Monthly Archives: December 2012

Embracing Chaos

A61

or, unParenting unResolutions

“Mama? Big mama? Wake up, big mama. I love you so very very very much.”

This is how Ender sets up the mood for the day—ensuring that no matter what he flushes down the toilet or smashes into pieces with the meat mallet (“How the hell did he find it again? I hid it on top of the fridge!” “Judging by barstool beside the counter, and the stack of boxes on the counter, you don’t want to know.” “Oh, Kee-rist. How has this child not broken any bones yet?”), my first and most brilliant memory of the day is tickling butterfly kisses and expressions of love ultimate from the beloved beast who will spend the day terrorizing the house, the family, and if we let him outside, the neighbourhood.

He is who he is; he is three. He’s careening towards three-and-a-half (see Surviving 3.5 and 5.5: A cheat sheet for an exposition and some almost practical tips and tricks), and three-and-a-half for the boys I birth is the age of chaos. So as I prepare to say goodbye to 2012 and hello to 2013, I know that chaos and the Ender crazy will dominate much of the year.

And I make no resolutions to yell less. Or discipline more. I will lose my temper, and I will yell, and there will be days when, as I survey the destruction wrought by the whirlwind in the kitchen while I absented myself from his side for five minutes, I seriously ponder just how wrong it would be to put him in the dog’s kennel. Just, you know, for a little while. And there will be days—and weeks—when I’ll be counting the hours until bedtime from 11:15 a.m. And days when, as soon as Sean comes home, I will hand over the entire parenting business to him, and lock myself in the bathroom with a bottle—um, glass, I meant to type glass—of wine.

That’s part of the ride; part of the package. I’ve written elsewhere on that the ultimate secret behind parenting is; its close twin is this: every age and stage, every journey has tough stretches, challenging stretches. And they’re all necessary, and most of them are unavoidable, and happiness and peace lie in knowing that they just are. And not seeking perfection, from myself as mother, or from the child.

He’s so lucky, my Ender, my third. His eldest brother broke me in, thoroughly, and no sooner did I start to boast that I had “cracked the Cinder code,” Flora arrived, teaching me that I had learned absolutely nothing about the uniqueness that is her (bar that nursing every hour, every 15 minutes, or, what’s that word, constantly, is kind of normal) from my first years with the Cinder. By the time Ender arrived, all I knew, for sure, was this:

I love him, madly, fully, unconditionally, in all his guises.

He will exhaust me, challenge me, frustrate me, make me scream.

And I will love him still, and love him more.

As far as everything else goes? As he grows, I will learn him slowly, piece by piece, unique need by unique need. Sometimes well, sometimes badly. Sometimes I’ll fail him—and sometimes, I will do right by him even though in the moment he thinks I’m failing him completely. And maybe, at the end of it all, when he’s 30, 40, with his own children—in therapy—maybe he’ll despise me, blame me, reject me. I don’t know. All I know for sure, is this:

I love him, madly, fully, unconditionally, in all his guises.

He will exhaust me, challenge me, frustrate me, make me scream.

And I will love him still, and love him more.

More like this: Sunshine of Our Lives, or, How Toddlers Survive.

Blog Hop Report: I spent some of the weekend blog hopping at the TGIF Blog Hop hosted by You Know it Happens At Your House Too. What a fascinating variety of blogs, people and approaches to life, the universe and blogging.

I’d like to introduce you, if you do not know them already, to three mama-bloggers (but so much more) with attitude:

Jenn at Something Clever 2.0  (Twitter: @JennSmthngClvr)

Teri Biebel at Snarkfest (Twitter: @snarkfestblog)

Mollie Mills at A Mother Life (Twitter: @amotherlife)

And something completely different, a woman who took my breath away with her authenticity and boldness of voice from the first line of the first post I read of hers: Jupiter, “Eco-Redneck,Breeder,Stitch-Witch,Knittiot Savant & Whoreticulturist Extraordinaire” at crazy dumbsaint of the mind. I’m not going to attempt to explain her. If whoreticulturist is not a word that turns you off, the word sapiosexual turns you on, have a visit and get to know her. Otherwise, maybe not. Safe she is not.

Happy reading, happy blogging, happy living, and I will see in 2013. My year of chaos. Your year of… what?

xoxo

“Jane”

P.S. And if you’re having a slow New Year’s Eve at home with your kids and computer, check out Dani Ryan’s The Best of 2012 Blog Hop at Cloudy With a Chance of Wine.

Of Dragons and Dinosaurs

We live near one of the most amazing places on earth, the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology. We’re at the Tyrrell almost every month. By the time Cinder was three, he could identify almost any dinosaur. Flora still thinks she might want to be a palaeontologist when she grows up. And here is Ender, who paid his first visit to the museum when he was six weeks old, and has spent the first three years of his life in a house full of dinosaur books, puzzles, and videos:

Ender to volunteer at Tyrrell Museum: “I like your dragons.”
Volunteer: “They’re dinosaurs.”
Ender: “I call them dragons, because that’s a cooler name. Where your dragons with wings?”
Volunteer: “Um… like the flying reptiles?”
Ender: “No, like my Lego dragon that blows fire.”
Volunteer: “Um… Would you like to hold some fossilized dino poop?”
Ender: “Yuck. No. I want to see real dragons, with wings. Blowing fire. Where are they?”

Albertosaurus and unidentified Ornithomimid at...

Ender, one year ago: A Bear By Any Other Name

Ender, two years ago: Matchmaking

This weekend I’m hopping here:

Another Christmas present: the all-purpose answer to “those questions”

It’s Christmas time. The time to meet and greet Aunt Josephine and answer all those questions that give you ulcers when you start getting dressed to go to that family dinner. This is turning your stomach into knots. Here is my early Christmas present for you.

Take an index card. Write on it:

 “I respect your right to have an opinion on this issue that’s different from mine. However, for the sake of preserving our relationship, I ask that you stop sharing it with me. Thank you.”

Keep it in pocket and when one of them comments or questions comes up – swallow the bite of gingerbread, gulp down the wine, reach into pocket, hand it to conversation partner with a smile, take it back, and start talking about those other dwarf planets. What are they called again?

christmas 2007

Photo (christmas 2007) by paparutzi

Originally published December 10, 2009, Unschooling Canada

More like this: Quote Me: Just Say Nothing

A very, very, very, very short review of Playful Parenting

Cover of "Playful Parenting"

 

This is by request for a friend mama who’s navigating through toddlerhood for the first time, and asked for my thoughts on this book:

Yes, back when I still read parenting books, I did read Lawrence Cohen’s Playful Parenting. Bear in mind this was aeons ago. I do think  there are quite a few useful insights in it, but what  I still remember best is my immediate reaction… which was this

This is a book written by someone who does not spend all day with HIS children for people who don’t spend all day with THEIR children.

The end.

Merry Christmas, from Mythbusters and Cinder

This is really hilarious, but also a little offensive, so if you’ve got bad language sensitivity, click delete / next now. It’s a story from August 6, 2009, when Cinder was about seven, and it’s our Christmas gift to you.

Christmas tree

We were on a crazy Mythbusters marathon, and Cinder and Flora’s absolute favourite episode, which they watched over and over again, was the Holiday Special, in which the Mythbusters test, among other things, the variety of products that are supposed to keep yer X-Mas tree greener, fresher, and needle-full longer.

Remember the episode? They put the trees in a bleach solution, spray one with hairspray, etc etc and one of them gets a “little blue pill” added to its water.

The little blue pill is Viagra, but they don’t say so. The announcer introduces it as the little blue pill, and then one of the Mythbusters does a “well, how do I describe this, people are probably watching this with their kids—Santa’s little helper?” and make a big deal out of it.

Viagra Clock

Anyway—the first time I watched the episode with me kinder, I said without much reflection, “Viagra? They must mean Viagra?” the kids asked what’s Viagra, I said, a little blue pill, apparently not being in a mood to discuss erectile dysfunction with a 7 year old and a 4 year old, and the episode continued.

Having committed the episode to memory over repeated viewings, Cinder at one point starts telling me what the bleach did to the tree (bad things), what the hairspray (pretty good, actually) and other stuff. I, having only watched parts of the show but once, have no real recollection.

“But you know what the best preservative of all was?” he asks.

“What?”

“The little fuck pill.”

“?????”

“You know—the little fuck pill.”

Words I did not expect to come out of MY seven year old’s mouth, ever—yet a strangely appropriate moniker for Viagra. And I’m naturally curious where and by whom he heard Viagra thus described (and am wondering if that’s something that came out of Sean or my mouth at some point? Cause it sounds like something we might say… but would we be so obtuse as to say it in front of the children? Well… maybe…)

“Where… what…” I start to phrase the question.

“You called it another name, remember? It sounded like Vinegar?”

“Viagra.”

“Yeah, Viagra. But on the show, they said, the little blue pill, and they wouldn’t say the name of it, because kids could be watching, remember?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, so I figured it was probably called the fuck pill. Because that’s the word grown-ups never want kids to hear.”

“Oh…”

“But you know how I know it? Fuck?”

“Well…”

“Cause that’s what you and Daddy say whenever you break something.”

Merry Christmas,

Jane

who breaks a lot of glasses

More Broken Glass

Photo (More Broken Glass) by autowitch

More like this: Want to hear all the swear words I know? and Why parents swear

Keeping them close, letting them roam: what to do when children start to push geo-boundaries

Latino Children Play Swing

Each year as they’ve grown out of the sling-and-stroller phase, and particularly after hitting age five, my children have moved to enlarge their physical world. Their physical boundaries.

In a word, they’ve started to roam. Further and further away from my watchful, paranoid eyes.

And letting them do this has… sometimes been easy and natural, an obvious evolution. And sometimes, the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.

I believe that if our relationships with our children are anchored in co-respect and co-trust, and that if a core practice of our parenting is listening to our children and being attuned to their needs, wants, challenges and all that as they grown—and, by extension, by talking to our children about our needs, wants, challenges and concerns and expecting them to listen to us with as much care and attention as we listen to them—then this is an easier field to navigate.

Easier. But not easy.

Cinder and Flora are in the process of expanding the scope of their ranges quite a bit this summer (2009)—not just in terms of the “territory” of the neighbourhood that they feel comfortable in roaming, but in the sorts of things they want to do, the people they want to spend time with.

An example of something easy: Cinder rides his bike in loops around the Common area, and we’re all cool with that, no major discussions of any sort necessary. (Last year, he wasn’t interested in doing that, and if he had, I would have had palpitations!)

An example of something harder: he’s also wandering off the Common and onto the wild hill that abuts it—and his little sister wants to be in tow. That’s pushing a boundary that I’m not comfortable with. I’m not sure if I’d be okay if it was just the seven year old wandering off—the five year old definitely cannot, so neither may. And so we talk about it, and find compromises and solutions:

I’ll sit at the playground bench and watch them—or be within ear shot of them.

Or, they go with a group of kids that includes at least one or two much older kids with a brain and a credit of trust with me…

Or, I put away the computer, the laundry and the supper preparations, and go with them, perhaps hand in hand, perhaps some distance away.

The mid-way point between constant hovering / the type of over-protectiveness that essentially impedes the experience of life and the full development of independent personality and hands-off parenting that borders on (or is) neglect is a type of indirect or unobtrusive oversight. I don’t feel comfortable in letting my children walk the four city blocks to the nearest off-Common playground–because they would be walking a totally empty street, with no one walking down it, no one peeking out a window, no one to hear or see anything if they got hurt or spooked.

But, I feel comfortable having them play on the Common for hours on end, because at any given time, there is a parent, older sibling or cranky octogenerian either passing by, peeking out a window, hanging out on the balcony—and always within the distance of a holler away!

We live in a very community-minded, “we live here because we want to live in a real community” kind of place, and I know that affects my thinking and practices in this area hugely. Would I leave my children alone and unsupervised in a suburban six-foot fenced backyard? I dunno… probably less likely to feel comfortable doing that than letting them roam the unfenced, abutting on a public bike path, Common area.

Another factor that affects my level of comfort with how far they roam is that I know the parents of the children my children are hanging out with. In some cases, the parents are close friends and I trust their children almost as fully as I trust my own. In other cases, I may not know the parents that well—or particularly like them or their parenting!—but I still have a community relationship with them that ensures that 1) if I speak to their children about their behaviour—or their responsibility towards the other children in the community—they will listen to me, at least in the moment and 2) if I have a larger concern, I have an existing relationship with the parents so it’s quite easy to raise the concern with them and with other parents and to address it as a community. Ditto if my children are not behaving responsibility: there are adults around who will call them on it—and who will appraise me of the situation.

What’s your level of comfort? How do you deal with your children’s boundaries? How do you keep them close… and how far do you let them roam… and what factors are critical in determining that for you?

Adapted from May 19, 2009, Unschooling Canada

Quote Me: The Secret to Happiness

Jane's Double Twisted 3D stars2_rev

If there is such a thing as a secret to happiness, I think a critical part of it must be realizing that the only thing you have the power and ability to change is yourself, your lifestyle–and that is, in the long run, the only really effective way of effecting real change on the world.

“Jane,” as she changes strides yet again
(plagiarizing myself from something I wrote  in a completely irrelevant context)

Photo (Jane’s Double Twisted 3D stars2_rev) by mimickr

Forgive the sappy interlude. It had to come out. Now back to regular programming:

Ender: Mama! I just love your breasts! They are like big, soft meatballs!

(Weep). To other weanies and weaners: it was all worth it, of course. All worth it. But. (Weep.)

Most beautiful thing in my in-box over this weekend comes from Deni Lyn Miller at The Diary of a Reluctant Mother who wrote of her son:

My hope for him is that he loves water as much as I love water.
My prayer for him is that no matter what he decides to love, it brings him much joy and peace.

The most important thing parents need to know from my in-box this weekend comes from Roll Over and Play Dad (what’s your name or handle, btw, dude? ROAPD don’t roll off the typing fingers) via his Twitter feed (@AndPlayDad):

If you are offering parenting advice I assume that you only have 1 kid. If you had 2 or more, you would know that all kids are different.

Yup.

Happy Monday. I’m off to change the world. What are you doing?

How I broke my children

It starts innocently:

Ender: I sorry, Daddy!
Sean: Um… why are you sorry, Ender?
Ender: I am sorry. I peed on your sheet. And now I sorry.
Sean: You peed on my sheet? Like, the sheet on my bed?
Ender: I did. I am sorry. Mama giving you a new sheet right now.
Sean: Oh, good.
Ender: I also peed on your pillow.

And I can’t tell you what Sean said next.

a pillow case (or pillow slip), with the pillo...

But I can tell you what Cinder said a little later when:

Ender: I! PEED!
Cinder: Yeah, so did I, Ender. Y’a know what the difference is? I peed in the toilet.
Ender: I peed on your foot.
Cinder: I know!

And then, their mother had a bit of a struggle with a project and:

Jane: Fuck, fuck, fuck!
Cinder: What’s wrong?
Jane: I’m just having a really hard time focusing on my work.
Cinder: I’m having a really hard time getting this Minecraft mod to work properly. Want to swear together?

And then, there was a horrible, horrible conference call, and the mother lost all moral high ground and self-restraint:

Jane (on telephone to editor): Fucking hell, I don’t fucking believe this==the [bleep bleep bleeps], they’re just [bleep bleep bleep], they’re [bleep bleep] and taking it in the [bleeeeeeep]…
Cinder (on extension): I’d like to apologize for my mother’s language. She’s having a very bad day.

[five minutes later]

Jane (to Sean): And then they [bleeeeeeeeeeep]…
Flora to Cinder: Wow, that was a new one. Are you taking notes?
Cinder: You bet.

It was, may I say in my defence, an exceedingly difficult day.

But I survived.

Although the children are probably permanently scarred.

swearing in cartoon Suomi: Kiroileva sarjakuva...

Quote This: Pam Laricchia on expressing parents’ needs while affirming kids’ needs

English: A jar of coffee-covered chocolate beans

We can express our needs and choose to gift our kids with extra attention, extra supplies, extra anything. Expressing our needs helps them understand when we’re going above and beyond so it doesn’t become an expectation.

Pam Laricchia, Living Joyfully

This is an excerpt from Laricchia’s very thought-provoking post, The Unschooling Family: Considering Everyone’s Needs. You might also want to check out its sister post, Unschooling and the Power Paradigm. For non-homeschooling/unschooling readers, don’t let the label keep you from taking a gander: both of these posts are essentially about respectful parenting. Agree with her point of view, disagree, or fall somewhere in between–I bet her take on power within the family will make you think. And thinking’s always good, right?

Photo (A jar of coffee-covered chocolate beans) from Wikipedia… combining the two elements that are essential to fulfilling my own most critical personal needs… 🙂

English: Weighing scale, Galicia, Spain França...

More like this: It’s not about balance: creating your own family’s harmony.

Why so serious today? Sorry. Want to laugh? How about this one: Mom? Have you noticed I’ve stopped…

And if you want to read more about unschooling, pop over to our new Undogmatic Unschoolers blog. It’s very new and so very thin, but that means you can read everything on it really, really quickly.

How focused attention, freely given, changes everything

I found this fun post I wrote when Ender was eight months old when I was struggling to explain the difference between offering attention freely versus diffused attention. I don’t achieve this very well, because this was when my brain was still leaking out through my nipples. But, there’s a valuable insight in there of what freely offered, fully focused attention is… and a hands-on demonstration of the sort of diffused attention our children and our lives usually get:

Crawling Baby Earthenware Olmec Culture 1200-9...

June 21, 2010. My eight month old–who’s just discovered crawling!–is giving me a hands-on demonstration of just unbabyproofed our house is, so of course I deal with this by sitting down for a moment and writing…

I find there’s a huge difference between offering attention freely, with full focus on the child, and giving diffuse or temporary attention. Most of the time, diffuse attention is great: the kids are there, doing their thing, the adults are there, doing their thing, the two intersect for a while, go their own way… but at some point–at different points of the day, at different points of life stages–children (and spouses! and friends! and grandparents, gosh-darn-it, them needy grandparents!) really crave focused, concentrated attention, and if it’s freely offered–given before it’s asked for–all the better.

My beautiful Flora, 5.6 going on 117, had [writing interrupted to change poopy bum, notice bum had washed the kitchen floor and himself with dog’s water dish, clean up water―hey, now I don’t have to mop the kitchen floor until the next mishap! what was I blathering on about before?] has been going through a rough couple of weeks. Sensitive always, she was uber-sensitive. People looked at her sideways and she burst into tears. [Crap forgot to put a new diaper on and the baby is now playing in his pee, hold on, break to wipe up pee] She was essentially waking up teetering on the edge of a breakdown. [oh, hell, the baby is trying to climb up the stairs… no, he’s backed off ]

Apart from being 5.5, a few disruptive things happening in her life, including chaos from the above mentioned 8 month old [gah, he’s back on the stairs…. ok safe], her best friends’ being sick and away, and her mother not well and not all there. There were so many things that I couldn’t do anything about… but I could do this:

I started sitting down and playing pets and Heart dolls with her. For what seemed like hours–but on the day on which I clocked it (because I’m that sort of anal retentive person), added up to a mere 45 minutes. It made all the difference. It gave her an anchor that was missing before.

OK, he’s determined to climb those stairs today I am done…

FLORA

2012. I’m so glad I found and re-read this post now, because I needed a reminder that beautiful, sensitive Flora needs this freely offered, focused attention so much more than either of her brothers right now. Ender’s fully satisfied to be destroying the house somewhere in my wake; Cinder grabs a quick cuddle and a book reading when he needs to recharge (although I do see him shifting more and more into needing more one-on-one Dad time). Flora needs one-on-one Mama time a lot. She asks for Girls’ Days Out. Girls’ Movie Nights. “Just a Girls’ Hour Out, Mom?”

This is really hard to do when you have three kids. There are only so many nights, only so many days. But I need to make a concentrated effort to give Flora this time, this focused attention, because it anchors her. Fills her up. In Flora’s ideal world, she and I would have a weekly night out. I would love to give this to her―and one day, one day soon, I will. Maybe we’ll take an art class together. Or Spanish. Right now, I can’t give her that weekly night or that schedule. But I can do this:

Flora! I’m going to the library. Ender’s sleeping and Cinder’s going to stay with Daddy. Want to come?

I do this all the time now. Take her with me when I go to my physio training. We have 30 minutes in the car there and 30 minutes back to talk; she has 30 minutes of brother-free chill time while I go through my torture session. Ask her if she wants to run pick up milk from the market with me. Run to the drug store. She almost always says yes.

Now, these opportunities don’t arise, frankly, that often. I have three kids. I work, as does their dad. Most of the time, I’m taking all three of them to the library and the grocery store. But when the opportunities arise―when Cinder wants to stay and home and play Minecraft, when Ender is sleeping, when both boys are engaged with Daddy, when the stars align―I grab my Flora and we run.

I also try to grab her at home when the boys are occupied, and I notice that she’s lost. And I sit with her while she organizes her pets. Or takes me through her art. Or just tells me silly things, important things, weird things. When she wanders into the kitchen when I’m massacring vegetables, I know that she might be looking for a snack―or Mommy-time. I pull her into chopping or stirring with me. And listen.

I don’t do this, let me be clear, very well or naturally. My attention most of the time is diffused―between all three kids, the freakin’ dog who won’t stop peeing in the basement, the house-that-ever-teeters-on-the-edge-of-descending-into-utter-pigdom, the latest three writing projects that are all due yesterday, the committee meeting, the really interesting discussion happening on my Facebook, and the less-interesting professional one I’ve got going on LinkedIn.

But I try. And I know when I’ve done it well or consistently, because I have a much happier, more anchored Flora.

Photos (Crawling Baby Earthenware Olmec Culture 1200-900 BCE Mexico) by  mharrsch and (FLORA) by adafruit