Thank You, Rock-n-Roll!

When my first born son was a wee tot, probably no more than 1, he tried his first tomato.  It was the first time I ever saw him dislike a taste; up to that point, he was a dream eater.  But that tomato caused a facial response worthy of overcooked brussels sprouts and became the first chapter in a long, depressing story called How A Kid Got Picky.

At the time, I thought: "OK, he doesn't like tomatoes.  No big."  But it turns out, it has been a huge road block in his eating life.  Pizza?  Nope: tomato sauce.  Family spaghetti night? Not with my homemade sauce.  Salads?  Well, sort of fine, if you pick out the toms, which of course, he does.  Salsa? No.  Bruschetta?  Uh-uh.  Most soups?  Fail.

As he has gotten pickier over the years, his not eating tomatoes has gotten more and more frustrating for me.  Pizza is such kid-standard fare that the issue comes up frequently.  Pizza is the meal of choice at most birthday parties, soccer team parties, class parties, always leaving me with "What the heck did he eat?  Chips?  A carrot or two?"

I've tried a million times to get him to try pizza again.  We make pizza for dinner fairly regularly, and he will not eat it.  I've encouraged, cajoled, threatened, bribed, stormed, and reasoned.  I've screamed and yelled.  Over pizza.  I've come unhinged a few times, to be sure, and that's never a good thing.

For a long time now, I have suspected that he would actually love pizza if he just gave it a try.  After all, it's now been over a decade since a tomato passed his lips.  Things change, right?

A couple of years ago and at the end of my rope, I tried a new tactic.  Employing my most practiced nonchalance, I mentioned, offhand, that "someday, I'm sure you'll like pizza."  Since then, every now and then I've asked (using my most crafted casualness): "So, wanna try some pizza this time?  No?  OK, no problem.  Someday you will, I'm sure.  You'll love it."  

In his presence, that zen like confidence prevailed.  But out of eye and ear shot?  I've expressed my true feelings, storming mightily at his monumental stubbornness.  I've obsessed over how he will ever truly enjoy college if he won't eat pizza.  I've wistfully longed for a normal kid, one who inhales pizza like a healthy American teenager. 

It's not that pizza is so great.  Bread, cheese, sauce.  It's not the holy grail of nutrition.  But pizza has become a metaphor, a symbol of his refusal to do something I want him to do, of his epic picky-ness, of the pain-in-the-neck hassle of figuring out how to feed him, of the never ending power struggle that food became at an early age between him and me.  (I learned my lesson.  My other kids are far less picky because I got smart about how to feed them and how to handle food with them.)

So back to the Zen Strategy.  I tried it because I had tried everything else.  I didn't really believe it would work.  The only thing it did was pull the plug on the power struggle, and as much as I wanted him to eat the damn pizza, that was enough for me for awhile.

12 years later, my son has joined a band as a guitarist.  After the first rehearsal, he came home with the bad news: the boys order a pizza at every single practice.  "Well, maybe it's time to try it, then!" was my response.

His?  "Yeah, maybe."

At the end of the second band practice, he called me: "Guess what mom?  I tried pizza.  I loved it."

He even gave me the details about how when the pizza got there, he didn't say a thing, acted like it was no big deal, grabbed a piece and shoved it in his mouth.  I love having that little movie playing in my head.  

Thank you, rock and roll, for giving pizza back to my family, for proving that the zen approach to parenting works every now and then, for teaching me to let go.  Thank you for confirming what I have long suspected but also long resisted: take 97% of what you most worry about when it comes to the kids, and stop worrying.  Fake it till you make it.  Fake it until you figure out that it's really true.  Fake it until what you most want drops into your lap.

I know it's just pizza.  But that pizza is teaching me to be a better mother.

* * *

  

How?

We are back at school.  One of my kids hates it.  Let's call the kid Pat, for the sake of this blog post, a non-gender specific name, and let's go with she as the pronoun to refer to Pat, just because.

So Pat is miserable.  She is a smart, kind, funny, generous, well-grounded kid, and she is miserable.  She loved homeschooling...or so she says now, looking back, never mind that some days, getting her to participate in a modicum of school-like activities was challenging to say the least.  But I knew this transition would be toughest for her, of all the kids.

So she's truly miserable.  It's only a little over a week into the new arrangement, so we can still give it time and still play the wait and see game.  But here's the thing.  She's really miserable.

And if there's one thing we moms hate, it's seeing our kid miserable, suffering, struggling to make sense of what seems like the senseless.  One interesting wrinkle is that a handful of folks at the school have said things to me -- not aware that Pat is miserable -- that kind of tell an opposite story, that she's doing better than she's leading me to believe.  That doesn't really surprise me, as I think I would exaggerate to make a point, were I in Pat's shoes too, and not all exaggeration is falsehood.  So there's that.

But again.  Miserable.  After school, we have the sobbing, the gnashing of teeth, the questioning: "Why did you do this to me???"  We have literally hours of homework to slog through.  We have devastation and despair.  We have tears and sadness and frustration.  

I've tried many, many words to soothe the misery and help the poor kid out.  Words are falling flat for now, and I'm left with only words for myself, a mantra that isn't quite working yet: Be patient.  Be encouraging.  Be hopeful.  Wait for my words of wisdom to sink in, to show themselves to Pat as true.  Be patient.  This too shall pass.

So now, My Dear Internetters, I turn it to you: How do you best support a child who is miserable, when you cannot change the situation creating the misery, or at least cannot take him or her out of it, and when the child in question is highly, highly resistant to your efforts?

I want Pat to know she is loved, that she can handle this situation, that we are here to help, that the school is here to help, that good things can come out of bad situations, that she and we will prevail.  I want her to face this challenge with all the support necessary to overcome it.

But how?

Help.  Please.  I need some rockin' good ideas.

* * *

It Is Not Right

Family life is hard.

This post could go in about 100 different directions from that opening line, but today, at 10pm, when I am finally sitting down and everyone (almost) else is lying down, and I've got just enough Lagunitas Censored Rich Copper Ale down my throat, and just enough energy left to ponder the extremes of the day, the post will go here: It's hard to follow children down all the different paths and into all the different choices and through all the different things that happen to them.

• One kid dealt with jerks today, real assholes, to tell the truth. I don't usually curse on this blog, but tonight, there's no other way to describe the people my child had to deal with. All I could do was tell him how proud I am to have a kid who is not a jerk, not the kind of person other kids have to talk to their parents about.

• One kid dealt with mosquito bites. No biggee, you say? Well, the kid in question has an extreme reaction to them, so when a child has 8 bites, all about the diameter of grapefruits, swelling painfully, itching maddeningly, and when that child is weeping with pain and craziness, it's no small thing. It's hard to not be able to make a child feel better, even with medicine on board, topical remedies deployed, ice packs called into service, and everything else we could think of being thrown at the problem.

• One kid dealt with-- no, she made ME deal with repeated, frustrating, exasperating behavior that we've been trying like hell to change, but which I find myself dealing with every. damn. night. and which I find exhausting and infuriating, and which leaves me with the very real need to control my hands so that I don't grab her too hard in a furious attempt to again convey to her how much we need her to get. with. the. freakin'. program.

So. After a pretty exhausting day, I found myself ping-ponging from one kid in need to another, kind of amazed by the demands parenting sometimes makes upon us, and wishing I could do more than caress a mosquito-bitten forehead, encourage an asshole-weary boy, and futilely reprimand a monkey-girl-child who doesn't seem to care one bit what I have to say.

(I have two other kids. They are total rock stars. One helped dad fix a window and deflate 15 soccer balls. The other ministered to her itchy sister, bringing her applesauce, offering her a soft blanket, offering her water, a pillow, kindness. The two of them are signs of hope and goodness for me tonight.)

* * *

What's the best way to handle jerks, anyway? All those platitudes we've offered our son?

Don't let them see how much it bothers you; if they know they're getting to you, it will only make it worse.

You're better off being a nicer, more sensitive kid, even if you don't see that right now. You will someday.

Just do your best. Hold your head high, and remember that as long as you are taking the high road, you can be proud of yourself.

Beat the crap out of them. (Did I say that out loud?)

Jerks are everywhere; quitting won't help, because wherever you go, you'll have to deal with people like that. As much as you would like to get as far away as possible from those people, wherever you end up, there will be jerks just like them.

All those platitudes are great when you have the benefit of age and experience, when you have the hindsight to see the way life and people work out. They are of little significance or value in the moment for a kid who is righteously pissed off at the injustice of the fact that assholes exist.

Those words will help him. Someday. They are worth saying. They just do precious little for him tonight, and that makes me feel helpless and lame.

It is not right that assholes exist. How do we help our kids negotiate them?

* * *

Nothing To Say

I really have nothing to report today.

Life has been so boring lately, nothing to do, nothing to think about, nothing to worry over. I hardly know what to do with myself! I've organized my sock drawer, color-coded my tupperware lids, and turned my kids' rooms into Pottery Barn slices of heaven. Their behavior, accordingly, has been epically wonderful. This is pretty much me these days:

Because I certainly have not

been unable to move from the couch in the evenings in order to restore some semblance of order to my barn-like environs;

worried unceasingly about my children's apparent non-relationship with hard work;

succumbed to overwhelm at the shambles my life is in;

bickered with my spouse over such important matters as why the back door is always wide open;

yelled at anyone, for any reason whatsoever;

compared myself to every other mother, hell woman, in the world and come out on the losing side;

OR

eaten way too many carbs, eschewed all vegetables, ignored my need to exercise, had wine when I should have had water, and in all other ways failed to take decent care of myself.

I'm so glad I'm evolved enough to be past all of that.

* * *

The Eye of a Needle Would Be Easier Than This

I have so much to do this morning, in a very short space of time. But I always have to time vent, it seems.

Today, I feel like my children are ungrateful and spoiled. Entitled and inflexible. Lazy and negative. Nay-sayers and buzz-kills. Nasty, brutish and short.

I'll be honest: when I am working hard to provide them with opportunities, relaxation and inspiration, and I am met with sour faces, complaints and resistance, I get extremely pissed off.

But what's the right response here? Yelling is definitely a fall back position; I'm pretty good at the indignant, guilt-inducing tirade. Unfortunately, I am the adult in this situation, and it's my job to guide them through the day, hopefully feeling good about themselves and having learned a thing or two.

I do want them to feel good about themselves; I want those positive feelings to come from having played and worked hard, helped their family, cooperated with mum, and experienced what it's like to engage the world positively.

It's all I can do to keep myself from screaming at them. Well-placed yelling is just that: well-placed and deserving. But I'm teetering back and forth between patience and righteous indignation.

We are off to a homeschooling science class this morning, after I (with their extremely reluctant help) finish cleaning up our Sonoma home-away-from-home so my folks come home from their trip to Ireland and find their house nearly as they left it. They will fight me on nearly everything I will ask them to do in the next two hours.

How will I respond?

* * *

I Am Not A Pillow

I have three daughters whom I adore. They adore me too. They like to be close to me. Really, really close to me. They smother me.

I love cuddling with one of them. Doesn't matter which one, but one seems to be the limit for me to be able to enjoy the time together. Any more than that and I turn into She Who Must Not Be Touched.

When my family is, say, watching a World Cup soccer game, which we've been doing a fair amount of, I usually end up standing behind the couch. If I attempt to sit down, I am promptly covered in girl children. They sit on any available portion of my body, my legs, arms, head, if need be. They attempt to achieve as high a percentage as possible of body to body contact. They crush me.

When I sit down to, say, write a blog post, it takes about 5.3 seconds before a girl child (or two or three) is pressing against my arm, leaning into my side and invading my space. Like right now as I type, and keep having to correct spelling because it's hard to type correctly when my left arm is supporting a 5 year old and my right leg is trying to keep a three year old at bay. And my seven year old is trying to engage me in conversation.

Once draped all over me, they usually sit peacefully for another 5.3 seconds before the squirming and bickering begin. They want to touch as much of me as possible, but go bananas if "her" leg touches "hers." They compare how much space they each have and make pronouncements about fairness and justice. They make life miserable.

It's not a nice feeling to be a mom who says: "NOPE!" as soon as a wee girl makes her way over to my lap, setting off the radar on the other two girls: BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP LAP SITTING IS TAKING PLACE BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP MUST JOIN THE PARTY BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP.

It's not a nice feeling to avoid physical contact with my girls.

I do love them so, but the amount of closeness they require is exhausting.

So my mothering challenge for today: Lovingly explain to my daughters the concept of personal space, without hurting their feelings, so that I neither bark at them nor become their pillow, so that all four of us arrive at the end of the day feeling like we got our needs met: their need to touch me as often as possible and my need not to feel like an overworked sheep at a petting zoo visited by a ADHD-infested classroom of kindergardeners.

Sounds pretty impossible to me. But I'm all about attempting the impossible, so let's see how this goes.

* * *

Crime and Shoelaces

I don’t even know how to begin to process this day.

Let me start by saying that the reason women should stay home and not work outside the home is that kids need shoelaces in their shoes and someone to comfort them when they are traumatized. And I really needed to be that person today. Yes, daddies can re-lace shoes and provide comfort, but what if I want to be the one who does that? After all, I got to carry them around for nine months (OK, more like 45 months, plus another month for their combined lateness) and I got to bring them forth into this world…and I AM THE MOMMY.

There is an episode of Mad About You that takes place right before Jamie gives birth. She and Paul are arguing about who is going to do what after the baby is born, and she basically has this moment of realization where she says, and then says repeatedly as it starts to sink in: “I’m the mommy!” She travels the spectrum from indignation to trepidation to abject fear, as the full scope of those three words sinks in and she realizes how much her life is going to change. I love that scene, because it captures, with a light touch, what I couldn’t have known the first time I saw it: That the privilege and responsibility of being a mother is alternately a blessing and burden, a joy and a hardship. The children themselves are not the hardship; it’s the attendant chaos and complication and challenges that really get ya’ down.

So what happened today? Well, it’s a nearly impossible task to paint the full picture, but the highlights are that we started off the day fighting about homework. Then, that fight was interrupted by a full blown crime scene unfolding out our front window. No one was hurt, thankfully, but a would-be robber attempted to steal items out of a school bus, traumatizing the kids on the bus, the mother who was getting her child on the bus, the bus driver, and finally, my children, who witnessed Act II of the unfolding drama – suspect running away and mother screaming for help – right out our front window.

Did I mention that the bus was one for special needs kids? Yes, that’s another lovely detail of the whole story. The guy actually pulled over in his own car in order to rob the school bus, which was idling in front of our neighbor’s house while she was helping her son into his seat. He stepped into the bus, said he had a gun (which he probably did not), and tried to take a few children’s backpacks before grabbing the bus driver's briefcase and running back to his car. This is when our neighbor, started screaming for the Police, which is what brought us all to our front window.

Rick ran outside to help the mom, our neighbor, and I ran to the phone to call the police. Our kids were left to get an eyeful of the commotion outside. They saw the guy running to his car, confronting their dad and exchanging a few words, flinging the bag he had stolen and driving away. They saw the poor mom screaming after the guy, clearly shaken to her core. They saw neighbors come streaming out of their houses. They could hear me, shaky myself, talking to the 911 dispatcher and telling her what little I could. It was an intensified few minutes. It was very upsetting to the kids.

One of our kids, in particular, was extremely upset. He wanted to know:

"Why would someone do that? Don’t people like that care that there are children in the world, and things like that scare them? I hate all this grown-up stuff, why did this have to happen, what is going on…”

And on and on and on. We had quite the ride to school, culminating with the child in question saying:

"I can’t get the pictures out of my head! I feel like it happened to me; I feel like something precious was taken from me."

I reassured him that nothing of his was taken, that he was safe, that he would be safe for the entire day, blah de blah de blah. But of course, I was thinking how something precious was indeed taken from him: the ability to believe that bad things don’t happen right outside his front door.

And the shoelaces. Vincenzo’s school shoes got so messed up last night that Rick cut the laces out of them. Today was a free dress day at school, and knowing this, I figured he would wear other shoes and give me a day to get new laces. I forgot that the kid is down to two pairs of shoes, not counting sandles. And we couldn’t find the second pair. In all of the excitement over the school bus incident, I didn’t even realize he was shoe-less until very late in the game. The shoe drama unfolded like this. Keep in mind that in the background, we have upset kids still processing the crime scene, so to speak. Maybe his shoes are in the truck? Oh wait, Rick is down the street giving a police report, and I don’t have a key to his truck. Call Rick, he can’t come back to the house yet, he really is talking to the police. Finally a neighbor brings me Rick’s keys, I check the truck, the shoes aren’t there. OK, where else? The soccer bag! Into the garage to try to find the soccer bag. And yes! The shoes are there. But they are SOAKED and muddy from the soccer game on Saturday, and they’ve been sitting in that bag for four days. They’re gross. Back to square one. No extra laces in the all-purpose kitchen drawer. No other shoes in his room I can take laces out of. Head to girls’ room, where I finally find a pair with plain white laces I can use. Rip them out of Lola’s shoes, string them into Vincenzo’s. Great, now he will go to school with his feet inside of shoes. Hallelujah.

I was handling all of this while keeping in mind that I had to get to work on time. Not because I work for ogres, but because I really need to get some work done, and the to-do list there is ever increasing. I was handling all of this while packing 5 lunches, remembering to sign and return 3 progress reports, finding $5 for the donation to the homeless shelter the school is doing, trying to calm the fears and anxieties of the masses, trying to explain how evil exists in the world, trying to be a rock of calm and steady perseverance for my children, as we rocked in a sea of chaos.

And it upset me, that I couldn’t just stop the world and give all of us the time and space we needed in order to enter the day peacefully. The racing and rushing is tough most days, but today, it nearly did me in. I had one of those moments when I wished with all my heart that I wasn’t working outside the home, that I could be one of those moms who has five packets of shoe laces in her all-purpose kitchen drawer, who can take as much time as necessary to calm fears and soothe worries.

And the day closes with chaos still swirling about. Boys still awake and not settling down. Noodles all over one corner of the dining room (thank you, 2-year old). Dirty dishes on every inch of countertop. Laundry threatening to achieve world domination. Legos everywhere. Truly everywhere. Work to do. Miles to go. Children to love.

I know we will make; I just don’t have a clue how.

I'm Not Ready for This

My son is in 3rd grade. THIRD GRADE. He is 9. Most of his classmates are 8, turning 9. He is young.

So I am not ready for the things that are happening in his "social circle." He struggles a little bit, socially; he has a couple of great buddies, but he's the kind of kid who really cares what other people think, so he worries about whether or not the kids in his class like him or not.

There is one kid in particular whom he has a hard time with. Today, he told me that this kid is his friend now. I asked him how things changed. He said that most of the kids in his class don't like him and that this kid (I'll call him Bobby) is helping him get the other kids to like him. OK, unpleasant enough. But what was next?

"Bobby says I need a girlfriend."

Me: "Why?"

"Because if I got a popular girl to like me, the way that girls like 'Bobby,' then I would be popular too."

The difficult thing about these conversations with him is that I feel like anything I can think of to say just falls short somehow. I asked him if Bobby generally behaves in ways that he (Samuel) thinks are good, knowing that the answer is no. So after he admitted that no, Bobby is generally a jerk, I suggested that a jerk is not necessarily a reliable source for getting advice on how to behave. I also tried to suggest that a person who gives you advice like that is not really being a good friend, that his other buddies wouldn't ever tell him something like that. Both Rick and I reminded Samuel that he has really good friends in his class, both boys and girls, and that it doesn't matter what other people think or say, especially if those other people aren't very kind.

Most of our words just sort of went splat. Didn't seem to register with Samuel or make any difference to him.

The thing is, I think Samuel is well-liked in his class. Not by everyone, of course, and there are some kids he has trouble with, but he is generally well-liked. The school is small, and focuses on community; they try to emphasize good ways of treating each other. It disturbs me that this particular class doesn't seem to be learning this very well; this little episode is just one of many I have heard, from Samuel as well as from other kids and other moms.

Samuel has a story of questionable social interaction at least a few times a week. Today, it's the girlfriend advice. Yesterday, it was the kid using the F-word with the teacher. Yes, with the teacher. Last week, it was some of the boys imitating those wonderful role models of the NBA: "You're in MY HOUSE!" *Sigh.*

I think this is one of those moments when parenting is mostly about faith, that the seeds we plant are taking root and will grow with proper care and nourishment. We cannot see the fruits yet...we have to trust that they will be there someday. This is why parents get heavy-handed: because they think that if they do not HAMMER HOME THE MESSAGE, then the message is not going to be received. We are guilty of that as well. But I'm trying to lighten my touch. I'm trying to talk and listen and listen and talk, and trust that what I say in love and with quiet confidence will take root and grow.

That and raise a little cain at the school and find out why there is so much cattiness, so much "flirting" going on, so many instances that make me say, "What is going ON over there?"

Shakespeare Days

My 9 year old son is obsessed with Shakespeare.



Now, I know that's not something you hear everyday. It's not something I would have expected. It's a wonderful thing that we are having a spot of trouble managing.

Before I paint the full picture, let me also say that Samuel is obsessed with having his own cell phone, playing video games, playing sports, Captain Underpants, and various other very typical 9-year old boy stuff.

But this past summer, we enrolled him in a 2-week Shakespeare theatre camp, and life has not been the same since.

For about three days a few months ago, every chance he got, he would pull out the full text of King Lear, put the audio-version on our CD player, and follow along with the words. Not having 3 hours in a row to devote to this activity, he asked me to bring it along in the car, so he could listen and follow along as we drove around doing errands. When we got home, he would immediately put the CD in the home stereo and disappear behind the book. It took a few days, but he listened to the entire thing.

King Lear is the play he did over the summer, with the California Shakespeare Theatre. Three very enthusiastic cheers to this amazing company, both for their productions at their Orinda ampitheatre and for their excellent kids' camps. The camp experience captivated Samuel. For two weeks of full days, he attended text classes, drama classes, rehearsals,...and soaked it all up completely. Since then, he has read through the full text a couple of times, watched a video version with us, and now, he is getting ready for his very own directorial debut, and is organizing his 3rd grade class to perform King Lear...in my living room.

This is where the difficulty managing his obsession comes in. Before we really knew what was going on, Samuel had put together a cast, designed a script book, "hired" a co-director (who, despite signing a contract, has unfortunately already quit, so he's looking again...), and started making a list of props he will need. Here are just some of the challenges:

He wants to do this play at home. We have a tiny house.

There is one particular scene that involves a significant amount of blood and violence -- Gloucester gets his eyes gouged out -- and Samuel is intensely mulling over how to pull this off. He was thrilled to find two chocolate eyeballs in the bag of Halloween candy. Now we just have to tackle the problem of how to make it all realistic without terrifying the director.

He wants to do the ENTIRE play, not just excerpts or scenes like he did over the summer. "But I've never done the whole play before!" goes his lament. Never mind that his classmates don't know Shakespeare from Dr. Suess...or that he doesn't have an entire team of knowledgeable people ready to help him with this large scale project.

He wants to have rehearsals twice a week.

He wants the performance to be in about a month.

He comes at us with a list a mile long of all of the ways in which this production is shaping up in his mind, and we must navigate our way through encouraging him in this truly great idea while reigning in what is not possible. Last night, he got so upset that we were suggesting that he do excerpts rather than the whole play that he threw up his hands and announced "I QUIT!"

He did calm down after that. And he and his dad spent some time looking at the website of the Folger Library in Washington DC, which has some great resources for kids. Among other things, he found a character identification quiz. He took this quiz, and Rick and I just sort of sat there amazed and incredulous; he knew lots of the answers.

So our challenge is to nurture this exploding interest. Not so easy when he is exploding with a kajillion and one mostly impossible ideas. So our guess our challenge is really to figure out which impossible ideas we need to find a way to make possible for him.

How nice that all of this is happening right as the Holidays are launching...I was looking for something else to do these days.

But of course, it's delightful, inspiring, and amazing to watch unfold.