A Reminder

I came across this article on Hands Free Mama today called To Build (or Break) a Child's Spirit, and I simply must share it.  I am the Type A, controlling, anxious, perfectionist mother in the article who is too often criticizing her children instead of building them up - but I have also been the child who was criticized (and many of us were),which led to the voice inside my head that is never happy with me.  It is past time to tell that voice to shut the f*%# up.

It was a brutal realization, but also an inspiration:  "...I will not dwell on yesterday.  Today matters more."

And then I made this, to help me remember better:

Teaching Children Self Control

I came across this excellent and interesting article on ParentingScience.com today that I just had to share.  Enjoy!

A Lesson on Pete Seeger

We lost a very important person yesterday when Pete Seeger passed away.  He was the musical bridge between Woody Guthrie and so many artists, from Bob Dylan and Peter, Paul and Mary to Bruce Springsteen and Dan Zanes, who took the folk music that Seeger preserved and passed it on to future generations.  He was a humble champion of the poor and the environment, and a beloved entertainer of children.  He will be sorely missed, indeed.                                                                                                                                 

Though my kids are somewhat familiar with Pete Seeger, I wanted to make sure they had a firm idea of who he was, so we took advantage of all of the information crowding the internet today, and we read Mr. Seeger's obituary in the New York Times (click on all of the links, too!), watched numerous performances of some of his most famous tunes, and listened to him tell the tale of Abiyoyo (we have the book and cd, but you can watch Pete tell the tale himself on Reading Rainbow here).  We also watched the Scholastic video of The Foolish Frog - a tale that Seeger told his own children.  You can listen to The Foolish Frog here.

One of the best things about homeschooling is being able to take advantage of learning opportunities as they present themselves, and today was a perfect example of that.  We also discovered that Mr. Seeger was really the embodiment of our educational and life philosophy - to question authority, to discover the truth for yourselves and to be true to yourself and follow your passions wholeheartedly.  Take a moment to watch Mr. Seeger play the song What Did You Learn in School Today - it sums it all up nicely:)                                                                                                            

A New Year and the Swirling Vortex of Holiday Terror

I doubt I'm the only parent (or person, for that matter) whose head begins to start spinning sometime around Halloween, and whose head doesn't clear until sometime after the new year has begun.  I have long referred to this phenomenon as "the swirling vortex of holiday terror," and though I've worked hard to stop it from engulfing me in its madness, I have been mostly unsuccessful - especially since the birth of my children.

My son had to make this violent cookie.  Boys.

I try to be "present" as the season starts - to appreciate the round of traditions that begin with a Thanksgiving up north, tree-decorating at my mother-in-law's and the tree-lighting in Cedarburg, where I've helped kids write letters to Santa for a decade.  I'd likely be more successful if my daughter's birthday didn't fall smack dab in the midst of all of that - forcing us to combine special holiday moments with a birthday celebration, while simultaneously trying to give them both the measure of attention they deserve.

Then we're on to finding and decorating our tree, the rounds of cookie baking with family and friends, a cookie exchange, the Nutcracker Ballet and our own Solstice tradition, in which we put food out for the "snow angels" (aka, critters) and hang a special lantern to light up the longest night of the year.

The Solstice lantern

All the while, trying to make time to watch the special Christmas movies (such as Charlie Brown Christmas and Emmett Otter's Jug Band Christmas), listen to the Christmas music and to read the special Christmas books (the titles of which seem to grow each year, but include The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, Carl's Christmas, The Gift of Nothing, Great Joy and Snowmen at Christmas) together next to our tree.  

When Christmas arrives, it's an absolute blur of gatherings and gifts; completely lacking in sleep, but abounding in stress, as we try to cram in whatever we didn't finish, make Christmas miracles for our children and get to every party on time.  It's overwhelming.

By the time I arrive at my birthday, which falls the day before New Year's Eve, I'm exhausted and often sick, but we're still not done:  there's the annual Epiphany play and, finally, my husband's birthday about a week into January (that's right: 3 out of 4 birthdays in our family fall among the holidays - 5 if you include my dad). And though we have all these traditions to mark the season and holiday, I often get to the end and feel that I somehow missed all of it - especially the quiet traditions.  I always feel that I didn't read the stories enough, listen to the music enough or just simply sat and enjoyed our tree enough.

I think we're just too busy.  I think there's just too much.

I envy my friends who hole up in their house and enjoy a long, quiet Christmas by their fireplace.  I don't have a fireplace, but if I did, it would be where I'd spend my Christmas - reading the books, watching the movies and listening to the music while staring at our tree - snuggled up by the fireplace with my family.  It's my dream Christmas - quiet, peaceful and simple.  

I know, I know - first world problems, right?  I shouldn't complain - many people would be envious of our large family to gather with and all of the traditions we have.  Still, I seek to simplify and scale down in this new year; to focus on what really matters so we aren't so overwhelmed.  I suspect that there are many people on that same path; people who are tired by the frantic pace and too much stuff, and I'm hoping that by relating my journey to you, I can help us all.  So, here's to simplicity in 2014!  Happy New Year, everyone.

The Best Thanksgiving Books

It's always bothered me that Thanksgiving has been swallowed up in the swirling vortex of holiday terror that "The Holidays" has become.  At our house, I refuse to put up a single Christmas decoration or hear any of out beloved Christmas music until the day after Thanksgiving, and not a moment before.

One tradition we have at every holiday is to put out our favorite holiday books on the coffee table.  I've started a special page just for Holiday themed books, so you can always check there for my recommendations, but here are some of our favorites for Thanksgiving:

1621  A New Look at Thanksgiving by Catherine O'Neill and Margaret M. Bruchac is an amazing look at what Thanksgiving really was.  This book is really for older children (8 and up), as it is fairly lengthy and detailed, though you could paraphrase and share the pictures to younger children - which I've done and strongly recommend.

The First Thanksgiving by Linda Hayward and the Story of the Pilgrims by Katharine Ross are wonderful introductory books on the holiday, for children 4-8, and The Know-Nothings Talk Turkey, by Michele Sobel Spirn is a fun look at Thanksgiving that young children will enjoy.

A fun project to do with your kids this time of year is to start a Thankfulness Tree.  Cut out leaves on fall colored paper and use a hole puncher to make a hole at the base.  Have children (and parents:) write what they're thankful for and tie with ribbon to some festive dogwood branches and - voila! - you have a Thankfulness tree.

Of course, there's always the handprint turkeys - you can't really go wrong with that.  Actually painting a young child's hand and stamping it is my favorite way to do it, but there are plenty of variations.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

The Best Thing I Can Do For My Kids

I am my greatest frustration as a parent.  I feel guilty and mad at myself almost daily, but when I feel my worst is when I take it out on my kids - blaming them for my own failure to live up to my own expectations. It happens more often than I'd care to admit, and it particularly happens when I've got too much on my plate - like right now, for instance.

Today, I was inspired by this post on Hands Free Mama:  The Important Thing About Yelling.  In it, the author admits that she was once a parent who yelled at her children.  She describes, in heartbreaking detail, the moment that she realized what that did to her kids and how she overcame it.

It seems that all parents today are under a kind of pressure that my mother, and her mother before her, didn't experience.  We all feel as though we're struggling and failing to succeed in some sort of ill-conceived parenting competition that exists only in our minds.

For me, being a nanny set me up for a heightened feeling of failure as a parent.  All that practice on other people's children and being known as a "professional" childcare provider for so long made me feel an enormous pressure that I had to be the perfect parent; after all, I was the expert on it, right?  Not only that, because I was both a nanny and a parent at the same time, I had a direct comparison of the perfect nanny vs. the crappy mom on a fairly regular basis.

For example:  one day, I was taking one of my girls to a violin lesson.  She was running late, but I was my usual patient and understanding self.  When we finally got into the car to leave, she said, "If my mom was taking me and we were this late, she'd be freaking out."  I said, "If you were my kid and we were this late, I'd be freaking out."

I realized in that moment that I didn't have the fun, relaxed, easy relationship that I have with my nanny kids with my own children, and it saddened me to no end.  I've never once yelled at 'my big girls' - not once!  Not just because it would be entirely unprofessional, but because I never felt the kind of pressure with them that I feel with my own children.  I never felt as though I should be doing something else when I was caring for my nanny kids; time with them was not only permitted, it was expected.  The quality of the time we spent together was valued far more than my time spent doing anything else; yet it is almost reversed in my role as a parent, and I'm not sure why.

As high of standards as I held myself to as a nanny, it doesn't come close to my expectations of myself as a mother.  These expectations, of course, are completely unrealistic but, when I'm overwhelmed, I seem to forget that too easily.  When I lose my patience with my kids, more often than not, it's really myself that I've lost patience with, but I transfer it to them.  As I'm yelling about being late again because they don't listen, inside I know that what I'm really angry about is that I didn't make enough time for them, but instead gave my time to another project that, in truth, doesn't mean anywhere near as much to me.  What I'm really angry about is that I failed again - but not just because I failed to make enough time for my kids, but because I allowed myself to believe, yet again, that being a mother was not enough.

Reading this post on Hands Free Mama was a great reminder to cut myself some slack; to pare down my to-do list so that I'm not pulled in so many directions at once; to slow down and to allow myself to let go of my guilt and the false pretense of parenting that I've subjected myself to.   Making time for myself and my children should be my first priority; it's the best thing I can do for my kids.

Downgrading Motherhood

I came across this blog post on facebook today by Matt Walsh, and I just had to share it here.  The post, entitled, "You're a stay-at-home mom?  What do you DO all day?" addresses a topic I am all too familiar with, and one that is all too prevalent in our culture:  the idea that stay-at-home moms have it easy.  The amazing thing is, it was written by a man!

Interestingly, I grew up with a stay-at-home mother who was fully supported by my father; that is, until I reached 5th grade, and my father reluctantly agreed that my mother going to work might help support our family of nine.  This had a profound effect on me, because I experienced first-hand what happens when a mother goes off to work (I'm the one who ended up having to do the laundry for said family of nine, because my mother no longer had the time to do it).

It wasn't the laundry aspect that solidified for me the importance of a mother at home, though; it was the effect it had on my two youngest brothers (who were about 2 and 4 years old at the time).  They were the first of us seven children to have to be cared for outside of our home, and seeing how they were affected by my mother going to work made me vow to never be a working mom.  Even though they went to my aunt's house every day while my mother was at work - a fairly close family member who had children their age to play with - the affect of not having my mother at home was instant.  They became clingy and whiny when my mother was with them, and they threw fits if she tried to sneak away to the grocery store by herself.  They were notably less independent and secure, and they were suddenly subject to a lot of chaos that my other siblings and I had never had to experience.

I shouldn’t need to explain why it’s insane for anyone — particularly other women — to have such contempt and hostility for “stay at home” mothers. Are we really so shallow? Are we really so confused? Are we really the first culture in the history of mankind to fail to grasp the glory and seriousness of motherhood? The pagans deified Maternity and turned it into a goddess. We’ve gone the other direction; we treat it like a disease or an obstacle.

As it turned out, the experiment failed:   working cost our family more than my mother was being paid, and not just because of the added costs of a second vehicle (and all of the included costs that came with it), clothing and childcare, but because it wasn't worth the stress it put on our family.  My mother came back home, and didn't return to the workforce until my youngest brother went off to school.  Still, I've always felt that the experience forever changed my two youngest brothers - and not for the better.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to fully keep my vow to be a stay-at-home mother.  When my daughter was born, I continued on with my full-time job (11 hours a day) as a nanny, because I was able to bring my daughter with me and because we didn't see how we could adjust to losing my salary, but that only lasted until she was 8 months old.  When my former business partner offered to trade the nanny agency we started together for my nanny position, it seemed like a better fit - I could work from home and continue to be with my daughter.

It was during this time that I first experienced what the general population really thought about stay-at-home mothers.  Even though I worked from home, people would call me for favors during the day all the time because I was "just home and not really doing anything."  Not really doing anything?!  At one point, I was running a nanny placement agency, being a stay-at-home mother to a toddler, working part-time as a nanny (and bringing said toddler with me) and I was pregnant with my second child, ALL AT THE SAME TIME.

Worse, I didn't even feel as if I could cut myself some slack!  My husband, after all, had the "real job," and I, after all, chose to stay home with my children - keeping up with the housework and bills should be my responsibility,right?  Because I was so lucky to get to be at home. Even I, who knew better than anyone, how stressful it really was - so stressful that, at one point, I actually got shingles from the stress - thought that I had to "really work," so as not to feel the condemnation of people around me - even people in my own family - who thought that I had it easy because I got to stay home.  I felt overwhelming pressure to have to prove myself and my worth - and it nearly broke me - all because we live in a society that downgrades motherhood.  Being "just a mom" is not good enough.

The people who completely immerse themselves in the tiring, thankless, profoundly important job of raising children ought to be put on a pedestal. We ought to revere them and admire them like we admire rocket scientists and war heroes. These women are doing something beautiful and complicated and challenging and terrifying and painful and joyous and essential. 

I had to learn the same lesson my parents learned back when I was a kid:  it costs more than you think to be a working mom.  Don't get me wrong, I have nothing but love and admiration for working mothers, and staying home with kids is definitely not always what's best for every mom or child.  I've certainly worked as a nanny for several mothers who've had a nice balance between working and motherhood.  That being said, time is serious money.  They didn't have time to take care of their kids, to work in their garden or to clean their home, so they paid other people for what they didn't have time to do themselves.  The difference was that they could afford to hire someone else to do it for them and still come out ahead, and I couldn't - or, more so, I chose not to.

I still struggle with feeling undervalued, though my children are now 10 and 8, because I chose to homeschool.  Let me tell you, the only thing more thankless than being a stay-at-home mom is being a homeschooling stay-at-home mom.  It took me five years of homeschooling before I realized that it's a full-time job, and I really can't work while I'm doing it.  I know that there are plenty of people who probably think I'm lucky, lazy or privileged, and there's nothing I can do about that, so I just have to let it go.  I traded money - and the respect that comes with it - for time.  It's a hard choice but, at the end of the day, my family and I are the ones who have to live with it.