parenting

Something shifted the last few days. The kids went from being happy to ignore me unless they were hungry to seeking me out to tell me things. Last night Kiki flopped herself on my bed and spent over an hour talking through college thoughts, growing up thoughts, future parenting thoughts, and what she is looking for in a future spouse thoughts. In the end I had to send her to bed because I could see that late night fatigue was starting to cause her to dwell on the negatives instead of the hopefuls. In Kiki’s case much of this was triggered by the overnight college orientation that she’ll be attending on Monday. It will be her first sampling of the year to come.

This morning Gleek came to me and told me every single detail about the dream she had. It was full of memory-fragments spun through a kaleidoscope and assembled into a sort-of narrative, which is much like most dreams. The details of her dream did not matter, my listening to it was really important. I was able to talk to her about dreams and help her pull out the relevant emotional content of this particular dream, which was that I was not in the dream and yet I was always there. She woke from the dream wanting to be with me.

At bedtime I lay down next to Patch and waited to see what he would talk to me about. He uses those quiet moments to unpack his brain before sleeping. Mostly it was about the current video game of choice. I listened, not because I care about the game, but because I care about the boy.

Link has not yet come to talk to me, but then he’s less likely to chat than the other kids. On the other hand, he’s more likely to seek me out to ask me things and request permission.

We’ve reached the midpoint of summer. The kids are shifting, ready for something more than just hanging around the house, but not yet ready to focus on school. I should probably schedule some family outings, times when we’ll get out of the house to go do things like swim. I’m starting to feel ready for these sorts of things. Though continuing to hide in work and electronic things also has its appeal. I do think it is time to venture forth more lest the summer get away from us completely.

I pinned the list of meals to our bulletin board. The matching ingredients were stocked in the fridge and the freezer. The list did not matter so much, because I knew that my two oldest children would likely ignore it once I was gone from the house, but requiring them to help me make the list accomplished two things. It forced them to think through the process of feeding themselves for four days while mom was not around to make food appear and it calmed that portion of my brain that worried about leaving them. They were old enough. Kiki was recently turned eighteen and thus a legal adult able to move out on her own. Link was fifteen, plenty capable to take care of himself under the supervision of his adult sister. The younger two children would be elsewhere, under the care of adults who were accustomed to managing kids. So I pinned the list and let go, wondering what my two oldest would discover about themselves and adulthood in my absence.

Kiki wrote me nightly emails with titles like “day one of solitary” in which she reported on how they were managing. By day three their sleep schedules had done the expected shift toward staying up very late and sleeping late. They also spent their time absorbed in separate electronic worlds, playing games and interacting very little. On the third day Kiki called me. “This is hard.” She said. I listened to the ways in which it was hard, none of which were actually dangerous or life threatening. I knew that all of my children were safe, but they were having age appropriate experiences with being away from parents. I found myself doing the opposite of the cliché and urging my kids to invite friends over while I was gone. Because I know my kids and I know their friends. There was greater risk in them feeling isolated and depressed than there was in teenage boys coming over to play video games for half a day. So Link’s friends came over and just having people and noise in the house was comforting to them both.

I returned home on Saturday evening. Both Gleek and Patch had returned home before me, so the house was re-populated even before I arrived. They were playing video games and my arrival was met with them glancing up and saying “Oh, hi Mom” then returning to the games. Kiki did put hers down long enough to give me a hug. I stood in the kitchen surveying the backs of their heads, feeling both glad that my absence had not been traumatic and a little under appreciated. It meant I’d done my job well. They were far more ready for their separate adventures than they’d anticipated.

I’ve reached the part of parenting where my job is not to hold tight and keep safe, but to slowly release. We still have at least eight years before they’re all launched, but the process has begun. And they are ready for it, because I can step out of their lives for a few days and they manage just fine.

“I just thought you needed to know.” My friend and neighbor said before giving me a hug and returning home. Yes. I needed to hear about Gleek’s panic attack at camp and the two times she struck out at other girls. I needed detailed information on all of the stresses which might have triggered the panic. I needed to know how it unfolded and how Gleek found calmness again. Because I am gathering data about this lurking thing in our lives, we need to understand the shape of it in order to find solutions, but just as we gave it full attention, the anxiety went underground. It hid and all seemed well. My neighbors information lets me know that hidden is not the same as gone. It reminds me that the path ahead may be thorny even though we’re currently passing through a sunny meadow.

Just as I needed my neighbor to tell me about the hard parts of Girl’s camp, I’ve also needed Gleek’s smiling reports of all the joyful things. I only get dribbles of information, bits and pieces of songs and stories as they are jostled loose during daily life. Gleek loved camp. The fearful nights, and one extra panicky night, do not loom over her experience. I am glad, just as I am glad that things are generally good for her right now. I try not to spend much time fretting over thorns that have not yet arrived.

However I am spending time thinking ahead to ways to make the trek easier. I can’t remove all the thorns from all the paths in the whole world, but I can make sure she begins the trip with a pack full of supplies and maps to safe respites. I began by putting the junior high summer library hours as a fixed point in our schedule once per week. Every Tuesday Gleek and I will go. She thinks it is just to get books to read. I know that each trip makes her more familiar with the school. She begins to associate the media center as a safe haven full of good things. So when things get chaotic or scary after school starts, she can visit her haven. I’m also doing everything in my power to foster a friendship between Gleek and the school librarian. I think every child should have a loving librarian in their life. So we enter the library. We greet the librarian by name. Gleek runs over to the Warriors books and sorts them into correct order. I wait while Gleek makes herself comfortable and meanders through selecting three books. Repeat week after week until a good association is formed. Haven acquired.

Before the beginning of school I will also walk Gleek to go and meet her school counselor, who is an amazing woman and will be an important ally for Gleek. Here child, before I release you into the thorny woods of middle school, have a haven and an ally. Hopefully Gleek will acquire more of both, places and people of her own choosing. This is what we will do while the anxiety is hiding. And perhaps it will not be so bad as my worst fears.

Did I even shout? In a two hour ceremony, five seconds were allotted to my child, her name read with her face on the big screen before she walked across the carpet and shook hands with the school administrators who gave her a diploma. My job was to shout across the wide space, let Kiki know that her crew was pulling for her. I can’t remember if I yelled. Things happened so fast. I have some blurry pictures as evidence. Kiki waved to us during the processional marches. Those did not go so quickly. There was time to shout, wave, and photograph her big smile. The whole ceremony seemed so long while it was happening, now it feels like an eye blink, which is rather like raising Kiki who is no longer a child anymore.

There are plentiful jokes about making all the mistakes on the first child. I’ve never felt that way about parenting Kiki. Yes I definitely gathered experience as I went. My parenting evolved and my capabilities grew, but rare was the occasion when I felt like I had to back track and resolve to do things differently the next time around. Most parenting tasks repeat often enough that we can get them right even with the first child. Yet this month it feels like I’m constantly taking note; ways to handle an 18th birthday better, the shifts necessary in being a parent to an adult, the emotional arcs of preparing to depart high school. I’ve felt like I was getting wrong about every other day. I had a map for figuring out how to become a parent, this is new and map-less territory.

“Do I have to go to school?” Patch said while curled up on the couch and hugging his blankets. It was the morning of the last day of school, hours before the graduation ceremony. Patch was stressed from the moment he woke up, over the smallest of things. He fidgeted, fretted, and clutched his security objects, so I sat him down on the couch and drew the physical manifestations of his anxiety to his attention. Then we tried to figure out where all the anxious energy was coming from. When I asked if he was sad about leaving his teacher, his hands began to still. Then we realized, two months ago Patch was very upset and sad about the changes that are coming in his life. This was the day when those changes became real. The last school year with all of the kids at home is complete. Kiki will leave for college, and Patch does not want her to go. I am not the only one without a map for what comes next. Patch watched her walk in her shining green cap and gown. We made sure he had a chance to hug her. I don’t know if it helped much, but it was a small gift we could give.

I hugged Gleek’s teacher in a nearly empty classroom. The walls were bare, desks stacked in a corner, ready for thorough cleaning. The school year was complete, a year which nearly went very wrong but somehow struggled back on course. “I’ll be thinking of Gleek.” the teacher said in answer to my heartfelt thanks. I assured her that Patch would still be attending the school for another two years, I would stop by to let her know how Gleek adapts to junior high. The note that I wrote this teacher is not enough. I don’t know what would be enough, a parade through the streets perhaps. Except I suspect she would not want a parade and true gratitude is best expressed in ways that make the recipient both happy and comfortable. It was a hard few months, and I still feel like I could have handled so much of it better. I can’t even use this year’s experiences as a plan for what comes next because the territory will be quite different. I shall be glad for the pause that summer provides. I need a pause before heading out into the territory only marked with a small sign saying “Here there be dragons.”

“Thank you so much for all your help this year.” Patch’s teacher told me. My eyes watered and I was taken aback. I could tell she truly meant it, but knew that I had never given her my best. I gave her what I had available, the classroom help that Patch needed, but I know I am usually capable of far more than she ever saw. I cried for that a little, for all the small, supportive, consistent parenting things that I simply could not manage this year. There were too many crises and urgent tasks. The best I could do was a cobbled together effort with big gaps in it. Yet she thanked me and her thanks gave me a small hope that perhaps it was enough. I would vow to do better next year, but I don’t want to make promises that I’ll berate myself for being unable to keep later. Fall is uncharted territory. I’ll see what I’m capable of when I get there.

Link lay on the couch in our house that had finally returned to quiet. It was after the graduation, after the joyful chaos of playing with cousins, after the end of school party with some friends. “I had a really fun day and I’ll never have it again.” Link said to me. So I sat next to him and listened to the pieces of his really fun day. He too is facing a transition in the coming year, transferring from the junior high over to the high school. This is easy to forget because it was not marked with a big parents-invited ceremony. His is a quiet transition, but still emotionally relevant. Is he nervous, I wonder but do not ask. Not today. This day I wanted to just listen to his reactions to the graduation ceremony. In three short years he’ll be the one in the cap and gown. When we arrive at that event we’ll have traversed the paths which I can’t see now. Life will be quite different and I can’t picture it, but with my eyes half shut I can almost picture this son of mine being a triumphant graduate. That is a destination worth the trek. I can picture it because Kiki went there first, because the mistakes and triumphs of this year have put lanterns on the pathway to make things easier for her siblings. We understand better how this works.

We took pictures of Kiki in her cap and gown. She smiled even though she is tired and suffering from a head cold. I wish I’d captured the look on Kiki’s face when Howard pulled out his new Samurai Monkey fez and wore it next to her. That way they both had funny hats with tassels. Howard did not bring the fez to the ceremony, but he did bring his phone. From it, he tweeted:

Today you have arrived, graduates. Tomorrow we will break it to you that you’ve arrived at the starting gate.

And we have. This was the day when things changed. Most of those changes are temporarily paused, but they’ve begun. We’re on the front edge of our journey into whatever comes next.

It often doesn’t take a very large parenting shift to make a big difference in a family dynamic. Some recent examples:

In mid-February Link was feeling neglected and unloved at home. He saw all the things we were doing for other kids, but wasn’t recognizing things we did for him. This was in part because we weren’t doing those things in ways that made him feel loved. Howard, Link, and I sat down and had a conversation where we cleared the air on this. Afterward both Howard and I made an extra effort to give Link hugs, to tell him out loud that we love him, to listen when he talked. It was half a dozen small adjustments, but Link no longer doubts that we love him.

Patch sometimes has meltdowns when faced with homework, particularly if the quantity or difficulty is unexpected in some way. These meltdowns have been garnering him lots of attention, which he craves, even though some of the attention is negative. When the homework stress hit, he would take actions to amp-up the meltdown and stress rather than attempting to take power and manage it. To address this I made sure he was getting positive attention and love elsewhere, mostly during a sacrosanct bedtime when I snuggle and listen. Then I stopped responding to his meltdowns. I’d tell him calmly that I was happy to help if he requested it with words rather than distressed noises. I also tried to place a reward on the far side of homework, such as a piece of chocolate. Then I told him he has the power to reach for the reward. As long as he was trying, I would be happy to help. When he gave up then I’d find something else to do until he was ready to try. The process was not fun, but it gave power and responsibility to Patch. Eventually he took both and finished the work. The next homework time was drama free.

Gleek has trouble with transitions. When I need her to stop what she is doing to do something else, like go to bed, she will ignore me, say “just a sec,” or request to do one more thing first. After the additional time or one more thing, she will repeat the request. Each request seems tiny, reasonable. But it is very common to discover that she has reasonable requested her way into an extra hour. If I get in her face and insist, then she reacts as if I am the being unfair, why on earth did I get so mad? She was totally doing what I asked. Except she did not actually move to close the book or quit the game until after I got in her face. To combat this I’m going to have to be really strict for awhile. Step on was to explain to her in a conversation that this is a problem and why it is a problem. Then I picked two small areas: quitting a computer game and closing a book. When I say it is time to be done, she has one minute to comply. If she does not, then she loses that book or computer game for about half a day. I don’t like being the parent who insists my kids must do what I say Or Else, but Gleek has been taking advantage of me. She knows it and I know it. We had a whole conversation during which she admitted as much. Day one of this new plan went well. There are battles coming, I’m certain. I’m not looking forward to them. However this is a small shift we can make which will decrease my daily frustration with her. Decreasing draws on my emotional reserves is pretty important because I’ve been tapped out lately.

Bedtime for the youngest two kids has a predictable routine. First comes snack. This is when the kids are supposed to make sure that they have a last bit of food so that they don’t feel hungry in bed. Then they read in bed. Then it is lights out. Many times I have lectured that they must do all their eating at snack time, because it is very frustrating when I get to lights out and have a kid tell me “I’m hungry.” Lately Patch has been the one doing this. He’ll assure me that he is full. Twice. Then he’ll read in bed for thirty minutes only to realize, ten minutes after lights out, that he really is hungry and he’d only skipped through snack because he wanted to read his book. Some of it is a play for additional attention. Patch doesn’t outright ask for permission to get out of bed and eat, he throws sadness at me: sad eyes, big sighs, etc. He knows I have trouble sending kids to bed hungry. I finally figured out how to turn the responsibility for this over to Patch. If he needs to get up after lights out to go eat, he can choose that, but he’ll owe me an extra chore. Having kids out of bed after bedtime impacts my ability to do other things with the evening, so if he needs to get out of bed, he needs to do something to increase my ability to do other things. That extra chore will happen before school the next day and will thus cut into his free time during that hour. Instead of me being the hero that lets Patch eat, or the villain who makes him stay in bed, I become a bystander while Patch makes his own decision.

Small changes such as these seem so unimportant, particularly when faced with large crises, but I’ve found that solutions applied to small problem spots have large ripple effects. Often it is the same emotional dynamic and need that is driving the larger, more problematic behaviors. Without intending to tackle the big issues, I end up generalizing the new strategies and the kids begin generalizing their adjustments. Sometimes a small shift is all it takes to renovate an entire system.

Humans are inherently social creatures, even those of us who are happiest when we have significant quantities of time alone. Some people are checking around to make sure they fit in, others are checking to make sure that they stand out, but we’re all looking around to see where we stand in relation to others even if we’re trying to adhere to our principles rather than be swayed by popular opinion. Unfortunately this tendency does not really help us establish a true normal, because it is impossible for one person to truly check with all people everywhere. Even more so because there are regional, cultural, and familial variations on what is normal.

This is one of the reasons I have trouble figuring out whether my emotional responses to the stresses of the past month are over reactions or if what I’ve experienced is actually hard. I scroll through facebook and see friends whose kids are battling cancer, traumatic brain injuries, and severe mental illness. Compared to them, my lot is easy. On the other hand I also see friends whose biggest problem is the inability to find a close parking space at the mall. My concerns are weightier than that. So am I justified, or making a fuss over nothing? I can’t make a definitive decision. Instead I have to accept that whether or not my emotions are merited, they exist. I must work through them, which I have for the most part. It is a relief to be coming out the other side where I can look back and figure out what was going on. I can think again. Of course next week will bring new challenges (thus justifying my reactions) or it won’t (thus lending credence to the belief that I was making a mountain out of a molehill.) Either way I’ll deal with it.

One of the fascinating things about this experience with parental grief and guilt has been watching the power of denial. Over and over again I’ve watched as my mind reclassified events or suppressed them in support of the “I’m making this all up” theory. Then I’ll look back at journal entries or be reminded by a friend about the particulars of a conflict. Then I remember how hard it was. In order to avoid painful emotions, my brain wanted to suppress information. I know that repression and denial are important survival strategies. There were some days where they were my bestest friends because they let me keep functioning. But it made sorting things out difficult because facts and emotions were all tangled up together. I needed to keep the facts in front of me and I so very much wanted to bury, deny, repress, avoid all the emotions.

The facts are, Gleek’s anxiety is strong enough that it is disrupting her education and creating challenges for the school. Most of the concerns that the school and I have for her are because the trend line of this anxiety could lead to some very dark places for her. But that is not going to happen because we’re going to use therapy and parenting shifts to re-direct that trend line. Gleek is a cooperative partner in this process. All indicators point toward things being fine again within a couple of months, a which point Gleek will be a stronger person with a well stocked tool box. Stripped of all the emotion, these facts are promising, good news even. After all, she could have had her anxiety crisis after she’d entered the teenage push for independence from parents, or at college without anyone to guide her.

I’ve known all these facts since the beginning of March, yet I’ve been a mess for a month. I’ve cried because my daughter flailed away in stress rather than just sitting down and doing the work. Hypocrisy thy name is mother, or Sandra. I’ll grant that much of the emotional mess was due to simple schedule disruption, lack of sleep, and mental fatigue. There was a lot to process. However, the majority of my emotional chaos was–and is–because this particular crisis manages to hit many of my pockets of parental fear and guilt. I’m left with the contents of my emotional baggage strewn all over the house. The therapeutic solutions are going to require disconnecting some long-standing parent child feedback loops between Gleek and I. They were strategies which saved us when she was a toddler, preschooler, and grade school kid. Now they are like an outgrown pen trapping us both. We need a guide in this restructuring process, hence the therapist. The hardest part for me will be learning when to stand back, trust her good judgement, and not help. I always help more than I should, or maybe I don’t.

Which brings me back around to wondering if the way that I parent is right, good, or normal. I know many people who are both more structured and less structured than I am. I pay attention to the parents around me, watching for useful strategies to apply or for behaviors I want to avoid. I see people with happy and well adjusted families who do things very differently that I ever would. It is tempting to shut my eyes tight and find my own way, except how else can I learn this crazy mothering job except by observing others?

All the pondering aside, I have a plan of action for the next week. It starts with going upstairs and helping Gleek watch a documentary about the Berlin Wall for her history day project. Then I’ll help her plow through all her other work to give her the best chance possible to feel prepared for school on Monday. I may be over helping, which may interfere with her ability to learn how to handle stress, but for now I want to keep it below the level of crisis and this seems the best course of action. Truthfully, all the best parents are just muddling through.