom floor being covered in can't-be-moved arrangements of "furniture" and "people" or "wedding processions," and it does drive me a little crazy. But she's completely immersed in it, to the point that she has to be dragged to the museum to see the Titanic exhibit or forced to play outside in the snow for an hour.
I don't even begin to know what to call what she's doing - design? fashion? pointless mess-making? But the thing I love is that she's doing it for herself. It's something creative she can indulge in outside of the daily homework, piano practice, soccer conditioning, school-going, family activity routine. And the thing I worry about is that, as a society, we're not giving our nine-year-olds much of this kind of time at all. I worry that kids who get whisked straight from school to tennis lessons to ballet to swimming to ski school won't know what they love to do when nobody's watching; that if, when they're a grown-up trying to figure out how to create a career out of doing the thing they love, they are asked what they did for fun when they were eight or ten, they legitimately won't remember. I worry that we're programming our kids to perform constantly, to ignore that small, creative voice deep inside.
These days, I feel awfully lucky to be building a bona fide career doing something I've always loved. I hope it will be possible for my girls to do that, too, and I'm doing my best to give them some time here and there to be "bored," and to figure out what their passion is. As spring and summer approach, I'm committing to pushing them outside with a bucket and some paint, to letting them dump out an entire container of Playmobil and mix it with Play-Doh, to letting them "cook" something with limited guidance, to forcing them to figure out what they enjoy. I'm so glad that my parents did.
When I was nine or ten, I read a lot and I wrote elaborate stories. I invented whole families of sisters (five or more usually - the better to use all my favorite names), and then I invented their lives. I sat with my best friend on my living room floor, and we went through the gigantic J.C. Penny catalog that came twice a year, choosing page by page what my characters would wear and which bedspreads would decorate their fictional bedrooms. Then I wrote about it in small, neat cursive. I still have a few of these stories. They're terrible, full of gratuitous detail and lacking any sort of a plot. But they represent my childhood passion, and so I keep them.
I did other things, too: played t-ball and soccer, went to catechism and piano lessons, went camping and rode my bike, had sleepovers, swam in my pool, played by the creek across the street. But writing was the thing I turned to when there was "nothing to do," and these days I still get a small thrill when I see the word "writer" attached to my name. On a good week, I have a few moments where I catch myself submitting an article I wrote or meeting an interesting person for an interview and I can't believe my good fortune, and I haven't stopped feeling grateful for it yet.
That best friend, the one who spent parts of her childhood cutting things out of the J.C. Penny catalog? She took those ideas - furniture, fabrics, colors - and drew and designed elaborate houses with them - the settings for my childish novels, if you will. These days? She's a de-facto interior designer, that friend that everyone calls to choose paint colors or put together their mudroom or re-do the baby's nursery. Another friend admits she logged hours in her childhood basement making up silly songs, putting on "shows" for her family, and getting voted class clown; she's getting paid for her work as a stand-up comedian and has an agent booking her events.
Annie's been spending hours and hours lately setting up elaborate tableaus of tiny toys and figures. These last few days, she's been on break from school, and she can occupy herself indefinitely putting together outfits out of fabric scraps for her dolls and animals, creating entire wardrobes out of ribbons, ponytail holders, string, clips, and sequins. Sometimes this involves her entire bedroom floor being covered in can't-be-moved arrangements of "furniture" and "people" or "wedding processions," and it does drive me a little crazy. But she's completely immersed in it, to the point that she has to be dragged to the museum to see the Titanic exhibit or forced to play outside in the snow for an hour.
I don't even begin to know what to call what she's doing - design? fashion? pointless mess-making? But the thing I love is that she's doing it for herself. It's something creative she can indulge in outside of the daily homework, piano practice, soccer conditioning, school-going, family activity routine. And the thing I worry about is that, as a society, we're not giving our nine-year-olds much of this kind of time at all. I worry that kids who get whisked straight from school to tennis lessons to ballet to swimming to ski school won't know what they love to do when nobody's watching; that if, when they're a grown-up trying to figure out how to create a career out of doing the thing they love, they are asked what they did for fun when they were eight or ten, they legitimately won't remember. I worry that we're programming our kids to perform constantly, to ignore that small, creative voice deep inside.
These days, I feel awfully lucky to be building a bona fide career doing something I've always loved. I hope it will be possible for my girls to do that, too, and I'm doing my best to give them some time here and there to be "bored," and to figure out what their passion is. As spring and summer approach, I'm committing to pushing them outside with a bucket and some paint, to letting them dump out an entire container of Playmobil and mix it with Play-Doh, to letting them "cook" something with limited guidance, to forcing them to figure out what they enjoy. I'm so glad that my parents did.
Friday, January 18, 2013
Apres
The morning hasn't been a great one, so far.
Jemma woke me up at 6:00 needing help with something potty-related; later, she refused to get dressed because she was "too tired to go to school" and "wanted Daddy to walk her to school" and "doesn't like gym, art and music," which she has today. Annie lost her mind because she ran out of time to finish dressing her doll before it was time to leave the house. (This is a child who, when I was explaining about my new DSLR camera and why I was taking a ton of pictures of the same object but just changing one setting on the camera to see what would happen, replied, "You mean like a variable?"; a child who is able to tell you Newton's law of gravity and theory of motion; yet is apparently also a child who believes that a doll is ALIVE and WILL BE COLD if someone doesn't put clothes on it ASAP.) Nobody could sit their butt down and eat breakfast. Somebody forgot her planner and lost her hat (AGAIN), and both children were in tears at some point.
Now I'm here, alone, with a yucky feeling in the pit of my stomach.
*****
Last weekend, we went skiing. It was the first time we'd attempted it as a family of four. A day before we left, I posted this as my Facebook status update:
Our status as we gear up for our first full-family ski trip: Annie, lost hat Tuesday; Jemma, lost mitten yesterday; weather forecast, 40s and rain; me, last seen on skis in 2002. So.
On Saturday morning, while Jason was in a continuing education class, the girls each had a ski lesson. I watched from my perch as they navigated the magic carpet on the bunny hill with their instructors, and then I picked them up and heard that they were "good to go" on the chair lift and the real hills.
We joined up with Jason, ate a quick lunch, and spent one million hours putting our ski gear back on. (SO. MUCH. GEAR.) (My gear, as you would expect, is also from 2002.) Then we hopped on the chairlift, all four of us in a row. It was sunny. We all had hats and mittens. We were ready to ski!
We got off at the top without incident, and Jason led us to the left. I was scanning the signs for a green run while trying to keep my eyes on the girls and while trying not to fall, so it's no surprise that I found myself just following Jason to a blue. We all did. And then we stared down what was a steeper hill than we had really meant to begin on.
"It'll be FINE," said my husband, ever the optimist. We started down. Jemma fell within the first ten yards and started to cry, while Annie zoomed ahead, going straight down the hill at top speed. I froze in the middle, not knowing what to do, then left Jason to help Jemma while I followed Annie. I tried to remember how to turn - turned right, turned left, zig-zagged my way down until somehow I was backwards for a split second before I fell spectacularly and lost my right ski. From my sitting position, I looked down the hill and spotted Annie, who had fallen and lost both her skis. I looked up at Jemma, who had fallen again and was refusing to get back up.
Thus began our first family ski trip.
*****
For some reason, this occurs to me this morning, as I'm standing in the kitchen unloading the dishwasher with a yucky feeling in the pit of my stomach and replaying the scenes from our chaotic morning. It's not possible, I know, to rewind our day and begin again, just as it wasn't possible to un-fall on that blue run last Saturday. I can't stop the falls, I can't stop the difficult moments. What I can control is what happens after - whether or not to get up, ski down to Annie, help her get her skis back on, and ski the rest of the way down laughing at ourselves. Whether or not to get Jemma back on the chair lift (after Jason skis down with her on his back) and find a nice green run that she handles just fine. Whether or not to make sure that an inauspicious start doesn't keep us from spending the three hours after enjoying the sunshine and snow with no falls and lots of smiles. Whether or not to let a not-great morning ruin the rest of the day, or to put yoga clothes on, move forward with the day, and plan to start again with the children when they get home from school. It's about what happens after.
(Apres skiing, by the way, we snuck away for a lovely grown-up dinner at a fancy French restaurant with good friends and plenty of red wine, so I think there might sometimes be a reward for getting through the hard stuff.)
Jemma woke me up at 6:00 needing help with something potty-related; later, she refused to get dressed because she was "too tired to go to school" and "wanted Daddy to walk her to school" and "doesn't like gym, art and music," which she has today. Annie lost her mind because she ran out of time to finish dressing her doll before it was time to leave the house. (This is a child who, when I was explaining about my new DSLR camera and why I was taking a ton of pictures of the same object but just changing one setting on the camera to see what would happen, replied, "You mean like a variable?"; a child who is able to tell you Newton's law of gravity and theory of motion; yet is apparently also a child who believes that a doll is ALIVE and WILL BE COLD if someone doesn't put clothes on it ASAP.) Nobody could sit their butt down and eat breakfast. Somebody forgot her planner and lost her hat (AGAIN), and both children were in tears at some point.
Now I'm here, alone, with a yucky feeling in the pit of my stomach.
*****
Last weekend, we went skiing. It was the first time we'd attempted it as a family of four. A day before we left, I posted this as my Facebook status update:
Our status as we gear up for our first full-family ski trip: Annie, lost hat Tuesday; Jemma, lost mitten yesterday; weather forecast, 40s and rain; me, last seen on skis in 2002. So.
On Saturday morning, while Jason was in a continuing education class, the girls each had a ski lesson. I watched from my perch as they navigated the magic carpet on the bunny hill with their instructors, and then I picked them up and heard that they were "good to go" on the chair lift and the real hills.
We joined up with Jason, ate a quick lunch, and spent one million hours putting our ski gear back on. (SO. MUCH. GEAR.) (My gear, as you would expect, is also from 2002.) Then we hopped on the chairlift, all four of us in a row. It was sunny. We all had hats and mittens. We were ready to ski!
We got off at the top without incident, and Jason led us to the left. I was scanning the signs for a green run while trying to keep my eyes on the girls and while trying not to fall, so it's no surprise that I found myself just following Jason to a blue. We all did. And then we stared down what was a steeper hill than we had really meant to begin on.
"It'll be FINE," said my husband, ever the optimist. We started down. Jemma fell within the first ten yards and started to cry, while Annie zoomed ahead, going straight down the hill at top speed. I froze in the middle, not knowing what to do, then left Jason to help Jemma while I followed Annie. I tried to remember how to turn - turned right, turned left, zig-zagged my way down until somehow I was backwards for a split second before I fell spectacularly and lost my right ski. From my sitting position, I looked down the hill and spotted Annie, who had fallen and lost both her skis. I looked up at Jemma, who had fallen again and was refusing to get back up.
Thus began our first family ski trip.
*****
For some reason, this occurs to me this morning, as I'm standing in the kitchen unloading the dishwasher with a yucky feeling in the pit of my stomach and replaying the scenes from our chaotic morning. It's not possible, I know, to rewind our day and begin again, just as it wasn't possible to un-fall on that blue run last Saturday. I can't stop the falls, I can't stop the difficult moments. What I can control is what happens after - whether or not to get up, ski down to Annie, help her get her skis back on, and ski the rest of the way down laughing at ourselves. Whether or not to get Jemma back on the chair lift (after Jason skis down with her on his back) and find a nice green run that she handles just fine. Whether or not to make sure that an inauspicious start doesn't keep us from spending the three hours after enjoying the sunshine and snow with no falls and lots of smiles. Whether or not to let a not-great morning ruin the rest of the day, or to put yoga clothes on, move forward with the day, and plan to start again with the children when they get home from school. It's about what happens after.
(Apres skiing, by the way, we snuck away for a lovely grown-up dinner at a fancy French restaurant with good friends and plenty of red wine, so I think there might sometimes be a reward for getting through the hard stuff.)
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Read Elsewhere: Parenting Perspectives
From Sundry:
From John Dickerson at Slate.com:
He is receding. He is still sweet, clever, and kind, but that impossibly large body I stand over while he sleeps is a different busier kid. This is natural of course, but in my reaction to it, I’m flirting with becoming that tiresome guy you meet at weddings. He’s the guy that goes on about how quickly children grow up. No couple with kids is safe from his instruction: Cherish every moment with your children.
From Swistle:
I've read a lot of stuff, mostly written in metallic script on greeting cards, about how much children TEACH us. Perhaps my own children are somewhat stupider than the standard-issue child, and that is why so far I don't feel they've taught me anything---and in fact, I have to spend a lot of time explaining things to them that seem really obvious, such as "This is why we don't throw a rubber band ball at the window" and "Are you serious, scraping a FORK into the TABLE??" But what I HAVE noticed is that I teach MYSELF things as a RESULT of having children---and perhaps that's what people mean to say but their children haven't yet finished teaching them how to articulate their thoughts clearly.
I remember feeling this great crashing wave of never wanting to take a moment with my children for granted ever again, that if they were healthy and happy that’s all that mattered in the entire world. And then I remember being intensely irritated with Riley all of half an hour later, as he pickily hemmed and hawed over the little box of toys that the X-ray lady offered him as a prize for holding still during the scan. “Hurry up,” I hissed at him, mortified at his greediness.
I don’t really have a point here, other than I was thinking about perspective lately, and how slippery it is to hold onto. I bitched and moaned mightily about how long this winter break from school has been, then I blinked back tears as Riley climbed on the bus this morning. Last night I couldn’t wait for the kids to go to bed, then I sat on the couch and read someone’s blog post about their children approaching the teen years and how hard things are getting, and I ran back into my boys’ bedrooms to kiss their confused, sleepy faces. And on it goes — I have a thousand examples. Christ, a BILLION. I’m sure you do too.
It’s sort of ridiculous, isn’t it? How parenting so often makes you feel as though you’re not feeling the right thing at the right time.
From John Dickerson at Slate.com:
He is receding. He is still sweet, clever, and kind, but that impossibly large body I stand over while he sleeps is a different busier kid. This is natural of course, but in my reaction to it, I’m flirting with becoming that tiresome guy you meet at weddings. He’s the guy that goes on about how quickly children grow up. No couple with kids is safe from his instruction: Cherish every moment with your children.
This lament is natural, but not helpful because, unless you are a total brute, the sense of loss is inevitable, no matter what kind of parent you are. If you neglect your kids, you look up and they have grown and you've missed it. If you are fully present in their lives, then when they’ve grown you lament the hole they’ve left in your life. Either way, you've done your job and now they're off backpacking out of cellphone range or making girls with unruly hair laugh in coffee shops.
The answer has to be avoiding the lament and focusing on the product. Try to give your kids the benefit of your experience, love, and discipline—so that they can leave you strong. This also means giving them the example of what it looks like to enjoy your job so much that sometimes it takes you away from them. You hope they’ll have a job like that one day too. There’s got to be a way for the guy at the weddings to say something more like this to new parents. It would be more helpful. Still: I’m pretty much that guy.
From Swistle:
I've read a lot of stuff, mostly written in metallic script on greeting cards, about how much children TEACH us. Perhaps my own children are somewhat stupider than the standard-issue child, and that is why so far I don't feel they've taught me anything---and in fact, I have to spend a lot of time explaining things to them that seem really obvious, such as "This is why we don't throw a rubber band ball at the window" and "Are you serious, scraping a FORK into the TABLE??" But what I HAVE noticed is that I teach MYSELF things as a RESULT of having children---and perhaps that's what people mean to say but their children haven't yet finished teaching them how to articulate their thoughts clearly.
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
One Possible Solution
Since we moved the girls' bedrooms upstairs this spring, they've had a bit of a problem staying focused and under control when I send both of them upstairs to do something - namely, to get dressed and ready in the morning, among other things. (I originally typed "we've had a bit of a problem" and then I became indignant: No! It's not MY problem! It's their problem! You'll see where this is going in a minute.)
During the remainder of the spring school year, what I tended to do was have Annie get ready first while Jemma ate breakfast, take Annie to school, and then have Jemma get ready. Since Annie naturally gets up much earlier than Jemma, and since Jemma's preschool started half an hour later than Annie's school last year, this solution worked. This summer, I've been sending one of them up to get ready while occupying the other with some type of activity, then having them switch. And that's worked, too, because we haven't often had to be anywhere at a very early hour, so we had the luxury of letting the tasks of getting dressed, making a bed, brushing teeth, and brushing hair take an hour total.
Starting next week, we aren't going to have that kind of time. So this morning, while the girls ate their breakfast at the kitchen table and I sat on the floor in my underwear, drinking my heavily-creamed coffee, I brought the subject up. What, I asked, were we going to do? How, I challenged them, did they want to solve this problem? They looked up from their breakfasts, eyes still round with sleep and hair a fuzzy wreck getting in their milk, and they acted casual. Oh, they said, we'll cut that silliness out. We'll make a new chart for the front of the fridge and we're bigger now and we'll cooperate and remember how to get ready without becoming a sprawl of hysterical, fighting, naked bodies who have forgotten how to make any kind of forward progress.
Great! I said. Sounds good! I sent them directly upstairs to get ready before we went to the farmers' market. Show me how well you can get ready together! I yelled after them. OK! they yelled back, scrambling up the stairs.
I stood in the kitchen, drinking my coffee, perusing a catalog, feeling smug. Three minutes later, Jemma came downstairs.
"Annie took Chicky Baby away from me!"
"Why are you even playing with dolls? Remember what you're supposed to be doing right now up there?" Blank look. "GETTING READY." She trotted back upstairs.
Three minutes later, Jemma came downstairs crying, alleging hitting. I marched upstairs, facilitated the necessary Tell-her-how-that-made-you-feel/Would-you-like-to-apologize routine, and marched back downstairs with Jemma, defeated in my goal of having both of them get ready together.
Later in the day, when the heat of the moment had passed, I brought the subject up again. "Seems like you two still have a problem getting ready upstairs together," I said, as though it's not MY problem, as though it doesn't drive me completely crazy on a daily basis. "How are you going to solve your problem? What ideas do you have? Even after our talk this morning, it was still a problem." There, I thought. I'm giving them ownership of it, letting them figure out a solution themselves.
Annie piped up. "I have a solution," she said.
"You do? What?"
"Have Jemma go to another school besides mine, one that starts later."
Yes, Annie, that's perfect. We'll send Jemma to private school for kindergarten - maybe every year, who knows? - and when people ask why we aren't sending her to the public elementary that we love, two blocks from our house, we'll explain, "Well, see, the girls couldn't get ready at the same time in the morning, so we thought the best thing to do was to spend thousands of dollars and transfer our younger daughter to a different school. You know. All so they could each get ready in peace."
I. Am. Sure.
During the remainder of the spring school year, what I tended to do was have Annie get ready first while Jemma ate breakfast, take Annie to school, and then have Jemma get ready. Since Annie naturally gets up much earlier than Jemma, and since Jemma's preschool started half an hour later than Annie's school last year, this solution worked. This summer, I've been sending one of them up to get ready while occupying the other with some type of activity, then having them switch. And that's worked, too, because we haven't often had to be anywhere at a very early hour, so we had the luxury of letting the tasks of getting dressed, making a bed, brushing teeth, and brushing hair take an hour total.
Starting next week, we aren't going to have that kind of time. So this morning, while the girls ate their breakfast at the kitchen table and I sat on the floor in my underwear, drinking my heavily-creamed coffee, I brought the subject up. What, I asked, were we going to do? How, I challenged them, did they want to solve this problem? They looked up from their breakfasts, eyes still round with sleep and hair a fuzzy wreck getting in their milk, and they acted casual. Oh, they said, we'll cut that silliness out. We'll make a new chart for the front of the fridge and we're bigger now and we'll cooperate and remember how to get ready without becoming a sprawl of hysterical, fighting, naked bodies who have forgotten how to make any kind of forward progress.
Great! I said. Sounds good! I sent them directly upstairs to get ready before we went to the farmers' market. Show me how well you can get ready together! I yelled after them. OK! they yelled back, scrambling up the stairs.
I stood in the kitchen, drinking my coffee, perusing a catalog, feeling smug. Three minutes later, Jemma came downstairs.
"Annie took Chicky Baby away from me!"
"Why are you even playing with dolls? Remember what you're supposed to be doing right now up there?" Blank look. "GETTING READY." She trotted back upstairs.
Three minutes later, Jemma came downstairs crying, alleging hitting. I marched upstairs, facilitated the necessary Tell-her-how-that-made-you-feel/Would-you-like-to-apologize routine, and marched back downstairs with Jemma, defeated in my goal of having both of them get ready together.
Later in the day, when the heat of the moment had passed, I brought the subject up again. "Seems like you two still have a problem getting ready upstairs together," I said, as though it's not MY problem, as though it doesn't drive me completely crazy on a daily basis. "How are you going to solve your problem? What ideas do you have? Even after our talk this morning, it was still a problem." There, I thought. I'm giving them ownership of it, letting them figure out a solution themselves.
Annie piped up. "I have a solution," she said.
"You do? What?"
"Have Jemma go to another school besides mine, one that starts later."
Yes, Annie, that's perfect. We'll send Jemma to private school for kindergarten - maybe every year, who knows? - and when people ask why we aren't sending her to the public elementary that we love, two blocks from our house, we'll explain, "Well, see, the girls couldn't get ready at the same time in the morning, so we thought the best thing to do was to spend thousands of dollars and transfer our younger daughter to a different school. You know. All so they could each get ready in peace."
I. Am. Sure.
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Summer, Halfway
It's six weeks down and six to go and I'm sitting outside with a Left Hand Milk Stout thinking that seems just about right. Jason's on a ride and the girls are freshly tucked in bed after a day that included both slushies and the new fro-yo spot in town, which also somehow seems right.
One of the fifteen new arborvitae in the back yard has died. Just one. Jemma bit my shoulder today when I lifted her into the house for a time-out, wet and dripping from the hot tub, and then she drew me a picture and wrote, "MOM IM. VORE SORRY. I LOVE YOU MOM. JEMMA."
The girls did a couple of pages in their workbooks this morning, but my early summer fantasy of languid, coffee-drinking mornings with the three of us working happily at the dining room table has proved to be exactly that: a fantasy. The girls spend much of their time outside (they are brown, despite the sunscreen I slather on them daily), creating elaborate fairy houses or homes for caterpillars and roly-polies they dig out of the mulch.
They cannot both be upstairs together at the same time, a situation that will have to change when school starts. When I send them both up to change clothes or get an item to bring wherever we're going, there is inevitable prolonged nakedness, followed by laughing wresting, followed by crying wrestling, followed by looks of stricken confusion when I ask what is taking so long. They forget why they're upstairs at all. Jemma threw a twenty minute fit about getting dressed yesterday morning, and Annie and I had this conversation when it was her turn:
A: So can I get a pedicure?
Me: What?
A: Can I get a pedicure as a prize for getting dressed?
Me: HAAAAAHHHHHAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHA. No.
You can imagine she didn't take that very well.
(I wondered today while I was driving whether, if a parent raising girls mapped out these particularly hysterical days on a calendar for a period of several months, the parent would eventually, in seven or eight years, come to see that the particularly challenging periods were occurring in, say, some sort of monthly pattern. (No reason at all! Ahem. Just wondered.))
We took a family bike ride tonight. We can do that this summer sans bike trailer, Jemma pedaling her little heart out, the bright pink feather in Annie's hair left over from the rock concert peeking out of her helmet. (She wishes aloud that there could be a rock concert every night. She is learning the guitar now, too, from Jason.)
My favorite photos of the summer so far are mostly the ones of the girls, really close up, eating something special: ice cream, s'mores, corn on the cob. Also the ones of us around any kind of water: boating on Walloon, spending an afternoon at the beach with friends, wearing goggles in the hot tub or at the pool, my toes on the dock. (Jemma wanted to take the swim test at the pool yesterday but was a little nervous. Annie offered to swim next to her the whole way. They made it all the way to the other side.)
Everyone asks me lately what I'll do in September when both girls are in school all day, and here's my standard answer: I don't know. Some days, that's a Zen, the-universe-is-unfolding-as-it-should, calm "I don't know;" other days it's a wide-eyed, nervous-laughter, slightly panicked "I don't know." Either way. Both. I've got a few ideas, and in the meantime, I'm trying to be okay with not knowing, and with six more weeks of summer.
One of the fifteen new arborvitae in the back yard has died. Just one. Jemma bit my shoulder today when I lifted her into the house for a time-out, wet and dripping from the hot tub, and then she drew me a picture and wrote, "MOM IM. VORE SORRY. I LOVE YOU MOM. JEMMA."
The girls did a couple of pages in their workbooks this morning, but my early summer fantasy of languid, coffee-drinking mornings with the three of us working happily at the dining room table has proved to be exactly that: a fantasy. The girls spend much of their time outside (they are brown, despite the sunscreen I slather on them daily), creating elaborate fairy houses or homes for caterpillars and roly-polies they dig out of the mulch.
They cannot both be upstairs together at the same time, a situation that will have to change when school starts. When I send them both up to change clothes or get an item to bring wherever we're going, there is inevitable prolonged nakedness, followed by laughing wresting, followed by crying wrestling, followed by looks of stricken confusion when I ask what is taking so long. They forget why they're upstairs at all. Jemma threw a twenty minute fit about getting dressed yesterday morning, and Annie and I had this conversation when it was her turn:
A: So can I get a pedicure?
Me: What?
A: Can I get a pedicure as a prize for getting dressed?
Me: HAAAAAHHHHHAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHA. No.
You can imagine she didn't take that very well.
(I wondered today while I was driving whether, if a parent raising girls mapped out these particularly hysterical days on a calendar for a period of several months, the parent would eventually, in seven or eight years, come to see that the particularly challenging periods were occurring in, say, some sort of monthly pattern. (No reason at all! Ahem. Just wondered.))
We took a family bike ride tonight. We can do that this summer sans bike trailer, Jemma pedaling her little heart out, the bright pink feather in Annie's hair left over from the rock concert peeking out of her helmet. (She wishes aloud that there could be a rock concert every night. She is learning the guitar now, too, from Jason.)
My favorite photos of the summer so far are mostly the ones of the girls, really close up, eating something special: ice cream, s'mores, corn on the cob. Also the ones of us around any kind of water: boating on Walloon, spending an afternoon at the beach with friends, wearing goggles in the hot tub or at the pool, my toes on the dock. (Jemma wanted to take the swim test at the pool yesterday but was a little nervous. Annie offered to swim next to her the whole way. They made it all the way to the other side.)
Everyone asks me lately what I'll do in September when both girls are in school all day, and here's my standard answer: I don't know. Some days, that's a Zen, the-universe-is-unfolding-as-it-should, calm "I don't know;" other days it's a wide-eyed, nervous-laughter, slightly panicked "I don't know." Either way. Both. I've got a few ideas, and in the meantime, I'm trying to be okay with not knowing, and with six more weeks of summer.
Monday, July 23, 2012
Read Elsewhere: More About Extra-Curricular Craziness
From Mitten Strings for God by Katrina Kenison (It's like she time-traveled, read my last blog post, and then returned to 2000 to write these words!):
From Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety by Judith Warner:
Is this what we mean today by family life? Is it really the way any of us want to live? I think not. Why, then, do we try to do so much? Why, as one friend put it ruefully, are we "dervishing through life"? And why do we allow our children to fall victim to the same kind of over scheduling that keeps us from enjoying our own lives? I am convinced that one reason we try to do so much is because we are afraid.
What if my son falls behind his tennis-playing peers? How can I show the world I am a good bother if I don't volunteer at school? What will people think if I don't appear at that party? What will we be missing if we stay home? There is fear behind all this frenzy, fear that we, or our children, will somehow fail to measure up. But just whose expectations are we trying so hard to meet?
These days I find myself pondering another question: What do I lose when I try to do too much? The answer is simple: Balance. For me there is nothing worse than the feeling that a day has flown by without any moments of real connection between me and my husband, me and my children, me and my own inner self. Yet how easily that happens. We want so much to do for our children, to give them every opportunity to learn and grow and succeed. At the same time, we want to live our own lives fully, to be productive and creative and useful. Sometimes, though, we lose touch with our need to feed our inner lives and with our need for solitude, silence, and time together.
Surely there is no one raising children today who has not paused at times to wonder: In our efforts to provide for our children, are we losing sight of what is really most important? Have our activities crowded out the kind of simple, spontaneous moments that truly make life worth living? Each and every child I know could use more of these. We adults need them, too . . .
. . . Like all mothers, I harbor dreams for my children, and sometimes I fall under the spell of my own aspirations for them. We want our children to do well! But when I stop and think about what I truly want for them, I know that it is not material wealth or academic brilliance or athletic prowess. My deeper hope is that each of my sons will be able to see the sacred in the ordinary; that they, too, will grow up knowing how to "love the dailiness."
From Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety by Judith Warner:
The Mommy Mystique tells us that we are the luckiest women int he world - the freest, with the most choices, the broadest horizons, the best luck, and the most wealth. It says we have the knowledge and know-how to make 'informed decisions' that will guarantee the successful course of our children's lives. It tells us that if we choose badly our children will fall prey to countless dangers - from insecure attachment to drugs to kidnapping to a third-rate college. And if this happens, if our children stray from the path toward happiness and success, we'll have no one but ourselves to blame . . . We are convinced that every decision we make, every detail we control, is incredibly important.
Entire towns turn themselves inside out for a spot in the right ballet class. Parents prostitute their souls for spots in private schools. We read about how our children can't get into good colleges unless they are superhuman. We know that our public school systems ca't provide an education in superhumanness (much less basic well-roundedness, in many places). Without a good education our children won't be able to get jobs, won't be able to buy a house or have the middle-class existence our parents seemed to find easy but that we can barely sustain. Ergo: soccer and violin and public service and weekends of baseball practice become vitally important because if we don't do everything right for our children, they may be consigned, down the line, to failure.
Thursday, July 12, 2012
Under Pressure
It seems like half the conversations I've had lately center around children's schedules and extra-curricular activities, specifically the sports they'll be doing come fall. Now, it's only mid-July, so I don't yet want to think or talk about our fall schedule, but there are decisions to be made. Child X's parents gave me a card at the playground the week school got out for the club soccer team that involves tryouts, twice-weekly practice, and Saturday games that require travel. The dance studio sent me the girls' end-of-year "progress reports"and wants their registration, with $50 deposit, by August 1. Child Y's mom texts me to ask what I'm putting Jemma in this fall (a fall that will include full-day kindergarten, by the way, and probably the accompanying meltdowns and 5:30 p.m. weeping that I enjoyed when Annie began full-day school) and I tell her, guiltily, "probably nothing." This week's tennis instructor talks up the fall tennis clinic at the gym. Annie turns a billion cartwheels in the lawn and nags me every day to sign her up for gymnastics. Church wants Sunday School forms returned. Piano lessons continue unabated through the summer. And the Parks and Recreation fall brochure hasn't even come out, with its pages and pages of yoga! and swim lessons! and drawing!
And even as I participate in it, it drives me crazy. Here's why.
Last fall, Annie - who had been enrolled almost continuously in dance classes since the minute she turned three - decided she wanted to take a break from dance and try tennis instead. Fine. So I signed just Jemma up for dance on Thursday afternoons, and Annie and I used the forty-five minutes outside Jemma's class to work on homework projects, enjoy a snack together, and read aloud if there was time. It was a nice break, and at the end of it, Annie decided she wanted to take dance again beginning in January.
Because none of the classes offered for that semester at our parks and rec. department worked with our schedule and because I had decided that, if Annie was to continue dance, she should probably start going to a studio, we signed up at a new place. The instructor - a very nice person, obviously, with lots of talent and experience - had the girls come try out a class before letting us sign up. Jemma was immediately put into the age-appropriate class. After watching Annie (who, remember had taken several continuous semesters of dance but hadn't danced since the previous spring because of a summer off and not enrolling in the fall), the instructor recommended that Annie take a few private lessons before starting in the 7-year-old class. She was behind.
That's when I knew. And even though Annie took two private lessons, subsequently enrolled with her "cohort," and enjoyed the spring semester of dance with the talented instructor at her studio, I learned the lesson that every parent attempting to retain a semblance of a normal childhood learns. I learned that we must constantly keep up with an activity or else we risk being left behind completely. Worse, I realized that this is the case with every single activity that kids participate in, and it begins at least by age seven, when the pressure begins to change from participating in lots of things all the time, to the pressure to specialize in AND BE AWESOME at something.
Already, that dance instructor wants Annie to audition for the studio's ensemble, which would require her to dance two afternoons and one Saturday morning per week. Already, the local parks and rec. soccer is badmouthed by parents in the know, and we're encouraged to sign her up for something more organized and ambitious. Already, there are children in her tennis class who have clearly taken tennis every week of this summer and who are worlds better than her. Already, a parent talks about how frustrated her son is to be on a baseball team with kids who are "just trying baseball for the first time" and how kids like him (the good kids) get singled out for the All-Star team, where they can really play without the newbies dragging them down. (This same parent talks about how her "entire life is for the kids" these days; these two topics seem to me to be related.) Already, Annie has friends who are in year three of competitive swimming, so that each year that Annie does not swim on a team that practices three days a week and competes in meets is another year that the possibility of her EVER being able to swim on a team like that grows smaller. Already, there are not enough days in the week for Annie to keep up with the things she enjoys, not to mention to try new things that she hasn't yet dabbled in. Already, there is very much the feeling that she must PICK SOMETHING NOW and STICK WITH IT FOREVER and have it be HER THING, and that if she doesn't - if she keeps trying to dabble here, enjoy there, try this, take a break, take up something new - she will not be good enough at anything. (Also: "good enough" to . . . what? Make the middle school team? Play varsity tennis? Get a soccer scholarship to college? MAKE AN OLYMPIC TEAM?) WHAT IS THE GOAL HERE?
Are those kids going to be happier? More successful? The most in-shape adults? What? (Tangent: Most adults I know who took this path - crazy travel soccer, psycho swimmer, college athlete, etc. - don't even participate in the activity as an adult. At all. Ever. Huh.)
She is seven. SEVEN. She enjoys - and is fairly good at - lots of things. And I want her to be able to keep doing them: because she loves them, because she is good at them, because it is good for her to grow her skills, because I want her to be well-rounded, because they are fun. But it's clear that we're reaching a level where there aren't enough days in the week, where it's less possible to do things in a casual, low-committment way, where the cost and scale and intensity of each individual activity goes up, where she (and we) are going to have to choose. And I wish that I could put that off for a few more years. I wish, like a funny and wise friend said a few months ago, that we could all collectively just agree to not do this with our kids. I wish that I could remember that Jason, who is playing electric guitar on stage next week, didn't start taking guitar lessons until he was in college, and that I hated track in high school but went on to run a marathon at age 26 and my fastest 5K ever nine months after Annie was born. I wish I was surrounded by a few more sane voices shouting for moderation. Mostly, I wish I could figure out a way to let my girls pursue their passions with alittle lot less pressure.
And even as I participate in it, it drives me crazy. Here's why.
Last fall, Annie - who had been enrolled almost continuously in dance classes since the minute she turned three - decided she wanted to take a break from dance and try tennis instead. Fine. So I signed just Jemma up for dance on Thursday afternoons, and Annie and I used the forty-five minutes outside Jemma's class to work on homework projects, enjoy a snack together, and read aloud if there was time. It was a nice break, and at the end of it, Annie decided she wanted to take dance again beginning in January.
Because none of the classes offered for that semester at our parks and rec. department worked with our schedule and because I had decided that, if Annie was to continue dance, she should probably start going to a studio, we signed up at a new place. The instructor - a very nice person, obviously, with lots of talent and experience - had the girls come try out a class before letting us sign up. Jemma was immediately put into the age-appropriate class. After watching Annie (who, remember had taken several continuous semesters of dance but hadn't danced since the previous spring because of a summer off and not enrolling in the fall), the instructor recommended that Annie take a few private lessons before starting in the 7-year-old class. She was behind.
That's when I knew. And even though Annie took two private lessons, subsequently enrolled with her "cohort," and enjoyed the spring semester of dance with the talented instructor at her studio, I learned the lesson that every parent attempting to retain a semblance of a normal childhood learns. I learned that we must constantly keep up with an activity or else we risk being left behind completely. Worse, I realized that this is the case with every single activity that kids participate in, and it begins at least by age seven, when the pressure begins to change from participating in lots of things all the time, to the pressure to specialize in AND BE AWESOME at something.
Already, that dance instructor wants Annie to audition for the studio's ensemble, which would require her to dance two afternoons and one Saturday morning per week. Already, the local parks and rec. soccer is badmouthed by parents in the know, and we're encouraged to sign her up for something more organized and ambitious. Already, there are children in her tennis class who have clearly taken tennis every week of this summer and who are worlds better than her. Already, a parent talks about how frustrated her son is to be on a baseball team with kids who are "just trying baseball for the first time" and how kids like him (the good kids) get singled out for the All-Star team, where they can really play without the newbies dragging them down. (This same parent talks about how her "entire life is for the kids" these days; these two topics seem to me to be related.) Already, Annie has friends who are in year three of competitive swimming, so that each year that Annie does not swim on a team that practices three days a week and competes in meets is another year that the possibility of her EVER being able to swim on a team like that grows smaller. Already, there are not enough days in the week for Annie to keep up with the things she enjoys, not to mention to try new things that she hasn't yet dabbled in. Already, there is very much the feeling that she must PICK SOMETHING NOW and STICK WITH IT FOREVER and have it be HER THING, and that if she doesn't - if she keeps trying to dabble here, enjoy there, try this, take a break, take up something new - she will not be good enough at anything. (Also: "good enough" to . . . what? Make the middle school team? Play varsity tennis? Get a soccer scholarship to college? MAKE AN OLYMPIC TEAM?) WHAT IS THE GOAL HERE?
Are those kids going to be happier? More successful? The most in-shape adults? What? (Tangent: Most adults I know who took this path - crazy travel soccer, psycho swimmer, college athlete, etc. - don't even participate in the activity as an adult. At all. Ever. Huh.)
She is seven. SEVEN. She enjoys - and is fairly good at - lots of things. And I want her to be able to keep doing them: because she loves them, because she is good at them, because it is good for her to grow her skills, because I want her to be well-rounded, because they are fun. But it's clear that we're reaching a level where there aren't enough days in the week, where it's less possible to do things in a casual, low-committment way, where the cost and scale and intensity of each individual activity goes up, where she (and we) are going to have to choose. And I wish that I could put that off for a few more years. I wish, like a funny and wise friend said a few months ago, that we could all collectively just agree to not do this with our kids. I wish that I could remember that Jason, who is playing electric guitar on stage next week, didn't start taking guitar lessons until he was in college, and that I hated track in high school but went on to run a marathon at age 26 and my fastest 5K ever nine months after Annie was born. I wish I was surrounded by a few more sane voices shouting for moderation. Mostly, I wish I could figure out a way to let my girls pursue their passions with a
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
On Teaching and Parenting
I had a conversation this morning with a friend about teaching (our school district is trying to come up with the funds to continue having paraprofessionals in the kindergarten and first grade classrooms, which I think is essential) and then I went to yoga at noon, where two different teachers shared teaching the class. So while I was lying on my back at the end of class, I was thinking about the way that good teaching is both an art and a science, and about how I continue to be surprised that I am not a better parent, because I was a very good teacher. And isn't parenting just teaching on a much smaller, much more continuous scale?
Don't get me wrong, I had a few extra-specially difficult kids in classrooms over the years, but even then I never became completely unwound by the difficulties. I put in my very best effort and knew, somehow, that my very best effort would have to be enough, that there was nothing more I could do. Maybe in parenting, we're too close to the source, too constantly surrounded by the "pupils," and too attached to the outcome to be as level-headed. In any case, I never yelled. I never lost my temper. I never went into another room to cry or lay awake at night going over where it had all gone so wrong.
This is not to say that parenting the girls lately has been completely joyless. In every day there are moments of satisfaction and goodness, and I try to focus on those. I try to take the long view, to have some perspective that things will not always be this way. (Swistle, again, putting my thoughts into words.)
When that fails, there is always commiserating with girlfriends, running, drinking, getting out of the house, or going to sleep and pinning my hopes on the fact that the morning will bring a clean slate and a fresh start. But it hasn't really been a party for me lately, and I'm wishing I could channel a bit of Wise Teacher Stephanie to tell Frazzled Parent Stephanie what to do.
Back to lying on my back after yoga: I'm thinking about teaching. I'm thinking that I used to love teaching the same units and skills and information to new students every year, the way I did at Cranbrook, because the fresh crop of students every year ensures that the experience is different. I'm thinking, too, that there's probably satisfaction in teaching new skills and information to the same students, the way my instructor does at the yoga studio, because the continuity of learners lets you see people progress in their practice.
So:
Parenting. Especially the kind of parenting I'm largely doing these days, the kind where you keep saying the words, modeling the behavior, providing the information, encouraging the skills, and yet it's a Groundhog's Day situation of the same frustrations happening again and again.
Maybe I need to switch up my material. It's either that or switch up the kids, I guess.
Don't get me wrong, I had a few extra-specially difficult kids in classrooms over the years, but even then I never became completely unwound by the difficulties. I put in my very best effort and knew, somehow, that my very best effort would have to be enough, that there was nothing more I could do. Maybe in parenting, we're too close to the source, too constantly surrounded by the "pupils," and too attached to the outcome to be as level-headed. In any case, I never yelled. I never lost my temper. I never went into another room to cry or lay awake at night going over where it had all gone so wrong.
This is not to say that parenting the girls lately has been completely joyless. In every day there are moments of satisfaction and goodness, and I try to focus on those. I try to take the long view, to have some perspective that things will not always be this way. (Swistle, again, putting my thoughts into words.)
When that fails, there is always commiserating with girlfriends, running, drinking, getting out of the house, or going to sleep and pinning my hopes on the fact that the morning will bring a clean slate and a fresh start. But it hasn't really been a party for me lately, and I'm wishing I could channel a bit of Wise Teacher Stephanie to tell Frazzled Parent Stephanie what to do.
Back to lying on my back after yoga: I'm thinking about teaching. I'm thinking that I used to love teaching the same units and skills and information to new students every year, the way I did at Cranbrook, because the fresh crop of students every year ensures that the experience is different. I'm thinking, too, that there's probably satisfaction in teaching new skills and information to the same students, the way my instructor does at the yoga studio, because the continuity of learners lets you see people progress in their practice.
So:
same information + new students = fun, satisfying teaching experienceand
new information + same students = fun, satisfying teaching experiencebut you know what sucks?
same information + same students = unsatisfying, frustrating teaching experienceAnd what situation most closely mirrors that?
Parenting. Especially the kind of parenting I'm largely doing these days, the kind where you keep saying the words, modeling the behavior, providing the information, encouraging the skills, and yet it's a Groundhog's Day situation of the same frustrations happening again and again.
Maybe I need to switch up my material. It's either that or switch up the kids, I guess.
Monday, April 30, 2012
Read Elsewhere: Books, Human Nature, Weight, Appearances
"I think, consciously or not, what we readers do each time we open a book is to set off on a search for authenticity. We want to get closer to the heart of things, and sometimes even a few good sentences contained in an otherwise unexceptional book can crystallize vague feelings, fleeting physical sensations, or, sometimes, profound epiphanies." - Maureen Corrigan, Leave me Alone, I'm Reading
"Most Asian cultures see human beings as innately good, born perfect but then pulled off course by false beliefs, unfounded fears, and other delusions. The Judeo-Christian tradition that undergirds Western philosophy sees humans as innately imperfect, born with all sorts of problems (original sin, carnal nature, ignorance of God's laws) that must be rectified and controlled if we are to become worthy. From a Western perspective, setting the original self free is shocking and dangerous: 'Why, if we just act from a place of freedom, we'll all be pillaging and looting by nightfall.' In Asian psychology, pillaging and looting (etc., etc.) come from a place of delusion, from imagining ourselves as separate from others, so that our welfare and theirs are disconnected." - Martha Beck, Steering by Starlight
"None of us lead the lives our appearance suggests. We each lie in bed at night with our personal terrors as to what life could be, or about what life is like right now, and whether we have the strength to get through it. Clothes and money rarely can make that go away." - Deborah L. Jacobs, in Forbes Magazine
"Most Asian cultures see human beings as innately good, born perfect but then pulled off course by false beliefs, unfounded fears, and other delusions. The Judeo-Christian tradition that undergirds Western philosophy sees humans as innately imperfect, born with all sorts of problems (original sin, carnal nature, ignorance of God's laws) that must be rectified and controlled if we are to become worthy. From a Western perspective, setting the original self free is shocking and dangerous: 'Why, if we just act from a place of freedom, we'll all be pillaging and looting by nightfall.' In Asian psychology, pillaging and looting (etc., etc.) come from a place of delusion, from imagining ourselves as separate from others, so that our welfare and theirs are disconnected." - Martha Beck, Steering by Starlight
"Nevertheless, she is six years old, and she is so far below the average weight for her height that the pediatrician mentions it at each visit, and she doesn't want to gain weight. She's mentioned this a few times recently, but I've ignored it because I didn't want to draw a lot of attention to it---or more truthfully, because I didn't know what to say. This time I asked soooooo casually if the other girls at school talk about gaining weight. She said no. I asked if anyone else had mentioned it. She said no. I asked why she said she didn't want to gain weight, and she laughed nervously and said, well, she meant she didn't want to gain TOO MUCH weight.
I didn't pursue it any further. There isn't any point. It's not as if it's possible to rear a daughter who doesn't understand that this society expects her to be thin. I'd been hoping, though, for a longer time before she understood it." - Swistle, writing "Weight and Daughters" at the blog Swistle
I didn't pursue it any further. There isn't any point. It's not as if it's possible to rear a daughter who doesn't understand that this society expects her to be thin. I'd been hoping, though, for a longer time before she understood it." - Swistle, writing "Weight and Daughters" at the blog Swistle
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Read Elsewhere: If Motherhood Were School
"I barely make it most days. By the skin of my teeth, I pass. All my life I made straight A's but this mother thing. It's not something I want to just scrape by... and I feel like the gap is closing, what's shaping their behavior, and memories, and when they'll catch on." - from Adventures in Babywearing
Thursday, April 5, 2012
On the Turning Away
My whole life, my mom has said the same thing to me each time I turn to leave. As I get in the car, walk out the door, hop out of the mini-van, pull out of the driveway, she says, "Be careful!" She said it yesterday - yesterday! - as I, a 34-year-old woman with two children in my backseat, a person who has never been involved in any kind of car accident and pretty much never speeds, backed down her driveway.
She does it, I know, out of love. She doesn't want anything bad to happen to me, as as a mom now myself, I very much get that. I haven't started saying it to my own children, though. I think it sends a message that I would rather not send; that is, the world is a scary and dangerous place, so above all, your number one priority should be being careful. In fact, I've worked very hard in the last few months to send the very opposite message to a pretty anxious little girl. The message I want to send is, embrace this good day, for while bad things are possible, they are not likely, and you will prevail! So I say, "Do your best!" and "Have a great day!" and "Have fun!" as I kiss her good-bye and she turns away to walk into school. I liked my message better.
And then I read this passage in How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk this morning:
It stopped me dead in my tracks, for it reminded me immediately of the infamous "Don't Carpe Diem" blog post that went viral among mommy-bloggers and Facebook users everywhere a couple months ago. Here's the gist:
I realized that I'm not really sending a better message with my flung-from-the-doorway words of wisdom than my mom does. I realized that, after three little old ladies told me in the span of two days in Florida to "enjoy every moment!" I should know better than to expect that every day Annie has at school will be "great!" or that every play date Jemma goes to will be "super-fun!" I realized that I'm acting like the older lady in the grocery store!!
I'm not going to start telling them to be careful. But I am going to stop telling them to (and asking them later if they did) have fun. I think I'll start trying to say, simply, I love you.
She does it, I know, out of love. She doesn't want anything bad to happen to me, as as a mom now myself, I very much get that. I haven't started saying it to my own children, though. I think it sends a message that I would rather not send; that is, the world is a scary and dangerous place, so above all, your number one priority should be being careful. In fact, I've worked very hard in the last few months to send the very opposite message to a pretty anxious little girl. The message I want to send is, embrace this good day, for while bad things are possible, they are not likely, and you will prevail! So I say, "Do your best!" and "Have a great day!" and "Have fun!" as I kiss her good-bye and she turns away to walk into school. I liked my message better.
And then I read this passage in How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk this morning:
"One common parental inquiry that seems to be experienced as pressure is "Did you have fun today?" What a demand to make upon a child! Not only did he have to go to the party (school, play, camp, dance) but the expectation is that he should enjoy himself. If he didn't, he has his own disappointment to cope with plus that of his parents. He feels he's let them down by not having a good time."
It stopped me dead in my tracks, for it reminded me immediately of the infamous "Don't Carpe Diem" blog post that went viral among mommy-bloggers and Facebook users everywhere a couple months ago. Here's the gist:
Every time I'm out with my kids -- this seems to happen:An older woman stops us, puts her hand over her heart and says something like, "Oh, Enjoy every moment. This time goes by so fast."Everywhere I go, someone is telling me to seize the moment, raise my awareness, be happy, enjoy everysecond, etc, etc, etc.I know that this message is right and good. But, I have finally allowed myself to admit that it just doesn't work for me. It bugs me. This CARPE DIEM message makes me paranoid and panicky. Especially during this phase of my life - while I'm raising young kids. Being told, in a million different ways to CARPE DIEM makes me worry that if I'm not in a constant state of intense gratitude and ecstasy, I'm doing something wrong.I think parenting young children (and old ones, I've heard) is a little like climbing Mount Everest. Brave, adventurous souls try it because they've heard there's magic in the climb. They try because they believe that finishing, or even attempting the climb are impressive accomplishments. They try because during the climb, if they allow themselves to pause and lift their eyes and minds from the pain and drudgery, the views are breathtaking. They try because even though it hurts and it's hard, there are moments that make it worth the hard. These moments are so intense and unique that many people who reach the top start planning, almost immediately, to climb again. Even though any climber will tell you that most of the climb is treacherous, exhausting, killer. That they literally cried most of the way up.And so I think that if there were people stationed, say, every thirty feet along Mount Everest yelling to the climbers -- "ARE YOU ENJOYING YOURSELF!? IF NOT, YOU SHOULD BE! ONE DAY YOU'LL BE SORRY YOU DIDN'T!" TRUST US!! IT'LL BE OVER TOO SOON! CARPE DIEM!" -- those well-meaning, nostalgic cheerleaders might be physically thrown from the mountain.
I realized that I'm not really sending a better message with my flung-from-the-doorway words of wisdom than my mom does. I realized that, after three little old ladies told me in the span of two days in Florida to "enjoy every moment!" I should know better than to expect that every day Annie has at school will be "great!" or that every play date Jemma goes to will be "super-fun!" I realized that I'm acting like the older lady in the grocery store!!
I'm not going to start telling them to be careful. But I am going to stop telling them to (and asking them later if they did) have fun. I think I'll start trying to say, simply, I love you.
Friday, October 14, 2011
The Seven-Year Itch
Seven years ago, I had a one-month old. I was simultaneously in that state of foggy bliss where every squeak from my child made my heart sing, and feeling like my life had been run over by a freight truck. It was the beginning of my insomnia; even when the baby slept, I couldn't sleep, so turned-upside-down was my world, which revolved around nursing, cleaning spit-up off of myself, changing blow-out diapers, and holding a baby while she slept. Annie would not, initially, sleep without being held, and so my days were a circle between the kitchen, the nursery, the bathroom, and the couch, where I watched every single episode of Dawson's Creek in syndication on TBS and Oprah every afternoon. I'd go out for short walks with the stroller whenever possible and meet the one friend I had made in South Haven at the coffee shop or the tiny indoor pool. I cried with happiness; I cried because I thought I'd never get my life back.
I was right. The days after we added Jemma to our family were all the more chaotic: she was colicky; Annie, despite my guilty encouragement, never wanted to watch television and so would sneak around the house doing who-knows-what while I nursed the baby; there was always a pile of dishes on the kitchen counter and a pile of laundry in every basket; and I went a whole year without really watching a single thing on television, so highly did I prioritize getting to sleep at the earliest moment possible. Eventually I carved out time for running and began to blog about our life and sneak in time for dates and friends here and there, but other than that, the bulk of my life has been all kids, all the time.
Those frantic days have tapered off, much to my surprise. I think I thought they would never end. These days, I can do things like meet a friend for a spontaneous lunch on a Tuesday afternoon, roam Target and get stuck in the throw pillow aisle for half an hour, work out AND shower (both!) before going to school pick-up. These days, everywhere I go - book club, the gym, the school playground, running, talking on the phone - it's the same conversation between those of us who have been nothing else but somebody's mommy for several years in a row: What will we do now?
The littlest ones are not napping anymore or wearing diapers or needing us quite so much; they're spending large chunks of the day at school or friends' or some type of sporting event. There is still plenty of mothering to be done, for sure: keeping up with the constant influx of papers from school; managing the increasingly-busy calendar; cooking dinner and doing laundry and helping with homework and shuttling from place to place. That work is not going to end for a long time.
But what has shifted is the fact that it's starting to feel like 99% of my energy goes into support work. It's the work that nobody notices because they've come to expect it. The lunch will be packed and inside the backpack, the birthday present will be purchased and wrapped with a card to be signed, the meal will be made and ready to eat in the exact 20-minute segment we have available for dinner, the clothes will be clean and in drawers, the calendar will be full of events, the tickets will have been purchased, the tap shoes will be in the bag with the snack and the water bottle . . . the work is never-ending, and it's sort of thankless, too. The only time somebody really notices is on those rare occasions when - God forbid - the work didn't get done. "Mom!" they say indignantly. "You forgot my ________!" or "Mom! Where is my ________??!" The work is invisible, except when you're being noticed for not doing it.
Sometimes I think they notice. I got Annie her Halloween costume this week and put it on her bed for her to find when she came home from school. She lit up when she saw it, immediately put it on, and cried, "You're the best mom ever!" And I know that it's not important that they notice, that it's my job - my lucky, lucky job - to do small things with great love, to build our family's memories, to tell our story, to make our house a home. But sometimes I see myself as if from outside of my own body, looking down and watching like a ghost: There I am, getting out the peanut butter. There I am, settling yet another squabble about tape. There I am, running a stained shirt under cold water.
Seven years into full-time, at-home parenting, the gig is almost up. It hasn't been a perfect fit. I've said before and I'll say again, I'm always jealous of the person who just knows that a certain mode of parenting is right for them. Some women are made to be at home with their kids, some are always certain that their families are better served by their working outside the home, and some families don't have the luxury of that choice and are making the best of whatever situation they're in. I've always been uneasy about my decision to be at home, and now I'm equally uneasy thinking about what comes next.
I don't have any illusions that my role as mom is ending. If anything, I think the next ten years are going to be even more challenging than the last seven have been, and I know there won't be easy answers. But as more time opens up in my day-to-day and the other people in my family forge their own new paths into bright adventures, I don't think it is wrong of me to want more than to be left behind doing the work of a glorified personal assistant. I don't think it is wrong to want to do more than get out the peanut butter.
"The future stretches out in front of me. I see myself making more mistakes, not fewer. Holding on when I should be letting go. Letting go when I should be holding on. The first nine years were the easy ones - when I could, for the most part, protect him from everything; when I was always in the next room when he took a shower, ready to run in and rinse the soap out of his eyes." - Melanie Gideon
I was right. The days after we added Jemma to our family were all the more chaotic: she was colicky; Annie, despite my guilty encouragement, never wanted to watch television and so would sneak around the house doing who-knows-what while I nursed the baby; there was always a pile of dishes on the kitchen counter and a pile of laundry in every basket; and I went a whole year without really watching a single thing on television, so highly did I prioritize getting to sleep at the earliest moment possible. Eventually I carved out time for running and began to blog about our life and sneak in time for dates and friends here and there, but other than that, the bulk of my life has been all kids, all the time.
Those frantic days have tapered off, much to my surprise. I think I thought they would never end. These days, I can do things like meet a friend for a spontaneous lunch on a Tuesday afternoon, roam Target and get stuck in the throw pillow aisle for half an hour, work out AND shower (both!) before going to school pick-up. These days, everywhere I go - book club, the gym, the school playground, running, talking on the phone - it's the same conversation between those of us who have been nothing else but somebody's mommy for several years in a row: What will we do now?
The littlest ones are not napping anymore or wearing diapers or needing us quite so much; they're spending large chunks of the day at school or friends' or some type of sporting event. There is still plenty of mothering to be done, for sure: keeping up with the constant influx of papers from school; managing the increasingly-busy calendar; cooking dinner and doing laundry and helping with homework and shuttling from place to place. That work is not going to end for a long time.
But what has shifted is the fact that it's starting to feel like 99% of my energy goes into support work. It's the work that nobody notices because they've come to expect it. The lunch will be packed and inside the backpack, the birthday present will be purchased and wrapped with a card to be signed, the meal will be made and ready to eat in the exact 20-minute segment we have available for dinner, the clothes will be clean and in drawers, the calendar will be full of events, the tickets will have been purchased, the tap shoes will be in the bag with the snack and the water bottle . . . the work is never-ending, and it's sort of thankless, too. The only time somebody really notices is on those rare occasions when - God forbid - the work didn't get done. "Mom!" they say indignantly. "You forgot my ________!" or "Mom! Where is my ________??!" The work is invisible, except when you're being noticed for not doing it.
Sometimes I think they notice. I got Annie her Halloween costume this week and put it on her bed for her to find when she came home from school. She lit up when she saw it, immediately put it on, and cried, "You're the best mom ever!" And I know that it's not important that they notice, that it's my job - my lucky, lucky job - to do small things with great love, to build our family's memories, to tell our story, to make our house a home. But sometimes I see myself as if from outside of my own body, looking down and watching like a ghost: There I am, getting out the peanut butter. There I am, settling yet another squabble about tape. There I am, running a stained shirt under cold water.
Seven years into full-time, at-home parenting, the gig is almost up. It hasn't been a perfect fit. I've said before and I'll say again, I'm always jealous of the person who just knows that a certain mode of parenting is right for them. Some women are made to be at home with their kids, some are always certain that their families are better served by their working outside the home, and some families don't have the luxury of that choice and are making the best of whatever situation they're in. I've always been uneasy about my decision to be at home, and now I'm equally uneasy thinking about what comes next.
I don't have any illusions that my role as mom is ending. If anything, I think the next ten years are going to be even more challenging than the last seven have been, and I know there won't be easy answers. But as more time opens up in my day-to-day and the other people in my family forge their own new paths into bright adventures, I don't think it is wrong of me to want more than to be left behind doing the work of a glorified personal assistant. I don't think it is wrong to want to do more than get out the peanut butter.
"The future stretches out in front of me. I see myself making more mistakes, not fewer. Holding on when I should be letting go. Letting go when I should be holding on. The first nine years were the easy ones - when I could, for the most part, protect him from everything; when I was always in the next room when he took a shower, ready to run in and rinse the soap out of his eyes." - Melanie Gideon
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