Archive for the ‘Julie’s Life’ Category

Where no one is an adversary

Trio

I remember when I was pregnant with Johannah (second child), friends threw a baby shower for me and another pregnant friend. The main gift from the party organizers was a wooden spoon to each of us. Instead of party games, two women gave “talks” to us about the importance of spanking, discipline, and “instant obedience” (what I later came to call “spanking on command”).

As a young woman (only 27 at the time), I smiled a lot, laughed at their jokes (which made me inwardly cringe), and pretended that stories of spankings and childishness framed as rebellion were entertaining. I also wondered if I might be wrong—that nurturing, co-sleeping, responding to a baby’s needs, expending physical energy to restrain a toddler—were naive choices. After all, these moms were more experienced and they seemed convinced that children needed training to become civilized people.

I gave spoon-spankings a shot. Results: I saw no behavioral improvements. Time outs were a joke for Noah—I’d put him in a bathroom and he’d follow me out of it. What then?

It didn’t take long to see that this approach—this requirement that my children cooperate with my version of how life should be lived—would change how I saw my children. I became aware that the more I felt “disobeyed” or “disrespected” or “ignored,” the less I could enjoy my kids as they were. I was evaluating them all the time, trying to shape and control how they behaved toward me and others. I found myself inwardly resenting them for making me spank them!

I had thoughts like, “How can you disobey me when you know you’ll get spanked and you know that I don’t want to spank you?” It became ridiculous—these layers of resentment that expanded as I became exhausted and disillusioned.

I gave up spanking. Obviously.

My children are adults now (all but one). I’m struck by the fact that they are basically the same people they were as toddlers. A requirement of “obedience” doesn’t fundamentally alter the temperament, the personality, the perspective of a person. It makes all those things go underground, in many cases, which is unhealthy.

Ironically, I also spent time with friends whose kids “ran amuck.” It was as though the parents weren’t present or were afraid to interfere in any way with their kids’ choices. I remember a mom friend who kept a big box of junk food in her child’s bedroom because the child asked for it. 10 cavities later…

My perspective on mothering is this: the key factor in relating to your kids is building trust.

The key factor in relating to your kids is building trust.

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Your children have to know if they have a need, desire, concern, perspective, fantasy, wish, fear, or difficult to manage mood, they will have a receptive, loving partner in you. They need to believe that most of the time, you will help them get what they need/want… and that when you can’t or don’t, you aren’t judging them as bad or shaming them for admitting what it is they crave or taking things personally, just because their ideas of “good” don’t match yours.

If you build trust, it’s possible to say “no” occasionally. Your kids know that you are for them, and that you want them to have what’s good for them, but also what feels good to them. The occasional “no” will come from the perspective of maturity, not a reaction of offense (you are disobeying! you aren’t trustworthy! your values are scary to me!).

Will your kids always agree with your “no”? Of course not. But a relationship that has goodwill in it, that is able to hear all the words and feelings about the “no” without disrupting the loving connection, can withstand parental direction. Your children do expect you to say “no” sometimes. You just have to spend the currency of trust carefully, wisely. You can’t “run things” all the time, without accounting for your child’s needs/wants, or you will go into “trust-debt.”

That’s when the family feels strained and stressed, and you can’t figure out how to get back to happy and peaceful and cooperative. To recover from that strain, go back to listening and facilitating what your kids envision for their happiness.

Bottom line: Live in such a way that your kids know you want them to have a happy, free, filled-with-good-things life.

Give to them freely, generously, selflessly.

Save your “no’s” for danger, impossibility, harming someone else.

Help your kids get what they want, even when it seems messy or absurd or off-task or silly.

Listen to the reasoning your child presents with curiosity and open-mindedness.

Everyone: get enough sleep, eat healthy foods, hug each other lots every day, make eye-contact, declare pride in your child, ask for help and give help, remove the concepts of punishment and “obedience” from your vocabulary.

Get to know the people you live with; become fascinated by them; learn from them; protect them.

Everything falls into place when you genuinely like each other and no one is seen as an adversary.

Posted in Family Notes, Homeschool Advice, Julie's Life | 3 Comments »

This is how it is for most of us. Embrace it!

Our homeschooling year

Posted in Julie's Life, Unschooling | 3 Comments »

What are they doing now: Caitrin

Julie_Caitrin
April 25, 2013.  My youngest, Caitrin, is 16 and finishing her junior year of high school. She had the least formal home instruction of any of our children. She read late (9+) but she’s an avid reader now, she didn’t like workbooks much, she followed her interests with zeal (took violin, took sewing classes, read the Harry Potter series over a dozen times, watched her favorite movies over and over, became vegan and a well educated one—who can cook!, studied New Testament Greek, studied fashion and created a 365 daily fashion blog for a year, read feminist non-fiction titles all through junior high and is a well-versed feminist now, learned to ski, played soccer, painted, did copywork every single day, avoided math, never did science…).

She’s our wordiest child (started speaking so young, I forgot to write down her first word, for which she has not yet forgiven me).

Today, she’s in high school. She attended fulltime high school as a freshman—we tossed her into the local public school. That decision was fabulous for her, though intimidating at first. She was ready for the structure of school, loved the challenge of homework (she’s still the only kid I know who does extra math problems for homework, gets her papers written days ahead so she can revise them before the due dates), and was keen to be a part of a group—some kind of extracurricular activity with peers.

She found it. The biggest benefit to high school for Caitrin has been participating in the Guard (Sabers, Rifles, and Flags). She’s loved being a part of a team, and working toward a goal. I’ve seen her thrive.

Just a couple days ago, Caitrin made a great comment about homeschooling. She said she’s realized that the main thing she got from her home education is a craving to learn. She told me that she measures herself by how much she’s learned, not by grades, not by meeting requirements. She knows that’s different than many of her peers and she credits homeschool with that quality.

Her goal is to go to Ohio State University to double major in French and Korean, with a minor in linguistics.

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed being Caitrin’s mother during her high school years. We’re having a great time. (And I still get to edit all her papers.)

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The Snare of Perfectionism

The Snare of PerfectionismTrends happen for a reason. The sudden spate of books and conferences exposing the myth of “the perfect mother” is a cultural admission that women feel a lot of pressure to both be mothers (you are less of a woman if you choose not to be a mother), and then to do that task “perfectly” however that is defined.

When women admit that being “a perfect mother” is not possible, a collective sigh of relief follows. Moms make mistakes and have legitimate worries:

  • forget doctors’ appointments,
  • don’t wash their children’s hair often enough,
  • feed the children sugary treats to stop the crying,
  • yell when they are frustrated,
  • are especially anxious when one of their children throws a punch or steals a toy.

Children become an extension of the mother’s body and identity—
a beyond-my-control extension of me that tells me (and others) about me.

Perfection, as it is defined for women, often includes non-motherly tasks as well, like being well coiffed, or keeping an organized and tidy home. Mothering doesn’t depend on either of these, though. Perhaps the “perfection” label is more about trying to be a woman who matches culturally-assigned stereotypes of female married+children adulthood.

Reading these discussions has left me a little cold. While I’ve had my share of guilt about motherly missteps (lecturing a child rather than hearing her, switching curriculum too swiftly without proper preparation, letting one child’s vocal needs drown out another child’s quieter ones) I don’t think I ever worried about having the right haircut while my children were young. Getting to go for a haircut once in a while was treat enough!

And even though stepping on a cluster of Legos in the middle of the night with a baby in my tired arms drove me to the brink of swearing on more than one occasion, I didn’t feel a lot of pressure to keep a perfectly neat home, nor did I feel particularly embarrassed by evidence of children strewn throughout the living spaces.

The pressure I felt (and still feel!) had less to do with my external presentation (how I appeared as a woman, mother, wife) and more to do with significance:

  • Am I mattering?
  • Am I making the ultimate difference?
  • Am I doing the right things to ensure the right results?

The pressure in mothering as a home educator is even more insidious. Not only do you feel it matters that your children eat healthy lunches (that are hot, predictable, and require clean-up midday), but you must also make “healthy” curriculum choices and adopt the “right-est” educational philosophy. You scour the Internet for the Magic List of principles and practices that ensure your children will be well-socialized, well-educated, and well-behaved people.

The danger of perfectionism kicks in not because you are
trying to convey an image of success.

You actually want to be successful.

Measuring success is a huge part of our culture—and that measurement is usually exacted by others who are in the same soup, trying to get to the same place. When we feel “measured against a criteria” (in other words, “judged”), that’s when we move ourselves toward the impossible standard of perfectionism. We double down and try harder to apply the methods and madnesses of a system. We stop hearing our own voices inside and we lose perspective.

What frees us isn’t simply agreeing that none of us is perfect (oh well) so let’s just do the best we can and hope for the best. Hey, let’s be kinder to each other and share our stories of all the mistakes we make every day. And let’s laugh about it (ha ha). Certainly there is some therapy to be had in those exchanges. For sure!

But for me, comic relief never freed me. I had high expectations for my family and my efforts. I wasn’t about to give those up just because of the snare of perfectionism or the judgment of others. And occasionally, some of the examples of what passed for mere imperfection appeared to be important flaws to notice and address.

What’s helped? Here’s my short list. It’s not meant to be a new standard, but I hope it inspires some of you to share what’s helping you, right now.

Breaking rules. The temptation is so strong to do what the rule-makers say to the letter, believing that it means I am protected from failure. When I apply the rules, I stop listening to my children and to my life. I put my faith in practices ahead of relationships. For instance, I breastfed my kids. A false nipple equaled heresy. The day I discovered that a pacifier helped my son sleep was a day of liberation. We happily breastfed for nearly 3 years, but knowing he could nap without me saved my sanity and made me a better mother. Breaking a rule, based on my son’s needs (and mine) was good for us.

Paying attention. I sometimes became distracted by principles and missed the really cool thing happening under my nose. For instance, I had read that starting school work right after breakfast every day led to a quiet expectation that “school” would happen and we would avoid power struggles. But the day I woke up and saw sheet forts and kids in dress up clothes and apples cut into tiny pieces for food told me that “school” was already happening. I didn’t apply the principle, that day.

Experimenting. I used to say to my friends that I would unschool my children to find out if it worked so they wouldn’t have to. I thought of unschooling as a risk and as something to embrace or explore, but I chose not to see it as the defining story of my family. That attitude, by the way, is not often welcome in unschooling settings. And that discovery unsettled me for a time. Then I realized: this is my unique family story and I’m writing it with my kids and their dad. I am not defined by someone else’s vision, even if their ideas can contribute good things to us.

Getting help. Maybe it’s my Malibu upbringing, but I’m a big-believer in therapy and support groups. Perspective doesn’t often come online to the degree we need it. The community you develop with friends across the miles via the Internet is legitimately supportive, loving, and often insightful. But those friends don’t know your kids. They haven’t been in your home. They aren’t aware of your marriage dynamic, or your family of origin. They don’t even really know what you’re like—they can’t hear your tone of voice or see how you use your hands or how long you talk before you let the other person get a word in edgewise. When you hit a wall emotionally at home, where you feel like you’re failing, and you can’t see your own neuroses, get in-person help. You want a safe space to think about the particularity of your family and life. You want to get away from systems that dictate their terms to you and tempt you to slavish devotion. You want gentle, kind, reflective space to consider a slew of options, not just the ones sanctioned “by the group.”

The bottom line is this:

My connection to my kids matters the most.

When we are connected, no matter how we’ve arrived at that space, I know we’re okay.

And that feels perfectly fine to me.

My connection to my kids matters the most.

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, Homeschool Advice, Julie's Life | 1 Comment »

Vertigo

Vertigo

A 21 year old me stood in the shower, carefully drawing the razor up the back of my leg, across the soft skin behind the knee, the way you do when you’re a girl who’s knicked herself within an inch of bleeding out at age 15. My head twirled and a loud pi-n-n-n-n-g-g-g-g-g filled my ears. The razor slid from my fingers, echoing a click-clack-click as it cascaded to the tub floor, and the world went black.

My awareness dawned slowly from some grey muffled foggy pit. I was slumped over the edge of the bathtub, ribs throbbing, crying for no reason at all and all the reasons in the world. I looked around. Is this my bathroom? Do I live here?

And then I remembered—shaving cream slid down my leg, water dripped from my hair, tears leaked from my eyes.

I had fainted. It was the first time but not the last. I would faint every few years—in bathrooms, at a friend’s house, once while trying to buy a newly killed chicken at a crowded stall in Morocco while 7 months pregnant! I have a scar on my nose from smashing into the diaper pail.

The distinctive feature of each faint, though—one I came to know and respect—vertigo. My doctor gave the syndrome a fancy Latin moniker, but translated meant: We don’t know why you have this unnamed sort of vertigo but clearly you do.

He ripped off a scribbled prescription from his white pad: “Get sleep. Stay hydrated. Pay attention to signs, sit down, and protect yourself with a pillow.”

Thanks Doc.

But it’s what I do. There’s no cure. It’s enough, weirdly.

I tried to “cure myself” many times. I read books, studied vertigo syndromes. I’ve been known to crawl on all fours across a living room floor to avoid having to stop supervising small children because standing would have “brought it on.”

My then-husband gave me a dose of niacin once (his dad took it to help with fainting). Being that neither of us are medically trained, the dose was too high and my skin became an inferno trap for my soul. My fleshy surface glowed red like Mars, and my ears wheezed smoke like a minion of Satan. I can still remember the scary trapped feeling… but I didn’t pass out! Still, not worth it.

I don’t know when it happened, but I realized eventually that I had a condition; I could befriend and live with it (or at least, not slam the door in its face when it turned up unannounced) or I could go on fighting it and agonizing over why or how or what it meant.

The thing about vertigo is that it screws with your basic assumptions about life on planet earth. Gravity is no longer the reliable old friend, gluing your feet to the floor. Instead, your body, untethered, floats or zig-zags, your head lurches sideways, and your limbs grab hold of whatever outstretched object pretends assistance. Coaching doesn’t fix it: “Hold my hand Julie! Lean on me. Don’t give in!”

The only help is awareness of the warning signs, and preparing for the crash landing. Which I do now: As the pi-n-n-n-n-g-g-g-g-g begins its whisper and drives to crescendo, as my eyes drain the color from the room, as my head wheels its merry-go-round spin, I grab the nearest pillow and get on the ground. I lean my forehead into the cushion, breathing, eyes-closed, until all symptoms pass. And they do pass. And I don’t faint. My nose has no new scars in the last 20+ years.

It’s tempting to force an analogy about homeschool burn out, or the exhaustion of mothering, or the uneasiness in your marriage, or the frightening spectre of your own unexplained illness. I esteem you more highly. I recently looked at a photo of my family taken in 2005 on our family trip to Italy. I couldn’t know then what I know now——how my life would flip upside-down, how what I knew to be sure and true could change lickety-split, how my basic assumptions about what made sense or what was right would be turned on their heads. I didn’t yet know how to protect myself from crash-landings.

But I’ve learned. Each of us does, in our own way, in our own time.

You know what helps me the most after I faint and I’m crying like I’m a channel for all the suffering of the whole world? Kindness and cookies and a hug and reminders that the people I love, love me. Lectures about fainting—not so much.

Wishing you safe passage through whatever vertigo you’re facing.

The Homeschool Alliance

Posted in Julie's Life | 7 Comments »