Archive for the ‘On Being a Mother’ Category

My kids

Warning: I’m about to brag. If you are already dreading the Christmas letter season wherein families trumpet their exceptional children, skip this post. I can’t help it. Sometimes my own children stun me (just like yours stun you).

I did not teach music. I was not against music. I played CDs, we listened to some classical when my kids were really little (without any attempt to explain or teach it), and I offered voice/piano/musical instrument lessons to my kids once we could afford them (meaning my children didn’t start piano or saxophone or singing until they were teens). Somehow, all of my kids love music, and a couple of them are truly devoted to all genres, including classical. I woke this morning to this discussion between my oldest (Noah, 24) and my third child (Jacob, almost 20).

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Give your kids the gift of learning and they will outlearn you for the rest of their lives (at least, that’s the idea and it seems to be working in their 20s).

P.S. Jacob is a resident assistant in his dorm at Ohio State and those are residents kissing him. 🙂 He looks happy about it.

Posted in Family Notes, Homeschool Advice, On Being a Mother | 7 Comments »

When kids are unhappy

What to do when kids are unhappy

Over the course of your 10-20 year homeschool odyssey, your kids are going to be unhappy at times. Some of the unhappiness will last months (maybe a year!). Sometimes you’re unhappy and it bleeds into the family culture. Let’s look at how to address some of the boredom and crankiness that visits the various ages and stages of children in your house.

Kids express unhappiness the way kids do:

  • boredom
  • anger
  • fidget-i-ness
  • being silly
  • procrastinating
  • pretending not to listen
  • picking on a sibling or the family dog
  • tears
  • staring blankly out a window
  • arguing
  • campaigning for what they think will make them happy
  • calling someone else a bad name
  • doing poorly executed work
  • not caring
  • not investing
  • giving up
  • pretending to be happy when they really aren’t
  • showing signs of stress and anxiety (sleeplessness, restlessness, not interested in eating)
  • comparing your home to someone else’s
  • rejecting your values
  • siding with the other parent who momentarily seems more fun

A 4-5 year old who is bored is much easier to rescue than a teenager who feels suffocated and has decided to challenge the values of the family. Yet the underlying feeling is similar—it’s unhappiness—and we can facilitate a huge turn around in how our kids experience our homes and “schools” if we help them become peaceful, cooperative, empowered-from-within, happy kids again.

Tuning into your child

Any child who is unhappy needs a parent to tune in and take notice! You’re the adult: you get to set aside your agenda to find out what your child needs.

The toddler needs physical touch and expression of energy (hugs, tickles, eye contact, being flipped upside down, wrestling, chasing, jumping up and down on a bed) to get the adrenaline flowing, to feel reconnected, to up-end a mood. Sometimes food, sometimes a nap, sometimes a cuddle on the couch is enough.

The young child benefits from focused attention on his or her specific interests. Too much time spent on your agenda will lead to tedium and crankiness. Bend low to make eye contact first. Then: a board game, running around the back yard, sitting in your lap for a picture book, helping you set the table for a snack, playing on the floor, singing to a CD…these help pull the young child out of the helpless, resentful mood of too many days in a row of someone else’s agenda.

The middler needs a dedicated time regularly (every day? every other day?) where there is no limit (reading as long as he or she likes without having to do anything else or without being required to sleep, playing a computer game without a timer ending the turn, watching TV and lying on the couch without having to get up, being allowed to finish the entire math book because he’s on a roll, digging a hole in the backyard as deep and wide as she likes, taking a scandalous amount of time to organize a bookshelf or rearrange the bedroom furniture, going to the zoo or the museum or the park or the nature preserve to indulge whatever interest is currently on fire, practicing a musical instrument for an entire day).

Middlers are curious. They benefit from indulgence in their curiosity and they especially appreciate it when you “get it.” If you notice that a particular child is obsessed with a hobby right now, take advantage of that white heat of passion and let them go! Buy a book, or rent a DVD, or take a field trip, or purchase new equipment, that adds meaning and energy to the passion. (And yes, I include the Wii, XBox 360, online gaming, and Play Station in this list of “passions” just like I include an absurdly long time of pining for American Girl Doll accessories while paging through a catalog. I’ve seen good stuff come from these sources in kids.)

The young teen is often the most moody and the hardest to cajole out of the mood. We’ve got hormones raging and they are old enough to feel the “been there, done that” of homeschool. They’re looking for adventure, yet they are not quite old enough to take charge and make it happen. Try a conversation about BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals). Ask them if there were no monetary limits and no time limits and no travel limits, what might they like to do? You might find out that your teen wants to take piano lessons for the first time, or wants to join a sports team, or a theater troupe, or learn Klingon, or go to Space Camp, or become expert at fashion. You may not cure the moodiness, but you can facilitate a brand new, grown-up adventure to buffer the sense of tedium that encroaches at ages 13-14. Talk to the teen! Find out what’s missing. Do the best you can to help it happen (you might need that teen to earn money or find someone to drive them or to start small and build—but put that goal somewhere visible and all of you work toward it).

The older teen is nearly at adulthood and feeling the tug between wanting a “mommy” and wanting to be respected as a “fledgling adult.” Risk and adventure. That’s what they need. Let them lead you into conversations about their interests, their viewpoints that aren’t yours, their anxieties. These conversations happen best one-on-one, with yummy food or drinks. Make time for the older teen and remember: they are gone A LOT! So if one comes home at midnight ready to talk, you get the toothpicks out to prop your eyelids open and you sit on the bed and talk. The older teen sometimes needs to challenge how he or she was raised and you need to go soft inside and let those words slide over you. They aren’t the final verdict. They are the words of a “near adult” trying to find his or her way this week. Be interested, be quiet, be curious, be gentle, be willing to take it.

Bottom Line:
You can’t keep everyone happy all the time and be happy yourself. Not possible! What you can do is pay attention, remind yourself that these years are fleeting (no matter how today feels), and that the needs of your children are reasonable and real. Just like yours. You may not fix any of it in a day, but you can do One Thing today to help alleviate some of the building pressure in the home. If you have Many Children (like so many homeschoolers), you’ll need help! Tag team with the co-parent or a friend. Get the community involved (youth workers, coaches, aunts and uncles, grandparents).

Take Care of You:
You need to be happy too: vitamins, exercise, therapy (it helps if you need it!), time alone, a passion or hobby, a good relationship with your significant other, and a source of joy each day (tea, flipping through a magazine, bubble bath, chocolate, gardening, your favorite rerun on TBS, your spiritual practice).

You can do it!

Image by Andrew Stawarz (cc)

Posted in Brave Writer Lifestyle, Brave Writer Philosophy, Homeschool Advice, On Being a Mother | 4 Comments »

Happy Mother’s Day: On Being a Mother

On Being a Mother

Years ago, Oprah featured an episode on mothering that ran so counter to my personal experience, I felt the need to write about how I understood mothering. As we celebrate our mothers and are thankful for the chance to be mothers, I share it again with you.

Oprah featured moms on her show. The two “experts” who “wrote the book” were bubbly, sharp, blond business-type women who wore chic outfits that had never seen spit up or spaghetti sauce stains. They rallied the audience into a frenzy of confessions about motherhood which variously decried the hardships of this “first order of creation” occupations.

“I hate the fluids of babies: pee, spit up, spilt milk, snot.”

“I cried the day I drove to the car dealership to buy a mini-van.”

“There were days I wanted to ’send them back to the hell from whence they came’.”

On and on the tales of woe pored from the mouths of devoted parents. Video clips of small kids on bikes, disastrous laundry rooms, “stuffed to the gills” cars with seats and sippy cups floated by, making one wonder why anyone would sign up for the task of mothering, let alone sustain it for decades. Moms confessed things, too, like the one who said she didn’t want to wake the sleeping baby by stopping the car for a potty break, but she needed to pee so badly, she took a Pampers diaper, stuck it between her legs and let it “go” as she drove. Yeah, I thought that was way more information than I needed to know about her, too.

There was a surprising lack of joy represented in the discussion of mothering. Mostly being a mom was held up as the hardest job on earth, the most demanding, the most self-sacrificing, the most misunderstood and overlooked work on the planet. A kind of shared martyrdom, underdog status united everyone and Oprah, never having mothered anyone, had to declare that indeed, they were right. Mothering equalled sainthood (which we all know implies burning at the stake and smiling through it!).

With my kids in the room, listening to the pain of childbirth and engorged breasts, the relentlessness of little voices, the demandingness of the small child’s need for food, sleep and comfort, the annihilation of a woman’s identity and sense of self, I couldn’t take it any more.

After all, far from being the hardest job in the world, mothering has been

  • the happiest,
  • most satisfying,
  • life-giving,
  • joyful,
  • rewarding,
  • fulfilling,
  • and (dare I admit it?) easiest job I’ve ever had.

Oh sure, the hours suck, there are anguishes deeper than the ocean, there are seasons (years!) of such utter exhaustion you can’t imagine ever being rested again… but all those discomforts are easily and unequivocally overturned by my children, themselves.

I punched pause on the DVR to set the record straight:

“Being your mother has been the single greatest joy and privilege of my life: not a burden, not a perennial unrelenting source of emotional and physical agony, not the ‘hardest job in the world’, not the knee-capping blow to my ‘adult individuality’ nor has it been the thankless, under-appreciated, most overlooked profession these mothers would have you believe. In fact, my sense of personhood, identity and self-knowledge has grown more through mothering than any business I’ve started, any degree I’ve earned, any relationship I’ve pursued. I thank YOU for being the best people to ever happen to me.”

Then I spewed in bullet style the privileges and unique joys that came with mothering them (all five of them, each one popping into my life like a fresh daisy, every two years for 10 years).

Cuddling

Being your mom means I got to have someone to cuddle non-stop for 12 years while sleeping with at least one of you at a time, nursing you, carrying you, holding you, helping you in and out of car seats, and backpacking you.

Sleeping

There is nothing more divine than a baby who falls asleep on your chest while you fall asleep and the whole world stops while mother and tiny child become fused as one content, quiet, shared being. No meditation, yoga, prayer circle, private retreat has ever come close to providing me with the depth of peace, pleasure and abiding hope that sleeping with a baby has given me.

Playing

Board games and hopscotch, dress-ups, face paint, finger paint, walks in the woods, trips to the zoo, picking up bugs, rolling down hills, blowing bubbles, eating too many cookies, watching Arthur on PBS, rewatching Disney movies, cards, chasing a dog in the backyard, trampoline jumping, creek splashing, snowman building, skiing, middle of the night slumber parties, bike rides, soccer in the backyard, soccer on the official fields, ultimate frisbee… What adult gets to do any of this on his or her 9-5 job? Talk about luxury!

Conversing

Oh it starts off good – Why do bubbles float? How did I get red hair? Why doesn’t Santa Claus visit Moroccans, too? But boy does it keep getting better!? I’ve learned about human rights, veganism, Role Playing Games, Shakespeare, Klingon, fashion, exercise, lacrosse, birds, fantasy novels, conspiracy theories, atheism, feminism, linguistics, alternative monetary systems for world peace (seriously!) and more by talking to my kids.

Mothering is the job that means taking the dog and kids for a walk in the woods is on task. It’s the one where teatimes and picnics are considered achievements worth trumpeting to friends and family. It’s the job where even on bad days, someone tells you “Hey, I love you Mom” and then hugs you so tightly, you believe it.

There is no comparison to the jobs I’ve had in business and writing. Sure, affirmation and personal achievement are nice… but they are nothing like the bond that comes from the devotion of loving people who live every day looking for you to see them for who they are. I’ve found that the easiest thing in the world is to love my kids. All it takes is entering into their lives on their terms and giving all I’ve got. I get it all back and more.

Yes, there have been nights where I cried myself to sleep over a non-stop crying toddler or a teenager’s emotional pain. There are times when I feel out of control and invisible and fearful for my child’s future or welfare. But the rewards of mothering so far outweigh any of its challenges, I can’t relate to the repeated refrains of “how hard I have it” simply because I chose to have five kids. Instead, I just feel perennially lucky that my lifestyle has included such richness, tenderness and connection to immortality through my children.

I think it’s time we blew the whistle.

Mothering isn’t a job. It’s a privilege.

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, Homeschool Advice, On Being a Mother | 14 Comments »

Put Fun on the Schedule—for YOU!

Put Fun on the Schedule

You’ve got to love homeschooling parents. They love what they do—this second shot at education, this all-day-long pursuit of good stories, in-depth investigation, and honing children’s talents.

They are also a hyper-responsible bunch. Tell homeschoolers that they must log 180 hours for math and, by golly, they’ll start tallying on the blackboard, right down to the quarter hour. Suggest that grammar ought to be covered every year and they’ll research programs to purchase while giving up meat for a month to pay for them.

All this commitment and devotion can lead to the disappearing act many parents perform equally well. While they are becoming (in the eyes and minds of their friends) “homeschoolers,” their children simply see devotion, passion, and care directed toward them. In other words, kids don’t know that a homeschooling parent’s primary hobby, career, and joy is homeschooling. It appears to them that all of this is done on their behalf, not for the nurturing of a parent’s identity, ego, or talents.

Which brings me to the point of this entry. Of course we love to homeschool or we wouldn’t do it. Still, education of our children is intended to lead somewhere. What life are you leading that is the exciting, expanded, enticing life of an adult that your children will look forward to attaining purely based on observing your varied and stimulating experiences? When your kids see you, do they see someone who has found their groove, who has outlets, hobbies, and interests of their own?

In other words, are YOU having any fun?

Last night I spent the evening with a local chapter of our homeschooling network. I shared about getting out of the mid-winter blues, about the power of taking time for yourself, of living your own learning journey in front of your kids. I also mentioned, because it seemed like a good idea at the time, that parents deserve to have a little fun of their own. Then I put out a tray of interesting objects: a blue candle, a floral teacup, a ball of rubber bands, an eraser, a paint brush, a fossil, a salt shaker, knitting, a chocolate bar, and red nail polish.

I asked the moms at the meeting to freewrite about the night’s conversation in light of the objects they selected. The hostess wrote such a wonderful piece, I asked her if I could share it with you. She chose the red nail polish and I think gets to the heart of what I was hoping to convey last night:

Red nail polish—my favorite!

I keep thinking I will paint my nails red, but then I never do! I don’t sit down and take time to do the thing I really want to do. So true on so many fronts. I fill myself up with “have to’s” and “need to’s.” Oh I try to snatch a little guilty pleasure here and there, but only in snippets and never truly satisfying.

Nothing so obvious as sitting down, putting on glasses, taking the time to color within the lines – and fix it as necessary. And red is so obvious that if I did, it would be a bold admission of time deliberately spent on something that makes me happy.

So what other guilty pleasures do I keep putting off? It’s not that I think they’re wrong, but I just don’t ever let myself get around to them. (Debbie Yurchak)

So go do something for yourself today, okay?

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Posted in Homeschool Advice, On Being a Mother | 4 Comments »

Healing Your Parent-Child Relationship

Healing Your Parent-Child Relationship

When I first started teaching writing online, I imagined helping parents figure out how to coax delightful words out of somewhat resistant children. I figured that if I could help parents see that the stuff in the heads of their kids was interesting (at least to the kids having the thoughts), writing would follow and that would make Mama happy. A happy Mama would mean a happier home and homeschool… and writing children.

What followed astonished me. Mothers from around the world sent emails to say that the Brave Writer classes had rescued their relationships with their kids. One mom claimed that she had forgotten that she liked her son, so frustrated she’d become with his foot-dragging approach to homeschool. Another mom revealed that she didn’t listen to her children almost ever. She didn’t know that listening was important to writing and had forgotten how important it was to mothering.

By learning to help their children break through,
moms were making discoveries as well.

The conditions we set up for writing seem to foster better relationships between parents and children, almost as a side-benefit! Writing, it turns out, is the “school subject” where souls are exposed, where the chafing in the parent-child relationship becomes most obvious. Somehow by helping children break through their writing blocks, parents discovered how to break through in relating to these stuck kids in a more compassionate, satisfying way.

What surprised me in the teaching of writing, then, is that the communication required to write well led to revived relationships between parents and their children. Kids were asked to express their thoughts forth-rightly, honestly. Parents were expected to “hear” the thoughts, not to judge or modify them. Parents discovered that many times they not only hadn’t been listening, they hadn’t even wanted to listen. Yet they expected their kids to listen to them and to do the things they expected.

Healing Your Parent-Child Relationship

There are a few behavioral tactics and principles to draw children out that are a part of the Brave Writer Lifestyle that I want to share here. If you are currently struggling with one of your kids, see if any of these might help. They work for writing and they may just work for your relationship too.

  • Touch your child.
    In freewriting, I suggest rubbing your child’s shoulders to get him ready to write. This bit of affectionate contact can ease the strain of a “schoolish” demand. Remember throughout your homeschool days to give a hug, run your hands through her hair, hold hands, wrestle, tickle, play a hand-slapping game, snuggle on the couch, or put someone in your lap.
  • Look your child in the eye.
    Showing interest in your child’s thoughts is essential to good writing. Looking him or her in the eye proves you care. You might be surprised how little you stop what you’re doing to look a child in the eye while he or she talks. Be sure to do this once per day with at least one of your children each time.
  • Invite truth.
    If one of your kids is struggling with math, reading, writing, beating a level on a computer game, or learning to do a cartwheel, invite an honest description of the struggle. Don’t help the child get beyond it yet. Rather, ask for the truth and listen to it. Don’t fix or change it. Honor it by acknowledging the disappointment, sense of failure, hopelessness, fear, anxiety or frustration that accompanies the attempt. As in writing, the only way to words for writing is through the true ones right there on the surface stopping the flow of ideas. Solving the problem may follow at a later time, but for now, hearing the truth with empathy is more important.
  • Get on your child’s level.
    In writing, getting on your child’s level means that you will let the child set the pace and agenda for writing, that you’ll sit side-by-side while the child still needs that support as he or she writes. In parenting, it can look like this: getting on the floor, jumping on the trampoline, sitting next to him on the couch holding a controller, laying on her bed at naptime, sharing a stuffed armchair for reading, crawling on all fours with a baby. There is something about reducing the size of your body to your child’s eye-level that helps you see the world from his or her perspective.
  • Surprise your child.
    Skip the hard math lesson, eat dessert first, tell a shocking story, decorate the table, sing to an old pop tune at the top of your lungs, paint the out-of-date patio furniture in six different colors. We parents love routines. Our kids love surprises. See life through your child’s eyes. Surprise catalyzes new language and the desire to communicate which in turn may translate into writing.
  • Change one thing.
    What one thing would make life happier for your child today? Take it seriously and see if there is some way to accommodate it. (Doesn’t like chores and is too tired to do them… you offer to do them today.) Trust is built when you take a child’s needs seriously. Trust is essential to a writer/editor relationship.

Writing is built on trust. A writer wants to know that the person doing the reading of that writing is on her side, is rooting for her success, will take her ideas seriously. Same thing for parenting.

The communication required to write well
can revive a hurting parent-child relationship.

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