narrating kayoz

The problem of unrealistic expectations

Sometimes lately I seem to be yelling at Liam all day. Not screaming, angry yelling, but definite voice raising and frustration. And the subtext, I think, is often "Don't be so stupid!" Not that I would ever say that to him: I wouldn't. But that's part of what I'm feeling I suppose. Quite aside from the fact that I don't think yelling is a great parenting tool, the fact that this is happening a lot leads me to think - either he is stupid (and he's not) or I must be expecting too much.

I know that in fact I do expect too much, I've been catching myself at it ever since he learned to talk in reasonably coherent sentences. His language skills trick me into thinking he's rational, even though I have read over and over that rationality, logical thinking, and understanding of consequences, is all very slow to develop, and really only just beginning at the age he is now - six. So why do I have so much trouble converting this intellectual knowledge into practical parenting?

An aside about blogging every day: one of the effects of this is nothing-posts like yesterday's, but a good effect is posts like this one. I was just thinking about this while I prepared dinner (while the kids are in the bath), and normally I'd think - 'I should blog about that' - but never do it. Because I'm trying to post everyday, this time I decided to take the couple of minutes I have before the kids emerge to post something. Not a long, thought-out analysis maybe, but at least the kernel of thought, and the record of a parenting challenge.

The longevity of labels

I had a conversation with a friend yesterday about her experience of being given a label as a young child, and how she wants to avoid that with her children. I'm not talking the extreme sense of labeling with diagnoses, but in the more general sense - he's such a bossy boots, she's just like her aunt.

My friend had had this label applied to her at a young age (just like your aunt*), meaning she was the selfish, self centred one in the family. She carried that label through into adulthood (as had her aunt), and anything she did that supported it was remembered, anything she did that negated it was ignored. Which of course is the normal way we humans approach life generally. We notice and value evidence which supports our beliefs and disregard that which doesn't. She told me that after several years in a caring role (living with an elderly parent), she finally shed some of the stigma of the label, yet it still comes up from time to time. It clearly was a big deal for her earlier in life, and still affects her now.

This made me think about the labels Liam is given. I have always tried to avoid them, but the older and frankly more challenging he gets (while remaining a lovely child really), the more I find myself thinking them, at the very least ('little brat' comes to mind, though I've never actually said it!). And people certainly do use them to his face - bossy, is the one I am particularly thinking of, though no doubt there are (and will be) others.

I guess it's inevitable, to some extent, that accumulate labels as you age. Extrovert, introvert, confident, shy, funny, serious, active, musical, whatever. Of course it's the negative ones that I particularly want to avoid. But others can also be molding and limiting: shy, serious, even funny. Even labeling a child as confident could limit their ability to show their vulnerabilities and ask for help when they need it. I don't know how to completely avoid those labels - even for myself - but I guess it helps just to be aware of their power.

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*Co-incidentally one of my sisters-in-law had the exact same label given to her, and was even named after this aunt, and still, as a women in her fifties, suffers the stigma of that label within her family.

The natural approach to change

Sometimes when I can see a change coming up in one of the kids' routines, I wonder: will it just happen naturally if we leave it long enough, or do we need to be more proactive, in order to head off a resistance to change that can come with a long held habit?

For instance, at some point in the next few months (I think) we will be wanting to move Mikaela into a bed, from the cot. This never happened with Liam, since he slept with us. We moved him to a mattress next to our bed when he was about 13 months old, after going on a trip for my cousin's wedding and having that system work well in the motel. Then he moved to his own room by his request at a bit past two. So if we leave Kaely in the cot for a while longer, will she be asking to move to her own bed in another few months?* We already talk to her about how one day she will sleep in Liam's room - it will be her room too.

So maybe that's what will happen, maybe she'll decide she wants to move in with Liam. But I think she probably needs to move to her own bed - and get used to going to sleep on her own instead of being nursed or rocked to sleep, which is what happens now - before she can share a room with her brother. But maybe that will happen naturally once she has the motivation of wanting to move in with Liam. It's not something I want to rush, because I know once we stop spending that extra nurturing time with her in the evening, we'll never go back.

Our bedtime routine has already begun to change though. Only a couple of months back, when we first got Lochie, we thought giving him at least a short daily walk would be no trouble, because Chris and Mikaela went for a walk after dinner every night while I read to Liam. This was a lovely quiet time for me and Liam to read stories, or sometimes I would tell him a 'made up story', and have a little chat about our respective days. And it was a nice time for Chris and Mikaela too, and later for Lochie. But, I started to feel a little bad that Kaely didn't have any regular book time in her day. Back when Liam was her age we usually looked at books before naps and before bed, but Kaely had never been very interested in books until recently, so we hadn't incorporated them into her routine.

I needn't have worried. Not long after Lochie arrived - maybe a month - Kaely started to refuse the walk routine. First it seemed to be because she was tired, after a long day and a short nap, or a late night the night before. So my reading with Liam would be curtailed and I'd take her to bed early. But recently she's made it clear that she doesn't want to walk, whether she's tired or not. Because she doesn't want to miss out on book time. Liam gets his book and climbs into bed to await my attention, and Kaely runs off to the living room to choose a book (or two or three) off her shelf, and then brings them down, climbs onto Liam's bed, and demands book time of her own. Or, I take her into her room (our room, supposedly), but she insists on looking at a book together in the rocking chair, before she begins to nurse.

Mostly, this seems to be how change works with the kids. I might worry at it in my mind for a few weeks or months, but eventually change just happens. I haven't learned to count on it yet, I guess I am too much of a planner. But I am getting there. And as far as the move to different beds and bedrooms goes, I won't stop thinking about it, but for the moment I won't do anything either. I'll just wait and see what happens naturally.

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*This is assuming it's safe to leave her in there for that long - already she can only be in the cot unsupervised if she is snug in her sleeping bag, otherwise she attempts to climb out. And once the weather warms up again, later in the year, she won't welcome a sleeping bag for nap times.

protecting privacy

Last night I cooked dinner from a recipe I found on another blog. Later I heard Liam telling Chris this on the phone (Chris being in Melbourne for work), and I starting thinking about Liam and blogging.

I remembered that Dawn mentioned a while ago that Noah wanted his own blog, and I thought - that will be Liam one day in the not so distant future. I've already started talking about blogging to him, a very little bit, so the idea that I am talking all about our lives on the world wide internet won't come as a shock down the track!

But then I started thinking: if Liam will want his own blog, probably some of his friends will as well. Which means they'll be reading blogs. Which means they could, conceivably, come across this blog. With funny (and not so funny) stories about Liam from the moment of his birth (leaving aside for a moment the unlikelihood of a prepubescent boy reading the blog of a boring middle aged women, with no sexy photos or nothin'). And while I haven't put many photos of Liam up since he was about three, it wouldn't take long to figure out that it was him I was writing about. So maybe, I thought, I should have used pseudonyms for the kids.

So I'm wondering, if you blog about your kids - do you use pseudonyms? And why do you, or why don't you? And are you happy with that decision?

Difference - and the lack of it

We went to the birthday party yesterday of one of Liam's (new) school friends, whose mother I only know a little. Meaning we've introduced ourselves at school and say hello to each other but that's all. The invitation had the parents' names on it, and one of them was a gender neutral name (is there a better way to say that?), while the other was the name of the mum I knew. I confess I was hoping the dad would turn out to be a second mum. He didn't.

Even though my best friend is one half of a pair of mums, we don't have any two-mum (or two-dad) families in our immediate circle here in Canberra. Similarly we don't have many people of colour in our immediate circle. Hell, we barely have any single parent or 'melded' families around us. Though I'm guessing that that, as least, will change as the kids get older (not that I'm wishing divorce on anyone! Just being realistic.) One of the downsides about living in Canberra - it's overwhelmingly made up of middle class, Anglo-Saxon, heterosexuals. They're also largely educated and left wing, which admittedly is quite nice, and probably largely 'tolerant' of difference. But then again it's easy to be tolerant of difference when you're rarely confronted with it.

For this reason I try to surround Liam with books and TV shows that show people who are different to him. Happily, Liam's teacher is of a different ethnicity  I'm very bad at even noticing, much less picking this, but I guess of Asian descent? And another of my best friends is half Japanese. She and her extremely cute one year old stayed with us for a few days in January, but unfortunately (for us, and not just because she's Japanese either, I hasten to add!) she lives overseas most of the year. But all in all I feel like I need to make more of an effort to expose Liam to difference - different families, different looks, different cultures. I'm just not quite sure how to go about it. Short of moving to Melbourne of course.

Nonsexist books - where they succeed and where they don't.

In "Learning to Be Little Women and Little Men: The Inequitable Gender Equality of Nonsexist Children's Literature," Amanda B. Dickman and Sara K. Murnen found that "Nonsexist books succeeded in portraying female characters as adopting the characteristics and roles identified with the masculine gender role, but they did not portray male characters as adopting aspects of the feminine gender role or female characters as shedding the feminine gender role" (381).

(Lisa Rowe Fraustino, 'The Berenstain Bears and the Reproduction of Mothering' The Lion and the Unicorn, 31.3 (2007), 250-263, p. 257)

I'm sure I've said this before, but there's no harm in repeating myself - any recommendations of children's books that succeed in doing any of the above (better yet all, but as the authors note, that is rare), I am all ears.

 

Where have all my friends gone?

Liam had his first day in full kindergarten on Tuesday.

It's not much different to last year - same classroom, same teacher, same routine - just more days, and different kids.

The different kids is the hard part right now. Liam loved school last year, and was really looking forward to it starting again (for weeks he's been telling me to call his teacher and ask if they can start NOW). But I big part of his excitement was caught up in playing the same games with the same kids. So when he got there on Tuesday and most of his friends weren't there - having gone up to class one, after doing their year of 'full kinder' last year - he looked very lost.

To me that is. I watched him, standing in the middle of this huge sandpit, waiting for his best friends A and G to show up, and almost got teary. Actually I did. I wondered whether I should have told him, even just that morning, so that he wouldn't be waiting and wondering. His teacher had said not. She said if you tell them they will just worry. Let them enjoy their holidays, and when they get here they'll find out, and they'll be fine.

When I picked him up I asked him how it was, and he, as usual, said it was great. I asked if it was as good as he remembered and he said no, because it was different kids. But he said it quite cheerfully, and he was just as keen to go to school today as he was Tuesday (Wednesdays he has off still).

But today I ran into the mother of one of his old friends in the car park, and saw another but only at a distance. And on the way home I felt all sad again, but I realised: this time I wasn't feeling sad for him, I was feeling sad for me. These mothers, my friends who I hung out with at drop off and pick up last year, have moved on without me. Sure, I'll still see them around, we'll still have a few play dates (when they can be fitted in around school - weekends I suppose), but it won't be the same. They've moved on, and I'm still in kinder. And I'm going to miss them.

Rules of an infantocracy

"The most important was this: If both children are crying, no adults can cry. Hard to follow, but vital." (Kim Todd of the period after her twins were born, in 'Under the Skin, Lesson's in Transformation' at Literary Mama)

Infertility and /or new parenthood in fiction

There seem to be plenty of memoirs being published, not to mention other forms of life writing (blogs included), either about or incorporating narratives of infertility and new parenthood (achieved via infertility or not). For example: Child of Mine: Original Essays on Becoming a Mother, Waiting for Daisy, Mothershock, loving every (other) minute of it, A Little Pregnant, and In Vitro Fertility Goddess, among others. But I can't find much contemporary fiction covering the same areas. (By contemporary in this case I mean the last decade or less.) Why is that?

The fiction I have turned up so far includes Ben Elton's Inconceivable (which I'm in the queue to get from the library), Tick Tock, by Jane Freeman and The Woman Next Door, by Barbara Delinsky. I've read the Freeman book and from memory it didn't do a lot to challenge the normative narratives about infertility, and I haven't been able to get hold of the Delinsky book.

Edited to add: I have found a few short stories in Literary Mama: Reading for the Maternally Inclined, and on the Literary Mama site. But is this the only source of them?

Stepping back

In allowing them to learn simple tasks and to feel their way into responsibility for the groups and for the camps, thereby making them their own, she had to break a lifelong habit of organizing chivvying and taking over. She had to let them blunder; she had to wait while they did in hours what she'd do in minutes; and she had to accepts that some would fail. (Drusilla Modjeska, Poppy, McPhee Gribble, Ringwood, 1990, p. 146.)

When I find myself at a loss in my writing I sometimes pick up Poppy, or some other novel I admire, and read a bit to see what inspiration it might give me. But in this case I am more reminded of parenting than inspired in writing. I'm not terribly good at this part of parenting - stepping back and letting Liam do in hours what I could do in minutes, without "chivvying and taking over". I need to get better at it.

Sibling fun

I love that Liam frequently says to Mikaela "Kaely, Kaely, do you want to come and play in my room?"
They are starting to have some jealousy between them (over Mummy-time), but still, Liam is really into her. And she adores him.
I just wish I could bottle this time for her, so that when in a year or two she is tailing after him and his friends and he is telling her to "Go away Mikaela!", she could take a swig of it and feel all better again.

When will I learn?

It amazes me that after 5.5 years of parenting, I am still regularly surprised by how little you can get done (and how slow it is) when you have kids around - especially of the smaller variety.

Child, halt thy consumption

Teaching Liam about consumerism is tricky, when I have such pronounced consumerist tendencies myself. But I am trying to do it all the same - trying to teach him to question consumer culture; to first Reduce, then Reuse and finally Recycle.

In my favour are the facts that I am a cheapskate (and with good reason, given our finances), and that I have a bit of a depression mentality. So I try to avoid spending money anyway, and I hate to throw anything out.

Against me is the fact that I am an emotional shopper. When I’ve had a bad day, I don’t just want to eat chocolate, I want to buy myself chocolate or some other treat. Also I like buying things. That seems to contradict the cheapskate statement I know, but I like buying certain kinds of things, especially if I think they are bargains. It’s hard to define better than that, but when I am in certain kinds of stores, newsagents, hardware stores, Big W, I have this urge to purchase something, anything. Bunnings especially because the options are so many – a sample pot of paint to try on the bathroom wall, a bag of cow poo to dig into the garden, a punnet of seedlings perhaps… You get the picture.

But I am trying to improve myself, and I am trying to help Liam be aware of the impacts of our consumption.

This is my Blog Action Day post, because I believe  everyday consumerism is a major threat to the environment.

So what am I doing with Liam? Well, first trying to curb my own consumerist ways.

Aside from that I do the obvious things like say No almost every time he asks me to buy him something; I don’t let him watch any commercial TV (which we wouldn’t do anyway, for a host of reasons); and I try to avoid taking him into toy shops and the like, although with even the supermarkets already in full Christmas mode with huge toy displays everywhere, that last one is a little tricky.

Luckily Liam doesn’t tend to ask for stuff he sees in shops all that much – not the big things anyway. I suspect that’s because we have always said no. Things that either we, or as often as not a certain grandfather, have bought before (certain food items in our case, rubber balls and other inexpensive junk in his grandfather’s) he does ask for, although he’s mostly learned to not bother asking me for the junk. I do let him buy a 50c item from St Vinnie’s quite often, which I explain is because it’s second hand, so no new resources have gone into making it for him. I’m not sure if he takes that in though.

I also do talk to him about the environment and the Reduce/Reuse/Recycle slogan. We talk about saving resources like water and trees, and we’ve talked about the importance of habitat preservation (though not in those terms). He understands a bit about the drought and water restrictions and a little less about global warming, although he still wastes a lot of water. This may not seem that connected to consumerism, but water use, power use – it’s all consumption.

Recently we bought a second hand freezer, and it took us a few months of haphazard looking to find one we were happy with, so again, I explained to Liam that we really wanted to get a second hand one so there wouldn’t be any new resources (electricity is the thing he mainly understands) used to make it for us.

All in all I’m not sure how successful I have so far been in avoiding inducting Liam into the rampant consumerism of our culture, but I am trying. The two most important things I think I can do are to bring up the impact we have on the environment in little ways often, and to lead by example. I’m better at the first than the second, but I’m getting there.

One other thing I will do is give him Jean Hegland’s Into the Forest, when he’s old enough to cope with it. That book had quite an impact on me (though it certainly didn’t do anything good for my packrat habit, unless you count never throwing anything away as a good thing!).

Do you have any other suggestions for this parenting project?

Independence

As our oldest child has given up his dummy, and has his first wiggly tooth, so our baby is growing up.

Two weeks ago I was telling people she seemed to have given up walking. She'd taken a record of nine steps, though mostly stuck to two or three, and then decided she'd done that trick, but crawling was faster.

A few days after I first said that, she started walking again, and had clearly decided to put me in my place. Less than two weeks later, she is walking everywhere. Sure she still falls over a lot (she has that cute little drunken sailor walk going on), but mostly she just gets back up again and keeps going. Occasionally she gets down to crawl (say, right through our screen door) and then keeps going, but mostly it's not long before she's up on two feet again.

She's the cutest thing imaginable, but she's not really a baby any more. Thank god I think I'm having another one, or I may just have to shed a few tears over my two not-babies. But I'm right proud as well.

Variety in mothering

"Many mothers report that mothering is a deeply ambivalent experience in which, at one time or another, they feel exaltation, despair, and many other emotions in between." (Patrice DiQuinzio, The Impossibility of Motherhood: feminism, individualism, and the problem of mothering, Routledge, New York, 1999, p. viii.)

The (would-be) writing life...

I am sitting in my dark part-time study, having just come in out of the sun where I was reading Virginia Woolf’s diary. I am reading a few pages of A Writer’s Diary (extracts from her diary published by Leonard Woolf a decade or so after her death) each day before I begin work (each Sunday/Monday that is!). It was tempting to stay out there and keep reading, but my point for the day is really writing, which I can do most effectively sitting in front of the computer. Besides, I wanted to record something she wrote in May 1920:

It is worth mentioning, for future reference that the creative power which bubbles so pleasantly in beginning  a new book quiets down after a time, and one goes on more steadily. Doubts creep in. Then one becomes resigned. Determination not to give in, and the sense of an impending shape keep one at it more than anything. I’m a little anxious. How am I to bring off this conception? Directly one gets to work one is like a person walking, who has seen the country stretching out before. I want to write nothing in this book that I don’t enjoy writing. Yet writing is always difficult. (Virginia Woolf, A Writer’s Diary, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1954, p. 25.)

Leonard Woolf comments in the preface that one must keep in mind at all times that this is only “a very small portion” of her diary, and does not constitute the entirety of her thoughts. Otherwise “the book will give a very distorted view of her life and her character” (p.ix). I mention this, because as I am reading there is a part of me wishing to have what she seems to have – so much time to focus on writing. I know she didn't have children, but indeed the entries in this diary are often weeks apart – indicating, presumably, weeks when her diary consisted only of non-writing related observations. And even within this extract she remarks that her time for writing has not been hers at all (evidence by the fact that she has hardly done reading outside her review books). Of course, my reading is also inevitably coloured by knowledge of her suicide two decades later. It’s hard to be jealous of that!

Last week I had an email from a (single, childless) old school friend who is currently in Berlin, having (by the sounds of things) the time of her life. She is there for (I think) about six weeks, following which she is heading to France to visit some friends there, and “then on”. I could hardly read her lovely email without feeling jealous as hell. I think she is living the life I want!

But actually, she’s not. I love my husband and my children and even my house, despite the mortgage. When I first bought a house I was 22*, and more than one person commented that I was the last person they expected to ‘settle down’. I wasn’t settling down, I replied, I was merely committing to live in the one place for a year or so, after which I could rent it out and head back overseas if I felt like it. Up to that point I had cultivated a footloose image - which I believed in myself and which fit beautifully with my star sign. I was carefree and adaptable, ready to pick up and leave at a moment’s notice. (According to this site, for instance, Sagittarian likes include travelling and freedom, while dislikes include being tied down, being constrained, being bothered with details). Then I met Chris, whose star sign makes him out to be a homebody (“It is a fundamentally conservative and home-loving nature, appreciating the nest like quality of a secure base” ). You’d think we’d be at odds (if you believe in that sort of thing). But actually, as much as the idea of being able to take off to Berlin appeals, I’m honestly just as much of a homebody as Chris is. Maybe more.

Sure, I have a constant conflict between my role as a mother and my role as a writer, but is there any other option? The fact is, I’m living the life I want. Except for the lack of a rich sponsor of course.

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*The housing market had just crashed and it was basically cheaper to buy than to rent, once you get past the start-up expenses which I borrowed from my mother, and paid back in dribs and drabs over the next several years. The house I bought then would now be worth over three times what I paid for it.

Liam the "moving, running, climbing and jumping" extrovert

Liam's been showing signs of his extroversion practically since the day he was born, but Chris and I have always wondered if he was just less introverted than us. Could we really have produced an extroverted child?

Well. I've been reading Nurture by Nature (Paul D. Tieger, Barbara Barron-Tieger, & E. Michael Ellovich), a book about figuring out your child's temperament and Myers-Briggs 'types', lent to me by a counselor friend. And yeah. It's pretty clear that he's an extrovert in Myers-Briggs terms. In fact, we're pretty sure he's an 'ENTP' - Extroverted, Intuitive, Thinking, Perceiving*. That makes him the first extrovert in three generations of my family (not counting cousins, and maybe an uncle). No wonder we find him exhausting!

Like the reading I've done on age appropriate behaviours, I find this so useful because it helps me to figure out when my irritation with his behaviour is an appropriate response and when I just need to suck it up.

Let me quote some bits of the ENTP profile:

"ENTP's are typically very active and excitable children. They become more wound up when people come to visit, and appear to get an adrenaline rush from being with others..."

You don't say? We always say all it takes to get Liam completely hyper is for one of his grandparents to enter the room.

And then this is really the money statement from my point of view:

"While ENTP [preschoolers] are exciting and stimulating children... because they grow bored quickly, they are rarely happy to play alone for any extended period of time. When they're awake, they seek constant interaction and engagement. [Uh huh.] They may talk so much, and so loudly, that it can sometimes feel like just too much of a good thing. [Oh god yes.] Because ENTPs think out loud, they can't help but interrupt adults to ask the many questions or make the numerous comments that just pop into their heads. They learn by experience and gentle guidance the subtleties of polite conversation. Their minds work so quickly that being asked or forced to wait their turn to speak often makes them forget what they were going to say. This can make them very frustrated, angry and tearful. Patience is definitely a learned skill for ENTPs."

Oh yeah. Introverted types (me, Chris, Mum, Dad, my step-dad, Chris's dad, my sister and my brother, to name a few), tend to think things through before they are willing to speak. Not all the time, or always completely, but as a generalisation. Extroverted types have trouble thinking without speaking.** Poor Liam. There we are, having adult conversation and not wanting to deal with his interruptions, and there he is, desperate to be interacting, and virtually unable to think without simultaneously speaking.

I like the description in the book of an extroverted girl who was having trouble (ie was disruptive) in school. Her parents suggested that she be paired with a friend to complete her desk work, which made it much easier for her to cope with sitting (relatively) quietly. While of course she would have to learn self-control in these situations, they pointed out the difficulty for her of learning "the life skill of self control" and the class room curriculum at the same time.

And then there's this:

"Because ENTPs are such brave explorers, they are just not very interested in rules or structure that seek to limit or restrict them... ENTPs are also not as motivated as other types to comply with orders simply because they are told to or in order to please their parents or other adults."

Damn. I guess that explains why we always seem to miss out on the developmental stages where the books say kids become so much easier to handle because they start to focus on pleasing their parents (notably ages three and five***).

And reading the section on Perceiving children vs judging children was an eye-opener.

Perceiving children tend to have a stretchy sense of time, get sidetracked in the middle of tasks (or before they start them), and often beg for 'one more minute'. And unlike Judging children, who like structure and rules, "Perceiving children tend to live life in resistance to limits. They are constantly pushing the edges of acceptable behaviour, incessantly questioning the reason for rules..." This is all Liam to a T. We find it so frustrating when it takes him half an hour to still not get his PJs on because of all the distractions he finds along the way, and we're both Ps ourselves. Imagine how hard it would be if we were Js!

These also sound familiar:

"Emotionally, ENTP preschoolers tend to get angry more than they get their feelings hurt." Yep.

"ENTP [preschoolers] often use adult or complex speech, sounding more grown-up or sophisticated than their years... Most ENTP toddlers love being read to... and may ask to hear the same story, or particularly dramatic parts of their favourite stories, again and again."

"They like being busy and outdoors and are rarely afraid of getting dirty..."

Uh huh. And finally:

"ENTPs usually need to be moving, running, climbing and jumping at all times. Most would be happy to have a continuous stream of friends and may be happiest with several children around at once."

Oh yeah, that's our Liam.

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*This makes him 3 out of 4 the same as Chris (who's an INTP) and two the same as me (INFP). Though actually we're not 100% sure of the T-F continuum yet, I think that'll become clearer as he gets older - but I think what'll become clearer is that he's a T.

**Edited to add: I should say that I'm sure grown up extroverted types have learned to think without speaking as necessary, but for small people it's hard to have to keep it in.

***Although one of the good things about five has been that he now will sit for quite a while most mornings looking at books all by himself, before we get up, or while we're showering etc. I really can't express how lovely this development is!

A lonely room of my own

Today I am writing in the massage room. I've already been out here for nearly fifty minutes when I hear Chris leave with the kids. Liam has a swimming lesson.

I love being out here, away from the disturbing noise of playing, crying, yelling, banging, singing, falling. And I'm happy to have a writing day today. I look forward to this all week. I've already had an idea for my work and written about five hundred words.

So why, when I hear my family leaving to go to the pool, do I feel lonely and sad?

Anti-Racist Parent meme

A meme from Anti-Racist Parent. I don't do meme's much (mostly I'm just too lazy and they're too long or two hard), but this one looks well worth a go...

1. I am:
Basically a several-generation-Anglo-Australian - I think I may have a great-grandparent from New Zealand, and maybe a great-great-grandparent from Scotland.

2. My kids are:

Pretty much the same, except with Pennsylvanian & Irish blood on their Dad's side (also basically Anglo).

3. I first started thinking more about race, culture, and identity when:

This is hard to answer. Incrementally over the years. Canberra (where I live and grew up, though I haven't been here the whole time) is a very white, middle class town - so I grew up somewhat colour-blind, not that I knew that term before the last decade.

I think probably I started thinking about them more when I went to uni, more still when I lived in the US, and more again once I had kids of my own (back in Canberra) and had to start thinking about how to be an anti-racist (and anti-sexist) parent. Especially when I noticed that almost all our (mostly hand-me-down) books depicted solely or mostly white kids.

4. People think my name is:

Last name: Scottish/Irish, which makes it one of many in Australia.

5. The family tradition I most want to pass on is:

Love of books and learning. And voting liberally (not Liberally!).

6. The family tradition I least want to pass on is:

Our depression-mentality packrat nature - it runs in both families and means our house is in a constant mess. I will de-clutter I will declutter I will de-clutter...

7. My child’s first word in English was:

Liam: Bwr (flower), Mikaela: ball

8. My child’s first non-English word was:

Liam: bonjour (he was learning how to say hello in a bunch of languages - actually French may not have been the first one, but it's the only one I retained!)

Mikaela: We're still stuck on ball...

9. The non-English word/phrase most used in my home is:

Gute nacht, meine leibe

10. One thing I love about being a parent is:

Listening to my kids giggle, especially when they are doing it together (which usually means Liam's tickling Mikaela)

11. One thing I hate about being a parent is:

Juggling me-time with them-time, and never having enough of either one.

12. To me, being an anti-racist parent means:

At this point it means trying to ensure my kids grow up knowing that people look, think, talk and live all different ways and that our way isn't better than someone else's. As they grow older it also means actively educating them about systemic discrimination and the reality of the racist culture we live in. And like someone else said on the anti-racist parent site, it means constantly evaluating my own prejudices and assumptions.

But Mikaela best

Liam wanted six babies when we were trying to conceive Mikaela, but was prepared to settle for two at a time. Now he's decided two children is enough for our family. However, he told me the other night at dinner that if we do have another baby, he'd like it to be a brother this time, because he likes brothers. "But," he said, "I think the one I'll like best will still be Mikaela."

He also told me earlier that same day that of all his best friends his very best friend is the one right here - Mikaela. Of course, she hasn't started crawling yet.

Overcoming the tendency for anger

For us to have any hope of taming our tendency to anger we need to work with our thoughts. The first part of the task is to notice them rather than going for a ride with them. They can feel so powerful and compelling, and take us so far from the present moment, that we really need to 'stop and realise', or 'remember to remember' to pay attention. We then need to identify thoughts that are unskillful, unhelpful and keep us from being happy and calm. (Sarah Napthali, Buddhism for Mothers, Allen and Unwin, Crows Nest, 2003, p. 71.)

What does the cot say?

It's weird seeing Mikaela in a cot - or seeing a cot set up in our house. Just as it was weird, at first, to have her sleeping in a bassinette. Liam slept with us from the very first day - I couldn't imagine being parted from him (and neither, it seemed, could he)*. So we never had the cot with the cute print sheets and the mobile overhead that is so strongly associated with a baby, with a new family, in our culture.

In some ways having the whole kit a kaboodle this time gives me a strange sense of dissonance, in the way I used to be so surprised to realise I was a mother. That I, we, were parents.** Seeing the cot set up with it's giraffes and elephants (on both sheets and mobile) brings me back, momentarily, to that place where half of me wants to cry "No! No, this isn't us. We're not those stereotypical suburban parents. I'm not that bored housewife, pushing the pram around the mall with my husband in his lunch break. We're people. Truly: People." But it also, momentarily, brings back the wonder. Because actually, suddenly, we are those people. But we're also not, because actually, those people don't exist.

We're just us. And we have a cot in our room.
____

*I have some sadness about not having this same close bond with Mikaela - not that we aren't firmly bonded, and nor did I find the bond slow or hard to develop, as it often seems to be for second babies. But it is different. But that's not what this post is about.

**True, I do still sometimes find this very weird, but the jolt occurs more and more infrequently.

Note to Self:

The key phrase for four-year-olds is Out of Bounds. Out of bounds physically; out of bounds verbally; out of bounds in sound levels. Four-year-olds talk LOUDLY. Walk heavily (in fact walk by Running) This is Normal. Accept it. And if you hate it, at least let that be your problem, not his. He is just being a normal four-year-old. Deal with it.

The trouble with anger

We may experience a sense of relief as we express anger, a glorious moment of self-righteousness as we assure ourselvse: 'Well, I certainly showed them!' But the great irony of anger is in the way it does more damage to ourselves than to the objects of our anger, be they family members, friends, acquaintances or strangers. We may see anger as an inevitable response and give up our freedom to choose a more wholesome alternative. Unchecked, anger takes our energy, threatens our health and undermines our ability to make wise decisions. And holding a grudge poisons our peace of mind and leads us to justify our actions in ways that undermine any potential for self-awareness. (emphasis mine) (Sarah Napthali, Buddhism for Mothers, Allen and Unwin, Crows Nest, 2003, p. 63.)

Books books books

Before Christmas I came up with the brilliant idea of making a few notes in here about all the non-fiction books I read in 2006 - the ones I remember anyway - as a way of revising and recording any insights they may have given me.

Ha!

Since it took me at least two weeks to get around to writing about the idea, when on earth did I think I was going to write the actual notes? Plus I am now much more interested in all the new books I got for my birthday and Christmas.

So I've decided instead to simply list those of last year's books that I can remember (some of which I am still using) and just try to do it for the books I read this year. Some of them anyway.

So last year's books:

• Anne Lamott Bird by Bird: Some instructions on writing and life (started it at some point when I wasn't writing much - maybe late pregnancy - and got depressed, but finished it recently and found it more inspiring and entertaining as well).
• Hazel Smith The writing experiment: Strategies for innovative creative writing (this was recommened by my fiction teacher. I'm still only up to about the second chapter, but I have found some of the exercises useful starting points and I like what she has to say in the introduction).
• Lu Hanessian Let the Baby Drive: Navigating the Road of New Motherhood (Read only about 18 months after recieving as gift. Absolutely loved it.)
• Rahima Baldwin Dancy You Are Your Child's First Teacher (I think I was more probably more glowing about this at the time than I feel now. I remember that what I particularly liked about it was that provided some recent research base for some of Rudolf Steiner's assertions about small children , and when the research didn't support Steiner, she said so. What I didn't like is that it - I think - made stuff sound easier than it really is.)
• Stanley  Greenspan The Essential Partnership (Don't think I read all of this, but got a lot out of it. Remember nothing much except the idea of floor time. Valuable idea though.)
• Ellyn Satter Child of Mine: Feeding With Love and Good Sense (Still finding it difficult to follow through and not coherse/threaten/bribe or otherwise get involved in the 'how much' of eating, but I think our restraint may be starting to pay off. What I really liked about this book was what it showed me about how some of my own eating habits may have formed. When she writes her promised book for grown-ups about ourselves, I'll be first in line to buy it.)
• Louise B. Ames et. al. The Gesell Institute's Child from One to Six: Evaluating the Behavior of the Preschool Child (Don't think I read all of this, just borrowed it for the description of the four-year-old child - in short: "out of bounds in every area" Good to know it's not just Liam.)
• Patrick Fanning et. al. When Anger Hurts Your Kids: A Parent's Guide (Haven't actually finished this because it has work to do as you go along. Imagine! Plus because I got it at the same time as Child of Mine, and there's only so much new stuff you can implement at once, and also was trying to finish uni for the year... Still am planning to get back to it. Find the trigger thoughts concept useful, but must sit down and figure out what mine are.)
• Haim G. Ginott Between Parent and Child (Good section on communication, but can't remember most of it. Hopefully am putting into practice anyway. Sometimes. Think it's mostly about active listening - acknowledging child's feelings without judgement or advice.)

Okay, for right now that's all I remember.

On to the more exciting part, which is the new books I have. Before I can read any of my birthday and Christmas books though I have three borrowed books to read. First one that my friend lent me before Christmas, but needs back quickly as it's promised to someone else, then two library books, one on parenting, one fiction.

• The friend's book is Sarah Napthali's Buddhism for mothers: a calm approach to caring for yourself and your children. Quite frankly I wasn't more than half interested at first, partly because of the obligation to read it (friend pressed it on me with rave reviews, which made me want to read it right up until she actually lent it to me), and partly because Napthali is just a little too glowing about motherhood at the beginning. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love motherhood (mostly) but it's hard too. But. I'm now about a third of the way through (and have taken my own advice and am reading with sticky notes - too bad it's not my book), and I am really loving this book. The next chapter is called 'Dealing with Anger'. I'm looking forward to it. Have lots of notes for a real blog entry on it, but now is not the time.
• Library books are How to talk so kids will listen and listen so kids will talk, by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish, which should hopefully build on the good parts of the Ginott book, since the author's did "years of workshops" with him; and The time traveler's wife: a novel by Audrey Niffenegger (recommended by someone in my fiction class last semester. I read the first page or so and found it really got me in, then regretfully put it away because I knew if I kept reading for a few more minutes that I not get the things done that I needed to that day.)

Once I get through those (or have to return them) I can start on all the yummy birthday and Christmas books I got. There's lots of fiction, but also some more parenting and writing books. (I'm running out of time, so I'm not going to be able to put links for all of these, sorry). Fiction first:

• Mark Haddon The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (from my Dad on Christmas day, but supposedly not for Christmas because he wasn't doing Christmas presents this year)(actually I already read this and it was wonderful. It's Young Adult fiction, which is what I am studying in the coming semester.)
• Cecelia Ahern A Place Called Here (I know nothing about this. My FIL gave it to me for Christmas. Looks interesting though.)
• Umberto Eco The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana (birthday pressie from my Mum)
• Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (one of those things we should all read sometime - my mum gave it to me for Christmas and said she'll borrow it back - convenient having similar tastes to the people you buy pressies for, ain't it?)
• Marsha Mehran, Pomegranate Soup: A Novel ('nother Christmas present from Mum. Looks interesting).
• Marion Zimmer Bradley, two of the later Darkover novels - can't remember right now what the titles were and Chris has already borrowed them back (they were a Christmas gift from him via Liam & Mikaela)(once again, similar tastes. And his Christmas presents from me (and the kids) would also have made nearly as good presents for me as him - but were things he really did want. Very convenient!)
• Allison Pearson I Don't Know How She Does It (I'm half way through this and so far have mixed feelings about it. There have been some definite laugh out loud moments though.)

A now Mikaela's woken, so I'll just very quickly add the non-fiction books which are:

• A Mind at a Time by Mel Levine
• Everyday Blessings: The inner work of Mindful Parenting by Myla and Jon Kabat-Zinn, and
• The Complete Idiots Guide to Getting your Romance Published by Julie Beard (of course, first you have to write a pubishable romance, but maybe it helps with that too - haven't really had a chance to look at it yet).

But now my reading/writing time is over. Mikaela needs a bath.

(For the baby book) Mikaela moves into a cot

Last night Mikaela spent her first night in a her cot. She is now the proud owner of the cot we bought for Liam but never really used (unless you count using it to dump our clean clothes in). We were going to move her into it a couple of weeks before Christmas, but then realised that still having her in the bassinette would be useful for our coast trip - just take the bassinette with us and she'd be right at home.

Instead, we put the cot up and just sat the bassinette in the cot. So she was getting a bit used to the look of the space (though admittedly it would have looked pretty different from inside the bassinette), and we had the cot up for when we were ready. Well, we came back from the coast yesterday, so she slept in the cot last night. So far so good. She seems in no way upset about the extra space. And since she was getting so she couldn't really stretch her legs all the way out in the bassinette, we figure the extra space might even be a welcome change.

Reading while parenting - it's just not the same as studying

All year I've been reading books, and bits of books, on parenting and writing. These are my two passions at the moment and will probably remain so for the foreseeable future.

The problem is, I read them while nursing Mikaela to sleep, and once she's down I come out and get on with parenting Liam, or cooking dinner, or doing housework (or, okay, sometimes catching up on other people's blogs). I rarely come out and make notes. I can be filled with good intentions, but once I leave the lovely cocoon of my bedroom I get hijacked by life. Which makes reading them often only slightly more effective than reading an escapist novel. I can be inspired and impressed, but because I make no notes, do no revision - because, in short, I am just reading and not studying - very little of what I've read stays with me on a long term basis.

I remember Haim G. Ginott pointing out in Between Parent and Child that you need to give your young child space to move (not expect that they will be able to sit still and mind the fine china), but I remember little else. Maybe some of it'll come back to me as I'm parenting, but mostly I'd be guessing it doesn't. I do remember him saying a bunch of weird repressive Freudian claptrap in the last few chapters about not letting your child see you naked/shower with you/sleep in your room, or god forbid your bed! But not so much the basic but useful ideas about communicating effectively.

I remember Ellen Satter's explanation of the division of responsibility in feeding your child (you decide when and where they eat, they decide whether and how much), but even as we are attempting to put many of her ideas into practice, I'm realising that I need to go back and re-read to remember what I specifically liked about her ideas and why - which will hopefully better enable me to decide what is and isn't working for us and why.

It's quite frustrating, and so for weeks now I've been thinking about writing a post here with a few notes on all the non-fiction books I've read this year - or at least the ones I can still remember anything about. Unfortunately most of them have been library books, which makes recapping months later a little tricky. Still, I'm going to give it a try. I planned on it being one post, but clearly that could take months to write (not because I've read so much, because I blog so little), and would probably be prohibitively long. So I'll just try for a paragraph here and there, and see how I do.

Right now I am reading about five different books on parenting (plus I just borrowed another one from the library), but the one I started tonight is Buddhism for mothers: a calm approach to caring for yourself and your children, by Sarah Napthali. A friend just read it and lent it to me with high praise. And I think it's been recommended to me before. I'm only reading the intro so far, but some bits that stood out in tonight's reading:

"Our only hope for mothering happily and wisely lies in developing inner resources to nourish ourselves. Tossed around by the needs of others, mothers give and give, so we must find ways to replenish ourselves." (S. Napthali, Buddhism for mothers, Allen and Unwin, Crows Nest, 2003,  p.2-3)

(Does it make me a bad mother that as I typed that I realised that I don't actually feel like this much of the time - I mean, I guess I give a lot as a mother, but I get a lot too, and not only from my kids, but from my husband, from my own mother (okay, so she's still giving), from my friends... but I still think it's true in essence, what she's saying)

"For me, the most accurate comment on motherhood is that it makes your life twice as bad and twice as good." (p.7)

That is such a nice line. And although I don't think this is quite how she meant it, it explains, in a way, what I want to say to the people in my life who have chosen not to have children, or who are undecided or are currently trying, when they ask me is it all worth it. It is. It makes your life twice as good. I absolutely feel that. But on the other hand, it makes it twice as bad too, so if you decide on a different path - well, there'll be roses (and thorns) that way too.

I'm pretty sure there was more that struck me even in the little I've read so far of this book, but see? Too much time has already passed. I really need to read with a pad and pencil, or at the very least a pack of sticky notes.

Being an anti-racist parent

One of the wonderful things about blogs is how they make me think about things I might otherwise miss. Of course, talking to other people IRL and reading books does this too, but I guess through blogs I get exposed to people I might not come across in my every day life.

For instance, a post by Robyn ages ago on DotMoms about the books her kids have that could help "broach discussions of diversity" made me take another look at my own bookshelf, and realise how sadly lacking it was. Most of Liam's books are either hand-me-downs, gifts, or left overs from my own childhood. So despite the fact that my best friend is a lesbian parent, there were no books with two moms. Also no books with adopted children, few books with children of colour... you get the picture. I know, it's shameful to admit that I hadn't noticed that before, but while I've tended to scrutinise books fairly thoroughly before (or while) reading them to Liam for things I wanted to avoid, I hadn't looked at them in terms of things I wanted to foster.

That post sparked a new series of trips to the library (and even a new purchase or two).

And now, what this post is actually all about: The other day, Dawn linked to her introductory post on Anti-Racist Parent, "a blog for parents who are committed to raising children with an anti-racist outlook". What a wonderful idea for a blog.

The inner lives of mothers

Another post via a Raising WEG post: a current survey by Suniya S. Luthar, Ph.D. at Columbia University, who is exploring the inner lives of mothers.

Kids and Consumerism

Does anyone have any tips or reading suggestions on how to educate young children about the connection between "our personal behaviour and our environment" (see below for full quote)?

We try to talk to Liam about not wasting water, in particular, but of course he doesn't really get it. And I don't actually want to scare him about the state of the planet (according to the Steiner education principles the first life phase - until about age 7 - should have the theme "the world is safe"), but I do want him to get a sense of the importance of not over-consuming - water, electricity, packaging, toys... (And yet I just gave Chris the go ahead to buy an iPod - am I a complete hypocrite?)

"[A] study... from the Earth Institute at Columbia University, found an ominous silence when it comes to educating American K-12 students on the relationship between our personal behavior and our environment: that the size and inefficiency of our cars, homes, and appliances, our profligate fuels, our love of disposables, and the effects of buying more than we need actually undermine our prospects on earth. Slightly more time is spent teaching kids how the environment can affect us, overpowering humanity with floods, droughts, storms, earthquakes, climate change. But in our overall failure to illuminate the interdependence between Homo sapiens and earth we withhold critical knowledge from those whose lives depend upon it most.

"Many of today's kids recreate in the unwilderness of the shopping mall, where messages of prudence and wisdom are overwhelmed by the consumerism that feeds global warming. We send our kids to the mall because we fear the dangers outside. We could hardly be more wrong in our assessment of risk."

Thanks to Suzoz for the link to The 12 tipping points of global warming, by Julia Whitty in Mother Jones.