Tag Archives: stress

Here’s how to successfully raise teens in 2023

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(tongue-in-cheek because single-parenting three teen boys is usually the feeling of drowning and just being thankful that the day is over!)

When your 14-year-old son leads on a weekend morning with, “Mom, are you busy today?”, the correct answer is never to list out all the cleaning and projects you had lined up for the day in your brain. The correct answer is, of course, “What do you have in mind?” And, of course, if you do not like what he has in mind, you may proceed with your list of impossible-to-accomplish things. But if his answer is, “Can we get a new hamster….I kind of miss mine after it died” then your answer is, “Let me know when you’re ready to go.”

That is one thing I’ve learned about raising teens. Here’s a few more:

  1. Keep them alive. This feels near impossible many days as their brains are 1000% crazy ideas and 1% “oh that might be dangerous” critical thinking. After a couple midnight joy-rides (and, they are always amazed that I can tell the moment I get in the car that it has been “used”), I now have the car keys in my pocket continuously (as well as the key to the alcohol cabinet and to my bedroom).
  2. Keep them fed. There is clearly “never any food” in the house as apparently, “there’s only ingredients,” but I do make sure to have plenty of quick-to-heat-up or grab-and-go foods to block part of the hangry moods.  Sometimes they figure out how to put ingredients of butter, bread and cheese together in a pan, but most of the time they want Mom to do that. Much of the time they want Mom to do that when she’s settled down at her puzzle table listening to an audiobook at 10:00 pm, but they’ve learned it’s a waste of breath. But not to fear, friends, there is always food in our house!
  3. Keep them engaged. This is the sage advice of every person who has had very little difficulty with raising their own teens.  But it really only works for teens who actually want to be engaged in sports or music or the arts or reading. But for some teens, “engaged” means connecting with friends on Fortnight gaming. Or for Mr. Ornery, now 14, it was months spent stripping down the parts of a kid electric dirt bike and purchasing a powerful battery and motor and chains and tires and converting it to something capable of 40 mph (see point #1)! I would whine to myself and to him about the cost of this “nonsense” so much until I realized the cost was likely comparable to a sport or music lessons and it was keeping him engaged.
  4. Keep them related. Some days, I barely see the boys. It’s off to school and then to friends or to their rooms. The best way to find some time to talk is driving them somewhere, so I’ll even do the 5-10 minutes to school. But these days, you’re competing with the cell phone in the hand and the earbud in the ear, so we have to work hard at finding ways to keep connected.
  5. Keep them healthy. While physical health sometimes seems effortless (with an occasional cold or COVID sprinkled in), it’s the mental health that’s harder to address. In the wake of a nation-wide rise in teen mental disorders, the resources are not easily available and rarely “accessible” in a way that my teens are willing to connect with. This year has been waves of depression and cycles of rage with furious destruction. I’ve had to be very intentional and very persistent to keep working toward diagnoses and treatment, but it remains a frustrating cyclone.
  6. Keep them safe from trauma. Raising biracial boys in a very white neighborhood is beyond challenging. This year the boys experienced blatant racism in the schools, the community and in their peers.  I have worked to understand their feelings, help them begin the process of learning to manage their fight-or-flight system, and have become a voice to call out the racism when it occurs. But it shocks me every time they tell me what people have said to them.
  7. Finally, keep the focus on the goal. A parent’s overall goal is a healthy and developing child moving toward an independent, thriving adult. So when anxiety and depression precludes school attendance for this week or this month, the goal remains that the child feels loved and supported and understood. That grade in biology will have to wait. The school year might have to wait. There is a bigger goal. And sometimes you might have to remind the “systems” of that bigger goal. (And sometimes someone reminds you. Like when I moan to the 12-year-old that I had not anticipated the amount of time it would require of me to teach his older brother to drive, his response was, “Well, you have to do it, Mom. It’s an important life skill for him.”  The youngest has his eye on the goal!)

And most importantly, for the parent:

  • Keep your patience.
    • Get sleep – which generally means being in bed by 9:30 because the kids’ bus comes at 6:30 am!
    • Practice self-care – spend time in any activity which causes time to stand still. Walking. Running. Pickleball. Jigsaw puzzles while watching TV. Reading by audiobook while walking or running or puzzling 😊.
  • Keep your sanity.
    • Find your tribe – those groups of mothers who hang at the pool with you, friends who go out for brunch or collect “stamps” at the local breweries, or those who visit in the evenings for a quiet dinner or drink. Find those who listen; those who offer suggestions; those who text back when you reach out in panic or anguish or frustration. Hold them close and nurture them as well.
  • Keep yourself healthy, mentally and physically.

Because your focus is on the goal – independent, thriving adults.

I Really Needed the 20 Seconds.

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This summer has been exhausting. Totally and completely exhausting. The boys have all aged out of summer day care or camps. They are not actively engaged in any sports at this time. They get bored. They get “creative” in so many ways to take up the long hours of day.

So three teens with minimal impulsive control, brains that crave dopamine rushes, and with flaring tempers has been a daily struggle.  I have fought to stay a step ahead of their activity.  I sleep with the car keys under my pillow to prevent any additional joyrides by underage boys.  I lock up the alcohol (only to find that a boy has tried to open the lock and damaged the mechanism). I monitor the security cameras to see who is sneaking out in the middle of the night and when. Keeping up with full-time work and volunteer positions, managing the greater food intake by teens (funny how much those school lunches made a difference) and the endless piles of dirty dishes and laundry seems impossible.

Through all this, though, the 12-year-old Little Guy did participate in the community summer swim league. He didn’t actually want to be there and didn’t do any of the daily practices because he just wanted to “hang” with his friends. But with generous encouragement, he joined the swim team for competitions every Tuesday and Thursday.  He swam well and helped win many relays.

At the end of the 8-week season, the neighborhood pool team had championship races which culminated in an award ceremony.  As parents gathered around, the coaches took turns presenting the “Fishy Awards” in which they said 1-2 sentences about what most impressed them about each child.  The swimmer was called forward to receive a fish-shaped paper with a couple words on it and a gift of an embroidered swim towel. My boys have participated in this swim club for the past eight years and I always look forward to hearing what strikes the coaches about each of my children.

As the Fishy Awards wrapped up, I suddenly realized that The Little Guy had not been selected to come forward at all.  The microphone had been passed on to thank the volunteers. The coaches had walked away.  I left my chair and walked over to the head coach in his mid-twenties and asked, “Why is my son the only kid who did not receive any recognition?”

The problem was, I had hit my limit. All the stress of the summer fell upon my heart suddenly. The injustice poked at my brain. The lack of sleep knocked down the walls that hold in emotions, and I was flooded. When the coach couldn’t grasp why I wanted him to take back the stage for a moment and call my son forward to recognize him like every other member of the team, I just walked away. I found myself in the bathroom sobbing until I could stem the tears a bit. Gathering up my things, I sat in the car and waited for The Little Guy to wrap up with the party.

A friend came over to chat and when The Little Guy joined us, he kept saying, “It’s okay, Mom. I don’t mind at all. It’s no big deal.”  I reassured him that my flood of emotions was just the culmination of fatigue and stress and disappointment. I added, “I just love you so much and sometimes as a mom, it is just really nice to hear how much other people love you too.”  I just needed those 20 seconds. Just 20 seconds of encouragement that my kid is doing okay and that I as a parent am doing okay. Yes, it was an unintentional mistake in dropping the “award” and not recognizing my son, but it was the absence of a much needed 20 seconds in just that moment of my life that punched.

Dry the tears.

Shove emotions back.

Gather up.

Parent on.

So I thank all the people over the course of this summer who have given me 20 seconds of stories about how well the 14-year-old is doing when they see him at his job at McDonalds. The friends who provide 20 seconds of stories about their struggles with their own kids and yet are doing okay. And the 20 seconds of sitting silently together, exhaling deeply about just how hard parenting is.

Share those 20 seconds with others. We all need them.

The Mental Gymnastics of COVID on Parents

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It seemed like we were in a pretty good space. Healthy and active kids. Busy but joyful Christmas. Ice skating daily outside during the break. All seemed like a nice little time away from school and a break from work. The random deep cough of the Little Guy, especially right after physical activity, nagged at me for a couple days. And so I did a home COVID test (negative) and a second one 24 hours later as recommended (negative) and thus felt pretty comfortable hosting the grandparents and sister and nephews for New Year’s Eve.  Felt pretty comfortable taking the younger boys to see SpiderMan No Way Home on the first day of the New Year. Felt pretty comfortable until about 11:00 pm when Super Tall Guy called me from his room with the words, “I don’t feel good.”

Thus began the mental gymnastics of COVID which are so incredibly draining. Thoughts of what testing to do? Where to go to get testing? When can we get appointments? What’s the best timing of when to do testing? Who have the boys been around? Who do we need to notify as contacts? What upcoming events and plans need to be cancelled?

At 11:41 that Saturday night, I got an appointment for COVID testing for Super Tall Guy and The Little Guy and off we went to join hundreds of others in the parking lot of a vacant mall the next day. And then we started the waiting game for the results. Normally, this service kicked back results in 12 hours. This time, we waited through Monday, what should have been the boys’ first day back to school. We waited through Tuesday, through Mr. Ornery and I getting tested since he had started with symptoms and I figured I was DEFINITELY exposed to plenty of snot. And then the dreaded, but somehow expected, red bar showed up when the phone pinged me that the results were ready.

Thankfully, I had been to the store to stock up. Thankfully I have lots of friends around texting to see if I needed anything. Thankfully, a friend dropped off chicken noodle soup that first day, which not only tasted great but felt like love. Thankfully, other friends and neighbors have made dinners and dropped off treats that have brought joy. Thankfully, I also have many friends that I can text and ask questions of and bounce thoughts off to help me think through all the scenarios. Thankfully, I have everything we need….except the peace and quiet I was expecting of boys returning to school at the end of break!

It took another three days for results of the middle child to return positive as well. Three boys, fully vaccinated, with COVID. Thankfully, their symptoms ranged from bad cold and exhaustion to barely a cough in the youngest. Thankfully my test came back negative so I could leave the house to restock bread and milk. But being surrounded by illness, and experiencing some slightly stuffy nose (Am I stuffy? Am I imagining this?), I just keep wondering when I will get it.

So the mental gymnastics continue. How are the boys doing? Are their symptoms resolving? When do they go back to school?  Literally every night I lay in bed counting on my fingers: “Okay, so symptoms started Thursday, so Friday is day 1, Saturday is 2, Sunday is 3…..” and then next boy, “Sunday is day 1, Monday is 2, Tuesday is….” Will I get it as well? When will I get it? Might be nice for me to have it and be done with it. How will the boys get caught up on school work since they haven’t had the energy to do the remote learning that they could have done? So much time spent in numerous calls and emails with teachers and school nurses.

And then there’s the emotional struggle over and over of keeping kids home and isolating as they start to feel better. No, you can not hang out with friends. No, we won’t be going ice skating or to the swim meet or to the store or anywhere else. No….No….No…..slamming against But, Mom….But Mom….But Mom…No….No….No….(repeat).

COVID brings not only physical illness but mental strain to the whole family. Even if this Omicron variant is said to be “mild,” it has caused quite a bit of disruption. It has required an exorbitant amount of time and energy in this family. It has occupied my thoughts and my heart.

So yes, I can be thankful that we are all vaccinated and have weathered this storm pretty well. I am tremendously thankful for the support of family and friends. But I also have to acknowledge that my experience this past week is being played out in thousands and thousands households across the country every single day. And for some of those families, the physical and emotional strain is much much worse. And the physical and emotional strain on our health care providers and health systems is currently much much worse than previously.

And my heartfelt plea is that we all continue to try to do the best that we can to protect one another through vaccinating ourselves, masking up when out of our homes, keeping kids masked in schools during the surge, putting in the mental energy to make wise decisions, and continuing to be kind and gentle with one another.

I Just Can’t Get “Back to Normal”

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I feel like we are all just supposed to be “back to normal” now. Like there’s some unspoken edict that says “Move on” and “get back to life.” We are coming up on a year since the first shut-down, and I feel like there’s pressure for life, businesses, schools, relationships….everything to be back to normal with a sprinkling of masks and a bit of physical distancing.

While I am so very thankful to have a flexible job, I still have this sense of guilt that “work” expects us all to be functioning at 110% like we used to. That the only real change is that most of the work is virtual now and therefore, “just get it work done.”  The thing is, there are no breaks at work like there used to be. There are no lunch breaks – I just heat up some food between meetings and eat during the next meeting. There are no commute breaks any more that would allow my brain to rest as I drove to and from home or to a meeting. And sometimes I would be so very lucky and would get to a meeting early and the sun would be shining and I would have a glorious 10 minutes to walk around the block and breathe in the warm spring or summer before settling in. Or I’d get in early to the meeting and chat with the couple other early birds, making small talk or connecting about a new project or idea. These days, I wake up, get kids to school, and sit….and sit….and sit…..alone at my computer (except when I’m yelling at the dogs to stop barking at everyone walking by!). My to-do list is endless and four or five things are added for every one scratched off. My email responses are days late or forgotten all together. Despite all the virtual interaction, I miss people. I miss travel. I miss the energy that comes from brainstorming and working together. And I’m certainly not back to normal.

Resting heart rate as a sign of stress – highest peak was when febrile and sick after the 2nd vaccine; second peak was the stress around boys’ school in February!

I feel like my boys’ school expects us to all be normal again now too. Literally my eighth grader has not gone into the school building all five days of a week for a month. I don’t think he’s mentally ready to do that. He got so out of that schedule that it elicits fear and anxiety in him to actually do it. Last April when I complained that the boys just weren’t able to do “remote learning” on a two-dimensional device given their attention deficit, the teachers reassured me, “Don’t worry, we’ll get them caught up next year.” That was before we knew that a two-week shut-down was a fanciful dream. Now it’s full steam ahead, as if they didn’t miss 25% of last year and had a very slow start for the first half of this year. There’s still an expectation to work at “grade level,” complete assignments, be present and engaged whether at home or at school. There’s an assumption that the kids will be flexible and resilient and go with the flow, even if they do find out at 6:00pm that they are in quarantine and have to remote learn tomorrow morning. We pretend that this constant change, this fear of being around people that’s been instilled, this interacting through a mask, this learning from an iPad, this watching teachers on a screen doesn’t faze them at all. We “speak” of mental health in our kids but we don’t make any changes.  We talk about the achievement lag that is hitting all students across the nation, but what are we doing to actively address this? There’s no way this is a “normal” school year for students or teachers!

I feel like relationships are struggling with the “are we back to normal” yet question. When we greet each other, we now ask, “are you okay with a hug?” instead of just rushing into each other’s arms. We are wary of people that we don’t think are using the same safety protocols that we’ve adapted to for our households. We limit our time together and question every move – were we together too long? Did we site too close? It’s been so long that we’ve welcomed people into our homes that we don’t know how to do it any more. We don’t know if we’re comfortable with people over. And we certainly haven’t kept (I mean, I haven’t kept) the house to the same standards of cleanliness as we’d like in case people do “pop over.” Hearing others’ stories or seeing social media posts, I see that others are hanging out together much more than I have, but I just don’t feel back to normal yet.

All of the usual stresses and challenges of life are happening in the context of greater stress and more worry. And while there’s so much pressure to be “healthy” and “coping” and handling the new situation, I must allow myself to acknowledge that it’s not normal yet and that’s okay. That I’m not managing everything as well as I thought I used to, and that’s okay. That I’m more tired and more irritable sometimes, and that’s okay.

What’s okay is that I am doing my best in the face of the greatest challenge of this lifetime and that I’m leaning on as well as supporting friends and family and relationships in the midst of this, including the three growing boys in this messy house who are also trying to figure out what’s normal now.

A friend reminded me this week of some words I had spoken six years ago…..

She gifted me with a reminder as well. We may not be ready to function as “normal” as much as we’d like things to “just get back to normal,” but we will persist.

If you or someone you know needs help, call the National Suicide Prevention Line (1-800-273-8255) or visit the website for resources. According to an NPR blurb this week, the increased stress from the pandemic will likely soon relate to physical health changes for many.

Let’s continue to uplift and encourage one another.

Open Letter to My Sons’ School

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Dear School Board and Administration,

Do you not understand how thoroughly exhausting this is? How every single day of my life is now shaped by your decisions to constantly alter the course of my children’s schooling?

The phone rings. A recorded message informs me that my two middle-school sons will now be “remote learning” for the next two days. My brain begins its mental gymnastics (again). I begin to process what the new morning routine will look like, adjusting timings to get one kid to school and two kids logging in. My brain strums through what meetings I have to coordinate for the day and what changes we will make for the next couple days.

My brain is constantly reading, processing and filtering emails from the school. This building is now closed. A case was reported in your son’s school, but your child does not have to quarantine. A case was reported in your son’s class but your son is not deemed a close contact so you can choose whether or not you want to keep your kid home in quarantine to do remote learning or to send them to school. Because this building is now closed, your son’s basketball practice has now moved to tomorrow at 8:30 instead of today at 7:30, but the other boy’s swim practice is now shifted to Saturday to allow for….

I take a sip of wine….

Because I don’t know how else to cope with the relentless stress. The constantly changing schedules. The pervasive uncertainty. The steady level of worry of exposure to COVID or the chance of one of us getting sick. The struggle to maintain some semblance of education and growth for the boys while balancing limited social contacts and the boys’ mental health.

Is it a “he’s tired” headache or a COVID headache? Does his belly hurt because he’s hungry or he’s sick? Is there a fever? Was that a cough? Do I send him to school or keep him home? Test him or wait it out? Do I call the school nurse or fill out an absence form or ask to make him remote…..or just say to hell with it?!?!

Do you not understand how tired and stressed we parents are as we try to understand the ever-shifting “guidelines” and “procedures” in this school district? As we try to figure out whether your guidance even makes sense based on data and science? As we struggle with the basic knowledge that we can not and have not been able to trust our community leaders to make the right decision?

I take a sip of wine….

I have spent the last couple weeks starting every email with “I apologize for my delay in responding.” Sometimes I attempt humor (“my kid left the garage door open and the pipes froze; I’ve been a bit distracted”). Sometimes I am honest and confess that I’m stressed and I’ve lost track of…well, of life. Sometimes I just move right along and answer the question I should have answered last week as if there weren’t seven days missing in there.

I’ve nicknamed myself “Last-minute Lynne.” My work is done the night before or it’s late. There’s no in-between. There is no staying on top of things. There is no managing anymore. Balls have dropped. Back-burner heat went out long ago. The to-do list got so long I’ve lost the first couple pages….

There is no relief in sight. Just constant worry. New COVID variants. New guidelines on masking. New impeachment trials and messy politics. New weather patterns and slippery roads. New research and new opinions. New vaccine roll-outs and new stimulus ideas. New evidence of health inequity and disparity. New, more, different, sudden, changing, insidious, good-luck-coping-with-this-curve-ball stress.

I take a sip of wine….

I’m a physician. I trained under a great deal of stress and experience stress at work which I can manage. But this stress is different and sneaks through my coping tactics. And, as a physician, I know that this chronic, ever-shifting stress is taking a toll on me. It’s taking a toll on my family as I waffle between fatigue and irritability. It’s taking a toll on health and on productivity. It’s taking a toll on my community and my city. It’s taking a toll on our country and across the world.

Dear school board and administrators, please decrease our stress.

Sincerely,

A very tired parent.

Cheers.

You Got This

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Easter of a pandemic. I stayed up late for Easter bunny fun designing a nice scavenger hunt for the boys to find their baskets in the morning. What I failed to appreciate was the vicious combination of holiday excitement and poor impulse control. Within minutes, Mr. Ornery was in tears about how hard the hunt was, how this was stupid, and how angry he was about having to do this. Within minutes a fight had broken out over whose tiny piece of chocolate was whose after cracking open all the plastic eggs from the family-room-egg-hunt. Within minutes, I was tucked away back in my bed sobbing.

My expectation of a beautiful morning clashed with the ADHD expectation of immediate access to candy! My expectation of a fun bonding moment in the midst of quarantine clashed with the need to just get to the end goal. It took me awhile to bounce back and realize that we are all stressed. Holidays add stress. Decreased amount of sleep adds stress. Constant, smoldering worry of an ongoing pandemic adds stress. A complicated scavenger hunt for an Easter basket was not the right type of stress to add.

I’ve been imparting wisdom left and right about how it’s most important to attend to our social-emotional health during this time, especially the health of our children. The other day, I stood in the hallway of our medical office listening to a mother stress about how many hours of school work she was trying to get her 6 year old to accomplish. She had gotten home from work and spent about 4 hours with her kindergartener trying to get assignments done. There was stress. There were tears. There was guilt about not spending time with the younger sibling because of all the attention on school. Her voice cracked. And my heart paused for her.

“Listen, we’re living in a pandemic. We’re just hanging on some days trying to cope. There’s too much stress of trying to do work well, trying to parent well, and trying to help kids with school. She’s in kindergarten. She’s going to be fine if you just focus on her emotional health,” I spouted.

There are just a few times I’ve cried during this pandemic and most of those times have been while on a phone (or after hanging up) with a teacher or learning support teacher at my boys’ schools. I find that I keep voicing how hard this is for parents to try to do their own work from home while simultaneously trying to figure out how to help the kids. I’ve advocated for paying more attention to “how are the kids feeling?” and figuring out how they are coping with their stress.  We’ve revised 504s and IEPs. We’ve decreased some of the workloads. But it’s a work in progress.

The moment the schools closed, Super Tall Guy packed up and moved over to my sister’s house. He loves being there with her two teenage boys. He spent the entire summer there last year. And while that seemed fine when they talked about closing school for two weeks, when the governor closed schools for the rest of the year – a total of 3 months – that just didn’t seem sustainable.  I struggled with the fact that he wasn’t getting the same “bonding” time that the other two boys and I were having (not that he’d come out of his room to go on our daily family walks, anyway). And although I kept fussing about whether to “make” him come back home, I finally relaxed into persuading myself that his stay there was buffering his social-emotional health. He is happy and that is good enough for now.

There’s just no right and wrong. No clear cut answers to anything. We are all just trying to do our best each day and waking up to try again tomorrow. So I wrote this….

 

 

 

When Newness brings Peace

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“And the peace of God which transcends all understanding….” (Phil 4:7)

There certainly was very little Peace and Quiet over this Christmas break despite the typical expectation of such. This year we moved to a house after living in a cramped, tiny townhome for the past 3 years. The older two had their own bedrooms, but the youngest slept in my bedroom. The TV was on one side of the “living” room space and the couch on the opposite side so the great joy in annoying the eldest was to cross in front of the TV multiple times…or just pretend to forget and stand there. The kitchen was tiny and I couldn’t stand to have a kid in there with me whenever I tried to cook anything on the non-existent counter-space. There was no garage, no basement, no storage area.

But there was an outside. There was an open green space with playground equipment that hardly anyone used if they were over five. And there was a glorious double-bump hillside that made perfect sledding conditions (perfect because the boys could thump over in their boots and I could stay in my warm abode!). And there were kids. Kids who also liked to play outside. Kids who knocked on the door at 8:30 on a Saturday morning. Kids who knocked at 8:00 pm on a school night. Kids that thrived on my boys’ energy and creativity. Kids who were great friends.

So the Saturday before Christmas, I moved over as many boxes as I could pack in the car with supplies to host our first “Cookie Day.” Many friends came out and we baked for hours (despite a nasty cold), creating 56 dozen cookies as the one oven browned sheet after sheet of dough. Sunday and Monday we packed and carted boxes. We cleaned some parts of the new house and some of the old. My sister tore up carpet and sanded two hardwood floors. And Christmas day after the excitement of gifts and a quick meal, we put polyurethane on the floors and opened all the windows. And when the moving trucks pulled out, my wonderful brother drove in from Ohio with two of his older daughters to finish up moving all the odds and ends.

It’s been anything but restful. Anything but quiet. But there has been a remarkable peace that has descended on the family. Christmas Eve I sent the boys down to the basement (“game room,” “man cave,” “den”…we haven’t settled on a name yet!) and I set up their rooms with beds and new blankets and put some select pieces of their school artwork (which I just framed the week before Christmas) on the floor as I didn’t have the tools or the energy to work on hanging them. I had name signs for each room. And The Little Guy jump around in his room with such joy and excitement to have his own space for the first time in his life.

Space. There’s now space for the boys to get away from each other to rest. There’s space in the kitchen (bless my mom and a couple great friends who helped clean and set it up) for me to experience joy and peace in preparing meals for the boys (I got tired of pizza and take-out pretty quickly!). There’s space to put the new hoverboards and electric scooters in the shed and the hand-me-down dirt bike that Mr. Ornery managed to fiddle with enough to get it working. There’s space to breathe and breathing feels very good.

And after three years, there’s a sense of settling and permanency. My brain is no longer searching and searching for the right house, the right location, the right school. It’s not perfect. I really intended to get a MUCH bigger yard for the boys, but it’s got great indoor space and a quiet flat road in front for their craziness.

I am so grateful for everyone who helped physically and emotionally with encouraging texts and messages and Facebook comments. There’s still much to do. I haven’t finished cleaning up the new place yet and there’s boxes upon boxes in “storage” at my sister’s and parents’ houses that need to move over.  But, a longtime friend said to me recently, “It’s so great to see how much you are enjoying that beautiful new home of yours.” And he’s right.

I’ve actually caught Super Tall Guy with smiles on his face!

And Then There Were Water Beads…

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“Hey, want to be Doctor and Nurse again for the kids’ science fair night?” I asked a friend a couple weeks ago. A few days later she sent me directions (so thankful) for creating a demonstration of blood using water beads as the red blood cells, ping pong balls as the white blood cells and pieces of red foam to be the platelets. Looked easy enough. Amazon delivered the supplies a few days later and I left them in the box until they were needed.

Chomping on some salad a couple hours before heading to the science fair, I pulled up the instructions on my phone to start getting ready. “Hmm…water beads….” I opened the box and read their instructions. “Soak in water for 6 to 24 hours.”  &!@$!!! But then I remembered many science lessons by my mother when I was young about the power of heat and soaked those tiny pellets in hot hot water!!  It was amazing to watch them grow!

Hours later, my friend and I were swamped by kids coming to play with our bucket of “blood.” Kids would stand there for 5-10 minutes just letting the little beads roll through

Bucket of “blood”

their hands. Some were semi-interested in learning about blood, but really, they just wanted to squish beads between their fingers. We even encouraged all the parents to put their hands in and the expressions on their faces were priceless. We witnessed awe, delight, relaxation, and sheer surprise that the beads weren’t “slimy.” I stood there as a perfect spokesperson (for Amazon!), “Don’t you think you need some of these in your house?” “Wouldn’t it be so relaxing?” “Excuse, Mr. Principal of this school. Don’t you think you should have a bucket of these in the office next week for the kids as they work on their PSSAs? A chance to relax and de-stress while they are filling in endless bubble exams?”

The entire next day, Super Tall Guy sat on the couch running his fingers through a bucket of water beads as he watched TV. I’d turn and see him letting them slip around his hands, squishing and squeezing them. I thought about how wonderful it was to see my boy who often has so much trouble regulating his intense emotions sitting so calmly and relaxing with this sensory stimulation. It seemed like a perfect item.

Except that all “perfect” things, in a household of boys, have a downside!  You can order a pack of 15,000 tiny beads and still have fights over even division of items among three boys! You can give all the warnings you want about keeping them in the buckets (and even outfit all the containers with snapping lids) and still you will find them all over the floor. (The vacuum worked, though!)

 

I don’t know whether I love these things or hate them. It’s only been 48 hours, so the jury is still out on whether these are a “helpful” experience for the boys. I can keep you updated.

But I can tell you that I haven’t ordered the “water bead gun” yet on Amazon and I sure haven’t informed the boys of its existence!!

 

Parenting: The Science/Art of Prediction

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When the boys were young, the day care center parking lot drove me crazy. Young kids are short enough that drivers cannot see them when backing up and every time I picked up or dropped off, I worried that a kid would be hit by a car in reverse. The new video technology is helping but it doesn’t guarantee anything. Kids in parking lots still stress me. This past weekend, the younger two helped me go grocery shopping. They eagerly unloaded groceries from the coveted “car-driving” cart into the back of our van. Without thinking, I stepped to the side of the van to put the “don’t-want-it-smushed” bread into the front seat. Then I heard a man yelling. The car beside me had started backing up at the same time that The Little Guy had decided to move our cart backwards to take it to the corral. The man’s yells stopped the driver moments after she had already bumped into the cart and into my son. He was fine. He was protected by the cart and by his angels. But the woman was in tears and I was in disbelief. I had failed to be there. Failed to predict my son’s movements. Failed to predict the driver’s movements. Failed to protect from harm. Lifting up thanks as we drove away, I reviewed the situation with the boys trying to reinforce safety.

Parenting, it really boils down to one’s ability to predict. Science or art….hard to tell.

And this starts early, shortly after the mesmerizing awe of the newborn look and smell. Soon, the parent is desperately trying to predict the infant’s sleep cycle. If the baby falls asleep at 9:00 pm, do you predict he or she will wake up at 11:00 and therefore there’s no reason for you to get to sleep yet, or might the little cherub sleep until 1:00 am and you can delight in at least 2-3 hours of peaceful rest. After a night or two, or a year or two, you realize there’s absolutely no rhyme or reason to a kids’ sleep cycle and you might as well give up trying to predict anything!

The toddler years are the nightmarish, desperate attempts at predicting the Tasmanian devil’s every movements. Is she too close to the steps and about to tumble down? Is he going to flush that Match Box car down the toilet or is he just happily driving it along the bathtub rim? Is she likely to choke on that piece of food? Is he going to bump his head on the glass table or duck just in time? Apparently at this age, unpredictability is the only predictable aspect of parenting.

You feel like you have a sigh of relief as they enter into the school-age years. Now they can dress themselves, feed themselves, sort-of toilet themselves, and sometimes even entertain themselves for practically an hour (if some electronic device is involved!). You start to feel smug and almost have empathy when you see the bedraggled parents of toddlers chasing kids down the grocery aisle. But then you rapidly realize that there’s a whole new level of prediction which is further complicated by trying to predict interactions with and influences of other children as well. “I’m sorry your friend just blocked you from Minecraft chat. It wouldn’t possibly have anything to do with the fact that you just blew up his carefully constructed building, would it?”

It’s a brain-spinning nightmare, really. The more experience you have with kids, the more adept you get at this game of parenting prediction, but really there is no level of perfection that any parent could ever attain. My life is full of little moments of failing to predict kid behavior (scribbles on walls, broken TV sets, holes in the bedroom doors, plumbing emergencies for toy extraction) interspersed with near constant mental energy trying to predict larger and more consequential situations.

For example, currently I’m trying to predict the likelihood that a guy who goes by the name James will continue to use my address as a meet-up point for people trying to sell electronics on an app. When they arrive, he approaches and then runs off with their item. Within minutes, he has it up on the app for sale. The local police seem unconcerned and apathetic. My neighbors seem to consider it “interesting.” Property management seems to be pondering what to do. I seem to be the one stressed that victims will eventually get fed up with “James” and come storm my townhome. The question is, will I and the boys be home then?

So, here’s my conclusion. There’s no way we as parents or as humans could possibly predict everything that would befall our kids or us. We get better with each experience, we rely on family and friends to lend advice, we pray and we hope, and that’s the best we can do.

For now, I’ll predict that my boys are going to be really excited about an upcoming surprise and that the first winter snow that is falling tonight. That’s about as much as I can predict. And that’s good enough.

 

 

 

 

 

Recommitting to the Boys

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It was one of those deep, cathartic cries for a few minutes last Friday night. One of those crashing moments that emanates from serious exhaustion and feeling completely overwhelmed. A moment sparked by a sappy movie and fueled by a very late hour of the night. When I glanced up at the canvas painting on the wall of the three boys at the beach, I thought, “What in the world am I doing? What am I doing parenting three young boys? Sitting here in this temporary home trying to figure out the next step? How did I get here? Why am I doing this?”

Earlier in the week a colleague said, “I remember meeting you five years ago. You had a little baby on one hip, a little toddler tugging at your other leg, and a larger boy clinging on you. I thought to myself, I don’t know how she’s doing it.” I confessed that there were many times in those years that I didn’t know how I was doing it and sometimes I still don’t.

And there have been many times that I’ve confessed to another mom of boys, “I don’t know how to do this. It’s overwhelming to be responsible for these boys. I don’t think I can be a good mom to them.” Her reply, “It was not a mistake. God picked you to be their Mom.”

And yet, I have those moments of doubt about making the right decisions in life and wondering where to go next. Everybody does. It would be a lie to say that my life is roses all the time. To say that there are not moments when I doubt the decision to adopt three kids on my own. I don’t think I’d be much of a parent to them if I wasn’t consciously thinking of them often.

There certainly are many moments when I sit exhausted on the couch and envision what my still single friends are doing in their tidy little houses. I know they haven’t picked up a thousand Legos over the course of the day, or wiped feces off the wall, or sat locked in a battle of wills over the spelling homework paper. Sometimes it seems that the grass is greener over there (or doesn’t have to be tended to as much!).

It’s not that I think about reversing the decision, it’s that I get overwhelmed with the responsibility. My brain is constantly worried about how they are doing. Are they behaving in school? When’s the next IEP meeting? Have I gotten all their appointments scheduled? How am I going to afford braces? Is Super Tall Guy’s med working well? Are they playing nicely with the neighbors? Is this normal brotherly aggression or is it overboard? Why did they decide to microwave the oatmeal and the spoon? When will I have to sign the next “behavioral slip” for school? Does he need to be evaluated or is he just normal boy?

So the other night, I wiped away the tears and tucked myself in bed, pulling out (and dusting off) the boys’ “letter journals.” I used to journal when I was in my teens and then into college. In med school, I “journaled” by writing a letter to my grandmother every single week for four years about my medical img_9950training and then into residency as well until she passed away. Now I blog to share the crazy journey of parenting in a wider community. And every once in a while, and definitely not as often as I’d like, I also “journal” to my boys as short letters to them in small lined books.

It’s a lot like taking photographs of your kids. The first one, Super Tall Guy, has an entry every few months for his first few years of life. There are so many fun stories and sentiments that document his days and adventures. Middle child has much fewer and The Little Guy’s book, well, you can imagine, has very few pages full of ink.

As parenting stress crashes upon me, it helps to re-center by reconnecting. It’s an important exercise for me  It forces me to think about each boy individually. To think about what they have been doing lately and who they are becoming. I think about their personalities and their gifts. It helps me to reconnect with each of them and recommit to them, reminding me of my love for them and my commitment to parent them in the best way I can. And it’s an opportunity for me to lift them up in prayers of thanksgiving and protection.

paint-wpI tell the boys every day, “I love you – forever, for always, and no matter what.” I finish their “journal letters” each time with the same words. Sometimes I need to remind myself that in the hard times, in the times when my love for them is hidden under painted fingers, soiled laundry, broken doors, angry words, noise and chaos, that this love is a commitment. Forever, for always and no matter what. That’s what it means to be their parent. And the honor and joy of being part of their lives is all I really need (well, that and coffee and chocolate pretty much does it!).