7QT

___1___

I wrote yesterday about teaching a holistic, healthy sexuality to our children. I’d love to have more perspectives from parents of older kids. Hint, hint. :)

___2___

As long as I’m asking for advice, I have a sleep question. Michael is now four months old, and he’s having a lot of trouble sleeping during the day. He’s actually slept through the night a few times (gasp! I didn’t know babies did that!) but it’s kind of frustrating during the day. I nurse him to sleep, put him down, he wakes up. Rinse & repeat. Very tiresome, frankly. With the other kids, schedules and nice long naps seemed connected to the “learn to put yourself to sleep” stage–i.e., the let them cry stage. But I’ve never done that until they were at least nine months old–into the object permanence stage. I’m really hesitant to do that with Michael so early. But he’s got to sleep longer than five minutes in a shot!

___3___

I know the first piece of advice is going to be sling/snugli. I did pull out the Snugli last night so I could go outside with my family and enjoy the evening. But a) he didn’t sleep, and b) while I can walk behind my kids with a baby slung across my front, I cannot bend down, throw baseballs, help kids learn to bat and pedal tricycles. So I’m really in a quandary, seeking solutions to the sleep issue. Because a baby who’s tired doesn’t do well with tummy time and learning to play with toys, and so on.

___4___

This week I served as adjudicator for our diocesan music enrichment day. I went into it with a fair amount of nerves. Partly that was because the logistics were so complicated. We had to figure out how to get Alex to his Harry Potter spring break theater camp, which began at the same time I had to be on site in a town half an hour away. And I couldn’t keep the baby with me, because the schedule was so compact. So I had to bring the sitter with me, and figure out how to keep the kids safe and entertained with a sitter. Very complex logistically. I kept having visions of Julianna running off while Michael was inconsolable. Fortunately, like most fears these proved unfounded.

___5___

The other nerves came from the fact that the very first ensemble I critiqued was my gradeschool alma mater, led by my high school band director. However, it proved to be very enjoyable, and a nice chance to catch up with a teacher who had a big influence on me, but whom I haven’t seen in a long time. All in all, it was an experience both energizing and exhausting.

___6___

I have a short fiction work up today. Wondering if it works; I’ve been trying to write this scenario for several years and I still don’t think I’ve nailed it.

___7___

I’m coming up with nothing but boring stuff now, so…have a great weekend!

7 quick takes sm1 7 Quick Takes Friday (vol. 168)

Published in: on March 30, 2012 at 7:04 am  Comments (5)  

Preschool Hassles (a 7QT post)

Nicholas needs to go to preschool. He’s extremely precocious and determined that it’s his turn right now. He puts on Julianna’s shoes, shoulders her purse, and says, “I’m going to ‘chool now. I will see you on Wednesday.”

To keep the expense and inconvenience factor low, we planned to send him to the early childhood special ed center in our neighborhood as a peer mentor next year. A peer mentor is a typically-developing child who models appropriate behavior and skills for the kids with special needs. We had Alex screened when he was four, but eventually decided his entire toddlerhood had revolved around Julianna, and he needed something just for him. That’s not the case with Nicholas, so I called up the school district a while back to schedule the “DIAL” screening. And this week, we went. I came out with my ears smoking.

One: not family friendly.

The cover letter for the paperwork (which I didn’t get till I got there) included this: Please bring only the child to be evaluated, in order to avoid distraction. I understand that, but what are my options? Hire a babysitter? I don’t think so! This is the next in a long line of un-family-friendly policies that smack me in the face on a daily basis…such as the concert that would have made me buy a ticket for my three week old baby. If you want people to bring up a new generation of concert goers, don’t make it so hard for them to come!

But I digress.

Two: the paperwork annoyance.

On the phone I was told I had to fill out “a couple of pages.” Which means four.

Three: none of your business.

As part of the health form, I had to tell the school district whether he rides in a car seat and whether he wears a helmet while riding a bike. While I appreciate the safety concerns (of course he rides in a car seat. Duh, it’s the law!), the answers to those questions have no bearing on the school district. It is simply none of their business. This is part of that “mission creep,” for lack of a better word, that makes medical professionals try to be developmental experts (i.e. the questions they ask at well child visits. I know I’m in the minority in this, but eh bien, that’s my opinion).

Four: not family friendly, part two

On the forms, I was required to provide names and birth dates for all other children living in the household. They left me two blanks. Imagine me hissing with (overdone, I admit it) righteous anger as I had to write Michael in the blank space beneath.

Five: the guilt complex

When it was all over, Nicholas scored in the 60th and 80th percentile on cognition and communication, but only the high 40s on physical skills. Which makes him marginal for acceptance into Title 1 preschool. Because…are you ready? He can’t cut with a scissors, and he can’t hop on one leg. I thought, Are you KIDDING me? Give this kid a scissors and he’ll learn to use it in three minutes. After he shreds my couch.

Six: the bait and switch

And after all this annoyance, it turns out that they “generally don’t accept peer mentors until age four.” I wanted to say, “Well, sure, that makes sense, but don’t you think somebody could have told me that BEFORE I waited six weeks till you decided he was old enough to make the appointment, and BEFORE we waited three more weeks for the appointment, and BEFORE we spent an hour and a half that we could have all spent doing more productive things?”

Seven: the up side

But at least now I’m looking for other preschool opportunities for him. And those are opportunities that may be better in the long run, anyway.

Have a great weekend!

7 quick takes sm1 7 Quick Takes Friday (vol. 167)

Published in: on March 23, 2012 at 5:28 am  Comments (8)  
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The Passing of the Baby Years

Alex, April 2005

It crept up on me, this wistfulness. A  feeling that these days are slipping away like pearls through my fingers. The way he looks at me and the wiggles settle into stillness. The way his whole face lights up when he smiles, just because I looked at him and said hello. Moments that make my heart hiccup.

It was the end of a long, very busy and chaotic day. Both sets of grandparents in the house, and Next Littlest Brother bouncing off the walls from birthday cake (in the middle of Lent) and presents. By 7:30,  Michael vibrated like a coiled spring, his little muscles taut, his head batting from side to side.

Julianna, March 17, 2007 in the PICU

My mother, with the slow gentleness she only exhibits toward grandbabies, settled him against her chest and took him upstairs. I followed, a moth drawn to a flame. She laid him down on the carpet in

the hallway, speaking softly to him as the shrieking glee continued downstairs. “It’s time to get you settled down, little boy,” she said, and his face nearly split with joy, legs and arms kicking wildly. “Does your mama have something more comfortable to put you in?”

I retrieved his sleeper, and we continued to sit there, two grown women reduced to helpless adoration by a fourteen-pound child. And a deep pang spread outward from the center of my chest, crushing breath for a moment. Because this stage is passing away and if, as I expect, we have to call it at four, I’m experiencing it for the last time.

“I don’t remember this stage with the others,” I said softly. “I’m trying to really live in the moment…but I don’t remember it with the others. I keep hoping once it’s all past, from a distance I’ll be able to pull it out, I’ll be able to look back and remember. Really remember. But I’m afraid it’s just going to be gone.”

Nicholas, March 2009

My mother’s hand brushed over his body. “It’s going to be gone,” she said, the voice of experience. “And grandchildren are different.”

I bent down and pressed myself against the tiny body, willing my nerves to capture the sensation and hold it, knowing they aren’t capable. And I wondered: am I really ready to move on? For a moment, weakened uterine walls and early deliveries and NICU stays and the sheer chaos of daily life with four children, one of whom has special needs–all of it disappeared into petty nothingness against the emptiness of life After Babies.

Because let’s face it, I’m a baby person. Two years from now I’ll be pulling my hair out over Michael, who will be saying “no” and breaking things and wanting me to play with him (blech!). Right now, his desires and mine are in nearly perfect unison. I want to touch him and talk to him and hold him, and he wants to be touched and talked to and held. Not that there aren’t frustrations–there are–and of course, not having to wash diapers every 48 hours, and being able to sleep at night, are big pluses to the later stages. Still, Babyhood is the part I love most about small childhood. Holding someone else’s baby just isn’t the same, at least not for me. There isn’t that visceral reaction, that gut-deep connection between me and this particular child, who is mine to care for, for whom I am the center of the world.

Michael, Dec. 1, 2011

Michael is on my lap now, tired and refusing to nurse, as has been his pattern of late, and reminding me that babyhood isn’t all transcendent moments. We really are stretched to our limit now. The kids we have need us, and there already isn’t enough to go around (how long has it been since I practiced my flute, for instance?). But I understand now how a woman can enjoy a “change-of-life baby” in a way she hasn’t been able to enjoy earlier babies. The kids go off to school, and it’s just Mommy and Baby again, like it was with the first one…only then, she was too freaked out to enjoy it properly.

Will we go that route? Honestly, it’s hard to imagine. My body really is pretty beat up from surgeries, and with three rambunctious boys, Christian sees college bills and car insurance premiums barreling down on us, to say nothing of the big unknown that is Julianna’s future. We have to be responsible.

But it makes me sad.

Published in: on March 22, 2012 at 8:06 am  Comments (9)  
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When Is It Okay To Laugh?

“Julianna, stop grunting and use your words.” Christian rested wrists on the table, fork in hand, and gave her a stern look, which our little pixie met with a bright smile. “Be-deeya blelua bwee!”

Alex collapsed into giggles, which made me chuckle. He has such an adorable laugh.

But at the end of the table, “stern” turned to “severe.” “You DO NOT LAUGH AT YOUR SISTER,” Christian scolded.

Alex’s face collapsed, and I leaped in. “Christian, he wasn’t making fun of her.”

“But this is where it starts.”

“But this isn’t like that,” I said. “We laughed at Nicholas, too, when he said cute things learning to talk.”

We’re entering a brave new world. For the first five years of her life, Julianna has been protected. At all times she’s been shielded from all the potential unkindness of the world by the presence of her family, except when she’s at school–a school walled off and dedicated to children like her. But in a few months, that’s all over. She’ll walk unprotected into a huge school full of kids who have never seen anyone like her, and who, for better or for worse, will have imbibed their parents’ attitudes (like the bozo I argued with all day on Facebook a few weeks ago, who refused to accept that the colloquial use of the word “retard” is demeaning and hurtful to those who actually fit the description, and wouldn’t admit that said usage came into being as an insult directly and knowingly comparing someone you don’t like to someone like my daughter).

Every time I fret about this, friends remind me that little ones are very open-minded. But the mental image of kids making fun of my kid is very strong, based on some conglomeration of memories whose images have become indistinct in detail, but whose essential truth I don’t doubt. I don’t doubt that at some point in her childhood, Julianna will be laughed at, made fun of, made to feel less-than because of her extra chromosome.

And yet.

Not all laughter is cruel. Human interactions are complex things. Every week at choir practice, we banter, we poke fun at each other, we laugh together at each other’s weaknesses. To suggest that no one can ever laugh at Julianna is to deprive her of the richness of these loving exchanges. If no one is allowed to laugh when she says something funny, that sets her up as different, as Other, as surely as making fun of her does.

Laughter is appropriate and loving at times, cruel and soul-killing at others. It’s all in the intention. But how do you teach a child the difference? It has never, will never, would never occur to Alex to make fun of Julianna. He adores his sister, even though she does drive him nuts sometimes. He’s grown up so integrated with life with special needs that he doesn’t even get why Daddy reacted as he did. Alex laughed because  was reacting as a family member reacts to someone he loves. Yet he needs to be aware that cruelty exists, and that he has a responsibility both as a human being and as Julianna’s brother to stand up and call people down when it occurs.

I have no idea how to communicate this without making him hypersensitive, which is also contrary to my goal of making a wall-less world for my daughter and those like her. But somehow, we have to try.

Published in: on March 20, 2012 at 8:36 am  Comments (5)  
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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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A Welcome Detour

Photo by Fuyoh!, via Flickr

Call me dense, but I just realized the other night that the ability to multitask has a downside. Namely, a person who can split hands into one task and brain to another is never fully engaged in either…which means she (read that: “I”) cannot block out distractions.

In the last few weeks, I’ve found it increasingly difficult to concentrate on my work, when it’s time to work. (Yeah, right.) Everything came to a head on Thursday, when I was trying to knock out a rough draft of an assignment that’s been causing me trouble. I don’t want to spend my life repeating I HATE age three, so Friday I resolved to take a day off work and just focus on family and home.

I probably started in the wrong place: two hours in the grocery store and several dozen variations on the words “Julianna, STAY HERE.” Then it was lunch and a conference call about our new local Down syndrome parent network, and up to school to go to Stations of the Cross with Alex. Lo and behold, the day was over, and not one lick of housework had been done. Suddenly I realized why it’s been so hard for me to make headway lately.

And then, of course, there was the swing.

Our wind-up swing is a hand-me-down that looks like this, only with a vinyl seat cover. I love it because it does NOT require batteries, and the wind-up status prevents you from going off and ignoring your child for long periods of time. It’s a tool to be used when Baby really needs movement and Mommy really needs her hands.

I love this swing. So, unfortunately, do the kids. Unfortunately, because a swing that old is not replaceable. The mechanism jammed once before when we over-wound the spring, and Christian spent almost an hour working on it before he got it fixed. So ever since I pulled it out a week ago, I’ve been trying without success to keep little hands off it. We had several battles on Friday, two more at dinnertime–during which Nicholas pushed it higher than it ever swings with a baby in it–and when I went to put Michael in it while I did dishes, it was jammed. Christian tried to fix it, but the old plastic parts inside snapped. Bye-bye, swing.

My frustration reached epic levels. I sometimes call Nicholas a “Destructicon”–rip books, turn off computers, get things out, throw them on the floor, break baby gear. I just want him to STOP IT. But I also know me choking on rage isn’t going to make it happen. I want to enjoy parenthood, not stew over what cannot be changed. And I remember that when Alex was going through this stage, I was the one who had to change first. Only…how? How do you take perfectly justifiable frustration and simply turn it off?

“Tell you what,” Christian said that night, as I vented about the project I couldn’t finish and the kids who break everything and the desire to simply bury myself in a hole where nobody could demand my attention. “Tomorrow I’ll take them to the park for a couple of hours so you can get this writing project done.”

Saturday morning, we tore into housework while we waited for it to get warm outside. And at 10:00, they left. Michael fell asleep, and without two little screaming children in the house, he stayed that way. I sat down at the computer with one final prayer for divine help…and I got the darned thing drafted.

When my family returned home shortly before noon, I felt like a new woman. I hadn’t realized how heavily that particular project was weighing on my stress level. For the rest of the day, I didn’t fret over deadlines or the length of my to-do list. I actually felt like I was taking a day off. I cooked up a table full of unhealthy appetizer goodies to accompany a family movie. I gave baths and got kids ready for bed without once raising my voice. I enjoyed a nice evening with my husband, and at bedtime I felt only lightness and gratitude, where for so long there had been murky, bilious ick.

Sometimes, you just can’t do it by yourself. Thank God I have such a wonderful man to share my life (and my frustrations!) with.

*

Sharing my gratitude with Ann’s community at A Holy Experience

Published in: on March 12, 2012 at 8:19 am  Comments (7)  
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What Luke Skywalker Taught Me About Motherhood

The three lead protagonists of Star Wars, from...

Image via Wikipedia

It was one of those days.To wit:

Michael would not consent to be laid down…all day. Imagine. Every time I tried to make lunch, use the bathroom, or aid another child in a self-care task, I had to endure heartbreaking wails.

Nicholas kept whimpering pathetically, “I want you, Mommy!” (translated: I want to sit on your lap.) Refer to my last.

Nicholas and Julianna bickered, took toys from and pushed each other, causing periodic eruptions of screaming.

I returned to the computer after, I don’t know, changing a diaper, to find a screen display completely rearranged and a mouse on its maximum sensitivity. The screen was just tiled like a triptych–not a big deal–the point was that Nicholas has been handling, moving and breaking everything in sight lately, and he had no reason to be messing with the computer at all. I yelled at him to JUST STOP TOUCHING THINGS, and he stuck his lower lip out and pouted (this kid’s got the guilt routine down, I’m telling you) and whimpered, “I get my twuck.”

“Yes, play with your truck,” I said, clutching the shredded remains of my composure around me like a too-small robe. He got down on all fours under the computer desk…and turned off the computer power strip.

I don’t exactly remember what came out of my mouth before I clamped my lips shut on it, but you might imagine it wasn’t pretty. Not…pretty…at…all. (Stop laughing! I need several months before I can laugh at this story!)

Deep breath, missy. In…..out….in…out.

At the end of this long, hard day, I wanted nothing more than to be left alone. Alex sat down to finish Return of the Jedi. This is a new thing for him, and he’s pursuing it with his usual enthusiasm, running headlong through all three of the oldies in the span of a week. But there are some pretty intense scenes in Jedi–you know, lightning bolt torture–and I needed to tell him when to hide his eyes. So I breezed back and forth from kitchen to office to living room, narrating to Alex what was happening (because let’s be honest, a lot of it’s still over his head).

And as I watched Luke battle his darker nature, as the twin Darths pushed his buttons and dismantled his hope one block at a time, maneuvering him into an emotional corner, I suddenly recognized myself: trying–trying so hard–not to lose it. Knowing the stakes: “Once you start, forever will it dominate your destiny” (what did we ever do for wisdom before Yoda?) Trying to be serene in the face of a repeated bombardment of frustration and desperation. To focus on the choice to love, instead of giving in to my own Dark Side.

Luke finally had enough; the lightsabers came out, and he began his journey toward Ultimate Bad Guy status. But then…then he recognized what was happening. He put the brakes on, threw the weapon away, decided he’d rather die the man he wanted to be than live as everything he’d fought against.

There’s a lesson in there for me. I haven’t worked it all out yet, but I think it has something to do with choosing, time and time again, to get up after I face plant along the Mommy Road.

Like I couldn’t have worked that out for myself. Right?

(Speaking of Star Wars…we just really need some Cello Wars today.)

Published in: on March 8, 2012 at 7:20 am  Comments (10)  
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In The Moment

When your voice rouses me from deep sleep, a hair shy of 4:30 in the morning, I can tell from the intensity of your anger that you’ve been trying to get my attention for several minutes. I went to bed worried about your cough and your lack of appetite, so your energy in protesting my absence is reassuring.

I stretch you out on the table and whisper soothing words while we do the necessary work, and we retreat to the chair in the corner. For all your outrage over being made to wait, you settle into an unhurried pattern of suck-swallow-breathe, your fingers playing with the satin ribbons on my pajamas, their smoothness the first toy you’ve shown interest in.

You fall asleep quickly, and no amount of persuading can convince you to eat on the second side. I pad softly back to your room and swaddle you, but I can tell from the outset that it’s a hopeless cause. You’re already ramping back up into red-faced outrage at the idea. We return to the nursing chair, but you fall asleep without even latching. You just want to be held.

I settle in bed with you against my chest. The ghostly roar of the interstate is muted by the walls. Your father breathes deep of sleep beside us; your siblings’ sighs and low groans punctuate the velvet darkness. But this five a.m. is for us, for you with me. The weight of your tiny body spreads outward and inward and fuses with me, filling up spaces in my soul I didn’t even know were there. It turns out there’s always more room for love.

I pull the blankets up around us in a U, conscious always of your need to breathe. I pat the warm curve of your back until your body stops resisting, and you sleep at last. I drift sleepily on the wave of Spirit that comes when I am living fully in the moment. My baby boy, how I love you.

For a visit home…overnight
the soul-filling silence of a winter afternoon in the country
and a glorious night of stargazing with my oldest
two brief shooting stars
deep darkness outside the windows
and a gentle sunrise that wraps the world around, uninterrupted by other houses

For the smell of my home church wafting out to greet me upon entering the familiar space
and the chance to worship with four generations of my family

For unnamed reconciliations

For morning snuggles with a preschooler in the crook of each arm

For conversations that illuminate yet again how blessed I am in my life
and the conversations that remind me that I can never stop wrestling with the hard questions

Counting to a thousand with Ann, for the first time in quite a while

On In Around button

Published in: on February 27, 2012 at 7:47 am  Comments (10)  
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Nicholas’s Transition

About a month ago, a friend stopped me after church and asked with a little smile, “So how’s life with four?”

I knew what she was asking: transition. “Actually,” I said, “it hasn’t been a big deal this time, as far as the kids go. Everybody’s handling it really well.” But even as she spoke, I recognized something I hadn’t processed until that moment: Nicholas’s increasing behavior problems. Maybe this has just been the grace period, I thought.

As if determined to prove that point, Nicholas spiraled downward into clinginess, acting out, bossiness and refusal to do any “big boy” stuff…overnight. The child who had been proud of his ability to dress himself, wash himself, and brush his teeth suddenly needed everything done for him. He took to repeating sentences and observations over and over…and over…and over. He began demanding to sit on my lap and snuggle, regardless of what else was going on–i.e., even if the baby was nursing. He started dropping whatever he was doing and screeching “I want that!” if someone picked up a toy he’d abandoned. (Or hadn’t noticed until they picked it up.) And he started wetting himself again.

The interesting thing about all this is that it is completely unrelated to his feelings for the baby. Everyone in this house adores Baby Michael unreservedly. The kids even think it’s funny when he cries, and when I come home from grocery shopping or meetings, Nicholas comes running and shrieks, “Da baby is home! Da baby is home!” Not Mommy–the baby. The trouble is not resentment, but insecurity.

Recognizing that his place in the world has been usurped, I have tried to be patient with him, to give him that physical and mental reassurance as much as I can. I vaguely remember Alex going through a similar process when Julianna came along. Not so much with Julianna when Nicholas came along, but then, raising Julianna is another ball game entirely, with entirely different problems to solve.

So I take time to draw him onto my lap and hold him at the computer or on the couch, or whenever he asks…if I can. The problem is, I have to make the boundaries clear. One day we had a pitched battle over the rocking chair in the basement. Michael was freaking out, demanding to nurse while I was trying to teach a voice lesson, so I’d put my student on the “away” side and was working with her on Italian pronunciation while I used the rocker as a footstool to help position Michael for nursing. As soon as Nicholas saw I was splitting my attention between two people, neither of them him, he just had to have the rocker.

Later that afternoon, another friend and mother of four advised that I find something that really means something to him–like a big boy glass–and tie that privilege to him doing what he’s supposed to be doing. At first, I didn’t think it would work, but then he unexpectedly developed an affinity for using the same plates and glass glasses that Alex gets to use. So we’ve been using that lately, and following through on “big boy glass” vs. “little boy glass.” And I tell him he’s the chewiest of my children…which is the truth; his proportion of soft skin to baby fat is absolutely perfect. And I can only pray for patience while he searches for his new stride as a middle child instead of the baby of the family.

(Note: any lack of clarity in this post, I must add, is due to Nicholas putting a hand on my shoulder and speaking loudly into my ear while I write. Just to illustrate the point.)

Published in: on February 23, 2012 at 8:38 am  Comments (6)  
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The Importance of Saying “No” (a practices of mothering post)

Click here for Part 1

Click here for Part 2

There’s a Gospel passage in which Jesus says no man gives his child a snake when they ask for a fish. It’s built in to our love for our children, this desire to fulfill their needs…and their wants. Whatever they ask for–the newest toy or a special treat–we want to tell them yes.

But even God, to whom Jesus is comparing us, doesn’t give us everything we want–because what we want isn’t necessarily what we need.

Growing up, my sisters and I got told “no” a lot. We didn’t go out to eat, we almost never bought treats at the store. (Like Oreo’s. Oreo’s were a huge treat.) We were a farm family in the ’80s, and my parents had to be very frugal. They were also very busy–Dad almost always worked ten hour days, and during planting or harvest, it might be twelve or more. Mom had to be available to help move equipment, haul grain, or run to the dealership for a part. And she grew and preserved most of our vegetables. So the “no”‘s were unavoidable. We didn’t go to the pool very often, and when we did we very rarely bought snacks, and then only the cheapest ones–no candy bars. I can count our amusement park and baseball game trips on one hand. Vacations, for that reason, were a Very.Big.Deal.

It was a very different childhood from that of many of my classmates, whose parents took them to St. Louis to buy school clothes every August. I don’t ever remember shopping for school clothes. We just went downstairs and pulled out the next box from the storage room.

Frankly, I don’t think I got told “no” all that often, because I learned pretty quickly not to ask for a lot. I think at some instinctive level, I could sense how much it would hurt my parents to have to say no. (Although if my memory is skewed, I’m sure my mom will hop in and correct me. It’s wonderful, but sometimes dangerous, to write when you know your parents are reading. :) )

Like all childhood lessons that sting, this is one I have come to value greatly. Self-denial is not a sexy concept–our entire economy is based on self-gratification. But look what it’s led to: an epidemic of debt and obesity. Self-gratification is really dangerous. It’s not intrinsically bad, but it becomes bad at a very low level. And let’s face it: in adulthood, we often have to go without what we need, or think we need.

I want to teach my children the difference between needs and wants. But we don’t face the same necessities that my parents did, and it makes it harder to say no. Their deprivation hurts my heart; their pain hurts me. Yet I know they need to learn to handle not getting what they want. That is a lesson that takes a long time to learn—to handle the word “no” with grace.

So we try to practice moderation, stewardship, and frugality, because those three things all require “no.”

Moderation: food, toys, TV viewing–we try to keep reasonable limits on these things. We have made a rule that there will always be only one television in our house, in order to moderate the temptation.

Stewardship: We steward the environment by recycling, using cloth diapers, and not buying a lot. We practice financial stewardship by saving (and saving and saving) to make any major purchase–for instance, we’ve been saving for almost two years toward an SLR camera, because the darned hospital bills and repairs keep cutting into the project. We keep on a budget, and Alex knows very well that he must practice the piano, not just because he should, but because we’re paying good money for his lessons.

Frugality: When we buy, we do it right, but we don’t buy much. We bought a new TV when I was 8 months pregnant with Alex–a great monster with a picture tube–at the time it was still the best picture quality. That’s no longer the case, and it would be awesome to have an HD TV, but how can we justify the expense? Ours works fine.

I hope these lessons help my children learn that life is measured not by Stuff, but by the quality of their relationships, both with the people in their lives and with the world at large.

What do you do to help your kids learn the importance of “no”?

Click here for part 4

Published in: on February 20, 2012 at 9:00 am  Comments (5)  
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