Family

Gleek and the Science Fair

By / January 30, 2013 / 2 Comments

During my freshman year of college I took a class called Human Development. I’m pretty sure I picked it to fill a general education requirement, but I think things I learned there have been pretty pervasive in how I developed as a parent. One of the things which I remember clearly was a lesson on how emotional needs drive child behavior. The classic example is the child who misbehaves because he wants attention. Punishment does not resolve the behavior because it is rewarding the behavior with attention. To extinguish the bad behavior it needs to be ignored while some desirable behavior gets the attention reward. The example is used because it is simple and clear. In practice the manifestations are much more complex.

Gleek has a science fair project and she has been stressed about it from the moment it was assigned. This puzzled me because Gleek likes science. Many times we have experiments in progress residing on windowsills or in corners. She likes to take notes and she watches science documentaries for fun. It seemed to me that a science fair project would just provide an excuse for a more elaborate than normal experiment. Instead she was stomping around the house declaring hatred for science and stating that she would just get a zero. I helped her look up options and pick a project. We set it up and the actual process seemed to soothe her. Measuring into jars and taking notes was happy. I thought we were past the stressful part.

The deadline loomed. Gleek had to take her happily-collected data and turn it into a display and a short presentation. The stress, stomping, and emotional declarations returned full-force. Gleek turned into a little ball of stress at bedtime one night. It was a night when I was already worn out, because that is always when kids schedule their massive emotional melt-downs. Gleek resisted all my attempts at reassurance or problem solving. She kept declaring a desire to just fail, which is pretty much to polar opposite of her usual desire to excel. After forty minutes of unpleasantness, during which I did not always wear my best mom hat, Gleek finally said something which made sense to me.

“I don’t want to be judged!”

It was not the science or the complexity of the display board. It was not fear of presenting in front of people. It was the fact that the science fair is a competition, and those always push Gleek’s anxiety buttons. She is the kid who deliberately makes mistakes so that she does not have to be in the spelling or geography bee. The only way she could see to escape the competition was to fail the project, but she was caught because, unlike the spelling bee, the project was also part of her classroom grade. In this new light all of her stress and stomping made sense. But until those words came out of her mouth neither of us knew where all the stress was coming from.

The emotion ebbed and we found a few ways to separate the competition portions of the project from the school work portions. Because Gleek is right. Competition is not the point of science fairs. The projects should be their own reward. I just wish we’d figured out where all the stress was coming from a month ago when the project was first assigned. We could have saved a lot of stomping.

The project is due on Friday. The display board is sitting partially assembled on my front room floor. Gleek came home sick from school today. I don’t know if the sickness is related to the stress or if she has caught one of the many varieties of flu which are making the rounds this winter. We’ve found the emotion which was driving the behavior, and that has defused it, but not completely. There are more threads and emotions involved here. I just hope we can muddle through and get the project pounded into something that will be satisfactory. The part that was not covered in my Human Development class was how the parent’s emotions play into these troubles as well. As I try to navigate us through this stress, I have to ponder if I’m really willing to let her fail or if I’ll provide assistance to get the project done. I have to decide how much help I’ll provide. Most of all, I have to look at my choices and evaluate whether I’m making them based on some need of mine instead of on what is best for Gleek. It is possible the best experience she could have would be to fail this project, experience that failure fully, and pick up to do something else. If that is what is best for her, I should let her do it. Even if it makes me look like a bad or uncaring parent.

Right now she’s not aimed at failure. Shes inching her way toward a completed project, which makes me glad. Later this evening I’ll help her tape things to her display board. Hopefully all will be well.

Antelope Island Again

By / January 26, 2013

A week ago today I ran away to Antelope Island. When I got home I Gleek was very sad that I went without her. We talked it over and decided to have a special outing today. Unfortunately for us, the fog rolled in last night and it lingered this morning.

This was the view for much of our trip.

We thought that the day was going to be a disappointment, but the fog lifted in patches and we ventured out to walk in the snow. Every step crunched through a thin layer of ice and into the fluffy snow beneath. If we were walking down a slope then fragments of ice tobogganed down the surface with a skittering noise. It was a day for melancholy photography, but we felt happy.

We even manged to spot a herd of buffalo.

We stopped by Fielding Garr Ranch to say hello to the owls. I wanted to take a hike to go see the place where bald eagles congregate for the winter, but Gleek was feeling tired and wearing overlarge borrowed boots. A long hike would not have made her happy and this was her outing. Also there was the question of whether we’d even be able to see the eagles at the end or if they would be hidden in fog.

Instead I let her get a trinket from the visitor center gift shop and we stopped by the northern point of the island to bid it farewell before heading home. We have plans to come back in the spring when the island will be green again.

The Developmental Stages of Teens

By / January 24, 2013 / 9 Comments

On my One Cobble communities on Facebook and Google+ I’ve begun running a weekly feature where I post a Re-Cobble. It is a link to one of my earlier blog entries with commentary. As I was noodling around looking for what to post, I came across this entry called Future Parenting it is from 2004 when my kids ranged in age from one to nine years old. At the time I was contemplating the teenage years and spinning my theories about how that would go for my family. I can tell you now that I was right to not be afraid. I’ve loved Kiki and Link as teenagers. Yes there have been some struggles, but understanding those struggles has meant that Howard and I can sometimes be allies to our kids as they face those struggles instead of always being the enemy. (There is no avoiding being the bad guy sometimes. It’s inherent to good parenting.) What I did not have back in 2004 was a list of what the developmental changes are and how they play out for kids. So here is my list, based on a sample size of two, so your mileage may vary.

Age 11-12: kids tend to get a bit existential and sometimes fear the future. They can see bigger responsibilities and privileges coming, sometimes they want to run toward them, other times they want to flee back into childhood. This is also when kids start to push away from parents, seeking more space for individuality. If a parent is not expecting this shift it can cause the parent to hover and cling, which means the child has to push harder. My solution was to let them try more independence and they came running back to me when that got scary. However I was ready for a hard redirect if their independence looked like it was heading them onto dangerous ground.

Age 12-13: This is heavy-growth-spurt territory. Kiki hit this age and spent a month sleeping for fourteen hours per day. Link and all his same-age friends began to sound like adults and they clomped everywhere they went. During this developmental span some of the higher brain functions and social functions shut down while the brain is renovated into a more adult landscape. Both of my kids regressed in responsibility and emotional management techniques. I particularly noticed the social things with the boys. Link and his friends said the most appalling things to each other and had no clue that they had been hurtful. I had to start supervising Kiki’s homework much more closely because she had a tendency to try to ignore it out of existence.

Age 13-14: Kids begin to need a focus, something around which they can form a teenage identity. This teenage identity will inform their eventual adult identity, but the adult identity will be different, so don’t worry if the teenage identity at 14 doesn’t seem like a good career path. It probably isn’t. Kiki spent her 13th summer drifting, bored. In the fall Art manifested as her focus. Link drifted for longer and is still working to form his identity. But this was the age when he began to feel the need for one. The hard part for parents is that you can’t give an identity to kids. They have to pick it and go for it. All I could do for Link was offer up options–programming, racketball, etc. In the end I had to trust in him and let him find his own way. Though I was ready to head both kids off if it looked like they were likely to pick a focus which would cause them long-term life problems.

Age 14-15: Halleluiah, some of that higher brain function comes back online. As it does, kids tend to re-examine their lives. They may have to re-frame or re-address any childhood dramas or traumas that they have experienced. Link had to learn abou–and come to terms with–his Central Auditory Processing Disorder and his ADHD. He wrestled with how to include them in his self image without feeling like he was doomed to fail. We’re still working on this. Kiki had an exceptionally difficult Sophomore year at 15. It was made of me helping her because life felt too overwhelming.

Age 16-17: I only have a sample size of one here, but this was when Kiki really started to come into her own. She learned to drive and she once again began handling all her own homework without much supervision. She started to feel grown up and thus started to act like she was. Most of the drama from this year was Kiki dealing with peer relationships.

Age:17-18: Again, only sample size of one. Kiki hit the summer before her senior year and everything just clicked. She started applying all the lessons we’ve been trying so hard to teach her for years. She started addressing her own moods and stresses in adult ways instead of childish ways. She is a joy and we’re going to miss her lots when she heads off to college in the fall.

These are only general observations. The specifics will be different for each child, particularly if there are neurological differences. Link hit a lot of the emotional milestones about six months to a year later than typical for boys.

Notably absent from this listing is the impact of teenage attraction and interest in forming romantic relationships with others. I didn’t include attraction milestones because I’m fairly certain that my kids are atypical in this regard. Kiki was un-self-awarely interested in boys starting at age 14. By 16 she was self-aware but scared by the whole idea, so she elected to avoid it. Link hasn’t talked to me much about girls except to state that he’s not interested in girls yet. He hits high school next fall, which was when the whole thing became real to Kiki. (Locally the kids don’t go to the high school until their sophomore year.) I’m curious to see how that will change things for Link.

This has been my experience so far. In another nine years I’ll have to re-visit this post to report whether Gleek and Patch followed the same patterns.

If you are a parent of teens, or have been a parent of teens, I encourage you to post your observations in the comments. Have your teens followed these patterns? Were they different? Do you have any advice for parents of young children so that they can position themselves well for the teenage years? I’d love to hear from you.

Insomnia and My Almost Teen

By / January 23, 2013 / 4 Comments

It was 11pm and Gleek was awake. I’d turned out her lights at 9, right on schedule. Then there was quiet, until she called me to ask a question. Thirty minutes after that there was a snack request. Then another question. Each time it was an alert that I was still on parenting duty. It aborted my relaxation in advance of my own bedtime. I couldn’t even rely on Howard’s help because he’d desperately needed to go to bed early. That was another source of tension, the need to not wake him up. All the other kids went to bed, even seventeen year old Kiki, who is six years older than Gleek. It was just Gleek and I awake. I turned out the lights and crawled into bed, hoping that this time there would be no call, that silence finally meant sleep.

In the dark of my room, I thought of the times when I have insomnia. I remembered how my brain would race and worry about the silliest things. Fear looms large in the darkness. The day had not been all I meant for it to be. Less of my attention landed on the kids than I’d intended. Bedtime is one of the best times to find out what is going on inside your kids’ brains. They’re willing to talk because that seems better than sleep, but all I’d done was march into Gleek’s room and vent a frustrated “Just go to sleep” as if sleep was hers to command, when I know that it is not.

I sighed and climbed out of my warm bed. Then I got Gleek–who was sitting up in hers, wide awake–and we went to sit on the front room couch. We talked of insomnia–its causes and treatments. Gleek demonstrated self awareness as she described how it feels when she is tipping over into insomnia instead of sleep. She spoke of her school science fair project. We elected to feed her a snack before tucking her back in bed, hoping that this would convince her body that the correct bedtime rituals were in place to induce sleep.

Gleek is small for her age, but my days of cuddling her in my lap are over. She sat by my side in the dark with her head leaned against me, my arm around her. Next week she’ll be twelve, which marks the switch from our church’s children’s program and into the youth program. In just a couple of months we’ll be selecting her classes for junior high school. Her world is going to shift, she is going to shift. I think it is better that she have a mom willing to talk it all through at midnight than one who shouts “Go to sleep!” from the doorway. I’m not always that better mom, but I managed to do it last night and this makes me glad.

Link’s Cheevo Book

By / January 16, 2013 / 1 Comment

“I definitely earned the cheevo for agony.” Link said as we drove away from the doctor’s office. It took me a moment to parse this statement and I only half succeeded when I remembered that cheevo is video gamer slang for achievement. It refers to badges one can earn by accomplishing things in video games. We had not been playing video games, we’d just exited the doctor’s office after having Link’s ingrown toenail removed.

“You earned a cheevo?” I said, trying to sound like I knew what he was talking about while gathering more information.

“Yup. I need to write it down in my notebook.”

“You have a notebook for cheevos?” I was an awesome conversationalist on this particular day.

“The one I got in my stocking for Christmas. I’m using it to keep track of all my cheevos.”

Further conversation clarified that when Link is faced with something challenging, he makes a cheevo for it in his book. When he accomplishes that difficult thing, he draws himself a little badge as a reward. It seems to me that a notebook full of cheevos is a good thing to have. I love that he made it for himself.

Not Quite the end of a Very Long Week

By / January 10, 2013

There is an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 6 called Life Serial. In it the villains place a device on Buffy which messes with time. She’s walking into class then blinks and class is over. She takes a few steps toward her next class and then she’s missed that one too. My whole day has felt like that. I look up from my computer and realize that 90 minutes have passed and I still haven’t done the thing I sat down to do. In my case I don’t have a device or villains to blame, just lack of sleep. It feels weak to claim that. I’ve managed on less. I used to do it on a regular basis when my kids were still waking me up in the middle of the night every single night. Of course Patch did wake me up this week because he was sick. And then I never napped to make up for it, because this was the first work week of a new year, the first full week back at school, the last week of the term for my two teenagers, and so many things were more pressing than sleep. Which landed me in today when my brain just stopped functioning properly.

The printer ran out of toner. This is a normal complication in a work day. Except in the holiday rush I forgot to place an order for toner cartridges. I had to go to an office supply store. Thus instead of spending five minutes printing postage, putting out packages for the mailman, and taking a nap; I drove to the store and back, returned to see the mail truck driving away from my house, printed the postage, drove the packages down to the post office, and then got back just in time to begin the after school pick ups. With extra trips out to conference with Link’s English teacher because the term ends tomorrow and there is last minute work to do tonight. The whole package thing wouldn’t have been today’s problem at all if I’d had my act together any time in the last four days when I knew those packages had to be sent before today. But the last four days had their own urgencies, their own lists of things which must be done today to prevent future crisis.

My whole week has been like that Google app Martin Van Buren commercial. The one where the kid shows up to breakfast saying “It is dress like a president day. I’m supposed to be Martin Van Buren.” So the mom slaps together an amazing costume in ten minutes. I have rescued and salvaged so many things this week. Little things which never had a chance to turn into big things. Little things which probably I should not have rescued, but I was in super-rescue mode and didn’t pause to think whether the little thing needed my time and attention. I could have let a lot more slide. I could have rearranged sleep higher on the priority list. Instead I find myself at the end of Thursday, wishing it was Friday, knowing I had a super productive week, but feeling like I failed.

At least today I’m thinking about dinner before it is already 6 pm. That’s a first for this week.

Courageous Link

By / January 9, 2013

Imagine that you have a child with sensory issues. These issues aren’t really an elephant in the room, they’re more like the coffee table you always have to sidestep in order to cross the room. Yes it is an obstacle, but you get so used to stepping around it that you hardly notice anymore. Link is that child. I used to have to cut his fingernails while he slept because attempting it when he was awake was either a two-adults-pin-the-child-down ordeal or a multi-hour long negotiation. Haircuts were similarly traumatic to the point that he spent most of his early childhood in various stages of buzz cut to completely shaggy because then we only had to have a confrontation about it very six months or so. I was so very grateful when Link took charge of his own fingernails. The arguments vanished and I stopped thinking about sensory things as an issue at all. It stopped affecting my daily life because Link was managing for himself. That let me forget that Link still deals with this stuff every day.

Now imagine this child with sensory issues gets an infected ingrown toenail. To prevent catastrophic infection, a minor surgical procedure is necessary. Link is now 15 and outweighs me. There is no way I could hold him down anymore. Fortunately I did not have to. We sat together and talked, noticing how it is one thing to logically agree that yes this needs to be done, but a different thing completely to sit still while someone sticks a needle into your toe. Link was marvelous. He was anxious, nervous, and jumpy, but he held still when it mattered. The procedure also demonstrated that he has super powered nerves in his toes or perhaps heightened perceptions of sensory input in his brain. It took half again as many deadening shots as are usually necessary and Link could still feel some pain. I watched my son and knew what courage looks like. It looks like holding still when every instinct tells you to flee.

It is done. The healing can begin, and hopefully we’ll not have to do this again ever.

Taylers and Their Screens

By / January 6, 2013

It is Sunday afternoon and the kids have been watching Phineas and Ferb for hours. Howard and I have watched snatches of the show as well, because the cleverness reaches out and grabs us as we pass through the room. Kiki watches while sketching. Link watches while seated at the computer, multi-tasking between an online game and the show. Gleek bounces around the room, teeters on Howard’s balance board, does a puzzle, or shoots bands for the cat to chase, all while also watching the show. Patch is the only one to give the show full attention, but then he’s the one curled up under a blanket with a pot nearby just in case. I could tell myself that Patch’s illness is the reason we’ve allowed this marathon video session, but the truth is that the TV is on more often than it isn’t. Usually it is showing a video game, but it is on.

When Kiki was two years old the bishop of our congregation (think pastor) issued challenges to families for two weeks and then had them report on the outcomes of those challenges. These challenges were things like: read scriptures for an hour a day, live off your food storage, or no electronic entertainment. When I heard about that last one, I felt quite smug. Howard and I owned a television, but it lived in the basement and was only hooked up to a VCR. We watched shows recorded for us by others and I took Kiki down there to watch Winnie the Pooh or Hercules which were pretty much the only kid movies we owned. Going two weeks without electronic entertainment would hardly have been a challenge for us at that time. Now it would represent a major pattern shift. We would all suffer electronic withdrawal and would struggle to find new habits. Yet I would not trade my life now for the one I had then. The introduction of video games has solved problems and provided avenues for growth even as they have become issues for overuse.

Yesterday I imposed a time limit on screens. Not only did I declare the limit, but also clarified that a one hour turn meant video games OR computer, not one hour on each. The kids did not argue with me because we’ve imposed limits before. In theory we’re always using timers to regulate turns. Timers went off and so did the screens. The boys earned additional time by doing extra chores. I allowed this because with the temperatures in single digits playing outside was an option with limited utility. Sleep reset all our brains, and Patch was sick, so not a single timer was in use today. In theory yesterday was better run, but that day was cranky and today felt nice. The kids did not just watch the shows, they giggled together and shared jokes. Kiki and Gleek joined together in a chorus of one of the songs. Link and Kiki re-enacted a particularly funny scene. They all had ancillary activities. Their minds and imaginations were engaged.

Thus it goes in our house. We have cycles of heavy video game usage, heavy show watching, and then periods where we eschew these things to play board games, draw pictures, or ride bikes. Our habits change and the biggest change is that I no longer feel like I am failing when my kids engage with electronic entertainment.

The End Game of Motherhood

By / January 3, 2013 / 4 Comments

The endgame of motherhood is to make yourself obsolete. This is how you know you’ve succeeded, when they launch into their own lives and no longer need you. It is a hard thing. It is why I find myself crying on a sunny morning in a bright new year feeling sadness because we’ve just concluded the final holiday season when all the kids live at home. Kiki will come home for Christmas next year. I know she will. But it will be different. I don’t know about the year after that. Too many changes loom in the next few years for me to be able to predict what life will look like. I don’t want to stop. I don’t want to go back and redo anything I’ve done in the past seventeen years. No major regrets haunt me. I just wish this holiday could have lasted longer, that I could have savored it more, or stored it up for later. If only moments could be preserved like home canned food. I try with blog entries and photo books, but the memory of a moment is not the same as the moment itself. All of the moments for this holiday are gone.

The future is bright and full of possibility. I’m excited to see where Kiki will fly. I’m excited to launch the other kids into their futures too. But I now know–in a way that I did not before–that I will cry. Again and again I will cry. Because it feels like I am departing the heart of my life and I don’t want to. I’m going to miss this. Life will be different and I will find new ways to enjoy it. But just now I can’t imagine it being any better, because this part has been the best bit. I finally understand all those fervent exhortations to “Enjoy them now. They’ll be grown before you know it.” It was usually spoken by some stranger to me when my toddler and baby were climbing precariously in a shopping cart. I thought the advice givers were wrong. They were and they weren’t. For some mothers the best bit is when the kids are little, that is the heart’s home that they miss. I don’t miss the baby and toddler years, though I enjoyed them while I was in them. Right now is what I will miss. I’m going to miss four at home, two teens two kids, all of them running in different directions, squabbling over the cat, and the incessant sound of video games. This is my heart’s home and just now it feels like I will spend the rest of my life missing home.

I have eight months left. No wonder I have no desire to travel anywhere. I just want to be at home while home is still here. There is time afterward to figure out which new dreams will flow into the spaces that are opening up in my life. New happiness will come. Old dreams will become possible again in ways that they aren’t when I have primary care of developing human beings. I will find laughter and adventure. Things will be good, but they will be different and I can’t quite picture how it will be. So today I cry a little. Then I wipe my eyes and proceed with the day. No sense wasting what I have by grieving for what has not even happened yet. Once the kids come home, they hug me and all is well for now.

Ice and Snow at the Tayler House

By / December 29, 2012

Nine inches of snow means that the next week is going to be all about icicles.

For today, the snow is all about sledding. Gleek and Link have been out sliding down the hill for the past hour.