March 10, 2011 ~ Day 91 Time to Reframe

Sometimes I get really frustrated with everything I *haven't* managed to accomplish during an hour/morning/day and bogged down in negative self talk.

"How can TWO hours have passed while I was cleaning that room?

Why can't I go faster? Why does it take me so long to do EVERYTHING?"

This kind of one-sided conversation doesn't do a whole lot for (a) my self esteem; (b) my motivation; or (c) the house!

I'm trying to teach my children lately that there are two ways of looking at everything - glass half full / glass half empty. If I'm looking at the same morning through a "full-glass" perspective, I can reframe the same events to be more positive. "I really devoted myself to cleaning that room, and got it done in two dedicated hours. I also managed to do a few loads of laundry and take good care of my daughter! The kids were bathed and dressed and off to school on time!"

In this way, my view lingers on what IS good.

Today has been one of the many mornings where I needed to do a re-frame, right around 10:30am. Even now, if I actually look around me it would be very easy to slip back into the negative side... I notice every single crumb on the floor, each dish that is waiting to be washed, all of the folded laundry waiting to be put away. (Quick, reframe! "Wow! I folded all that laundry! That's awesome!")

I envy my husband in this regard. He has an amazing capacity to ignore small imperfections and mess, and I think this is so healthy. He focuses on the task at hand... the one that can be done in the next five minutes, and he doesn't get wrapped up or overwhelmed by the big picture. His tolerance for chaos can sometimes irritate me but I clearly see its excellent side; if he and I looked around the same room at the same time, I can almost guarantee that he would say - "It doesn't look that bad! Most of this just needs surface cleaning. Overall, I think we're doing a great job."

Reframing seems to help a lot with parenting too. Especially when my elder son is actively trying to shake or choke his little brother. This continues to happen almost once a day, and while my husband is convinced is is merely a phase (and I hope he is right!) it still really stresses me out. My inner voice is that of an exhausted, defeated, whiny mother: "Why is this happening? Why is my child so angry and violent? What am I doing wrong?" during those moments. When I pull myself out of it and reframe though, I can see that at least 80% of the time my son is very well behaved.

Perhaps this would be a good reframe - "Wow, my son managed to be kind to his brother and sister for *most* of the day... what is happening right now within him that is prompting him to suddenly act so poorly?" When I actually manage to pull back from the situation taking place (after rescuing the smaller boy from attack) I often have clarity enough to sort through the possibilities and realize that he is hungry-tired-worried-needing my attention.. and that if I can simply redirect him or give him a snack, the violence level in our home will drop significantly.

The more I consider it, the more I think that there is a place for mommies to give themselves little pep talks throughout the day... why not? After all, we spend most of our day encouraging the little people that we love to continue practicing their life skills. It makes perfect sense that we might need a little encouragement ourselves; and while our children surely love us, it isn't likely that they're going to sit up as babies and say, "Wow mom, I really like the way you changed my diaper today! Good job!"

Humility is important, but I think appreciating our own strengths is also really worthwhile. It takes compassion and self control to witness tantrums, aggression, even meanness... and not react in a loud or frustrated way.

It takes determination and a sense of humor to continue cleaning up the same room over and over again as your children manage to destroy in moments everything you have worked to put back together for hours.

It takes organization and motivation to have three children ready for the day on time; nutritious food in their lunches; permission slips signed and homework done; children picked up from school at the exact right moment.

Parenting is one of those jobs that, if you do it right, manages to look so easy that the childless people around you think it is a simple and mindless occupation. "Parenting isn't rocket science," they might say. "If *I* was the mother, I would *never* let my child watch television!"

Yet raising a human being to be healthy, warm, well-fed, morally sound, socially aware, environmentally conscious, caring, confident and kind is not a simple thing to do. Parents deserve props for sticking with their kids through the hard times, the difficult ages and phases. (Not everyone does! Some parents abandon their kids, and some do worse!) Devoted moms and dads definitely deserve some kind of internal recognition for the effort that we do put into the job.

Since becoming a mother I have been peed and pooped on, spat at, hit, kicked, bitten, shoved, head-butted, screamed at, and insulted... over and over, for years on end. All of these acts have been performed by the three small people I love most and have sacrificed the most for ~ which sometimes made the abuse feel worse.

In return I have bathed them, cuddled them, cleaned for them, cooked for them, sung them lullabyes, chauffeured them the equivalent of thousands of miles, and generally 'turned the other cheek'.

I am not alone in this. Every mother I know ~ every friend or relative of mine with kids ~ is just as compassionate, loving and dedicated as I am... sometimes more! Whether working or SAHM, mom to one child or four, every one of my mommy friends gives their all to this often thankless job.

I guess then this blog is one massive reframe to my morning and a big shout-out to ALL of the moms and dads who keep showing up to 'work' 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with a good attitude and a full heart.

We may not always get the laundry put away (or even out of the dryer!) but we're in the trenches fighting the good fight day after day, making sacrifices from a place of love and devotion. In the words of my husband/favorite parenting 'co-worker': "Overall, I'd say we're doing a great job!"

March 3, 2011 ~ Day 84 Bumps and Scrapes

I'm sitting here next to my littlest man who is sound asleep, listening to him breathe in and out steadily. Today in a freak accident he managed to get clocked on the head very hard by a sizable tree branch (more like a small stump) that his older brother had for some reason placed at the top of the gate that leads into our back yard. Apparently the little guy went to push the gate open, the stump-like branch fell on his head, and I was alerted to the problem by a storm of tears and a rather large bump.

In my heart I am sure that my younger son is going to be okay and even if I simply use logic without intuition I can see that his pupils are not dilated inappropriately, he has not been vomiting or nauseated and he has not complained of any headaches. That said, he did tell me before going to sleep tonight that he felt dizzy as though the ceiling were spinning in circles... so I'm definitely keeping a close eye on him.

This is the hardest part of being a parent; the complete and utter helplessness I feel to protect my children from all possible danger and to mend or heal them when they are ill or broken. I would do anything it took to keep my babies safe al day long but the reality is, even when I turn my back for mere seconds things can and do happen.

Loving this particular child has been a contant lesson in learning how to let go. I vividly remember being 19 weeks pregnant with him when my blood pressure spiked intensely and my doctor began to talk with me about possible pre-eclampsia and bed rest. I wept for about two days, praying and trying to talk with the little soul still gently taking root in my body. I knew he was not yet big enough to survive outside of the womb, and I wasn't sure what could actually be done to keep him growing healthily if my body was rebelling its biological role.

Then one sunny afternoon I lay down on the red brick patio in our (then) back yard near our orange tree and I looked up at the bright blue sky radiating through its branches... noticing each individual orange silhouetted by the Sun. Some were new-ish and green, others were ripe and plump, a few were beginning to rot on their vines and several had fallen to the ground below and were beginning to slowly dessicate. I meditated on those oranges and I realized that all of them were, in their own ways, perfect. It wasn't up to me to judge their merit based upon whether they'd ripened on cue. My job was to appreciate their unique beauty and love them for what they were.

Those thoughts helped me to calm down significantly. I realized that I couldn't value my unborn son's life based on how long it lasted... but needed rather to trust deeply in whatever divine force had brought him to me, believing that however things transpired from there, everything was happening as it should. My son was a unique, lovable soul and I needed to appreciate what he had already brought me - rather than wringing my hands over everything I had no control over.

Our little bean must have had some deeper purpose beyond gestation because everything seemed to calm down after that. The high blood pressure resolved after I stopped work a few months early and rested all of the time. He was born two weeks early as a large and healthy baby in what later proved to be my easiest and smoothest delivery.

Still, from the get-go he has been a child prone to accident and illness. He suffered terribly from colic for the first several months of his life, writhing in agony and screaming his little lungs out night after night. He has been on many different courses of antibiotics in his short life for a variety of infections. His thumb was very nearly sliced off while I was in the hospital giving birth to his little sister... that took a cast and several stitches to remedy. He has suffered from food allergies and tummy troubles, countless ear infections and several rashes. He has always been a tiny, elf-like little guy and at one time we were told that he was in the 7th percentile for height for children his age... meaning that 93% of children his age were bigger than he.

This is the child that suffers from nightmares and fear of the dark; he is prone to projectile vomiting and "owies". He has visited the ER and the doctor's office more than my other two children combined. I can't count the number of times I have stopped next to his open door at night just to listen to make sure that he is still breathing. Tonight has been one of those nights - just listening to make sure that he's still with us.

Having children is such a strange thing. For years I imagined how great it would be to finally have a family of my own: I thought about all of the books I would read to my children, the travels and adventures we would share, the sweet things I could do for them and the love I could lavish upon them. Not once in all of that time did I seriously contemplate the fact that my children might get sick, that bad things could happen to them in a split second, that I could ever lose them.

Now my babies are here and since the weight of responsibility first settled upon my shoulders I haven't been able to get away from the uncomfortable realization that my husband and I are the main things standing between our children and potential disaster. "It's all up to us!" I realized on the day they first discharged us home from the hospital with our real live baby, and I haven't really slept with both eyes closed since that night.

Still, a life lived in fear is no life at all. I don't know what destiny has planned for my three little imps but I *do* know that it would be a genuine tragedy for me to overprotect my children and deny them the chance to experience real life with all of its exciting discoveries, wonders and heartbreaks. Falling off your bike while learning to ride is surely preferable to sitting alone in the house watching other children cruise down the street because your parents are too scared to let you try.

When I was in elementary school I had a friend whose parents were so concerned about losing her to a car accident, she was not allowed to drive in any vehicle but their own... or to spend the night away from home. She missed out on field trips, birthday parties, slumber parties and other fun opportunities ~ anything her folks weren't able to drive to or participate in.

Worse, she suffered the embarrassment of having to tell her friends and teachers over and over throughout the years that she would not be able to do x-y-z with them because of her family's rules. Her parents tried to make up for this by giving her every toy and luxury, attempting to make their own home a mecca of fun that no child would wish to leave.

I haven't seen this same friend in twenty years but when last I knew her in high school, she was rebelling hard core from her parents and acting out in an extreme way. My mother ran into her mother at the grocery store recently and was saddened to learn that her parents no longer have any contact with her at all. "She has become a terrible human being," her mother confided sadly. "She has stolen from us, lied to us, and generally made awful decisions for so long that we had to let her go."

I cannot imagine a worse irony. In holding on too tight to their adored child, they managed to set themselves up for a lifetime in which she survived her youth physically unscathed but emerged from childhood emotionally scarred to the point where she could no longer maintain a healthy or even dysfunctional relationship with her family of origin.

I myself had a very overprotective dad (although not to that extreme degree) and I am trying hard not to fall into the genetic or memory-based trap of becoming just like him. At some point as a parent you just have to take a deep breath and accept that your children have their own life paths to follow... and that your job is to nurture and guide them without stifling their sense of adventure. There is no point in second guessing every choice. "If only I hadn't let him play in the yard yesterday... he might never have gotten hit by that branch!" That kind of logic just doesn't work at all.

All this to say that even though my son got hit in the head today by a heavy piece of wood AND got his first bloody bike scrape, he'll be out there in the back yard playing hard again tomorrow with my blessing. And a helmet :-)