Over a month ago, I read a blog that sent me into a whirlwind blogging frenzy. Per his usual, my blogging guru Stuart posted an entry that inspired me to exam more closely than I wanted my horrid temper and lack of patience with my children. In Stu's
Stand Up Comedy, he describes a situation between his son and himself and the actions of a bored tired boy. While I recognize that Stuart does "lose his stuff" on some things, overall his approach to raising his boys is nearly the polar opposite of mine. He lets his boys pee outside and watch the Simpsons while I go crazy if Z drips on the seat and I don't even let Z watch Sponge Bob let alone the Simpsons. I have a huge appreciation for Stu and his Lovely Bride's more laid back style despite my, as previous entry's have pointed out, up tight ways that just may suffocate my children .
ANYWAY, I wrote the temper/discipline blog as honest as I could and for that reason I suppose I am too chicken to post (Sorry Stu -- not there yet with putting it out there!) Boils down to - I ride Z too hard but in the moment I can't seem to remember that I need to chill. Only after time and I simmer down do I realize how I overreact. I am not a patient mother and again times like right now I am embarrassed and hurt that I would ever yell at Z for the things I do and I don't want him to remember me like that or far worse to become like that. Anyone have ideas on how to remove the cob that is shoved pretty far up my hind end? Kudos to Chad to try and balance my skitzo ways with some stable parenting!
So then my sister in law sends the following Mother's Day Post and provides me with another gentle reminder to take it easy, down a notch, and love my children for time is rushing by me as they grow and change every day. I pray that I will remember to Live in the Moment - not worry about pee dribbles or why Z can't sit still for dinner or gets out of bed for the 10th time to tell me he had MacNCheese for lunch at school. I want to enjoy that Rylee is crawling and cruising instead of groaning in frustration that I can't get anything done because she is getting into things. I truly do want to take time with my children like Stuart did to talk not yell about actions and consequences when the time calls for it and I want to just let it go when in the grand scheme of life it really isn't a big deal.
So the challenge to me and to anyone willing to try --
LIVE IN THE MOMENT! By Anna Quindlen, Newsweek Columnist and Author: All my babies are gone now. I say this not in sorrow but in disbelief. I take great satisfaction in what I have today: three almost-adults, two taller than I am, one closing in fast. Three people who read the same books I do and have learned not to be afraid of disagreeing with me in their opinion of them, who sometimes tell vulgar jokes that make me laugh until I choke and cry, who need razor blades and shower gel and privacy, who want to keep their doors closed more than I like. Who, miraculously, go to the bathroom, zip up their jackets and move food from plate to mouth all by themselves. Like the trick soap I bought for the bathroom with a rubber ducky at its center, the baby is buried deep within each, barely discernible except through the unreliable haze of the past.
Everything in all the books I once poured over is finished for me now. Penelope Leach., T. Berry Brazelton., Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling rivalry and sleeping through the night and early-childhood education, have all grown obsolete. Along with Goodnight Moon and Where the Wild Things Are, they are battered, spotted, well used. But I suspect that if you flipped the pages dust would rise like memories. What those books taught me, finally, and what the women on the playground taught me, and the well-meaning relations --what they taught me, was that they couldn't really teach me very much at all.
Raising children is presented at first as a true-false test, then becomes multiple choice, until finally, far along, you realize that it is an endless essay. No one knows anything. One child responds well to positive reinforcement, another can be managed only with a stern voice and a timeout. One child is toilet trained at 3, his sibling at 2.
When my first child was born, parents were told to put baby to bed on his belly so that he would not choke on his own spit-up. By the time my last arrived, babies were put down on their backs because of research on sudden infant death syndrome. To a new parent this ever-shifting certainty is terrifying, and then soothing. Eventually you must learn to trust yourself. Eventually the research will follow. I remember 15 years ago poring over one of Dr. Brazelton's wonderful books on child development, in which he describes three different sorts of infants: average, quiet, and active. I was looking for a sub-quiet codicil for an 18-month old who did not walk. Was there some thing wrong with his fat little legs? Was there something wrong with his tiny little mind? Was he developmentally delayed, physically challenged? Was I insane? Last year he went to China . Next year he goes to college. He can talk just fine. He can walk, too.
Every part of raising children is humbling, too. Believe me, mistakes were made. They have all been enshrined in the, 'Remember-When- Mom-Did Hall of Fame.' The outbursts, the temper tantrums, the bad language, mine, not theirs. The times the baby fell off the bed. The times I arrived late for preschool pickup. The nightmare sleepover. The horrible summer camp. The day when the youngest came barreling out of the classroom with a 98 on her geography test, and I responded, 'What did you get wrong?'. (She insisted I include that.) The time I ordered food at the McDonald's drive-through speaker and then drove away without picking it up from the window. (They all insisted I include that.) I did not allow them to watch the Simpsons for the first two seasons. What was I thinking?
But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of them, sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.
Even today I'm not sure what worked and what didn't, what was me and what was simply life. When they were very small, I suppose I thought someday they would become who they were because of what I'd done. Now I suspect they simply grew into their true selves because they demanded in a thousand ways that I back off and let them be. The books said to be relaxed and I was often tense, matter-of-fact and I was sometimes over the top. And look how it all turned out. I wound up with the three people I like best in the world, who have done more than anyone to excavate my essential humanity. That's what the books never told me. I was bound and determined to learn from the experts. It just took me a while to figure out who the experts were.
