parenting

Blind Spot

By / August 31, 2012 / 4 Comments

Howard sent me a link to a game called Petit Computer with a note that it might be a good choice for Link’s upcoming birthday. I watched the video and it was like being transported back to all the computer avoidance of my childhood. My father was a computer programmer beginning in the days when that meant racks of punch cards. My three brothers and two of my sisters were all interested in the possibilities of programming. For me, programming was something to escape from rather than enjoyable. My response to Howard was that I was not a good judge of whether the game would appeal, because it looked hard and boring to me. I was just self-aware enough to know that not everyone shares my opinion of programming. My family members certainly didn’t. Many of my current friends are excited by the thought of putting together code which turns a pile of organized metal and plastic into a magic generator of games and productivity. I just want to turn on the computer and use it.

I think I was in elementary school the first time I located the blind spots in my eyes. Every eye has them. They are the spot on the retina where the optic nerve attaches. This means that no visual data is collected there. We don’t notice them because our brains fill in the gap with what ever is surrounding that spot. If you put something small enough into exactly the right visual space, it vanishes. I remember holding an optical illusions book close to my nose and moving it back and forth to watch a printed dot disappear into my blind spot and come back again. As long as the dot sat in my blind spot, it was as if it did not exist.

As kids hit their teenage years, they start needing a focus. They need something around which to form an adult identity and a direction to be heading. Children are happy to just be, teens want to be going somewhere. Link struggled last year because he knew that he needed a direction for his life, but the only thing he is really passionate about is video games. I keep trying to introduce him to things ancillary to video games in the hope that something would ignite the same passion. I gave him tools for making videos and video editing. We took him to GenCon. I kept casting around for something, anything, that would help Link find a focus. I never even considered teaching him to program a computer. Programming sat in my blind spot, because I didn’t like it and didn’t know how to make it sound exciting. It did not occur to me that to the right person, programming is exciting all by itself.

“Mom! I want to buy this game.” It was a familiar refrain, one I’ve been hearing all summer. Link has spent most of his lawn mowing money buying games on his 3DS. He researches the games himself, plays demos, and then comes to me for help when he’s ready to buy. The game he had found this time was Petit Computer.
“You really want this one?” I asked.
“Yeah! I can use it to write my own games!” Link’s eyes were bright and excited in the way that he is when he is truly engaged. When Link is talking about something he loves, he meets my eyes and speaks at length. His enthusiasm causes him to forget that words don’t always come easy. At all other times he uses as few words as possible. We bought the game. More than that, we made an appointment with one of his uncles, someone who loves programming, to sit down with Link and teach him enough BASIC to make the game do fun things.

It is like I turned my head and realized that a wonderful possibility was sitting right there in my blind spot. Among the things that Link will be getting for his birthday is a copy of Hello World! Computer Programming for Kids. It is possible that Link will not fall in love with programming, and that is fine. He needs something he is passionate about, not something his mom thinks he should do.

I never wanted to be the parent who tried to push kids into things I wish I could have done. Yet over and over I discover my own interests and biases leaking into their lives. All I can do is make adjustments when I catch myself doing it.

Exactly the Same, Only Different

By / August 22, 2012

Day two of the school schedule and it is all beginning to feel familiar. My brain is unearthing the habits which lay fallow for three months. I’m remembering to watch for school pick up times and what times of day are parenting heavy because all the kid needs get squished into the same few hours. The kids are all in the same schools as last year, so no one is adapting to a big cultural shift. We are beginning to fall into the patterns of last spring. Even the afternoon carpooling schedule is the same. Except Kiki has a before school class that requires us to get up earlier every other day. Last year Gleek and Patch had teachers with very regular and regimented homework schedules. I can tell already this year is going to be different. I think this will be the year that Gleek seizes control of her homework and I’ll need to keep my hands off. It feels like I’m going to be able to continue to require chores instead of having to excuse kids because they’re overwhelmed. This year we might even be able to make the weekly activities for the kids. Things are looking good, so naturally I’m holding my breath waiting for crisis to erupt. Surely there has to be a crisis, some big emotional event or huge homework slog to be got through. Yet when I try to sense it, anticipate the shape of it, I can’t. Maybe that means there won’t be one for awhile. Maybe we can just have small daily crankiness and stress instead of big worry and diagnostic processes. At least for a month or two. By November the shapes of the strains will begin to emerge.

For now, we’re back to school and it feels the same, only different.

Organizing the House

By / August 21, 2012

In the past six months my house has grown steadily more organized, clean, and attractive. I still have a lot of work to do, but improvement is visible in almost every room. I’m glad for this. The push toward organization and beautification began last fall when I sat in my messy office and pictured what it would be like if I broke down a wall. I was deliberately shaking up my thought processes at around that time, forcing myself out of old patterns without being sure what the new patterns would look like. I stared around at the jumble in my office and started picturing what my ideal office would be like, how it could be arranged to provide space for the things which make me happy. My office was a box, and I was able to see how to break the bounds of that box to create something new. I gave myself permission to really own the space and turn it into whatever I wanted. The vision was exciting and all the other organization flowed from there.

July was the month of extended family in my house and the family reunion of 35 people in one cabin. I found it fascinating that I responded to the over crowding by organizing, cleaning, and getting rid of stuff. There were days when it was really compulsive, I had to keep picking up, scrubbing, imposing order on my surroundings. As compulsions go, I’ll pick cleaning over piling any day, but it did trigger a concern for me. As my house gets more organized, I notice the small messes more. I couldn’t have noticed them before, because they were buried in the large messes, but now I see them and they bother me. I need to clean them up, make my surroundings more lovely. Then I remember the old adage “a clean desk is a sign of a sick mind.” I’m not sure that being compulsively clean is mentally healthier than being disorganized and jumbled all the time. I guess time will tell if my recent push toward organization is me becoming healthier or just a different manifestation of my particular neuroses. I strongly suspect that the influx of school things impinging on my time will test my intention to make my surroundings lovely.

One of the hardest parts of my new-found organization is keeping my hands off of the spaces and things which belong to my kids. I want to organize all the things, however if I swoop in and clean up their messes, they will never learn how to do it for themselves. I’ve found a lot of growth in examining how I relate to spaces and things. If I clean up after them constantly, they will never have the chance to learn those lessons. This is why I spent an afternoon sorting with Gleek. We began with a trash bag, a donate box, and a bribe. She could have a small new toy she has been wanting if we could clear the floor, fill the garbage bag, and put some stuff into the donate box. I was pleasantly surprised with how willing she was to get rid of stuff. Even better, I learned a lot about her and what she values. Things which seemed like junk to me felt like treasures to her, and once she explained why they mattered, I could see the value. Because I let her make all the decisions, she was willing to listen when I asked her if she really needed to keep some of the items. The end result was a room where I can now clean the carpet. I need to go through the same process with Patch next. Hopefully listening to how he relates to his things will help us create an organizational scheme that lets him keep his things organized for more than three days. This approach to helping my kids I learned from watching Hoarding: Buried Alive. I can’t watch very much of the show, too depressing, but a few episodes were instructional.

The open question is whether I’ll continue to have emotional and physical energy for organization beyond maintenance now that school has begun. Time will tell I suppose.

Ready or Not. Again.

By / August 21, 2012 / 1 Comment

My sister dropped her oldest son off for college last week. I’ve watched her this summer as she rode emotional arcs related to having her first child leave home. My daughter is only a year younger and I’m afraid I patted myself on the back a little about how sensible I was being about her entering her senior year. I honestly felt no apprehension. I even wrote a post or two in that vein. My smugness was justly rewarded when I waved the last of my kids out the door for their first day of school, turned, and smacked right into a wall of grief. It was actually more subtle than that metaphor implies. I was aware of something filling my head, so Howard and I had one of those conversations where I begin talking with a tiny thread of thought, spooling it out until suddenly I find that I’m holding an emotional tangle instead of a simple thread. All my thoughts unblock and I learn things about how I’m feeling by listening to the words which fall out of my mouth. The key sentences today were:
“I don’t want this part to be over. I’m going to miss this part.”
I meant this part of my life when all my kids are at home. Later I spoke words which I liked even less, because it implies a level of control freak in my psyche with which I am not comfortable.
“I’m going to miss being in charge.”
As much as I complain about it, I like being the organizer of our lives. I have all my people gathered close to me under one roof. I know I have to let them fly free. That is the point. It is what I’ve been aiming toward ever since the first minute I knew I was pregnant. But I grieve because this era of my life is going to end and today felt like the beginning of that end.

Today I was also tired, insomnia and the bio-rhythmic upset of getting up three hours earlier than during the summer, did not help any. I also felt silly to feel grief about something which has not actually happened yet. My daughter has a full year of high school ahead of her. She may well decide to live at home and attend one of the two universities within twenty minutes of our house. I could be years away from the first one flying off. I’m surprised to feel grief over this. I really thought I wouldn’t.

The good news is that the grief will pass. It is probable that any later sadness I feel on the matter will be less because I addressed some of the emotions today. This is why I did not attempt to hide from it. The feeling exists inside me, I acknowledge it and try to incorporate it, even if I feel silly or cliche about it.

My four kids came home from school happy. Kiki had nothing but cheerful words for her classes, even the dreaded physics class. She got a pair of science teachers she really likes. Link has concerns about his yearbook class. I’ll keep an eye on it to see if it needs adjusted. Gleek spent most of the ride home providing a comparative analysis of last year’s teacher and this year’s. Patch just says he liked his teacher.

We’re off and running; happy or sad, ready or not.

Being Between

By / August 17, 2012 / 2 Comments

For the first time all summer, I find myself between. There is no more work I can do for GenCon and I can’t yet begin post-GenCon accounting. I’ve mailed all the things to ChiCon, but have to wait for Howard to get home before the final preparations. I’ve finished off the house organization projects which got shuffled aside during the crush of other things, and I’ve not yet decided what house project to tackle next. I’ve let go of my summer plans, but won’t embark on school schedule until next Tuesday. I am between. In some ways it is a lovely space, but staying here too long would not be good for me. I like moving forward.

Yesterday I read a letter from a friend where she lamented that every year she intends to plan and prepare better for the beginning of school. Then every year she ends up dealing with the same frantic scramble to get everything done. I read her words and realized that one of my focuses over the past six months is that I’m trying to be less prepared. I live much of my life planning for the future. I’m paying attention to thing I need to do today in order to prepare for events a week, a month, a year in the future. I’ve slowly become aware that the world is full of people who do not do this. I regularly see something coming, stress about it, plan ahead for it, and then move onward; only to find that others hit this same emotional process weeks or months later than I do. Several times I’ve had to straighten out a financial misunderstanding because I’ve paid a bill so early that the recipient mis-filed the payment. I plan ahead. Much of this is my job. I am the one to reserve a hotel room in February so that Howard has a place to stay at GenCon in August. I make sure that merchandise arrives where it is supposed to and when it is supposed to. I create schedules out of nothingness and then remind everyone to adhere to them. I intend to keep doing my job, accomplishing concrete tasks on a think-ahead timeline, but I want to shed all the needless stewing over possibilities.

My kids start school on Tuesday. Beyond reminding myself what the wake-up, drop-off, and pick-up schedule needs to be, I am trying not to think about it. Entering school will expose my kids to new information and people. They will shift and grow in response. Some of that growth will be painful and difficult. Tantrums and meltdowns are coming. I know it. If I sit down to think about it, I could predict what those crises would be, but then I would begin planning how I could respond to these hypothetical crises. After that I can imagine that the child does not like my response and reacts poorly. I could stage an entire melodrama in my head with branching possibility trees, a choose-your-own-adventure of parental stress. Except when school really does start, odds are that my kids will depart from the script in the first five minutes. All my fretting, planning, preparing would then be discarded because we’re going somewhere else. Instead of trying to improve my predictive abilities so I can better plan, I’m trying to trust that I’ll be able to deal with whatever comes when it arrives. Some things are concrete and life will be better if I plan ahead for them. Other things are in flux and I need to leave them alone until they are concrete. Living in flux is where I have to exercise my faith; faith in myself, faith in God, faith in the family members around me. Faith is often hard, I want to be able to predict and plan, as if I could plan life into calmness. Controlling something that is in flux is like trying to grab a fist full of water. I need to learn how to open my fingers, let the water flow past, and wait for something solid to grab.

So I am between, and will be until Monday. I will do the few small concrete tasks which are nearby and then I will endeavor to fill the remaining space with something enjoyable. Perhaps I can make something lovely out of these last few days of summer.

Parenting Then and Now

By / August 13, 2012

When my kids were little it was my job to figure out what they needed and provide it to them. Once they hit the teen years, what they need is to know how to figure out what they need and then figure out for themselves how to go get it. In theory this gives me less to do, but the emotional reality is that watching someone struggle and having no useful way to help is hard.

No one is actually struggling this morning, but a piece of my brain is convinced that they will be as soon as school hits.

Conversations with My Kids

By / August 12, 2012 / 3 Comments

Kiki was very animated as she detailed the plans her friends have for a post-high-school-graduation trip to Disneyland. Her description had all the earmarks of a sales pitch. I could tell that she was framing the projected trip to be a safe and well-planned as possible. She wanted permission to go. She finished and waited with bright eyes for my answer.
“You’ll be eighteen next May, whether or not you decide to go on this trip is really up to you.” I said. “But you’ll have to fund it yourself.”
It was a quiet sentence, one I hadn’t anticipated before hand. When the words were out of my mouth, I felt the truth of them and was startled not to have a stronger emotional reaction. Next May Kiki will be legally an adult. Contemplating it doesn’t feel scary, because it is only a small step from where we are already. She’s an amazing person.

Link was asked to give a talk in church, which is something that he dreads. He and I discussed this at length and I tried to help him identify the feelings he’s filled with lately. His emotional repertoire has tended toward sullen and angry of late. He recognizes this and doesn’t like it, but isn’t sure how to make it stop.
“You realize we couldn’t even have had this conversation six months ago?” I asked. “I’m actually really impressed with you right now.”
A hint of a smile quirked the corner of Link’s mouth. The remainder of the conversation was not smooth and did not end in sunshine and puppies, but at least he heard those words. He was less pleased with words about weak things becoming strong and the fact that Moses wasn’t a great public speaker either. Perhaps he’ll never give another talk in church, but I fully mean for him to be able to self-spectate the reasons why.

Long ago I wrote a blog post where I looked forward eagerly to having adult conversations with my kids. Here I am. It isn’t always easy, but it is pretty awesome.

Prayer, Scriptures, Church, and Parenting

By / August 5, 2012 / 4 Comments

For someone who believes in prayer, it is amazing how often I forget to use it. I believe that God listens to my prayers and answers them. I also believe that when I pray on someone else’s behalf that my prayers have an effect, even though my logic brain is stumped to explain the mechanics of exactly how it works. I know for sure that when I pray it changes me; my internal landscape alters, calms, shifts and I step away with a clearer view of what is and what needs to be next. Sometimes the changes to my internal landscape unlock floods and rivers of inspiration which wash through me. Other times I realize that God has been waiting very patiently for me to ask before helping me. I’ve seen all of this over and over in my life. Yet I’m usually fairly well established in my stress or crisis before I think to apply prayer to the problem. I need to be better about that.

There are other religious observances which I also neglect such as daily study of scriptures. Somehow it gets lost in the middle of everything else and I don’t even think to miss it until it has been absent for weeks or months. Every time I put it back, it fills my soul. I find greater reserves and strength for managing everything else in my life. It is exercise and good nutrition for my spirit, yet it fares about as well in my schedule as exercise does.

Fortunately I have weekly church attendance to nudge me and remind me of the importance of prayer and scripture study. It is like a regular appointment with my personal trainer, the day when I have to account for my choices during the prior week. Sometimes I slouch into the appointment resentfully, knowing that I’ve been lacking. Yet I’m not scolded there, just encouraged, reminded, nudged. And on days like today, when I’m feeling a bit cracked open and raw, I am healed. My spiritual practices bring me closer to my loving Father in Heaven who only wants me to grow and is sad that sometimes the growth process is painful. I can sympathize with that today as I look forward to this coming school year and know my kids have some difficult emotional terrain ahead. I keep forgetting that Howard and I do not have to do this alone. My Father in Heaven is also there for my kids and when I remember to apply prayer to our challenges, miracles happen.

Parenting in View of Others

By / July 29, 2012 / 2 Comments

Spending time with relatives is sociologically interesting. My siblings and I were all raised in the same house by the same parents, yet there are some significant differences in how we parent our own children. Some of this can be attributed to natural divergence. Because we are each different people, we experienced growing up in different ways and learned different lessons as a result. The influence of spouses is huge in determining how kids are raised. The most fascinating aspect for me is trying to figure out which differences in parenting spring from the children themselves. My children and their cousins are distinct individuals and thus have trained their parents in different ways.

I am not the only one who observes these differences in parenting method. Sometimes I feel self conscious about this when my kids are not displaying their best behavior. Gleek wields anger as a shield. Her first reaction to stress is to be angry and assertive. As a result I’ve developed a host of parenting strategies centered around preventing anticipating angry outbursts and preventing them, or for controlling them and managing them when they occur. For years I worried that I was handling this wrong, but lately Gleek has matured and is co-opting these tools as her own. She is managing herself instead of me having to do it for her. That is a huge parenting success in my book. Yet one of my relatives did not comprehend the dynamics of Gleeks anger. Her kids did not explode in that manner and in all seriousness she asked “Can’t you train that out of her?”

I’m afraid my mind jittered to a halt and I was grateful that the conversation turned elsewhere, because the question was shaped in a way that expressed a miscomprehension of what was going on with Gleek. Gleek is not an angry person by nature. She is a highly empathetic and sensitive person. Often she gets angry because she is afraid that she is a bad person and does not want anyone else to see it. Being angry hurts less than being sad. If the anger comes from insecurity, then punishing her for angry behavior will only increase the insecurity and the anger. Instead we have to let her use the tools that come naturally to her. We weather the anger while making sure that it is not expressed in ways that do harm. Then when the storm has passed I help Gleek look into her mind and heart to find the real source of the emotion. This methodology means that sometimes there are public scenes with private resolutions. It means that other people witness the hard bits without fully comprehending the extent of the follow-up. Are there better ways to parent Gleek? Maybe, but this is the best way I’ve found. We’re making it up together as we go along.

I have similar parenting loops for each of my kids, they need different things from me and I strive to give them what they need. Sometimes this means that I spend time in a public space looking like a horrible parent. I can live with that though I never enjoy it. I try to remember it when I observe the decisions of other parents. I see my siblings and the disciplines they give to their children and sometimes I think I would not use the tactic that they are using. Yet if I feel inclined to judge, I try to stop myself and remember I am not seeing the whole picture. The public part of parenting is the tip of the iceberg and there are many ways to get it right.

School is Coming

By / July 29, 2012

My kids schools have started sending me mail. The contents vary in detail, but the general gist is “School is coming, this is what you need to do to prepare.” I collected the letters and pinned them to my bulletin board because I wasn’t ready to think about it yet. Then I looked at my calendar and realized that August arrives half way through this week. School starts in three weeks, ready or not. So this morning I began thinking about the school year to come and talking to my kids about what we need to do in the next three weeks to transition smoothly.

Kiki is going to be a senior this year. I find it fascinating that the minute people hear this, they begin to ask all sorts of questions about career plans and then to spout advice. The only other time in my life that I’ve heard so much unsolicited life advice was when I was pregnant. The trouble is that people keep asking questions for which we do not yet have answers. This is not because we haven’t considered the issues, but because it is not yet time to have answers to those questions. I can’t tell you how we’re going to pay for college because I don’t know yet which school or what scholarships. Kiki is still considering schools and weighing options. She is still in the open possibilities stage of this process, the time of imagining her life in a hundred different ways. Yet all the questions are focused on narrowing down options and picking a path. As if picking a single path now determines her entire future. As if adults never change direction or readjust their lives.

Often I’m not actually a participant in these conversations about Kiki’s future, I just get to listen to them. Kiki does not seem to mind having them most of the time. Perhaps they are helping her see her choices. The truth is that I am not particularly stressed about college admissions for her. I know her and how competent she is. She will find a way through to good life solutions. Her solutions will be a better fit for her than any solutions that I can give her. It just falls to me to decide the quantity of financial support we can provide as she furthers her education. Those conversations and stresses will hit late winter. I’ll be stressed about it when the time is right, not now.

It is also possible that I’m in denial about how stressful this “applying for college” process will be. In which case I will snuggle my comfy denial close and keep it for awhile. My brain is already quite occupied with unpacking the school stresses that I put away last spring and now must pull out to examine. In the first few weeks of school I need to conference with Link’s teachers to make sure that his IEP reflects the diagnosis we made at the very end of last school year. We need to make sure that Link has the resources he needs so that he can take control of his life. Patch’s teacher sent a letter emphasizing the importance of multiplication tables. Those were the bane of his existence last fall and threw him into a pit of self doubt. I am hopeful that this new year will not trigger a similar emotional crisis, but I need to watch carefully. Gleek is headed into sixth grade. In Utah that is still elementary school, but the hormonal and emotional shifts which girls go through at this age can cause them to make really poor decisions. I’m not so much worried about Gleek choosing awry, but I really hope she doesn’t suffer because someone else decides to alleviate her own self doubt by being mean.

These are the thoughts that I shoved into the back of my brain last May and have not touched since. School is coming. It will bring me six hours of quiet house each week day. I’ll be able to re-separate my work time from my parenting time. That will be a blessed relief. School will also bring all of that other stuff. My fears will be appeased or shown accurate. My biggest fears revolve around the crisis that I don’t yet know the shape of, the new thing which shows up and blind sides me with its unexpectedness. Last year I didn’t know to worry about multiplication tables or a new diagnosis cycle. This year there will be something else. I can’t prepare for it because I do not know what it is. So I spend extra energy on the thing I do know. Patch will practice his multiplication tables and we’ll buy him new clothes because he shot up this summer. I’ll call Link’s teachers in advance of school starting. Gleek will go through the contents of her summer homework packet. In between all of that, I will take my kids out and do some fun things. We will try to grasp the last pieces of summer and hold them tight for as long as we can.