The Trouble With Absolutes

I used to think I was an “attachment parent.” I have kept my babies, all four of them, close by me, never put them on a schedule, never fed them a bottle, responded to their needs and always proceeded on the belief that we have to learn to be parent and child together.

I don’t believe in letting them cry.

But.

When Alex was about four months old, it became impossible to put him down. He could not transition from breastfeeding to the crib without waking. Couldn’t do it. For a while I laid down with him to nurse, and that way when he finally conked out (45 minutes later), I could cautiously slide away, leave him on the bed, and go on with life.

It worked. I listened to my baby and met his needs.

But 45 minutes takes a real chunk out of married couple time. After a few weeks I realized I wasn’t leaving the house, because if he needed to nap and we weren’t somewhere I could lie down with him and leave him there, we were in trouble. Before long, I was falling apart.

Finally I gave in. We let him cry. Of course, we went in and soothed him every five minutes, then ten, but oh my goodness, it felt wrong. I was a mess. But then–Hallelujah! In less than a week, he learned to put himself to sleep.

Fast forward three children. At 4 1/2 months, Michael is in a totally different environment than Alex was. With big siblings grabbing him by the head and yelling in his face, picking him up, playing with him, he’s perpetually stimulated. All last week, he refused to nap. He would nurse to sleep on the breast and wake up the instant I put him down. If I got lucky, he’d sleep twenty minutes. At night, sometimes he would go down at 8, but often he’d get a six-minute snooze at 7:30, only to be zinged awake again by the chaos of three other kids getting ready for bed, and then he’d be up until 9:30 or 9:45 with us–wiggly, hyper, and wearing us out.

I’m no baby whisperer, but after four kids, I can intuit a lot more of what’s wrong with a child than I could seven years ago. Michael was tired, and he couldn’t get to sleep. He was too dependent on me. That much I knew. What I didn’t know was what to do about it. I was trying to avoid the “let him cry” solution. But when I started to fall apart, it was clear what had to be done.

I believe in attachment parenting. But these days it seems there’s never enough of me to go around, and everything’s getting broken (the baby swing, the CD player, etc.). I raise my voice far more often than I would like–another thing attachment parents DO NOT DO. You never, ever yell at your children. You find ways to discipline positively, without shaming them. So between losing my temper and letting my baby cry, I feel I’m betraying my convictions.

But that’s the trouble with absolutes. They become codified and inflexible, and life involves too many variables. I totally believe in teaching children good behavior by reason and by empathy. And with Alex, that’s primarily what I do. But you can’t reason with a two year old–or a three year old, for that matter–and you can’t have your eyes on your kid at every moment, especially if you have several children. Sure, it’s a worthy goal to distract them before they get in trouble, but when they go around hitting their sisters, or taking toys from their brothers, a calm, reasoned approach is like taking a Rembrandt and throwing it in a blender. Sometimes, they need to see Mommy and Daddy angry, because it’s the only thing that sinks in. I wish that wasn’t the case, but in my experience, it is.

And when a baby’s showing you he needs to sleep, and every other possible solution has been tried without success, is it reasonable to take crying himself to sleep off the table? Is it better to let him teach himself to go to sleep by crying for a few days, or is it better to let him drive himself to utter exhaustion because he can’t sleep at all?

(That’s a rhetorical question, by the way.)

As much as I hate the process, I don’t believe I’m damaging my children. As I have said before, some of the most important lessons of my life were learned, not in joy, but in suffering; not in affirmation, but in shame. Sometimes a good parent has to allow her child to suffer; that truth isn’t going anywhere. As kids grow, they’ll have to suffer through broken friendships, heartbreaks, failures of all kinds, academic and personal. If I try to shield them from all pain, I’ll deprive them of the richness of life.

I don’t ignore my children’s needs for my own convenience, but there are lessons they need in order to become healthy adults. Yes, I fail sometimes, and when I do, I apologize. And I hope from that, they learn another important lesson.

Published in: on April 24, 2012 at 8:30 am  Comments (8)  
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A Portrait of Nicholas

This isn’t something I do often, but just for my own sake, I want to share a glimpse of my kids, separate from how they interact with me (which is what I usually write). Since I’ve been struggling with the stage Nicholas is in a lot lately, it seems like a good idea to start with him, and what an amazing kid he really is.

  • He adores his baby brother, even though said brother has usurped his place in the world. He giggles every time Michael’s wildly-flailing fists contact any part of his body.
  • The cute speech-isms of new speaker are fast fading. This week I realized that “too-ie” has now become “cookie,” and “the nail has a tail” (the snail has a tail–sounds rather Dr. Suessish, doesn’t it?) has now become “the sail has a tail.” He drives Alex crazy by repeating everything he says. A few days ago we spent Michael’s morning nursing going back and forth on the word “harmonica.” He tried it five times, and three of them came out as “formica,” “Mo-hannah” and “har-monta.”
  • He’s getting to be a whiz at puzzles; this part of the age of three I do love, because I love doing puzzles. He’s working a 100-piece Thomas puzzle and a 30-piece fire station puzzle all by himself. Welll, mostly all by himself.
  • He loves to paint.
  • His conversations with Julianna are adorable. They trade off big sibling status; they bicker over toys three dozen times a day, but in between, they crack each other up. They like to hold hands, and he takes the lead in this matter all the time.
  • He instinctively understands that he has to ask Julianna yes or no questions, so they can converse quite fluently despite Julianna’s limited and still barely intelligible vocabulary. In fact, they converse much better with each other than Julianna does with any of the rest of us.
  • We have never had a conversation with him about Down syndrome, and thus he’s growing up with a much more organic picture of what it means to be Julianna’s brother than Alex has. It will be interesting to see how he and Alex process the subject when they get older.
  • He’s so ready to go to school. In two weeks, he’ll be screened as a peer mentor for next fall, and we plan to send him to preschool at Early Childhood Special Ed. Every day, he tells someone that “Juweeanna wides the ye-ow bus, and I wide the bwue one.” (That would be a city bus…but he’s never been on one, except in his dreams.)
  • He’s been dry at night several times, with help. We’ve undertaken a new project, you see, tired of quadruple diapering at night, and we’re getting the kids up at our bedtime and in the middle of the night when Michael nurses. Trying to train little bodies to wake up when bladders get full.
  • And yesterday, Hallelujah Lord, he reached for the open compartment on the printer….and then, remembering how many times he’s been scolded not to touch it , he stopped, looked at me and said meekly, “Do you need that closed, Mommy?” As a reward for asking, I let him close it. And then I gave him a big hug and told him how proud of him I was.

And–how appropriate–he just came over and said, “Mommy, I need you.” Translated: I want to sit on your lap. So here he sits, asking where O is and what the camera is, and did I push the “i”? and “N starts with me!” (Meaning, his name starts with N.) Another day in the life begins.

Published in: on March 15, 2012 at 6:54 am  Comments (3)  
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Great Expectations

Last Friday was Julianna’s kindergarten IEP meeting. The wisdom of my fellow parents-of-kids-with-special-needs told me I needed backup for it. Several people offered to accompany me. If I’d remembered before the meeting, I probably would have availed myself of the offer, but as I said earlier this week, my life is crazy, and I only remember the essentials…you know, diaper changes, feedings…because the need makes itself obvious. ;)

However, I have a good relationship with all the people who work with Julianna in preschool, soI wasn’t worried. it was generally a positive experience. It takes an hour or so to go through current skills strengths, weaknesses and goal-setting, and then we got to the part where we say “how many minutes in the regular classroom, and how many minutes of special instruction?” At that point, I sensed everyone in the room taking a deep breath, and I thought, Uh-oh.

The problem, her classroom teacher pointed out, is that the people at the new school don’t really know Julianna, don’t really know what she’s capable of. So while we, and specifically she (the teacher), know her to be more than capable of a high level of inclusion, the new team wants to play it cautious. After all, we’d rather over-support her and withdraw it quickly than under-support her and have her begin kindergarten with frustration or failure.

It makes perfect sense, and for that reason I took a deep breath and signed off on something utterly contrary to everything I want for my daughter: namely, putting her in a self-contained classroom for all regular instruction, with only her “specials” happening with her typically-developing peers. I did so with a very clear instruction that I wanted it in the plan that re-evaluation would begin immediately, and not late in October or November. And only after taking down three different names for people within the new school whose phone lines I can burn down to make sure it doesn’t get set aside.

I signed, but I have tears in my eyes thinking about it, and a vague sense of nausea. Because I know how hard it is to move a bureaucracy unless you have an advocate within…and my whole support system is at the early childhood center, not at the elementary school. And our goal for the kindergarten year is to see if Julianna can function in the classroom without that support, because only then can we explore the possibility of sending her to Catholic school with her brothers.

I spent all week watching her outdo the expectations for a child with Down’s. They think she needs special P.E. because she’ll need help with stamina navigating a school so big. Knowing my child, I shook my head and smiled. I smiled bigger three days later when she pushed a stroller containing a child almost as big as she is up a huge hill, down the hill, around the corner, 2/3 of a mile from the fire station to our house. Stamina: check.

I watched her name colors and identify letters, and shook my head at 65% special instruction, because she really isn’t much behind other almost-5-year-olds in terms of her knowledge…only in speech.

And then, as I worked on a music list before choir practice yesterday afternoon, she settled at my feet with the cards from the “Your Baby Can Read” box. I’ve ceased to wonder why she’s interested in a bunch of cards with no pictures, only words; she just likes shuffling through them. In the middle of scribbling notes to myself, Julianna uttered her usual “pay attention to me” grunt. I turned around to see her making a sign I didn’t recognize: her hands crossing in front of each other repeatedly, as if drawing attention to her ribs. “I don’t know that sign,” I said, but she kept signing insistently. I glanced at the card on her lap. It said “zebra.” “Zebra?” I said halfheartedly.

“Euh!” she said happily, and signed all the more furiously.

I frowned, trying hard to squelch the leap in my chest, and turned to the computer. And I found this link. And my breath caught.

My girl can’t talk, but she can read…at least a little.

My breath caught, because now I know I have reason to fight for what I always said I wanted for her.

Published in: on January 19, 2012 at 8:29 am  Comments (7)  
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“Eyes Ahead”

If you’ve never been walking with Julianna when she runs smack into something at eye level, you might not understand why we laughed so hard when this book came home in her backpack.

My name is Julianna.

This is a story about keeping my eyes ahead.

Sometimes when I walk,
I look down at the ground.

When I look down at the ground,
I can run into things and get hurt.

Sometimes I run into walls.
It is not safe to run into walls.

Sometimes I run into doors.
It is not safe to run into doors.

Sometimes I run into friends.
It is not safe to run into friends.

If I keep my eyes ahead,
I will not run into my friends.
I will be safe.

If I keep my eyes ahead,
I will not run into doors.
I will be safe.

If I keep my eyes ahead,
I will not run into walls.
I will be safe.

My name is Julianna.
I will keep my eyes ahead.
I will be safe.

Well…at least we know what language to use now!

Published in: on January 5, 2012 at 7:55 am  Comments (3)  
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A Kerfuffle About Doughnuts (or, The Rules Apply to Special Needs Kids, Too!)

Doughnut covered with coconut flakes

Image via Wikipedia

By the time I got there, Alex was crying.

It began, as far too many of these encounters do, with Julianna. She took advantage of the fact that her parents were caught in conversations after church and helped herself to someone else’s juice cup. We saw her, but the people talking to us were not to be sidetracked. “Alex,” Christian said, “go get the cup away from Julianna.”

I shot Christian a glare; it’s totally inappropriate to saddle Alex with this task—for one thing, because it encourages his bossy side, but at a more basic level, Julianna doesn’t recognize his authority and it always gets ugly—but I couldn’t get out of the conversation. (I mean I couldn’t get out of it. You know the type.)

By the time I got disentangled, Alex was huddled on the floor crying with a grownup leaning over him and Julianna continuing to drink someone else’s juice in blissful…or should I say willful…unawareness of the drama playing out behind her back.

The Julianna damage was done, so I focused on Alex. I drew him into a hug, comforting him, whispering in his ear that he was in the right, no matter what the adults said.

The man looked abashed. “He tried to take the juice from her,” he said, “and I told him it would be nice of him to let her have it.”

How can I respond? He doesn’t know the history of the Julianna-versus-the-doughnut-war. For several weeks this summer, the choir had to warm up in the room where coffee and doughnuts are served after Masses. No matter what we did, she always managed to figure out when I was focused on conducting, and slip in to steal a sweet treat. Once, we managed to keep her out of them until we were packing up to head over to church. By then, the last Mass had let out and the line of people waiting for doughnuts had begun to file past the boxes. While we were stacking books and answering questions, Julianna walked straight to the front of the front of the line and grabbed a doughnut right in front of an adult…WHO LET HER DO IT.

The next week, we resolved to win the battle. We dragged her away from the table three times. She knew the rules, and was responding with a petulance that proved it. And yet the fourth time we looked her way, there she sat, eating a doughnut with one of the women staffing the table, who (it transpired) had given her one despite Alex protesting that she wasn’t allowed. (A child with special needs is never as clueless as they want you to think they are.)

Are you getting the idea, people? THE GROWNUPS ARE THE PROBLEM.

You think she’s cute, and she is. You feel sorry for her, and you decide the rules don’t apply because she has Down syndrome/cerebral palsy/autism/fill in the blank. You don’t want to be a jerk to a child with special needs, or you think they don’t understand, so you treat them as if the rules that apply to everyone else don’t apply to them, because of their disability.

It sounds ugly, but be honest. If a “normal” child came up and tried to butt in line ahead of you and steal a doughnut, would you let him? If a “normal” child took a cup of juice from your table, would you chuckle and say “oh, how cute”? No way! You’d be firm, tell them “no,” and possibly mutter about their parents.

Think for a minute. What if my child had celiac disease? What if she was diabetic? Forget all that, let’s just talk about life. If you decide that standards of behavior don’t apply to kids with special needs, how are they supposed to turn into anything but self-centered jerks who use manipulation and a victim complex to make life living hell for everyone around them?

Kids know better. I’ve yet to see a kid that let Julianna get away with anything. Kids come to the parents and say, “Miss Kate, Julianna pushed me!” exactly as they would if the name was “Alex” or “Nicholas.” No, it’s the grownups who are the problem.

I’m fully aware that as Julianna’s parents, it’s our job to teach her acceptable and unacceptable behavior—not yours. Believe me, we’re working on it. But you make our task far more difficult when you apply double standards in the way you treat children. You add bricks to the wall that separates her from integrating into society. Because though you may think you’re acting with compassion, other children see only injustice.

And they’re right.

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Published in: on August 11, 2011 at 5:54 am  Comments (16)  
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Pixie vs. My Little Linebacker: Smackdown!

I always expected that Nicholas would leapfrog past Julianna by the age of two, and that they would switch places in the family, he taking the position of role model, she becoming the one who looks up and tries to imitate.

It turns out it’s not that simple. This isn’t going to be a deep, insightful blog post, but I thought it might paint an interesting picture of life with Down syndrome to try to show the dynamics of these two children’s development.

In many ways, my little ones are still twins. As Nicholas grows and Julianna stays tiny and pixielike, they’re starting to look the part—enough that a mom at a birthday party the other day was shocked to discover Julianna was two years older.

The place I really expected the difference to manifest was in speech, and I was right. At 2 ¼, Nicholas is a little parrot, repeating every sound combination he can figure out, and making hilarious guesses at all the rest. We’re constantly trying to decipher what he’s trying to say, because 75% of the time he’s trying to communicate. “Five plus two,” Alex yelled from the living room the other day, and from the level of my knees, where Nicholas was helping pull dishes out of the dishwasher, I began hearing “I…puh…too. I…puh…too.” He doesn’t bother with details like closing consonants—or midword consonants, for that matter. “Daddy” becomes “Da-ee,” doggie becomes “dah-ee,” and so on.

Meanwhile, Julianna continues to communicate by yelling, pointing, grunting and signing. She has the same three or four words she’s had for quite a while: “mmmmmmmmmAH!” (moon), “d-d-d-da!” (dog), “bBAH!” (ball), and so on. (1. Yes, they all have exclamation points at the end. Speech is hard for her, and she puts her whole body into the effort.) (2. “Mama” and “dada” are not on the list, but “Ba-ba”, grandpa/grandma, makes an occasional appearance.) I’m trying now to stop responding to her demands for drinks unless she says “wawa” or “mmmmmmmuh.”

But speech delay does not mean an equivalent delay in cognition. For Julianna, the difficulty in speech is physical. Speech is largely a physical task. With “hypotonia” (low muscle tone), every physical task is harder—thus, she didn’t walk till 2½ (although the last ½ year of that delay had more to do with major illness than low muscle tone). Speech requires your tongue to do incredibly tiny, complex movements in quick succession. For one who struggles with all physical tasks, speech is bound to be delayed—but that doesn’t mean understanding lags equally.

Emotionally, Nicholas is still far behind his big sister. He follows instructions better, but it’s not because she doesn’t understand. It’s because she doesn’t want to comply…because it’s hard. I’ll hand her a pair of underwear and say, “Put on your underpants,” and she’ll hang her head and stare at my midsection, she’ll yell and point to the music box playing in the background, she’ll sign “book”—anything to avoid the task at hand. At least three times during the dressing process each morning, I have to count backward from 5. If she’s in a good mood, she hops to as soon as I start. On a bad day, I get all the way to one. But she always does the job in the end.

She understands. Oh, yes, she does. She just knows there’s something different about her, and she’s figured out how to use it to her advantage.

Another example: evening chores. At the table one night, Christian told Alex his new job was sweeping under the table after dinner, and that the little ones would take over his old job, clearing the table. Of the two little ones, Nicholas was the first one finished. We told him to take his plate to the dishwasher. Next thing I knew, Miss Stealth herself had slid down from her chair and was plodding across the kitchen floor carrying her own plate, without even being told.

Consider this your lesson in interaction with children with disabilities. Difficulty in speech does not an equally-slow brain make.

Julianna is toilet trained—Nicholas is about 1/3 of the way there. They both recognize about half the letters of the alphabet. Julianna can say “k” (when she really wants to, but it’s hard) while Nicholas still skips it or substitutes “t/d”.

Well, I’m getting long…time to stop. But we’re uniquely positioned to be able to visualize how incredibly complex is the nature of developmental delay, and I wanted to try to share that with all you fine people. I’m interested to hear from you: did this give you an “aha” moment? Was this something you already knew? Can you share examples from your own experience?

Published in: on July 12, 2011 at 6:05 am  Comments (2)  
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Being Cute Gets Her Out of Jams

Signing "Daddy" at bedtime: being cute keeps her out of jams.

Julianna has a pair of pajamas covered with strawberries. It says, “Being cute gets me out of jams.”

I bought it for her, partly because we love strawberries and it’s a darned sight better than Disney Princess pajamas. (Or Dora, or Tink, or any other licensed character. I can’t tell you how much I loathe licensed character stuff…at least, for girls. Not the superhero boy stuff, just the girls’ stuff. Yes, it’s irrational.) But there was another reason. As soon as I saw that pajama set, I said, “Holy cow. That’s Julianna. Right there, in a nutshell.”

She’s entering a tricky stage—one I expect to last, uh, the rest of her life, based on what I hear about people with Down syndrome. Most kids grow in understanding of appropriate behavior parallel to their increasing communication skills (both receptive and expressive). But Miss Munchy has an uncanny knack for reading people. She can pounce on a moment of weakness like no other child I know. She is selectively deaf to her name, and she’s learned that if she answers the question “Do you understand?” with a poker face, she might very well get away with doing what she’s been told not to do—because after all, the grownups will never know for sure that she’s actually disobeying. She knows they’ll question whether she actually gets it.

She knows how to work the system, my girl, and she’d be on a fast track toward “intolerable” if not for the fact that she’s so stinking cute.

With small children, it’s hard to figure out how much of what transpires is actually processing in their mysterious little brains. Sometimes you can see the processing going on, but you never know what conclusions they’re going to draw. This is one of the (many) reasons I’m a baby mommy and an older child mommy, but not so much a toddler mommy. I find it incredibly intimidating to guide them through this critical developmental time when I’m essentially walking blind in the dark. And with Julianna, this stage—like all others—is a long one.

Even so, I’ll take her as she is. The more time passes, the more I realize how perfectly suited this particular little girl is to be my daughter. Independent-minded, enjoying time alone, a budding bookworm who doesn’t demand that I have tea parties with her (shudder), a dusky laugh and the goofy sense of humor that makes bedtime so much fun (even if brushing teeth is not)…God gives each of us the children we need, but He outdid Himself with this one.

Published in: on June 22, 2011 at 5:11 am  Comments (7)  
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Teaching Chores…What A Chore

“Mommy,” Alex said as he reluctantly brought his plate and cup around the peninsula to the dishwasher, “when are Julianna and Nicholas going to have to start clearing the table?”

“Well,” I said, “Julianna’s probably old enough already, I guess.”

But it took another two weeks for me to make her do it for the first time. See, she’s a slow eater. And often I’m working on dishes or something else by the time she’s done. And she makes such a ridiculous mess of herself, and she has to use the toilet after dinner, and taking care of those things are such a hassle that I just don’t feel like adding the hassle of teaching Julianna a chore.

But therein lies the danger point. Because if I only teach Alex the concepts of responsibility and family duty and work ethic, I’m setting myself up for a lot of problems with my younger kids down the line.

In the past two days, people online and in person have been venting about their children’s sense of entitlement, their lack of gratitude for—or even awareness of—what their parents do for them. Dishes, cooking, laundry, making lunches, cleaning house, chauffering…parents do all this stuff in order to facilitate their children’s childhood: sports, lessons, etc. “Don’t do what I did,” one mother admonished me. “Don’t do it all for them.”

We haven’t required much of Alex in his early years. His first “chores” consist of self-care in the morning and evening. When he doesn’t flush the toilet, he has to clean the bathroom (that’s an attempt at a “natural consequence” kind of discipline). I’ve hesitated to pile work on him. I want him to be a child. But at what point does that change?

Generally, when I start hearing the same message from multiple sources, I regard that as a sign. Which I suppose means the answer to that question is “now.”

And this wraps back around to the beginning. I remember the oldest child of a large family expressing how frustrating it was for her that her parents never made the younger children learn the jobs they’d taught her. It was so much easier to just tell her to do what needed doing, rather than taking the time to teach the younger ones. There was so much to do, after all, with all those little ones running around, it’s natural to take the path of least resistance. But it’s not fair to the oldest child, and it’s shortsighted to boot.

All this is more complicated in our family because Julianna is so delayed. There’s a reason Julianna hasn’t been assigned the basic “chores” yet. She can’t even do them. And yes, it is far, far easier to brush her teeth and wash her body than it is to give her the soap and watch her smear it in her eyes (yes, she does do that. Repeatedly. It takes her many repetitions to learn things, you know). But this repeating message also tells me it’s time to start pushing Julianna out of the “I do it for you because it’s easier and takes less time” nest.

So: my mid-year goal: by Christmas, my little ones will be toilet trained. Julianna will be dressing & washing herself, and brushing her own teeth.

Okay. The goal is set. Onward, mothering warrier.

(This goal makes me too tired to end with an exclamation point.)

Published in: on April 27, 2011 at 5:33 am  Comments (4)  
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7 Quick Takes

__1___

I suppose it was, um, highly optimistic to expect that I would get much work done during Spring Break.

___2___

It’s been a while since I referred to Julianna as “cousin It.” And although she still screams when we have to comb her hair after she’s gotten food in it (daily, IOW), she’s actually beginning to be a teeny tiny bit girly. I put her hair up in pigtails for the first time in almost a year, and she giggled at the sight…and left them in. And the next day, I asked if she wanted pigtails again, and she screamed with excitement. In a fit of delight at finally having a girl to primp, I bought special butterfly barretts for her! And she promptly pulled them out. Oh, well. Incremental steps.

___3___

Nicholas has always taken his sweet time about crossing the milestones. If I was a first-time parent, I’d probably freak, but especially after Julianna…it’s hard to rattle me. But now, at age two (he celebrated his birthday last week), Nicholas is finally attempting to talk. He’d crossed the threshold of about a dozen words when he handed a book to me, pointed to a certain round letter and said, “Aaauuuooooooooooohhhh.” Since then, he’s picked up “A,” “B,” “C,” and “D” as well. It’s so exciting to see him tuning in to that celestial aerial.

___4___

Speaking of which, Julianna, too, is showing signs of letter comprehension. She’s pointed to “A” and tried to say it, too, but her “A” comes out more like “Ah.” I’m beginning to differentiate tiny variations in her vowels.

___5___

Christian's reaction to this picture? "I'm telling you, we're gonna have trouble with this one!"

But we were speaking of Nicholas. Did I mention that Nicholas celebrated his second birthday by throwing the first real tantrum we’ve ever had in this house? And that he continued to throw them daily for a week? Slowly, we’re learning to cope, to recognize the signs and head them off. I think that naps are a factor (the Tantrum Week was my week to pick up at school) and so is blood sugar. But the thought of a tantrum still makes me quake in my mommy shoes. So anyway, yesterday a parent of a student walked in–this is a family I taught before kids, and who are returning now–and they were oohing and ahing over the children. Nicholas peeked from around the banister, and the mom’s first reaction was, “Oh, that one’s going to be trouble for you!” Which I thought was an astonishing first impression, considering how often my husband has said this same thing (for an illustration, see here).

___6___

Alex has begun taking piano “lessons” from his daddy. And he’s really excited about it. Which is really exciting to me. I got all sniffy and sentimental watching my boys at the piano–so much so that I had to go get the camera. He won’t take from Daddy long-term, but for an introduction it works. They went out and bought him his very first piano books yesterday.

___7___

Last Friday night we got home from a family outing to Catfish Corner to find a long box full of plants from Michigan Bulb, containing the flowers and strawberries I ordered for planting this spring. The package bore a stern note admonishing me to get them in the ground TODAY IF POSSIBLE, because Michigan Bulb prides itself on sending plants at the ideal planting time for my region. I find great irony in the timing of its arrival…considering that the temperatures were nosediving into a 6-inch snowstorm. :)

Have a great weekend, everybody!

7 quick takes sm1 7 Quick Takes Friday (vol. 122)

Published in: on April 1, 2011 at 5:25 am  Comments (3)  

I’m not a Toddler Mom…And That’s Okay

7:30 a.m., breakfast finished, and both my little ones transfixed by the sight of themselves on the TV screen: I finally finished editing a year’s worth of home video and decided to let them watch it this morning.

Home videos show so clearly how beautiful life is. Like scrapbooks, they catch the cutest moments, the best memories, and preserve them to be trotted out as a reminder that all of life brims over with sweetness.

And yet lately, I’ve been wrestling a single inner conflict over and over: how to enjoy the moment while acknowledging that not all of it is pretty to look at, much less live through.

I’ve come to a realization in the last few weeks—one that perhaps should have been obvious, but wasn’t. A wonderful lady I know opened my eyes a couple of weeks ago when she commented on my first post on this topic:

“The older he got, the better mother I became. Some women are baby/toddler mothers. I was not one of them. Give me a teenager any day!”

That is the most liberating thought I think I’ve ever heard.

Some parents thrive on early childhood, and mourn its passing. Me? Well…I love little kids—especially mine. ;) They’re cute, they do adorable things, they’re cuddly. But man! the stakes are high. This is when children learn everything that will shape their world view until the day they die. Of course, no attitude is impervious to change, but the mindset instilled in early childhood is the bedrock of all that comes later. This is true for attitudes, belief systems, and coping strategies, but also for life skills. This is the stage when you have to teach them that no matter how bad they feel, they have to get to the toilet before they throw up. You have to teach them to put their clothes on, to brush their teeth, to put things away—all the self-care skills that we take for granted. Teaching them takes more time and energy than doing it for them (especially when you have a child with special needs). Not only is this stage super-important, but it comes with a heaping side of parental frustration: testing behavior, tantrums, demanding, whining, lots of breakages, and that tiny thing called toilet training.

My husband thinks babies are blobs. No baby is cute; they all look the same—including ours. Around 14-18 months, he really starts enjoying them. “I like them when they can interact with you,” he says.

Now, this does not mean he’s in absentia for the first year. He plans for their future, changes diapers, holds and rocks babies. But it’s a labor of love for him, without much return. He’s just not a baby person.

I am a baby person. But I’ve known since I was a kid that I am not a “toddler/preschool” person. I loathe playing. Once, when I fought with my little sisters, my mom punished me by making me play with them for an hour. Let me tell you—Barbie dolls? PARALYZING boredom! I was on my way to the longest hour of my life when I finagled my way out of it by offering to read them one of my stories. Thus passed the punishment with enjoyment instead of agony. ;)

I’m fully aware that part of my frustration with this part of childhood is a result of overexposure. After all, when Alex was little, I thrived on it; I kept my cool when he tested, thought my way rationally through the tough times. It was empowering to realize I could handle the “terrible two’s.” But with the baby beginning to outpace his big sister right at the testing/skill-learning stage, and her passing so very slowly through it, I’m oversaturated. At least once a day I think, “And you really want to do this all again?”

Alex is coming out of that stage now. The foundations have been laid, and I’m pretty happy with what I see rising from it. I relish his curiosity, his questing, imaginative mind, and his devotion to his friends and family members.

I know I have years of worry left ahead of me. Another five or six years, and hormones are going to kick in. Who knows what the results will be? But I do know this:  we have a foundation of trust to help us through the teenage years. That’s a really gratifying thing to realize, and so for now, I have to struggle through the foundation-laying for my other children. It’s my turn to act in love, even when it’s hard and sometimes unrewarding.

Published in: on March 8, 2011 at 8:14 am  Comments (6)  
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