Tag: parenting

Wounds or Scars

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“Suffering makes an instrument of each of us, so that standing naked, holes and all, the unseen vitalities can be heard through our simplified lives.” – Mark Nepo

The other day I shook out the blanket that I keep outside for lying on the grass in summer and my son immediately starting looking for the little farmhouse that we usually play with on it. I am fascinated by how quickly my kids make associations. Blanket = Little People farm. A particular cup = hot cocoa. Boots = puddles. Baths = lotion.

But that observation makes me realize how much I do it as well. Fall comes and I think of hot cider. I turn on Grey’s Anatomy and want a glass of wine. When I write I sit in one chair and when I work I sit in another.

It seems to be a way to winnow down our choices so that we don’t have to make as many decisions. But every once in a while a pattern crops up that reminds me of where I stuck. The other day my daughter was carpooling with friends and they asked if there was a particular car she didn’t like. She said BMW’s. And they asked why and she said it was because her mom didn’t like them.

I had to laugh when my carpooling friend told me this story. My daughter and I had been talking about cars and I’d offhandedly said that I didn’t like them because it seemed like the drivers bought them for image. Which is a very unfair broad generalization that I never thought would be repeated. The fact is, my ex-husband bought one to bolster his image and so I created the association. I’ve been over that relationship for some time so I shouldn’t punish BMW drivers forever.

Meditating on this, so many associations came up for me. Many of them are ones that make me smile – places that I walk that remind me of my beloved dog and phrases when I hear them that bring back my dad.

And one that I wasn’t expecting. I miscarried a baby four years ago. When I heard the news, I went to hike a beautiful trail that overlooks Puget Sound. This trail had been my go-to for any time I needed to think. The wind seems to whip whatever is inside me out into the open and the view puts it into perspective.

As I was thinking about associations, I realized that I’ve never been back to that trail since the day I heard the news about my miscarriage. Obviously I went on to have a beautiful son and so I filed the miscarriage away as old news. It isn’t something that I mourn or think of as painful. It just was. But every time I think of hiking that trail, I think “nah” without ever digging deep for the reason.

Life keeps teaching me I can carry around wounds or scars. If I choose wounds, they drain a lot more energy as they try to heal without ever been unpacked. But if I do the work to clean them out and then heal into scars, they just become part of the patchwork quilt that is me.

All of this introspection is a great reminder to me that I can pass things on based on my loves or my losses. And given how easily they clearly stick for my kids, I think it’s time to heal those wounds before any other misguided association gets repeated!

The Courage Not to Quit

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“It always seems impossible until its done.” – Nelson Mandela

When my daughter, her friend and I were biking back from school the other day she absolutely refused to walk her bike up a steep hill even though her friend and I were walking our bikes. She would run out of steam, stop and then start trying to ride again in the middle of the hill. I repeatedly coached her “walk your bike.”

Finally she explained she wanted to be a story. “What does that mean?” She replied, “I want to be a story we talk about at the dinner table.”

I assume this hearkens back to the time she bought an ice cream for her brother from the ice cream truck, all by herself, with her own money and without me telling, choose to get one for him too. I blogged about it in The Great Turnaround post. I was proud of her, she was proud of herself and I told many people the story when they came over for tea or dinner.

So I had to explain that for every epic journey, there is always a time that you want to quit. I’ve never climbed a mountain where there wasn’t a place where I totally wanted to quit. Just mentioning this brings back the time on the Mexican volcano, Mt. Ixtacchuatl right after we left high camp at about 14,000 feet.

It was dark, the middle of the night and we were walking on scree – that loose gravel that shifts every time you set your weight on it so that every step was a scramble and rebalancing effort too. We were on the way to the 17,600 foot summit so we had a long way to go and the only thing I could think was that I’d have to contend with this on the way back too. I totally wanted to quit.

And so I told her that’s where the stories come from – because you want to quit and yet you don’t. Whatever you do to get past that section where it’s hard and bleak doesn’t have to be pretty. The epic stories all have a middle section. Otherwise they aren’t very entertaining..

My daughter looked at me as if she wasn’t convinced. And since she’s 6-years-old and has had very little personal struggle in her life, I suspect that she doesn’t yet have a hook to hang that on.

So the next time she had to ride home from school, her friend’s dad ran behind them and pushed them up the hill as they stayed on their bikes and rode. She returned home to me triumphantly and said, “I have my story now!”

Picture of the Week

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My 6-year-old daughter and her friends wanted to ride bikes to school. It felt hard to do – it was cold, difficult to get everyone ready early and took a lot of coordination with the other parents. As this was our second time doing this, my daughter felt confident enough to lead for some of the ride with me and her little brother on my bike behind her and her two friends following us. We turned a corner and all the difficulty stripped away when I took this picture. The promise of the day meeting the potential of youth.

I was so proud of them. But more importantly, they were proud of themselves.

Riding to school on a crisp October morning

Cut the BS

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“Life is the sum of all your choices.” – Camus

The first time I did preschool with my daughter she had just turned 2 years old and it was a co-op preschool. Parents worked in the classroom one day per week and dropped off our child the other day of the week. The teacher said to us, “Never leave without saying good-bye to your child. It doesn’t work to sneak out.”

I think that might have been the best parenting advice that I may have ever received. I took it to mean to not undermine my child’s trust in me by being sneaky. Just because you can fool a small child doesn’t mean you should. I didn’t know any better at the time but witnessing parents do the “sneak-away” approach at other moments, I’ve seen the resulting effect when it’s happened. The child seems both dismayed that they can’t find the parent as well as beyond consolable because they want the parent for comfort.

I want to claim that I knew sneakiness doesn’t work in life before I was a parent but that would also be BS. I was not attuned to the feeling of tension that signals a choice of not facing or facing the emotions of someone who will be unhappy by what I chose to do. I have ducked out of many parties with a white lie about why I couldn’t come instead of telling the host the truth that I didn’t feel like coming. I shudder to think about the time I canceled going to see U2 with a friend and his son because I had a colossally bad day at work.

But what I’ve learned from parenting isn’t about lying per se – because I don’t tell my kids the truth about many things like Santa and the Easter Bunny and whether or not I’ve ever had sex. It’s more specific to not telling the truth in order to avoid emotions. Like saying we are out of cookies instead of being the bad guy who says “no” because they’ve had too much sugar.

Instead of amplifying feelings by adding the horror of being tricked, this advice has taught me to lean into the discomfort of the initial disappointment. It also honors the emotional intelligence of anyone that I might mislead who can often sense they are being tricked, even at a very young age, even if they don’t know exactly how.

I’m leaving. I will miss you and can’t wait to scoop you up when I return. There is nothing like the sweetness of reunion and it is not possible until we recognize the truth of being apart.

(photo by Pexels)

Effective Redirection

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“It never hurts to see the good in someone. They often act better because of it.” – Nelson Mandela

The other day I quietly came into my still dark room and to put my toothbrush away before waking my daughter for school. She had migrated into my bed in the middle of the night as she often does so I brushed my teeth in a different bathroom so as not to wake her prematurely.

After setting my toothbrush down, I went to kiss her on the cheek. As soon as I did, she barked out “You are ignoring me and you’re late!” And I was taken aback that the quiet had turned to this and started to retort, “Now wait a minute, you are in my room and I’m just trying to get to my bathroom…”

It made me think of a dog-training article I read the other day. One of the tips was that when telling a dog not to do something, it’s too vague for the dog because in essence we are saying “don’t chew my shoe” but then then dog has to both process that and also think of what it should be doing. The article, and I can’t think of where I read it or why I read since I don’t presently have a dog, suggested instead to tell the dog what to do. That in essence solves both problems – getting the dog to stop chewing the shoe and redirecting it to a new behavior – in one command.

This seems to be the work of relationships as well. I don’t think it’s just me that often responds that I don’t like what someone has said or done without ever saying what I’d prefer to happen. In fact, I often just hope the other person can intuit that! Because thinking and naming what I want comes from a different place than a retort, an intentional place that takes some work to access. It’s a subtle shift from defense to bridge-making.

When my sister-in-law nannied for me she was great at saying to my kids, “A better way to say that is…” and it worked great at helping them know how to express their feelings but in a way that is more likely to be heard. My sister-in-law both was telling my kids what not to do and redirecting the behavior but in one efficient suggestion.

My 6-year-old daughter is so verbally adept so it’s really easy to forget that communication is still incredibly new to her. It may not be obvious how to express irritation and ask for what she needs. And more than that, it requires her to practice accessing her intentional space as well.

Even though I’m an old dog (or middle-aged one), I’m trainable too. So I stopped my retort and started again. “Hey darling girl, a better way to say it might be, ‘Morning, Mom. I’m frustrated you are taking so long because I’m dying to have your attention.’ ”

(photo by Pexels)

Comparative Suffering

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“Comparison is the thief of joy.” – Theodore Roosevelt

I’m old for a parent of a 2-year-old and a 6-year old. I had my son when I was 50 years old. Most of my long-time friends have kids in college which is great when I need babysitters. So part of my parenting journey has been to make new friends with people that have young children and have met many delightful ones.

But the other parents don’t complain to me. That isn’t to say that they don’t like me or include me, it’s just that generally they refrain from sharing their parenting woes. Every once in a while I’ll get a hint of why they don’t when a mom friend will say to me, “My husband was out of town for this week and wow, it’s so hard to get two kids to bed!” And they will often then add, “But I shouldn’t complain about that because you have to do it all the time.”

While I reassure them that it is totally fine to say that to me, I completely understand. More than that, I don’t feel bad that I do it by myself because I chose to. In fact, I often think about what would have happened if I’d had children when I was married and shake my head in relief that it’s only two kids that I have to get ready in the morning and not three if I was still married to my ex. 😊

But I finally have a term for why parents don’t complain to me because of a great Brené Brown Unlocking Us podcast episode with Esther Perel that I heard this week. Comparative suffering. When we start to complain about something and then cut ourselves off because others have it so much worse. I was recently talking with my friend Mindy about my dad’s death when I was 45-years-old and then stopped because her mom died when Mindy was only 23-years-old. I felt insensitive because I’d been able to have him in my life so much longer.

But I heard a heart-changing quote from Brené Brown on that podcast: “I had very little empathy for other people because I wasn’t open to my own pain.” When we stop to acknowledge that something hurts, sucks, is difficult — without comparing it to anyone else’s journey — we land ourselves back in reality. And from there, we can reach other people.

I frequently use “Comparison is the thief of joy” with my 6-year-old when she resorts to comparison with her friends. But now that I heard that wisdom I’m thinking of expanding it to “comparison is the thief of relationship.” We don’t have to compare any of our experience – good or bad. And when we do, we just have to acknowledge our own experience and theirs, and then continue to be real because that’s the glue of friendships, old and new.

(photo from Pexels)

Feedback Loops

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“Life is an echo. What you send out — comes back.” – unknown

My son and I were reading before bedtime. He climbed up on my bed with the pile of board books, snuggled in and then said, “Come up.” After I did, he said with a clap, “Good boy, Mama!”

When I put my daughter to bed, after we say our prayers and I snuggle her up so only her little face is showing above the comforter, I say “Good night, beautiful girl.” And she replies “Good night, beautiful mama.”

I studied feedback and control systems in college when getting my Electrical Engineering degree. But nothing has been more effective and more immediate than parenting in reminding me that life is an echo. My kids show me every day that what I send out comes right back to me, usually in the same tone.

Taking Off the Hats

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“Don’t go through life, grow through life.” – Eric Butterworth

In my daughter’s first grade class they fill in a mood meter for each day that tells how they feel and why. For example, last Tuesday she marked sleepy and proud and said she was proud because she made it in without being scared. Which is huge for my 6-year-old.

School has been in session for a month now. A month of adjustment to early mornings, pickups and drop-offs, new faces and routines for my kids, a quiet house during the day for me. It’s a lot and it’s taken the entire month to adapt.

The thing I’ve noticed most for me is the slow unwinding of some of the pandemic trauma that came from the necessity of being involved in everything in my kids’ lives. It’s like relaxing a spine that I had to hold stiff or I’d crumble. I was wearing so many hats – teaching assistant, school janitor, lunch lady, principal entertainer, class clown, mom, chief encouragement officer – that I’ve gotten to take off some of them and ease the strain. There is an intentionality to this restarting of activity that feels rich and treasured in a way that I took for granted before.

What I’ve uncovered is that I’m a way better parent when I don’t have to do it all. Which sounds so obvious but in crisis mode, I couldn’t gage the impact. Now when my 2-year-old son comes home and doesn’t want to have his diaper changed, I have the energy to fly him around the room pretending he’s an airplane on the way to the changing table. I’m listening better and I’m more playful when not having to run my engine all out to get everything done.

The uncertainty is still with us but I feel like I have a fuller tank to deal with it.

And the most delicious thing is that I miss my kids. I gather them up on Friday afternoon and can’t wait to spend a whole weekend playing together. I’m so incredibly impressed by how they’ve handled this transition. It hasn’t been without tears but we’ve faced these big moments talking to and understanding each other.

My mood meter is proud and grateful!

Know Your Audience

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“Integrity is the ability to listen to a place inside oneself that doesn’t change, even though the life that carries it may change.” – Rabbi Jonathan Omer-Man

My 6-year-old daughter asked me yesterday if stealing was bad. I told her it was always wrong and then tried to illustrate it with the example of us going to the store to buy groceries and then coming out and finding our car was stolen. How would we feel? Would that be okay? She countered, “But then we could just walk home.”

I agreed with her resourcefulness and then tried another example. “What if someone stole our Halloween decorations we just put up this weekend?” “That”, she emphatically agreed, “would be so, so bad! You can’t just go around taking other people’s Halloween decorations!”

Which reminded me that while our values don’t change, stories need to be tailored to the audience. 😊

The Wall of Defense

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“Fear is the cheapest room in the house. I’d like to see you in better living conditions.” – Hafiz

Last week the most worrisome thing happened. My mom invited me out to lunch. Since I see her usually a couple of times a week at my house when my kids are there and we text every day, I immediately decided that I must be in trouble.

I spent the two days between when she invited me and our lunch date in the back of my mind trying to think of everything I could be doing wrong and my defense for each.

Giving my kids too much salt or sugar to eat?

Spend too much on toys?

Needing to reprioritize saving money?

Not working out enough?

It doesn’t seem like anything very serious but we have enough history over this handful of points so even if I don’t necessarily disagree with her, I can muster a strong defense along the lines of “I’ve got bigger things to worry about” and “I’m doing the best I can.”

Then I had lunch with my mom. She just wanted to know how I was doing. I spent the first half of the lunch just unwinding inside. And for what it was worth, taking stock of what I might be doing wrong wasn’t a bad exercise. It was building the defenses that was a waste of mental energy. It reminded me that any conversation that I prepared for like that would never be open or productive.

And I learned that sometimes the best trick of a parent is to say nothing. And that the power of a parent lasts forever.