On Advocating for your Kids and Not Being That Parent

Currently two aspects of my personality are warring each other.  On one hand there is an incredibly large part of my persona that doesn’t want to make a fuss.  I don’t want to be difficult, don’t want people to have to spend a lot of energy accommodating me, nor do I want to be perceived as anything short of “go with the flow.”  I’m a fairly adaptable person, and would much rather be the one adjusting to circumstances than force others to adjust around me.  The thought of someone thinking I’m difficult or hard to please makes me all hivey and twitchy.

I’m trying very hard not to raise selfish, difficult, “please accommodate me” a-holes.  I want them to be able to work around others’ needs and preferences.  I want them to be able to handle change and hiccups with grace and consideration for others.  However, three year olds are not particularly great at this, especially three year olds as adverse to change as my Monster.

Therein lies the problem.  Currently, this core value of being “easy going” directly conflicts with my other core value of advocating for my kids.  I found myself in the principal’s office of Monster’s school asking if it would be at all possible for him to stay with the same teacher for summer school.  He started school with only two weeks left in the year and his transition has been, shall we say, not great.  (See also: awful, frustrating, and traumatizing for everyone involved.)  The one bright spot has been his attachment to his sweet teacher, Ms. Kim.  He talks about Ms. Kim at home, finds comfort from her alone, and can be seen holding her hand during the day.  In short, Ms. Kim may well be the only thing Monster likes about school.

I completely understand that things will have to change and my kid will need to learn to adjust.  I want him to learn to adjust, believe me.  It would make my life a heck of a lot easier.  But this transition has been so difficult and he’s had to deal with so much change already, I’m a little concerned losing Ms. Kim will make his head explode. 

So there I was in the principal’s office, my mama bear instincts asking for someone to accommodate us, to plan around us, while my “be as undifficult as possible at any cost” side nervously sweated and paced, so uncomfortable with the conversation.  I stood their hating this, reading every look on the principal’s face as proof that I had been deemed “that mom” and would forever more be placed in the
“demanding parent” category.  Yet I persevered because it’s my kid and he needs me to advocate for him.

Where do you draw the line?  How much advocating do you do, and how much do you let your kid learn to adjust?  How do you keep from being a “troublesome mom” without neglecting your kid?  I know at my core that speaking up for Monster is much more important than what anyone thinks of me.  And yet I still die inside imagining the staff complaining about me in the teacher’s lounge!  Has anyone else struggled with this?  How did you decide when to speak up and when not to?

Monster's Third Birthday!

My Monster turned three last week!  He calls birthdays "happy days" and has spent weeks talking about "Monster's Happy Day."

My dad made these signs for us every year growing up.  The tradition continues...

 As I've said, three is a big one around here.  For Monster three meant cupcakes, and lots of them.  There were cupcakes for breakfast, lunch and dinner around here.

The kid had no fewer than 6 cupcakes over the course of 3 days.

We celebrated his "happy day" at school, at home on the actual day and at a little birthday pizza party with his pals.  'Cause he has pals now :)

his people

These two.  They kill me.

My sweet monster milked the birthday for all it was worth.  Just like his Mama taught him.  At his little pizza party on Friday night he ran around with excitement bursting from the seams.  Which was more than my heart could handle.  Monster likes to fly under the radar.  Unlike his sister, he makes you work for his smiles and excitement.  While she spends most of her waking hours wearing a smile that takes up half her face and bouncing her little body in joy, he tends to be more restrained, more understated.  He hangs back and watches, reads the situation and then decides whether to engage or do his own thing.

But at his "happy day"he ran around with a permanent smile on his face, joy radiating from his three year old body.  He greeted everyone with exclamations of Monster's Happy Day!  He knew it was a party and the party was for him.

My favorite moment came when we sang Happy Birthday to him for the third time in three days.  True to his shy form he was embarrassed by the attention.  Simultaneously uncomfortable with a group of people singing to him and thrilled with the cupcake in front of him, my little guy put his hands over his face, huge smile plastered on it.  It was a darling moment, so true to his little personality.

It's fun to see that personality emerge more and more as the months go by.  I can read him, predict his responses and guess how he's feeling about things.  It's fun to know him more and more with each passing year, this little person who is so connected to me yet also a completely separate being.  I'm always surprised when new facets of his personality emerge.  I carried him for nine months, have spent more hours with him in the last three years than anyone else, and yet there is still more to know.  He is still revealing himself. 

And every day I fall a little more in love with the person unfolding.

 

Happy Birthday Monster!  We love you so much.

Big School Today

Last week Monster turned three.  I'll post pictures and words regarding this big milestone as soon as I upload all the pics (which I can only guarantee will be before his fourth birthday.)  Three is big for a lot of reasons, but around here the biggest deal was that three meant big school.

Monster has been attending an early intervention program at a school for the deaf and hard of hearing two mornings a week.  I stayed at school during the three and a half hours, attending his therapy sessions and seeing him in the hallway.  Then together we went home in time for lunch.  It was the perfect combination of stimulating independent activity for him, and parental connection for me.

All that changes on the third birthday.  After three the kids graduate to the “big school.”  Suddenly they attend school five full days a week.  I have to pack Monster a lunch each day.  I no longer stay at school while he’s there and have no clue what he has doing all day and the friends he is making.  Though it is the same school he has been attending Monster has all new teachers and classmates and is in a different part of the building.  It’s a big adjustment for everyone.

Yesterday we put on our new school outfit and had breakfast out of our monkey lunch box because someone just couldn’t wait until school to eat grapes out of new Tupperware containers.  We took traditional “first day of school pictures” in front of the house.  And then we loaded up in the car and set off for our first day in the big school.

There was all sorts of chaos when we arrived.  Crying kids not ready for the new week to begin and a broken laminator.  Typical Monday stuff that did nothing to ease my mama heart.  Monster walked into his classroom and sat down in someone else’s seat.  When the seat’s rightful owner less the politely pointed this out, his kind teacher showed him the seat with his picture on it.  Monster moved without any fuss and sat down ready to begin.

I knew this was my cue to leave, quickly before he fully realized he had an opportunity to get upset.  Tears in my eyes I gave him a quick kiss on the top of his sweet head and walked out.  I put my sunglasses on while I was still inside to mask my water-filled eyes.  And I walked out, leaving my heart sitting in a tiny green seat with his picture on it in a school too far from home for my liking.

And I know this is all terribly normal.  We’re supposed to let our kids grow up and away.  But three seems awfully early to have friends I don’t know about and lunch out of a monkey lunch box.  It seems too soon to send him away from me all day.

But 2:45 was there before I knew it and it seems we both survived.  I accomplished much more than usual with one less tiny but found the quiet of his absence deafening.  He spent the day proudly proclaiming “big school today” to everyone who asked how he was doing, and picked up new vocabulary.  All evening he said “’scuse me! ‘Scuse me!” a phrase his lips had never uttered before yesterday. 

And isn’t this what I’ve signed up for?  A lifetime of letting him grow up and away from me?  In the early days of his infancy I dreamt about this moment when he would not be solely dependent on me all day every day.  I longed for the time when I’d finally have some time to myself and he’d be at school. 

And then in a flash here we are.  And I’m sobbing in my car wishing I could take him back home with me.  Parenting is a tricky little business, isn’t it?

What Bryan Taught Me

Earlier this week Tommy and I gathered with a number of others to celebrate my friend Bryan.  Bryan is moving back to Texas after ten years here in the greater Chicago land area.  I met Bryan five years ago.  He was the director of the ministry internship program I participated in.  I sat in his office for the first time on a cold morning in February.  It was the first in a long day of meetings with all sorts of ministry leaders and interns.  Outfitted in my new brown boots and my favorite burnt red J.Crew dress, the one that was professional but not stuffy, I was in full on interview mode.  I desperately wanted to be accepted into this internship program.  On the precipice of a career change I saw this opportunity at a well-known mega church as the door-opening venue I needed to make the move.   Having sat across the desk from countless principles during interviews for teaching jobs, I knew the drill.  Put your best foot forward, be likable, relatable, professional, and above all competently pulled together.  

So you can imagine my surprise when Bryan started asking me all sorts of feeling questions that morning.  I faltered with these questions, not sure how to respond.  Feeling questions were vulnerable, risky and not interview appropriate.  My honest response to these feeling questions did not exactly reveal a competently pulled together me.  I tried to answer as competently and honestly as possible without revealing too much of the catastrophe that was the real me.

Months later, after hours spent in that office answering a million feeling questions that elicited a billion tears, Bryan would tell me that their one big hesitation in accepting me into the internship was their uncertainty that I could be open, vulnerable and honest with regards to the emotional journey of the internship.  In short they worried I would try too hard to look together.  #interviewfail.

Anyway, as I sat next to Bryan on Tuesday night surrounded by other people whose lives have been profoundly affected by him I felt the way I always feel in Bryan’s presence: supremely grateful, awkwardly emotional and on the verge of opening my mouth and spewing all my most vulnerable thoughts and problems in an inappropriate display of verbal diarrhea. 

The thing is, without being overly dramatic, Bryan changed my life.  It didn’t take long for me to give up the “I’m totally pulled together and competent” façade with him.  Bryan has a way of drawing out people’s most authentic selves.  He doesn’t do it in a harsh, confrontational, “I see through your bullshit” kind of way.  You just can’t help but let your guard down with him.  Bryan has a way of making everyone feel that there is something likable inside of them.  He is perhaps the safest person I’ve ever met.

I sat in his office week after week revealing the truest, most loathsome, hardest parts of myself.  I cried the ugliest of ugly cries and left his office puffy eyed and snot nosed more times than I could count.  I spoke aloud all the thoughts I kept under lock and key for fear that bringing them to light would result in my complete banishment from society because no one could still like someone who harbored such beastly thoughts and feelings.

And with each repelling truth I flung his way Bryan responded with pure grace.  More than that, despite knowing my most repulsive truths, Bryan still seemed to like me.   He didn’t distance himself, or turn me into a project, kick me out of the program or deem me an unfit Christian leader.  In fact the more Bryan learned about my most authentic self the more he seemed to like me.  It took me a little while to trust this reality but once I did a strange thing happened.

I started to think maybe God might like me too.

I spent years assuming that God was perpetually disappointed with me, frustrated with this child who couldn’t ever live up to his expectations.  Unlike everyone else, God knew all the monstrous thoughts I hid from the rest of the world, so naturally he wasn’t pleased with the real me.  This notion that God might not be tallying up all the ways I wasn’t enough, that he might still like me despite my shortcomings, was hard to swallow at first.  But slowly, with Bryan’s help, I began to shrug off the heavy cloak of shame I wore, suffocating me and my relationship with God.   It was hard work, accompanied with set backs and tears and distrust.  God had been a cold, distant, displeased father for so long.  I didn’t really know who he was if he was no longer that. 

But here is the greatest lesson I learned from Bryan: Shame, when brought to light, loses all its power and this has an opposite reaction from what you fear.  For years I stored my most shameful truths inside, terrified to be found out.  I thought if I could just keep a lid on it, eventually the shame would go away.  If I were to be found out, my shameful truths revealed, it would repel everyone who loved me.  But in that kind of secretive, fearful environment shame grows exponentially, gaining power with each unused opportunity to expose it.  But speak your truth aloud to a safe source and shame is diminished, extinguished over time.  The heavy burden of shame is lifted and light prevails. 

What Bryan did for me, extinguishing my shame and teaching me that God does, in fact, still like me, changed my life.  I continued to meet with Bryan after the internship ended.  After each meeting I walked to my car feeling lighter, more hopeful, closer to God.  It’s Bryan’s gift.

Ultimately Bryan taught me that God liked me.  But the greater lesson lies in how Bryan taught me this truth.  I don’t remember Bryan telling me that God liked me.  I’m sure he did, but the words weren’t the catalyst for belief.   Bryan convinced me by liking me in spite of my many faults.  He didn’t talk about grace he embodied it.  It is important lesson for me, wordsmith that I imagine myself to one day be.  I’m a words person.  I enjoy crafting witty and transformative sentences with them.  And while words can carry significant power they are nothing in comparison to the influence of my actions.  The way that I embody a truth can change a person’s life.  I can write thousands of posts about how God likes you, but you are more likely to believe this truth because of the way I show you how much I like you.  Words are important, but actions are life changing.

And thankfully my path crossed Bryan’s at just the right time for his actions to change mine.

So this is what Bryan taught me and it’s why I find myself so emotionally grateful when I’m around him.  He changed my entire relationship with God and taught me how to help others do the same.

Mother's Day Hangover

Mother’s Day came and went last Sunday.  This is my third Mother’s Day as a mother, but nothing has beaten the one right before I became a mother.  I celebrated with my family and my husband’s family in a sweet lunch out.  Tommy gave me the wallet I’d been eyeing for months, the one that I could fit my phone into and toss in my diaper bag without having to think twice.  At 37 weeks pregnant I was close enough to be anticipating with sweet excitement the arrival of this baby.  Little did I know in exactly one week I’d be holding him.  So you see- perfect. 

This past Mother’s Day was nice.  It included breakfast out with my little family and dinner home with my extended family.  All in all it was a day filled with sweet, harmonious family moments.  The kind of day Hallmark tries their best to create.

But I found it hard to enjoy. 

I always find days that are supposed to celebrate me hard to enjoy.

Part of it is the fact that I put a lot of pressure on these days to fill some unmet need in me.  And of course they can never stand up to this pressure.  For some reason I need permission to articulate my needs and desires.  Days like Mother’s Day or my birthday give me that permission.  I would never spend the money on an expensive wallet that I’d been coveting for months, but if Tommy “grants me permission” in the form of a gift I suddenly feel worthy of the luxury.  Days like Mother’s day give me permission to feel worthy of being celebrated, pampered, and put first. 

So I anticipate these days with a large amount of expectancy.  I’ve stored up months of wishing and waiting to be noticed, appreciated and celebrated.  And all of a sudden one day bears all the weight of my hopes and dreams in the unmet recognition department.  And of course a single day will crumble under all that weight.  I found myself strangely emotional and sad on the Saturday before Mother’s Day, knowing I would yet again be disappointed.  Not because my sweet husband didn’t try, but because nothing could fulfill that many months of need and expectancy. 

Because my husband did try.  And he asked me time and again what I wanted to do for Mother’s Day.  But therein lies a deeper, more difficult problem.  I didn’t really know what it was that would make me feel loved, celebrated and pampered.  I didn’t know what I wanted.  At first I thought I was frustrated and hurt that my husband didn’t know me well enough to create a day that fit me.  But when I really sat in it, when I really thought about what I wanted Mother’s Day to look like, I had no answers.  I don’t know me well enough to create a day that fits me.

Which was a particularly depressing discovery.  Not only do I need permission to express my needs and desires, but when granted said permission I am tongue tied, unable to articulate what it is I want.

I’ve talked a big game lately about how turning thirty has given me a whole new confidence and self-awareness.  The reality is that I’ve tricked myself into thinking that being sure in a small amount of personal preferences meant I’ve mastered the whole self discovery thing.  I’m not there yet. 

And the bigger reality is that at thirty years old I really need to stop waiting for permission to ask for my needs to be met.  I need to stop waiting for someone else to introduce me to myself and start figuring out what exactly I need and want in life.    

The thirties, for me, are about being bold and going after the life I desire instead of waiting for permission to be the person God created me to be.  If this is the case then I need to start getting in touch with that person.  It feels like sacred and true work.  But it also feels like clumsy work, awkward and uncomfortable.  Shouldn’t I know this by now?  Did I used to know it and forget?  It feels vulnerable and risky to try and fail at self-discovery.  Shouldn’t this come naturally? 

And yet I don’t want to be fifty and find myself disappointed yet again because another Mother’s Day has come and gone failing to meet the unmet needs I don’t know well enough to articulate.  I don’t want holidays to buckle under the pressure I’ve put on them because I can’t advocate for myself throughout the year.  I don’t want to limit my worthiness of love and appreciation to a few days a year.  It’s no way to live life really.  

On Mothers

Moving back in with my parents a few years after becoming a parent myself was not really in my master plan.  I prided myself on never having moved home after college.  Two weeks after graduation I packed my suitcases and moved to the big apple never again to claim my childhood home’s address as my own again.  Well, until now that is.  Twelve years after leaving for college, one husband and two kids later, I’m back in the room of my teenage years.  Well played God, well played.

Inevitably this move comes with some tension, some awkwardness, some growing pains.  I find myself reverting to ways of interacting with my parents that I haven’t employed for years.  It is normal, I’ve been told, to fall back on these familiar patterns of living with those who raised you.

Most days I cook dinner for everyone.  Cooking dinner is causing a large amount of anxiety in me.  Suddenly every night feels like a high stakes dinner party.  Before moving in with my parents my culinary feats were consumed by Toots, who eats everything you put in front of her, Monster, who only eats one big meal every three days and employs no rhyme or reason to what he will and won’t eat on a particular day, and Tommy who eats pretty much everything and will make a frozen pizza for second dinner if necessary.  Low stakes at their finest here.  Now I’m cooking for people more finely tuned palates and I’m terrified.  (Perhaps I need to go back and read my own advice…)

A few weeks ago, as I prepared dinner for us all, I found myself battling the insecurity and anxiety that accompanies the five-o-clock hour now.  My dad asked me a pretty innocent question about how I was preparing the meal.  I responded with a flustered, anxiety ridden half answer followed by “that’s-probably-not-a-good-idea-what-do-you-think-I-should-do-and-how-do-you-usually-make-this?!”

My mother, calmly and encouragingly said, “that sounds great.  Do it how you would normally cook it.  It’ll be great.”  It was a simple, motherly statement, infusing confidence into her (grown) daughter.  I’m sure my mother has been saying things like this to me my whole life, but in that instance I truly saw it for what it was.  I recognized that tone, the loving patience.  It is the same voice and inflection I use with Monster as his little hands work to manipulate scissors and Toots as her body struggles to string steps together into bona fide walking.  They are the voice and words of a mother trying to help her baby take clumsy, awkward steps towards self-confidence and blessed assuredness.

And there she was, her baby now 30 years old, my mother still mothering.  My mother could still recognize my insecurity and parented the best way she knew how… towards self-confidence and blessed assuredness.

We never really stop being mothers do we?  It’s strangely comforting this thought.  To all the mothers out there, from those who’ve been at this game for decades to those who are snuggling fresh new babes and all those in between, happy day.  Thanks for mothering the best way you know how, and for never truly stopping.

For Lauren

This is my dear friend Lauren.  If I’m being totally honest I don’t know if I would have predicted, way back in high school, that I’d be toasting her on her 30^th birthday.  But to be fair I think she expected to be rid of me by now too.  It’s not that we weren’t close friends in high school.  We were.  It’s just we found ourselves on opposite ends of the spectrum within our group of girlfriends.  We had this knack for hurting each other’s feelings back when teenage girl feelings are so easily injured.  Then I went and married someone connected to a part of her life with which she hoped to cut ties and, well, it would have seemed that friendship beyond our early twenties was probably doomed.

I’m so, so glad that wasn’t the case.

Because you see my dear friend Lauren has taught me so much about what it means to show up for your friends.  I will never, ever forget the hours she spent with me after we learned about Monster’s diagnosis.  She is a quality time person and she loved me with time.  Time wandering the aisles of Target talking about anything but the awful news I was still digesting.  Time on my couch watching Real Housewives of all the cities, unloading my fears and tears during commercial breaks.  When I think about that period in my life I remember a lot of time with Lauren.  She let me talk about all my worries with regards to Monster’s future and promised me to have a little girl he could take to prom in case no one wanted to go with the kid with hearing aids.  She let me cry and grieve.  But more than that I will remember the ways she just showed up and spent regular, ordinary time with me so that I knew I wasn’t alone.  It was a gift that got me through.  I don’t remember asking for this gift of time.  I don’t think I even knew I needed it.  But there she was. 

And I will be forever grateful.

Lauren is now an amazing mother to Monster’s future prom date.  Her sweet girl was born just 5 and a half weeks after Toots.  Future besties for sure.  She is the friend I go to when I need to know about grown up things like life insurance and feeding eggs to my 9 month old.  This year, a few mere months after giving birth to her first child, she freakin’ started her own business.  A few months after giving birth to my first child I considered showering a huge accomplishment.  I am in awe of her self-confidence.  Lauren has always known exactly who she is.  She is able to speak up for herself in ways that both inspire and terrify me.  When faced with conflict and “people pleasing” dilemmas I find myself asking, what would Lauren do? 

Lauren’s best though comes out in her love.  She is thoughtful and caring, deliberate with her time and attention.  She listens carefully and responds even more carefully.  When Lauren gives advice you listen.  She loves by showing up.  She has been showing up for me for 15 years, surprising me at times with this loyalty and love.  She has been a gift to me, a gift I never feel quite worthy of.

Lauren turns thirty today.  Last Saturday we gathered at a wine bar to celebrate her.  Like a fine wine gets better with age so has she.  The wonderful qualities she had when I met her all those years ago have only gotten stronger.  And the harder edges in her have softened.  She’s worked hard to learn from life’s tough lessons.  She’s pushed herself to grow.  In college Lauren got dealt a pretty crappy life hand.  She had to deal with medical and relational issues that no 20 year old should have to worry about.  For most people that kind of difficult life stuff could have become the defining moment that hardened them for ever.  Instead of letting hard things harden her, Lauren chose to let them soften her.  She responded to those difficulties in a way that still amazes me.  It was more then lemonade out of lemons.  She found her greatest strength and beauty where others would have just focused on the negative of the situation.  I think of how far she’s come in the decade and a half I’ve known her and it makes me so excited to watch the woman she will continue to grow into over the years to come.  I’m so thankful we never managed to drift apart all these years.  And now, well, she won’t be able to shake me.  She’s stuck with me.  Happy birthday dear friend.