Sarah MacLaughlin's Blog, page 7

Adjusting

A little back story on my journey thus far: I started dating my husband when I was twenty-three years-old. We were married three years after that. Only as we neared our ten-year wedding anniversary was Joshua born. 

Before we became parents we had thirteen solid years of relationship.

Thirteen years of Dual Income No Kids and endless kid-free evenings—spontaneous long weekend trips up the coast, countless lazy weekend mornings. I know it's somewhat sacrilegious to wax nostalgic for the B.C. (before child) days, but this has been a serious adjustment. 

Not that I didn't think about it. I remember discussing it with a friend when I first started trying to conceive. She'd had her first baby in the verdant and fresh place that is new love. She had commented on how nice it would be for us to start our parenting journey with such a foundation between us. Even then, my response was something along the lines of, "Yeah, but imagine how used to just the two of us we are." 

While the grass is often greener, I can see the wisdom of having some years logged in a union before taking on such a massive project: creating, nurturing, and supporting a brand new human being. And can we just pause for a moment to acknowledge howseriously needy young humans are? SO NEEDY! And for SO LONG! Eighteen years later, a child is finally "grown up." While you may never stop being a child's parent, at some point (not at eighteen, but maybe mid-twenties?) you do stop actually parenting them. 

This thought brought me to the odd realization that if all goes well and my child and I both live long and healthy lives that we will have a longer standing adult to adult relationship than we have had an adult to child relationship. I ran the numbers and have to live until age seventy-two before this switch happens. With a little more math, I realized I only had to reach age eighty-six before Joshua will be fifty—FIFTY! Am I the only one who ponders weird stuff like this?

I am thrilled, and I mean thrilled to be a parent. I LOVE my son—the highs and lows, the joys, the challenges. But this is truly the biggest commitment I can imagine ever making. Aside, I suppose, from the commitment to marriage all those years ago. I'm glad I made both, and there is probably no sweet spot or "perfect time" to have a child anyway. 

But the relaxing, leisurely brunches on restaurant patios sipping mimosas in the sun. Yeah, I miss that.

aim high

Magda Gerber, founder of R.I.E once said, “Parenting is a most difficult job for which you cannot really prepare yourself.” Perhaps my first wrong turn was my strong belief that I had prepared myself. I had spent six years in toddler and preschool classrooms. I had spent the next six-years as a nanny caring for young boys ages nine-months to four-and-a half years. My diaper-changing stats were off the charts. My soothing skills were top-notch. I had naptime prowess. I had once majored in early childhood education. I’d read The Continuum Concept and every parenting volume I could get my hands on while researching my book. Passion drove me to understand developing minds and promote respect and kindness toward all children.

In short: I had plans. (My husband likes to remind me often of the Woody Allen quote: “If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.”) When reality crashed into my plans, it wasn’t pretty. I had planned to breastfeed on demand. While I did succeed in doing this, it was at huge nipple-shield-lactation consultant-breast pumping costs. I’d planned to co-sleep. Joshua was a fitful sleeper who (once weaned from his “straw,” the nipple-shield) refused to nurse anywhere but the rocking chair. (What’s the point of co-sleeping if you cannot nurse in bed, I ask you?) I’d planned to nurse for at least as long as the World Health Organization recommends (two years). But my sweet son went on an extended nursing strike at ten months that coincided with the death of my mother-in-law and well, I just couldn’t hack the amount of pumping required.

Plans, let me introduce you to this window here.

NOTHING can prepare you for parenthood. Nothing.

Confession: most of my book, written largely for parents, was completed before I became one. I finished final edits when Joshua was a toddler and while I certainly questioned the feasibility of some of my own advice (When did remaining calm get so darn hard?), I left the bar high, and will now spend the rest of my life trying to live up to my own standards. Luckily, I was kind and also realistic in knowing that kids (especially our own!) will trigger us—though I couldn’t have dreamed how often or intensely. My own advice: If you mess up, apologize—it’s the right thing to do, and also great modeling. I can do that. And have. Many times.

My quest for better parenting continues and I am lucky to have discovered Hand in Hand Parenting , The Consciously Parenting Project, Aware Parenting, and more. My ideals grow even higher. But I become more firm in my convictions as a parent when brain research confirms how human minds actually wire as a result of our interactions with them. What we say and do does matter. A lot. Connection and the ability to relate are at the crux of our experience as humans. And, how we were wired as children impacts how we respond (and react!) to our children’s emotions and behavior. Dr. Dan Siegel says, “The most important thing a parent can do is understand themselves.” Too bad I blew my lifetime budget for therapy back in my twenties. I guess I’ll have to depend on my friends to help see me through.

“Parenting is a marathon, not a sprint.” I wrote that. Before I gave birth. Little did I know. Labor was a marathon. Parenting is The Iron Man—a triathlon with grueling lows and endorphin highs—for the rest of your life. We will laugh our heads off. We will cry our eyes out. We will seethe with anger. Fret with worry. Exclaim in joy. Drown in sorrow. Burst with pride. We will shake our heads in wonder, and also in frustration. Stamina will be required.

I’m ready.

Keep it Simple

Winter has simplified our surroundings. After a fresh snowfall everything is white and our whole landscape becomes pristine and beautiful. The minimalism of this lack of color is so calming. Because this white blanket falls upon us, and the light and temperatures are both low, we settle into our homes a bit more. Life can be so hectic, and the colder season is a good time to slow down a little. This is the time of year where I am apt to stay home, crank up the woodstove, and make homemade bread and a hearty soup.

While winter may sometimes feel simple, parenting usually does not. When I looked up the definition of simplicity and saw; freedom from complexity, intricacy, or division into parts, I thought, “Yes, that’s what I’m looking for!” In seeking lack of complexity in parenting, here are a few suggestions for ways you can simplify:

Assess your level of busyness. Do your children each have three to four after-school activities going? Do you and your partner have to email each other throughout the day or week to make sure everyone is where they need to be and picked up on time? Is every timeslot of the day spoken for? Do you feel like a circus ringleader? Even if your schedule isn’t this over the top, the pressure of a too-full calendar can pile on added stress. Check in with yourself and the other members of your family and then set some limits. (I had to.)

Purge some toys. Downsizing your child’s bedroom and/or play area can be such a relief. Payne and Ross, authors of Simplicity Parenting suggest cutting your child’s toys in half, and then in half again….and then maybe even in half once more. What is left will be much more accessible. Children are quickly overwhelmed by too many play options. With a sea of colorful blocks, dolls, trucks, trains, puzzles, books, and games, they just can’t focus. If you take the majority of the toys and put them into deep storage, you can rotate them on an as needed basis. I cannot tell you how thrilled my boy was to play a game of Hi Ho Cherry-O after it had been hidden in the coat closet for four months!

Offer less choice. This seems counterintuitive, but I’ve found myself in a pickle on numerous occasions by giving my child too many choices. For example, “What do you want for breakfast?” is way too open-ended a question for my preschooler at 7:55 in the morning if I want to walk out the door in twenty minutes. When I give arbitrary choices in an effort to promote a sense of autonomy, it almost always backfires. I ask my son which of two shirts he’d like to wear and he stares at me for a moment before running to ransack his drawers for an outfit I hadn’t even contemplated. I’m pretty sure he didn’t care at all what he wore until I broached the topic.

If you are like me, you could use a reminder to ramp it down and chill out a little. Tonight after I cancel a commitment and stay home, I will read my child a bedtime story without fussing over which book he wants to hear. Then I’ll kick my feet up in the near-empty playroom, sip a cup of piping hot chocolate, and stare out at the peaceful, white view. Ah, simplicity.

RESOURCES:
Simplicity Parenting; Using the Extraordinary Power of Less to Raise Calmer, Happier, and More Secure Kids by Kim John Payne and Lisa M. Ross

Originally published in the March/April issue of Parent & Family

Thriving Parents = Thriving Community

Guest Sermon at Norway UU Church, January 8, 2012

It’s great to be back at this church. My parents have been members of this congregation for a number of years. I have always found it to feel very comfortable here. I guess that’s why they call it a sanctuary

A home is supposed to be a sanctuary too—a sanctuary for families and our youngest and most vulnerable community members—children. I’m a social worker by trade and my primary job is in foster care. I can tell you that for many, home is no sanctuary. For some, home is an adrenaline-inducing nightmare, a horror show, a war zone. It’s shocking how bad things must be for a child to be removed from their parents. Abuse or neglect usually must be reported more than once. The problem needs to be substantiated. A judge has to make the call. I understand that a balance must be struck. Misunderstandings happen, and taking a child from her home should not be taken lightly. However, our system is imperfect to say the least—and things fall through the cracks. Sometimes the cracks are so large that actual people fall through.

When I was in my early 20s, one of my best friend’s mother died. One of her young sisters was home at the time. We were not surprised. Her mother, and active alcoholic and drug user, had been spiraling downward for months. We had made multiple calls to the state for help. Reported her when we found her passed out at home, or heard she had been driving while under the influence. My friend had volunteered to take custody of her two young sisters. We’d diligently dropped by their apartment unannounced. We searched for bottles of vodka and dumped them down the sink. We had wanted to help. We wanted to protect the girls. Instead, the youngest was the one to find her mother: dead in a chair. It had not been the worst fate we could imagine, but it was traumatic enough. Something a ten-year-old will likely never forget.

I’m sure this experience was among many that informed my career choices. Understanding children, supporting parents, helping families—this has always seemed like the most important work to me. Doesn’t it make sense to invest our time, attention and money in preventing problems at home?

Sometimes I say that foster care is like putting a Band-Aid on an amputation. It’s a pretty frightening metaphor, but often it feels like if only the initial infection had been fought hard and well from the start, things wouldn’t have snowballed. It is so easy to judge, or to say, “that could never happen to me.” But often parents are left with nowhere to turn. Recently, in the state of Texas, a mother committed a horrible act against her own kids and then herself at a state welfare office. Even with these most abhorrent of cases, I have to wonder:

What if this mother had had better support? If she had started her journey as a mother with paid parental leave, instead of nothing, or the paltry twelve weeks of unpaid time she was entitled to if she had a full-time benefitted job? In some states she might have been eligible for some paid weeks under an insurance claim. New mothers must declare themselves “disabled” in order to have any compensated time with their precious new babies. If only we put our scientific knowledge about human brains into practice and policy! Babies’ brains develop well as a result of their interactions with the grown-ups in their lives. Doesn’t it make sense to reduce the stress and worry of those grown-ups as much as possible?

In the U.S. we treat parenting like a hobby. I can hear our society saying: “Oh, you decided to have kids? That’s great, good luck with that. Once you get through the toughest and most demanding first five years of your child’s life—the portion where they are most emotionally volatile, least rational, and constantly needy—you know, that part where your kid’s brain gets initially wired based on the quality of their connection with you? Yeah, after that we’ll provide you with a federally-funded education. But only for part of the day. And only for nine months out of the year. For all the rest of it, you’re on your own. After all, it was your choice to have kids.”

It is easy to argue that when parents truly fail this impacts the community. Since as a culture we don’t invest much up-front in the lives of children (aside from that great schooling I just mentioned), our tax dollars are needed after the fact, after the amputation: as a Band-aid for in-home support or out-of-home placement; for treatment and education. But even for parents for whom things are not-so-bad, things are not great. People are struggling. Jobs are sparse. Moms are worried. Dads are tired.

I know that previous generations raised kids, and raised them well, within our current capitalist system and with little support. But our system is ever-shifting, economies ever-changing—the middle-class is ever-shrinking. It is now less common for a parent to be home full-time for any length of time, let alone until Kindergarten. Living is often too expensive for someone to not be working. Parents are doing too much, I should know, I’m one of them. I’m parenting in a paradigm shift. We are (hopefully) moving from an individualistic viewpoint that holds financial success and material wealth in the highest regard, to a community-minded view that reveres cooperation and emotionally honest problem-solving.

And because it is always true that the personal is political, and vice-versa, change can begin at home. Genevieve Simperingham who has a website beautifully entitled: The Way of the Peaceful Parent writes about a paradigm shift in parenting. She notes: “Children respond to conflicts in the only ways that they are familiar with, in the same ways that conflicts are responded to at home. Your children will respond to conflicts with themselves, with you, with siblings, and with their friends in the same ways that they've seen modeled in their primary relationships.”

When we think that a child has done something wrong and must be punished, given a consequence, or taught a lesson, we see them through the lens of being naughty and untrustworthy. Genevieve states, “The child is given the message that a consequence is being set because this is what ‘needs’ to happen in loving relationships, this is all part of the responsibility of a loving parent (or friend), this is what ‘love’ looks like and this is how we learn to be a better person.” We believe that we must TEACH them, through unpleasant experiences, or losing something they desire, how to behave well. But this is faulty thinking because children ALWAYS learn from example. They learn by watching us: what we do and what we say. We don’t need to always instruct them how to behave, because we are always showing them with our own behavior.

The Way of the Peaceful Parent also suggests: “we approach a problem from the perspective that we have a conflict because one or more people are upset. From this place we trust a child’s inherent goodness and also trust that through honest, authentic, but sensitive sharing of how each person feels, difficulties can be resolved. We all need to talk to better understand each other, we need to take turns listening to each other, misunderstandings need to be uncovered. We need to sort it out together.”

So for me—a working-mama-who-does-too-much—parenting in a paradigm shift can be confusing and disorienting. I want to be connected, mindful, and oriented toward cooperative problem-solving. I want to avoid punishment and being punitive. I want to teach through calm, loving, peaceful example. And this does happen…some of the time. But because I still, by nature of my place in this shift, have one foot in the old paradigm, I am ever- mindful of the old story too.

It plays out like this: My darling son is having a melt-down. We are out of the snack he wanted. I have twelve other snacks available. But he is bereft, miserable, and screaming about the one that is not. He is adamant in his lack of logic: “I am hungry and really want a snack but I don’t want any of those snacks, I only want that OTHER snack and we don’t have it so I’m not hungry but I’m hungry.” My “new-paradigm thinking” says: “He is tired. His emotional upheaval is not about the snack. He is saying nonsensical things. Stay with him. Be close. Be empathetic. Stay warm. Allow him to offload his strong feelings. He needs to know you love him when he is acting his most obnoxious.”

And even as I may succeed at doing all of that, I still hear the “old paradigm thinking” loud and clear: “Are you kidding me? Eat the darn snack! Some children don’t even have snacks. I shouldn’t have to listen to this ridiculous wailing. He’s not even making any sense. Crazy kid. I should just leave him by himself until he can pull it together.” You see, even when I truly, with my whole heart believe in what I am doing, believe that it is right, and know that it will work and pave the way for a better future. I still hear the old junk. It chips away at my confidence. It casts doubt.

Then, if you place this scenario in public, the small doubt grows to huge judgment and I worry that others will be thinking to themselves, or even worse as it happens, voicing it aloud: “What a brat. In my day, children didn’t behave that way. You shouldn’t let him get away with that.” And on and on with the things that I don’t believe, but still hear.

And so I imagine that someday children will be honored and parents will be supported. No one will be labeling behavior “bad,” or insisting that children be “taught a lesson.” Parental leave will be standard, parenting education plentiful. Lack of resources for families will not be tolerated. I envision two people talking: “Remember when people didn’t really respect children or realize they need to be listened to? Remember spanking and time-outs? Remember when people lost their jobs unless they went back to work when their children were babies?—Wasn’t that insane?”

I remain ever hopeful because educated people once believed the earth was flat.

I Hate That Stupid Book!

Yes, I said, “I hate that stupid book.” Don’t get me wrong, I am a book lover at heart. I’m always reading. I have read at stop lights, while walking down the street, and (embarrassingly) while half-heartedly playing a board game. I still have a 5th grade report card that declares, “Sarah might gain more from the lesson at hand if she didn’t always have her nose in a book.” Sorry Mr. Marino.

Because I aspire to help nurture the next generation of bookworms, I am also always reading to my child, aiming to build his pre-literacy skills and vocabulary. Boy is it working! My three-and-a-half-year-old is astoundingly articulate. New words and phrases appear on a daily basis. Beside the aforementioned “hate” and “stupid,” other gems I can attribute to kid’s books (think of well-loved authors: Kevin Henkes, Judith Viorst, Robert Munsch, and Lauren Child) are: “You’re mean!” “You’re not my friend,” “Go away!” and, “This is boring.”

As much as we don’t want our children using foul or rude language, bad words abound in children’s literature. I recently perused the anti-technology story, It’s a Book, and found it hilarious. One page reads: “Can it text? Blog? Scroll? Wi-fi? Tweet?” “No…it’s a book.” But I wouldn’t read it to my little one since at the end one character calls the other a jackass. I don’t want to go there, even though he justifiably was…a donkey. In many tales, the subject matter isn’t so great either. How about the threats of corporal punishment in Bedtime for Frances or actual hitting with a stick in The Story of Ping?

Underlying messages in the stories themselves can also be questionable. Online, I found an interview by Madeleine Brand of NPR fame with children’s author, Laurel Snyder in which they discuss their most hated children’s books. Three titles are vilified for their twisted slants on the mother-child relationship: The Runaway Bunny (mother who can’t let go), Love You Forever (stalker-mother who REALLY can’t let go), and the biggest stinker of them all, The Giving Tree (mother co-dependently sacrifices everything she has, is left a shadow of her former self, and steadfastly maintains that she’s happy about it). They do have a point.

Just tonight I read the classic The Cat in the Hat with new eyes. They saw: Creepy cat in weird hat walks in on two legs, brings unwanted friends, trashes the place, cleans-up to cover his tracks, then leaves and doesn’t seem to want the mom to know about any of it. “What would you do if your mother asked you?” Indeed—that fish in the pot is the only voice of reason!

I am not suggesting that you stop reading to your child, or even that you stop reading these very books. On the contrary, I maintain that reading aloud is one of the most important things you can do. However, you might want to preview books before reading them to your child. Knowing the topic and text is a good preventative measure. Sometimes we wreak havoc by reading books to children before they are developmentally due. As well-loved as Where the Wild Things Are is, I confess I have yet to read it to my own boy. Knowing your child, and how they may react to depictions (however benign) of larger-than-life monsters, is another good ounce of prevention. As fellow parenting educator Pam Leo said recently, “Why invite home problems you don’t even have? If your child isn’t afraid of the dentist, leave that book at the library!” Sound advice.

If you are like me, you won’t have time to pre-read every book that lands on your family bookshelf, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t read it. You can always alter the words on the fly, use even the worst storyline to start a rich conversation, or insert a bit of parent wisdom. I have asked questions such as, “What do you think that girl is feeling?” or, “That poor tree doesn’t seem happy—what could the boy have done differently?” I’ve made comments like, “’Hate’ is a very strong word,” and “That wasn’t a very kind thing to say.” Earlier this evening, I heard myself implore, “You could always tell this mother about anything—even that crazy cat!”

RESOURCES:
The Read-Aloud Handbook, by Jim Trelease
Reading Magic: Why Reading Aloud to Our Children Will Change Their Lives Forever, by Mem Fox

First Published in Parent & Family Jan/Feb 2012 issue

Safety First?

I don’t know about you, but when two things happen to me in a week that both strike the same chord, I pay attention. My recent “wake up call,” if you will, was about safety. The first piece that came to my attention was the fact that generally speaking, I’m not a big risk-taker. For the most part I like to play by the rules, go along and get along, and stay out of trouble. But recently, my husband and I had been taking a leadership course designed to help us think and step outside the box, and I ran smack into the issue of safety. I realized that more often than I knew, I was taking action and making choices from a default place of just wanting to feel safe.



Well, what’s the problem with that? You may ask. While not a problem, per se, living with safety as one’s highest value can be a bit limiting. Safety, at this modern juncture, is not about staying out of the mouths of predators. The trick of biology, and perhaps conditioning as well, is that we often feel as if we are in grave, grave danger—as if a saber-toothed tiger is stalking us—when we are actually perfectly safe. I experience this phenomenon often when I get up to speak in front of a crowd. I feel like I’m about to die, but in reality I am just standing in front of a group of people, riddled with anxiety, safe as can be.



The second thing about safety that I noticed was how ridiculously often I was imploring my young child to, “Be safe!” I also found myself overusing the cousin statement, “That’s not safe,” to rein in my kid’s behavior. But is it really unsafe? Often it is not so unsafe as to warrant the complete and total suspension of the activity, whatever it may be. Around the same time, a friend modeled some nuanced language around some daredevil climbing her son was engaging in: instead of using my well-worn refrain to get down and, “Be safe,” she asked her son, “Would you like some help practicing how to climb safely?” Hmmm, more food for thought.



The topics of safety and risk reminded me of one my favorite quotes from the wise and renowned professor, Leo Buscaglia: "To laugh is to risk appearing the fool. To weep is to risk being called sentimental. To reach out to another is to risk involvement. To expose feelings is to risk exposing your true self. To place your ideas, your dreams before the crowd, is to risk being called naive. To love is to risk not being loved in return. To live is to risk dying. To hope is to risk despair, and to try is to risk failure. But risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.”



I know in my heart that there is no true safety. Perusing my parenting bookshelves turned up the titles listed below—with good advice in all three. At first glance they may seem to contradict. But in the end conflicting advice may be the wisest of all—with balance as the ultimate goal: Stay connected with your children and let them be. Treat them with tenderness, and have rowdy pillow-fights. Hold on tight….and also let go.



RESOURCES:

The Art of Roughhousing: Good Old-Fashioned Horseplay and Why Every Kid Needs It, by Anthony T.DeBenedet, M.D. and Lawrence J. Cohen, Ph.D.

The Idle Parent: Why Laid-back Parents Raise Happier and Healthier Kids, by Tom Hodgkinson

Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers by Gordon Neufeld, Ph.D. and Gabor Mate, M.D.



First printed in the Sept./Oct. issue of Parent & Family

Bullies Beware

The parenting a child receives greatly influences their tendency to be a bully, be bullied, or to be an ineffective bystander. Here are some ideas for fostering an empathetic child who will not be any of the above, but who will instead know how to respond to a bullying situation in an empowered way.

Aim for a balanced parenting style: I was not surprised to learn that the authoritative, or as Barbara Coloruso, author of The Bully, The Bullied and the Bystander, calls it; the “backbone parent” is the preferred mode of operation. Compared to the “dictator” or “jellyfish” parents, these folks are neither too strict nor too lenient. (Read more about parenting style in: Who’s the Boss from the Jan/Feb issue of Parent & Family). These even-handed, consultant-type parents are likely to set boundaries and follow through from a place that is both firm and loving. Parents who discipline by “working with” and not “doing to,” as Alfie Kohn so aptly put it, will have children less likely to bully.

Promote emotional literacy: Don’t squelch troublesome feelings at home. The expression of the messy and loud, and less socially acceptable emotions such as grief, rage, and fear is vitally important for the growing brains of children. Shutting down these feelings does not banish them, it creates a deeply rooted well of unexpressed hurts. I like fellow parenting educator Pam Leo’s quote: “Crying is the healing, not the hurting.”

Teach empathy: The ground-breaking Canadian program, The Roots of Empathy, provides opportunities for youngsters to interact with newborn babies as a way to promote empathy. Part of the curriculum is to ask the children what they believe the babies might be feeling—this gets them thinking outside their typical “me, me, me” zone and to a place where they can truly consider what a smaller, helpless being might be experiencing. Powerful stuff.

Play with power: Role reversal is an excellent tool for allowing children to feel powerful when they usually do not. Play games where you allow them to be feisty and rebellious—angry even. My three-year-old loves to play these types of games. A recent favorite is to set a pillow on my lap and say in an exaggerated, inviting tone: “Oh my, I’ve got this pillow just where I want it. I certainly hope no one comes along and messes it up!” Joshua runs over with delight, grabs the pillow and throws it vehemently on the ground. “Oh no,” I exclaim, “My poor pillow— I have to put it right back here where it belongs!” This type of play where he gets to “win” is more satisfying to him than I could have ever imagined. My theory is that when I allow for him to have power-over a pillow, he will not feel such a need to have power-over another child.

Model assertive behavior: A coworker of mine recently described children as “little anthropologists.” Even though they aren’t carrying around steno pads and taking notes, they are serious students of adult behavior. Use this to your advantage and stay mindful or the example you are setting. Always stick up for yourself (and your child) when the situation calls for it. It is possible to give someone compassionate feedback in an assertive manner. For instance, “Sir, I recognize the fact that you have a long line of people here, but I’d appreciate it if you used a different tone of voice with me.”

Bullying is a problem—a HUGE problem—a life or death problem. Use these suggestions to do something about it. Change begins at home.

First printed in the July/August 2011 issue of Parent & Family