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Jen: April 2009 Archives
Last week, I completely lost my tenuous place in the Mother of the Year Award Competition by completely losing my cool with the two adorable children you see in the picture above. You'd think they were angels, really, from reading this blog, and if not that, you might think, at least that I'm a nice person. But, no, there was a meltdown and it wasn't the starving, sleep-deprived small people in my house. It was me.
I don't remember what set me off, but some chain reaction unleashed my inner martyr and I launched into one of those long speeches you remember from your own childhood--about the lack of appreciation, the absence of respect and how no one in this house has any idea what it's like to be around here.
It wasn't one of my better moments, let me tell you.
This mommy temper tantrum, however, had a hilarious affect on my two kids who only seconds before had been fighting like cats and dogs. Now, in the presence of Our Mother Who Is Clearly Losing Her Mind, they bonded together like children seeking shelter in wartime, whispering consolations to one other in tears.
At first, this development made me want to stop in my tracks. What? Suddenly you're not fighting anymore? What's wrong with this picture? But then I decided to rant another minute just for fun. My kids had not only a common cause but also an apparently stunning surplus of empathy--not for the mom in meltdown mode who really needed it--but for each other. Who knew. It was all I needed to make me feel much better once and for all.
How about you? Do you let your kids see your mommy meltdowns? Do you find your personal moments of frustration create more connection between your kids? Let me know how you deal with mommy meltdowns and the subsequent chaos in the comments below.
Wondering what you and your kids can do to preserve the earth? In case you need help getting started, here are some simple suggestions in honor of Earth Day,.
Create a situation where some small person in your house can be the boss of all things recycling. In first grade, Madeleine's school created a special program where kids were specially selected to monitor energy usage at the school. Kids as young as six and seven went from classroom to classroom to audit the habits of the teachers as well as their students. Were they remembering to turn off lights when they left the room? Were they recycling properly? Madeleine was delirious to be chosen and happier still to have a clipboard and pen to check off the boxes. This responsibility taught Madeleine plenty about what simple measures are required to save energy, and she's a regular know it all when I try to tell her why it's important to care about conservation and recycling.
Introduce your kids early and often to the wonders of gardening. Nothing says love the earth like a garden in your own backyard. If you (like me) have no green thumb to tackle a full fledged garden, consider container gardening on a windowsill or back step. We might not be able to keep tomatoes alive in the ground, but we can do a bang up job with a pot full of basil or mint. Helping kids have a first hand experience with growing something is a very tangible reminder that the earth is a living, thriving planet that must be protected for the good of all.
Become the kind of family that walks, bikes and hikes together. Kids (like the rest of us) can forget that there are many forms of transportation that do not require us to participate in excessive gas consumption. Walk whenever possible and make a point of creating little adventures along the way. Start with short distances and choose the simplest mode of transportation available whenever possible. Carter's science education in kindergarten made him very aware of the impact cars have on the planet, so we make it a special point to walk whenever possible.
How does your family preserve the planet? Your comments welcome as always. And don't forget to follow us on Twitter as we continue to give away books in honor of the Kid Art Auction. Art above by Declan, age six.
We have seven more Barefoot Books to give away in honor of Earth Day this next week. Please join us on Twitter as we highlight the finest Earth Day resources for your kids to enjoy all week long.
Last year five and a half year old Declan decided he wanted to have an art sale in his backyard. He and his friends would make the art, hang it up on the clothesline and then invite all the parents to come over and buy their art. For how much? one parent asked. Just a quarter. Or a penny. Declan the tenderhearted capitalist replied--because he likes to drive a hard bargain like that.
This postmodern twist on the traditional lemon stand caught on in the neighborhood, and then some kind mother suggested they turn the art sale into an online auction AND donate the proceeds to charity. Charity? Why not? Declan and his mom, Aimee Greeble, decided to donate all their proceeds to help the environment and the Annual Kids' Earth Day Auction was born. Declan got to have his art sale and become a tenderhearted capitalist and a kid-philanthropist all on the same day.
This year PBS Supersisters are lending a hand and inviting you to join our kids in submitting art to the auction and bidding on your favorite finds. This year all the proceeds go to The Nature Conservancy and in honor of the auction we'll be giving away a book a day from the delightful Barefoot Book series. All you have to do is follow us on Twitter and help spread the word about the auction. We'll select a new winner everyday for the next nine days.
More information available here.
Pancakes, syrup overflowing, a chance to be together. Last Saturday I said "whatever" to a hundred deadlines and swooped my kids off for a morning at our local diner. Here's what Madeleine saw through the lens when I passed the camera across the table. Pretty sweet, right?
Here's hoping your Saturday morning is packed full with a lot of fun and not too many responsibilities. It's the weekend after all, and everyone needs a little time with the ones they love.
See that boy, the one with the shining eyes?
He's smiling because he has his whole family, his grown-up friends Nick and Jess, his grandparent neighbors Mark and Meryl and those eggs are hatching. All fifty to two hundred of them. His dad woke up to find them, and then climbed the stairs to find him. "Call everyone!" he told his mother, and so she did.
No praying mantis ate another in the grand exodus from the egg case. Not a single one (that we can determine) died in the passage. All the horrible things that could have happened never did, and for all our flaws, all our broken, cracked places, we are all together.
Everyone.
If you were very, very lucky you caught the "Coming Home" program on PBS this last week. I had heard from my friend Laura (who'd had a sneak peak) that it was incredibly positive and touching, and she was so right. Check out these snippets here, if you missed it.
Check out these resources designed specifically for parents and kids, whether someone you love is in the military or not. With so many families in our country affected by our involvement overseas, part of being a kind community member means being aware of this pain and also this pride.
And speaking of pride, don't miss these three military moms who are bursting with pride because of the ways their loved ones have committed their all to the conflicts at hand. Whether you're wondering about how to thrive in the store, during bedtime or in the public sphere, these women have something to say that makes a difference.
If you still have unanswered questions about your own experience--either as someone who wants to be supportive of military families or if you are a mom in the military (an often overlooked community of women), please head on over to My Crazy Amazing Military Life and let this exceptional group of mom military bloggers point you in the right direction.
illustration above by jen lemen, dedicated today to all our military families who are coming home and coming back together in new ways. winners of our last two interview giveaways to be announced on monday. stay tuned!
When Carter was in preschool, he had a good friend named Tommy. Tommy's mom Emily Warner Eskelsen was one of those women who stood out to me on the playground. Her love for her children was fierce; I could feel her gentle determination that her children be happy, secure and strong. It took me a while to realize that for the time that we saw each other every day that Emily was essentially a single mom, her husband on a military assignment for an extended period of time. I remember not knowing exactly what to say when I heard that news and then not knowing what to say again when he finally came home. I asked Emily to share her experience with us as PBS Parents has a special focus this month on helping military kids adjust to family changes when a parent comes home.
How long was your husband away? Where was he sent and how old were your kids when he left?
My husband was away for just over fourteen months. The year before he was away for four months in JAG school, so in a 28-month period he was gone a total of 18 months. He was stationed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. When he left my son was just over 4 and my daughter was 20 months. He got back when my son was 5 and a half and my daughter was turning 3.
How did you explain this absence to your children? What's your advice to other parents who need something clear to say that can really help kids get through?
I explained to my son, many many times, that his dad was a soldier and was helping America. He of course developed his own varied understandings. One was that his dad was in charge of a room filled with hundreds of computers that constantly needed fixing. Another was that there was a jail full of bad guys that kept escaping, and his dad had to run them down and put them back in. I was clear that his dad worked in an office and did no fighting, but at some level my son did not believe that, because his fear of his father's injury or death was unabated.
I did a few things to help my children through this time, and I felt that they were important and effective tools. First, I never talked badly about the military, about our country, or about their father to my children, and I never allowed anyone to do so in their presence. Further, at no time in their presence did I admit to discouragement or depression, and I never let anyone treat us with pity or talk as though we were in desperate or unusually difficult circumstances. I did, however, point out any time anyone gave us respect, and spelled out for my children that people were proud of their father, and proud of them for what they were doing.
What helped you the most during this time? What helped your kids?
There were many people who helped us during this time, but a certain few were clearly inspired and directed to serve a specific role in our lives. There was a family who had us over for dinner and family night every Monday night that Jon was away. More than the food, more than the hour of games and fun, that family gave us the feeling of being part of their family through the continuity of their welcome. We would go sleep deprived, temper tantruming, or in pajamas, and we were treated as part of their casual, tumbling, food-grabbing crew. I still feel emotional about the depth of what that family did for us, when our family was far away.
The other person who comes to mind was a single man of our acquaintance who laboriously took the time to befriend my socially-phobic, hurting son. His patience and interest in a child so many others had given up on resulted in my son having an adult he could talk to, something I would have paid any amount to get for him. I found that many people were willing and able to help me--a dear friend used to come and help me clean my house! Heaven!--but what I could not get enough of, what I needed and valued and treasured most, was for people to connect to and be consistently involved with my children. I am overwhelmingly grateful to those people who did that, especially this man who could allow my son to laugh and talk and express himself freely.
What was your biggest challenge when your husband came home? What was the hardest part for your kids?
A few weeks after my husband came home, I sat my children down, just the three of us. "I know we're really happy that Daddy is home," I began cautiously, "but sometimes we have other feelings about that too that we can talk about." I then brought up confusion, resentment, unfamiliarity, and other emotions I felt sure that my children should be feeling. They stared at me blankly. I tried again. "Tommy, do you have any feelings about Daddy coming home that you want to talk about?" "Yeah, mom," he said impatiently, "It's great. I like having him home." I turned to Ilse. "Darling, what about you? How do you feel about Daddy being home?" My wise little three year old was not fooled. "Mom," she replied, "how do YOU feel about Daddy coming home?" They both stared at me reproachfully. And they were right--they never had a problem, but I did.
I was sensitive about the distance there was between my husband and his children, about his accidentally heavy-handed discipline, or his ignorance of what their behavior was really communicating. My kids weathered it just fine. My relationship with my husband was a different matter entirely, of course. The military told us to expect one month of recovery for every month he was gone. We felt sure that we would be above average on that. We were wrong. I joked with a friend at the two-month mark that I was no longer actively seeking a way to send him back, but I'd still be open to it. At a full year back I was still wondering if we were going to get through this, and at sixteen months home I decided that yes, we might actually be able to stay married after all.
Luckily my husband is humble, communicative, and patient, so he was able to survive my frustration with his refusal to understand how our family worked now, how the house should be run, how to care for our children, and what I was thinking. Within the first few months he relearned an obscenity-free lingo and the empathetic model of family communication, but I am very sorry to report that although he has now been home two full years, he still folds t-shirts wrong.
What advice would you give to friends who want to be supportive of military families during a deployment? Any tried and true tips on how to be truly helpful?
We humans have a terrible habit of deciding how we would feel or react in a certain situation, and then demand that of others who are actually living that reality. I'm afraid that I disappointed many people in the way I coped with this deployment, and some of them turned away from me in confusion. Yes, it was true that sometimes I was quite desperate, nearly depressed, or hysterical, but I could not do that on demand and I could not open up to just anyone at any time "how bad it must be"! When I was succeeding at fighting my demons some people would feel so alienated from me, guessing (incorrectly) that they could never do this thing, and I must be so different from them. The very first helpful thing that anyone did for me was to not assume they knew how I felt or how I was doing, and to not treat me with pity. Pity always includes condescension, and that is never helpful.
Second, I would say that a small gesture done consistently was worth far more than random acts of kindness. One of my friends had lunch with me once a month. One agreed to host us for a playdate once a month. We needed a schedule, and we needed consistency. We didn't need to go to dinner one time at the home of people we barely knew where we would have to overcome our own shyness and perform socially for virtual strangers. That's who we were; others in our situation might feel differently. Unfortunately, I lacked the courage to tell these well-meaning people what a nightmare it would be for me to drag my poor kids to their house for the evening, so I made us all suffer in the name of shared kindness. The lesson for others who are well-meaning: make the effort to find out what would actually help; don't assume.
Third, I mentioned before that the best way for anyone to help me was to help my children. I could not be okay when they weren't; it had to start with them. Similarly, I needed my husband to be okay as well, and I deeply appreciated those friends who managed to keep track of a complicated military address and remember a guy who used to work with them, or go to church with them, and drop him a line here and there.
Thank you, Emily. Leave a comment today in support of our military families and PBS Parents is giving away green PBS Parents photo envelopes and two PBS Parents bookmarks.