Giving Thanks

“Dear God.  Thank you for the Sullivans, Harry and Rosie.  Thank you for the teachers.  Please help us not to fight.  Oh ya, and thank you for teaching us to be polite.  Amen.”

Spoken like a true three-year-old, whose head is filled with the recent good time spent at the home of good friends, days spent picketing with the teachers during the strike, and a new babysitter who stresses no fighting on the playground and compliments my daughter on her manners.

If only our parental days could be wrapped up so conveniently in an evening prayer of thanks and call for help.  But can’t it?  Of course it can.  We sometimes get so caught up in the daily grind that we forget to just take a minute to breathe, appreciate life and the little things that make it worthwhile.  We seldom acknowledge that we can use some guidance every now and then because we don’t have all the answers.

I sometimes laugh at myself for thinking I have such a stressful life and playing into the drama of it all.  I tend to get going so fast in my daily quest to complete as many tasks as possible, that I sometimes physically hurt myself!  I literally run around the house or the neighborhood or the school or the office at warp speed.  I’ve been known to trip, fall, and crash into people and things.  

It’s usually after one of those events that one of my kids says, “Mom, just slow down.  It’s not the end of the world.  Just relax!”

Again, my children teach me instead of the other way around.  It’s truly humbling to listen to the sincerity in their voices and the wisdom of their words.  Each evening after I’ve been told to slow down by one of my kids, it never fails that they include me in their prayers, either at the dinner table or before bed.

“Thank you for Little Mama, and please help her slow down and not run into things.”

I’ve found that when I do take the time to slow down, whether it is for a moment of prayer or appreciation, a few minutes of meditation, or sometimes just a short period of rest or doing absolutely nothing, it sets the tone for calmness.  I feel renewed, restored, and ready to face most anything that comes my way.  Conversely, when I keep stubbornly butting my head up against a wall, refusing to take a few minutes to give thanks for the things that ARE going right, or the people that are part of my world, the day usually goes from bad to worse.

A priest told me recently that going to church and worshipping communally is not always going to be fun or interesting or awe-inspiring.   He said sometimes it takes work, or at least cognizance, to find the peace.  He suggested noting one thing, anything, each week at church, and to appreciate it.  It could be the way a certain hymn sounds when sung or the pat on the shoulder from a fellow parishioner, or the cry of a baby a few pews behind you.  The point is to notice it and be thankful of its presence.

Translate this concept into our day-to-day lives, and we’ve got a prescription for healthy living, where we consciously at first, then naturally as it becomes more familiar, take a minute to notice those people, things, and events around us and appreciate them.  Giving thanks for the unfamiliar lends easily to being grateful for what exists in our personal lives.

Noticing the way the man on the train quietly chuckles as he reads a passage in a book may help you remember to take a minute to yourself on your commute without the work emails, weekly scheduling, and phone calls to just BE.  Recognizing the trap of chairs and bars that the elderly woman down the block sets on her front porch every evening to ward off intruders before retiring may allow you to be thankful for your house full of people and pets that helps you feel secure every minute of every day.  Watching your child struggle with learning multiplication tables may allow you to not only value the fact that your own school days are over, but also to appreciate the extra time that you have the ability to spend with your child on homework, as the other stuff can wait.

I challenge you to make a simple pledge of noticing what’s around you today and taking an active moment to appreciate just one thing you encounter today.  Let it be the way the clouds billow or the dog barks or the amazing ability that guy ahead of you has of weaving in and out of traffic without causing an accident.  Notice one thing and be thankful for it.  Keep doing it daily, and the rest will happen naturally. You won’t be able to help but giving gratitude for things in your own life.

Man in the Mirror

As parents we unconsciously lead our children based on our own insecurities.    I obsessively hover over my girls’ to make sure they get plenty of daily exercise and eat as healthy as possible because I was a chunky kid and have struggled with my weight most of my life.  I don’t want my girls to go through that.  A neighboring mom with underdeveloped social skills constantly tries to further her girls’ popularity by trying to align them with kids that are associated with the ‘in’ crowd, so they don’t face the exclusion she suffered as a child and currently feels as an adult.  Yet another example is the father who inundates his children with material things so they never have to experience the wave of self-consciousness he carried with him growing up in a poor family.  Common sense tells us that this overcompensation with our children has the potential to backfire, and we sometimes adjust our parenting style if we are lucky enough to make the connection.  We don’t, however, always address the bigger problem, which is accepting our lack of self-confidence.

We all carry baggage around from past experiences:  successes, failures, memories, and learned and unlearned lessons.  While I’d like to think of myself and my fellow parents as mentally healthy adults who carry their baggage effortlessly slung over one shoulder without a second thought to it, the reality is many folks are bogged down by the staggering weight of the negativity they drag around with them on a daily basis.  The heavy shackle of unresolved issues from previous time periods often keeps us from effectively guiding our children. 

The bully who never effectively learned the art of conflict management encourages his son to “man up” and throw the first punch when teased on the playground by other kids as a way to address the problem.  The mother who never shed her childhood angst of being ignored by a group, now leads her children by example of cutting down other children in front of others, as she knows she will secure an audience.  The parent who used drugs and alcohol as a coping mechanism during high school to dull the pain of his parents’ divorce today chooses not to notice as his own daughter slowly starves herself to death as a means of dealing with her own sorrow over the death of a family member. 

It can really go either way.  Our past can either help us or hinder us in our endeavor as parents.  It’s not a crap shoot, though.  We can actually choose to be positive examples for our kids by acknowledging the fragmented pieces of our core and choosing to fix them.  Michael Jackson lays it out so eloquently when he sang, “If you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make a change.”  Self-awareness is powerful.  While it’s sometimes difficult to swallow the reality of who we are or who we’ve become, the simple recognition of such can be life altering, as it opens the door to change.

We all know people that bitch, moan, and complain about stuff incessantly.  Kid stuff, school stuff, money stuff, parent stuff, health stuff, religious stuff, political stuff….anything that has a negative angle they glom onto.   At times in my life, I’ve gone through periods of complaint as well.  It’s always an indicator to me, though, that I’m trying really hard (and failing) to avoid some problem in my life or persona.  Case in point:  I’ve been complaining about going to church with my family for the past few years.  I’m not Catholilc, don’t understand Catholocism, even though both my daughters were baptized as such, and don’t enjoy the masses.  Additionally, I tried to convert to Catholocism a few years ago and was essentially denied entrance into the church.  I’ve developed a habit of skipping church altogether for the past year and instead use the time my family normally worships as a chance to have some time to myself at home.  While this works in practice, I still kept complaining about it as I not only want to be part of my family’s worship, I want to quit sitting on the sidelines.   After repeating my gripes for the umpteenth time to a very pragmatic friend, she suggested I go talk to the priest at our church.  I made the appointment, sat down with him and discussed my issues, and developed a plan on how to move forward.  The plan will be tough and may or may not work, but the point is that after years of suffering and complaining needlessly, as the song says“I’m starting with the man in the mirror.  I’m asking him to change his ways.”

By “fixing” me, I will reduce the risk of me “breaking” my kids moving forward.  You “fixing” you can help you do the same.  Have you taken a look at yourself in the mirror lately?  If not, I encourage you to do so.  You may be surprised what you see when you really focus on your reflection on your kids.  It’s never too late to make a change.

Going Along For the Ride

Last night I was watching a segment on Nightline about kids and strangers.  Kids, grouped by ages and sex, were put in a test scenario, where they didn’t know they were being watched via camera by their parents and the Nightline crew.  They were all being assessed on the “don’t talk to strangers” mantra that had been pounded in their brains since they were old enough to comprehend words.  Experiments were conducted where older kids were enticed into giving their names, phone numbers, and even addresses, when asked by an unknown person under the guise of a television star recruiter.  Smaller children were lured into the back of an ice cream truck to see ‘how ice cream is made’ and to ‘choose the music that blares out of the truck.’  Some of the kids saw through the schemes and didn’t take the bait to trouble.  They stood their ground and refused to do what they knew in their hearts and heads was a trap.  The majority of the kids, though, regardless of age or gender, eventually fell prey to the predators, giving out personal information, leaving with strangers, and getting in the ice cream truck to have the door shut behind them.

Many of the children started off on the right track, questioning the intention of the strangers, trusting their own instincts. At some point during the interaction, though, those same kids folded after they saw and heard the other kids in their group trusting the unfamiliar person enough to do what the foreigner asked them to do.  The parents watched in dismay as most of the kids, one by one, joined the masses and caved under pressure.   

The camera would zoom in for a close-up of a parent as she responded with shame, “Obviously we didn’t do a great job in teaching him to beware of strangers.”

No, what you didn’t do was teach your child to think on his own.  The piece was chilling to me, not because of the stranger danger scenario, but because of the example it served of children starting at a very early age following the masses and not using or trusting their own judgment.  It hit a nerve in me because I had just spent the past few days trying to understand how the noxiously disruptive “USA, USA” chant had spread so quickly across the audience at the Republican National Convention last week, keeping a female Puerto Rican delegate from taking the podium in a timely fashion, after having already been introduced.  It did not come off in the best light, to say the least.

Fast forward and those Dateline children could be the same people causing a ruckus at the RNC.  Sure there was some sort of explanation for why the ironic chanting of “USA, USA” was rudely interrupting Zoraida Fonalledas, the chairwoman of the Committee on Permanent Organization, from making her speech.  Whatever the point of the chant, it was obvious from the video footage that not everyone screaming it knew why they were even screaming it.  Here’s where my astonishment lies.  As the cameras panned across the audience, they focused on the young guys that seemed to be repeating their mantra with absolute conviction.  Of what, I’m not sure.  The cameras then rested on the faces of people that seemed horrified to be in the audience at that exact moment and that were not joining in.  The video cameras next caught person after person hesitantly joining in on the chant, then increasing their volume and confidence, as they heard and saw others doing it too.  It was shocking to see so many people, young, old, male, female, all white, jumping on a bandwagon that I’m guessing they knew nothing about, especially one that was emblazed with IGNORANT on the side!  The point of the chant, regardless of its intent, was completely lost to its untimely overlap with the introduction of a speaker, a female Puerto Rican speaker.  Come on y’all!  Didn’t your mama ever give you any hometrainin’?

From a young age, my biggest pet peeve with many of my friends and family members can be boiled down to this:  making decisions based on what everybody else is doing, or sometimes not even making decisions at all, but just blindly saying, acting, or doing things just because others do.  I remember never wanting to follow the norm for the sake of just following the norm.  I was curious as to the ‘why’ of decisions that kids, parents, and teachers around me were making.  It was imperative to me that I know why I was doing what I was doing, before I ever did it.  A lifetime challenger of everything and everybody I came across, I was often a lone dissent on many issues and trends growing up and on into adulthood. Of course I was wrong often, but more frequently than not, made good decisions, even if they didn’t parallel those of my peers.  Today, as parent to both a nine-year-old daughter and an almost four-year-old girl, I’ve spent more time trying to teach them to make their own decisions, trust their own instincts, and be their own people, than I ever have with cautioning them on strangers, predators offering them candy, or the rant of politicians who want to keep their parents from legally marrying and their school classrooms filled with WASPs.  I want my kids to THINK.  I want them to believe in themselves and their unique qualities, capabilities, and brain power so that they can grow into healthy, well-adjusted adults with confidence in their own judgment.

As parents, how can we keep our kids from just following the herd (and ending up on national television, looking like a racist)?  We can lead by example.  We can forge a path that makes sense for our own family, instead of one that corresponds with the Jones’s path.  We can make authentic decisions without fear of backlash from our peers, illustrating to our kids that they can do the same and survive unscathed.  We can take a moment of clarity each time we see our children making choices solely at the discretion of our personal beliefs as parents.  We can redirect them to view the world as THEY SEE IT, not just how we see it.  We can teach them to respect every person, even the ones we don’t agree with or don’t like, every single minute of every single day.  We can enforce manners as being paramount in life’s lessons and punish our children for interrupting when another is speaking.  We can stop enabling them to be a herd follower by saying NO when our kids ask us for toys or clothing of a certain label or type, because “that’s what all the other kids have,” instead of going out and buying it because we don’t want our child to feel ‘different.’  We can quit stereotyping people and situations in front of our children, which not only forms an opinion for them, but also gives them license to enforce that opinion, without ever putting an ounce of thought into it.  We can give our children knowledge instead of just opinion.  Encourage them to soak up every bit of fact and theory that comes their way.  We can promote education-based decisions in our children by showing them how it’s done:  live genuinely and without regard to how the guy in the next seat is living his life.

Changing Gears

The best laid plans sometimes need to be amended.  You plan on taking the bus, but you’re running behind, so you have to grab a cab.  You plan on paying cash for a large purchase, but you don’t have enough “change” to cover the sales tax, so you put it on your card.  You order the sushi special, but it’s sold out, so you settle for a California Roll.  No brainers, right?

Even though I pride myself on my ability to roll with the punches of most situations, the reality is that it’s really hard to change courses on the fly sometimes.  I do well through the decision-making part, as I’m a doer….when things need to get done, I do them.  But then I inevitability immediately mourn the change of plans afterwards.  It’s a vicious cycle that needs to stop.

The entire cab ride is spent silently lamenting the fact that I’m wasting money on a nausea-inducing cab ride all because I decided to flat-iron my hair at the last minute.  The second the debit card is swiped at Target, I kick myself for not grabbing the two extra $20’s that were sitting on the table, as now I’m going to have to make two more stops at home and the bank to even up the accounts.  I have buyer’s remorse the second the waiter leaves the table, as I ALWAYS order the California roll.  Can’t I possibly come up with something I’ve never tried before?

Over the years I’ve gotten better at hiding my agitation at last-minute changes.  I still complain in my head, but I try not to talk about it out loud.  I think if I don’t talk about my compulsive thoughts, they don’t really exist.  They do exist, though, and my face always is a dead giveaway.  The people who know me well can see the wheels turning every time I suddenly alter a plan.  The saving grace is that the pace of our lives is so swift that I don’t have time to linger on the duress because I’m forced to immediately move on to the next topic or decision that’s thrown my way.

Over the weekend, I asked my eldest daughter to take a run with me.  I was desperate for some exercise to clear my head and I knew her mood could use a reboot as well.  She unenthusiastically suited up in her pink running shirt and patterned shorts and moodily met me at the door.  Before we had a chance to lace up our shoes, her friend came to the door to get her bike that was left at our house the day before.  The friend was swimsuit-clad and ready to ride her bike to the neighboring block party we planned on attending later in the day.  Knowing my daughter’s spirit was more likely to be lifted from the waterslide than with our jog and balancing that against my selfish yearning for a few minutes to myself void of conflict with my nine-year-old, I changed gears.  The running clothing was donned for a swimsuit and the bikes were brought out of the garage to the front.  My daughter went on to the party with her friend and I grabbed my music for my solo exercise session.

Not two seconds after the front door shut, I started bullying myself over the change of plans:  my child needed the exercise and it would have set the tone for her day; I gave up the cherished one-on-one time with my child in exchange for some solitude; there’s no need to go to the block party this early in the morning; who’s going to watch her while I’m not there?

I took my grief on the road and headed to the kitchen, where my girlfriend took one look at me and without even asking what I was thinking, said, “Get over it and go on your run!”

I wanted so badly to review the negative implications of the modified schedule with her, but she shooed me out the door, where my anxiety melted away with the first pop lyric that screamed out of my ear buds:  I think I’ve finally had enough, I think I maybe think too much…my head is spinning so blow me one last kiss.  P!nk always says just the right think at the just the right time!

Here’s the gig:  with life coming at us so fast, our maps inevitably change at a moment’s notice.  We can plan and prepare and primp for what we think will happen in the days, weeks, and months ahead, but ultimately we never know exactly how things will pan out.  The only thing we can be certain of is that things will change.  If you can roll with change, you’re as prepared for life as you can be.

They Listen All Right!

My eternal complaint with my kids is that they don’t listen to me.  At school, at other’s homes and in the presence of my family, my daughters mostly pay attention, follow instruction, and respond appropriately to requests.  It’s in my presence where they seem to turn their listening ears off.  I am forever badgering my girls to listen to me.

“Please listen to me and do as I ask,” I warn them on a regular basis, in response to an initial request of shutting the door, turning off the light, or bringing the noise level down a notch, being blown off.  While the even yet stern tone of my voice usually grabs their attention, it doesn’t always yield an immediate action.  Sometimes they’re having so much fun doing whatever they’re doing, that they feel it’s just not possible for them to pull away at that moment.

Today’s laundomat excursion followed that line of thinking.  The girls helped separate the clothes, pre-treat the stains, and load the washers.  They sat on a high folding table together, reading Highlights and playing Go Fish.  After spending their quarter rewards on bouncing balls from the toy dispenser, they got a little rambunctious playing hide and seek in the empty Laundromat.

To keep them from getting so wound up that someone gets injured, I asked them to help me with gathering up the clean clothes and getting them to the car.  They took turns filling the big portable carts with baskets of clothes and supplies and wheeling them to the car.  When my eldest came in to snatch the last basket of clothes to put in the cart, so she could do the final trip to the car, I asked her to instead collect the wet clothes that were hanging on the various carts to dry, and take them out to the car.  As I was folding the last of the clean dry clothes, she ran back in to ask me what to do again with the clothes. 

Sometimes I think she hears what I say, but doesn’t always process the words in her head, so I frequently ask her, like I did today, to think back to what I had asked, and then do what I asked, instead of me repeating the request.  She seemed to remember the task about the wet clothes, but still didn’t remember where to put them.

“Just anywhere is fine, honey,” I responded.  “It doesn’t matter.”

When I came out to meet the girls in the parking lot, 5 items of hang-dry-only clothing were draping the outside of the car, drying casually in the sun.  I started to ask what in the Sam Hill is going on but then caught myself as I remembered my own words. 

My daughter was so proud of herself for coming up with the idea of finding a place for the wet clothes where they would also get dry, that I swallowed my laughter, and praised her for the creativity in her solution. 

Never mind that the clean wet clothes were draped over the filthy, dirty car that had just transported us over 2000 miles in the past ten days.  Forget the idea that as recently as last night, the girls were squealing with fear over the hundreds of bugs that were covering the roof and hood of the car after parking in a knat-infested lakefront motel parking lot.  The point is that my girls DO in fact listen to me.  They also do what I freakin’ ask!

Life is a Highway

For the past six weeks, I’ve been absent from my life.  I’ve let the laundry go without washing, allowed the dust to accumulate, and let the dishes stack up.  I haven’t had time to wash the sand out of the kids’ swimsuits or mend the hole in my bra that gives the underwire permission to poke me each day.  I haven’t paid the bills, balanced the checkbook, or planned our road-trip vacation that starts tomorrow.  But worst of all, I’ve plain out ignored my children.  I’ve been here with them, but not so much in a parental role, but in more of a peaceful co-existence.  

My attentive parent hat was replaced with the all-consumed home buyer dunce cap.  Somebody had to take the job, as we need a place to live.  Half of my carefree summer has been eaten up by my full-time house-hunting gig.  Our building owner decided out of the blue to sell the two-flat we live in, and while the sale itself wasn’t a big surprise, the timing of having to move within 60 is stressful, to say the least.

Leisurely walks around the neighborhood pointing out different types of birds and flowers have been substituted with brisk speedwalking down each and every street in the neighborhood, hunting FOR RENT and FOR SALE signs.  Relaxing trips to the beach have been interrupted with quick exits to get to a showing with the real estate agent.  Movie nights with popcorn and M&M’s still happen, but without my presence, as I’m busy negotiating out the terms of the proposed sales contract for our new home.  And finally, early evening bike rides to the DQ have been usurped with harried phone calls to building owners regarding their potential interest to sell their building, when the house deal finally fell through. 

It’s been a necessary step in our journey this summer and I’m guessing I could feel discouraged that we’re back to square one with no apartment to rent and no home to buy.  Ironically, I feel relieved, though.

 I looked at my kids today and listened, for the first time in weeks, to what they were saying.  I hugged them and kissed them, and let them linger in my lap without pushing them away so that I could address a parapet wall repair estimate.  I ate breakfast alongside them without excusing myself before my last bite.  I ran behind them as they rode their bikes as fast as they could, and didn’t even stop to talk to the seller of the building we had been trying to buy, as we ran past her down the block.  I wasn’t even mad at the woman for reneging on the deal that would now take us back to the drawing board in regards to finding a place to live.  She gave me my life back.  

I say to my kids often that it doesn’t matter if we live in a straw hut, so long as we’re all together.  I should amend that last phrase to be ‘so long as we’re all together and present.’  I can’t even begin to justify letting six weeks float by without really having any idea what’s been going on in my kids’ heads.   Throwing caution to the wind by leaving our housing situation up in the air to deal with when we get back, I'm going to follow the "Life is Highway, I'm gonna ride it all night long" chorus and just focus on my family and our fun for the next ten days.  The daily stresses of life will still be there when we get home, but my kids' being receptive to my attention will be gone before I know it.

Monkey See, Monkey Do

My 8-year-old daughter injured her foot in a head-on-collision with the pavement a few days ago.  Even though the scabs have mostly healed and her pride has since recovered, she thinks it necessary to walk with a limp, to remind us of her unfortunate mishap.  She only does the limp when she’s bored, is in no rush to get anywhere, or when she has a captive audience.  Today was the latter.  With my mother and my best friend in town staying with us, my daughter really played up the gimpy routine.  As we all watched her shuffle down the hall to her room, taking one regular step with her good leg and then dragging the bad leg behind her, we were amused to see my 3-year-old daughter following her lead and limping with the same foot.  We stifled our giggles so as not to promote it, and returned to our conversation.

A few hours later, I walked into the living room and asked my older daughter to close her eyes in an attempt to hide the red velvet batter for her birthday cake that I was carrying in my bowl, and open her mouth for taste.  I gave her a bite and turned to offer my littlest girl a sample as well.  I found her sitting on the other end of the couch with her eyes closed and her mouth wide open waiting for a bite herself.  Monkey See, Monkey Do.

The imitating and copying our kids do can be adorable, endearing and encouraging, as it means they’re picking things up without having to be actually taught how to do something.  The mimicking they do can also be a reality check for your own behavior.  When your 5^th grader drops the F-Bomb in your presence and your kindergartener smokes an imaginary cigarette with her imaginary tea, you realize as a parent, ‘you’ve got some ‘splainin’ to do.’

We’re going to pass bad habits down to our kids.  There’s really no way around it.  I challenge you, though, to take two minutes and think about the things you do and say to, and around, your children.  Model the future by imagining how it feels to you when your child duplicates that action, those words, or that belief on his own.  Will you be proud of him?  If the answer is no, get rid of it when you’re around your kids, at the minimum.

Imagine what it would feel like to take it out of rotation all together.  Would it be the end of the world?  If you can fathom existing, maybe even happily, without that behavior, belief, or language, just go for the gold and drop kick it out of your life. 

If you can’t envision your life without the drunk driving, name calling, heckling, obsessive cleaning, ambulance chasing, or whatever idiosyncrasies you own, then hold on to it; to each his own.  Just be prepared for your little monkeys to do what they see.