treading, and fighting siblings

Hallooooo! Been a while since I've been here. I've missed you! Missed being here. Much afloat and little time to process in writing. Plus, I've been thinking I will switch over to the new blog about which I keep talking. It will come, it will come. For now we are here. Together.

I am so far behind with - um - everything. Emails I meant to answer ages ago, christmas decorations still to pack away, laundry that has filled up the shute literally from the basement past first floor so we have to go to the second floor to put anything into it. The rental office of the beach house we're renting this summer called about the money I hadn't sent. "We sent you a contract," they said. "It's probably here in this stack of mail I haven't opened," I said. "But we sent it in December...!" they said. "Yes, probably here in this stack," I repeated. They sounded incredulous. I have this tape running through my head, a kind of ticker tape with all the things I need to do. It's very annoying. Things have been a little nutty and I can't seem to get from in front of the plow and back around behind it where I can steer. I'm just moving moving, as fast a clip as I can manage.

This is what parenting is for many people, isn't it?

I'm trying not to think about how behind I am. I'm choosing to look at it as the stuff of the sitcom and just keep rolling.

Today Clark made it clear to me that he needed some normal time at home. What I badly needed was 40 minutes on a treadmill at the gym but I decided to forgo that so Clark could have some time to settle. I thought about the fact that the gym is one of the things I do for me, and that I was giving up something good for me in exchange for something good for him. But this is my job. Not the giving things up, but making sure that he is settled in himself, teaching him how to do it and giving him as much practice as possible so he knows the feeling he's trying to create. Sometimes my job does indeed mean I need to sacrifice things. The trick is finding the balance. As moms we're only doing our kids a disservice if we give it all up. And figuring out when one should hold fast to filling our own needs is a complex art.

I keep singing Bob Dylan's Buckets of Rain: "Life is sad, life is a bust. All you can do is do what you must. Do what you must do, and you do it well."

Frances needs a lot of physical affection. She gets it from us, of course, but she also wants it from her friends, and most importantly from her brother. She loves her brother. Loves him. Thinks he's charming and funny and fun to be around. He loves her too, but she has this habit of pulling the superiority card, to trying to help him with things he cannot yet do by himself. And this drives him crazy. Their 17 months of age difference is so little that often they are on par with each other, more or less. They started activities like karate and swimming at the same time and so are equally experienced. Frances doesn't mean to put him down when she does it, she just so desperately wants to be helpful (and perhaps a bit in control...), wants to show her love this way. And wants for him to be grateful. He's not. He's resentful.

Which means he does not want her to hug him. And since he's 4, he's still unable to clearly say what it is he indeed wants. Instead he pushes or grumps or hollers at her. And these actions, believe it or not, tend to destroy her feelings of affection and good will, at least for the moment.

I don't have any brothers or sisters. I didn't learn how to fight with someone I'm close to. (In fact, this is a skill I've found it necessary to learn as an adult, what with the marriage and all.) So I don't know what healthy conflict looks like between a 6 year old and an almost 5 year old. Do I ignore it? Redirect? Talk to them? Explain? Separate? Drink heavily? Tell them stories about little fox siblings who have a hard time getting along? Waldorf believes this last one is the way to go, but I have to say, it's really hard for me to get up the inner energy for story creation. Maybe I'll work on that. In the meantime, I keep tissues in my ears and hope for the best. 

material joy

For Frances's 6th birthday I fear we climbed a pennicle that will never again be crested. All other birthdays may pale forever in comparison.

There were two sets of grandparents here, much doting, you can imagine. Plus a big gathering for dinner plus a lit and glowing cake that she helped decorate plus a trip to the pet store for fish and a little fish tank with a light. It was a big day. 

The biggest thing, though, was the American Girl doll. It goes against so much that I believe in - predatory marketing, consumerism as status symbols, questionable manufacturing practices. Yet yet yet.  Yet practically the only thing she has talked about daily since her last birthday is an American Girl doll. Maybe literally. 

I made her a lovely and sentimentally valuable Waldorf doll who wears the same size dresses as the AG doll. Over the past year we talked about the RIDICULOUS price of the commercial one, and then compared that price to all sorts of other things that same money could buy. It was a good math exercise. Did we learn anything from it? I have no idea. 

But oh the joy when she opened the package. Many parents need it like a fix. They go to crazy lengths christmas after birthday after christmas to see that response on their child's face. It captures something we've mostly lost as adults, some kind of faith that we can be fixed, that joy is pure, that our wishes can indeed be filled, that we can - in the end - be happy. 

And since, of course, the doll was all she wanted, everyone else got clothes and accessories to go with it. We filled her every single wish, mostly because her wishes were so few. And because I am a sucker. 

It sure was fun. 

afternoon kindergarten

Got the letter yesterday from the public kindergarten Frances will be attending in the fall. The letter that tells us whether we've been assigned to afternoon or morning kindergarten. Around here everyone wants morning, which means that some people who request morning are not going to get it.

Kindergarten in our town is TWO HOURS LONG. I frankly don't know what that's about except maybe the economic and social breakdown of the district, and the fact that nearly all the kids have been to some kind of preschool and come in already knowing their letters at least. Whew, got those out of the way. Let's just cut a couple of hours off the kindergarten day since we don't have to teach them that! I'm told social skills are the things best imparted in kindergarten here, and I suppose two hours is plenty for that. Though, it seems to me, all they actually have time for is the teacher to take each kid to the bathroom once. Then it's time to go.

I wanted morning kindergarten because Clark (age 4) is going to be at the Waldorf school Tuesday through Friday mornings. If Frances were in school then also, I would have FOUR WHOLE MORNINGS with only me to keep track of. That alone time is something I've been waiting for. Waiting, holding out, hanging on. A time for me to find my own work in the world. (which brings us to the subject of a post soon to come: one's work in the world. My husband has his work, my kids (of course) have theirs. Mine of late has been helping the kids to do theirs best, but I've neglected my own work in the process.)

So when I got the letter - the one that said Frances had been assigned to afternoon kindergarten - I sat down and had a good cry. A really good cry. Then I went upstairs and threw myself across the bed and sobbed into the bedspread. I cried and cried, and then I plotted about who to speak with to get this changed.

In the next day or so, before I had a chance to call the school district, something interesting happened. I thought it through. I thought about literally what it would be like to have NO TIME TO MYSELF, to always have a kid with me, every day, morning and afternoon. Frances with me in the mornings, Clark with me in the afternoons. And what I saw was a door in the wall I hadn't seen before. What I saw was the experience of having an only child, which is a thing about which I have fantasized from time to time. And it's even better than that - it's two different only children! Variety! This way, I could actually do activities with Frances I've so wanted to; activities like baking bread and crafts projects. Plus being solo with a child provides opportunity for a kind of conversation and intimacy that's not possible when you're the shepherd of multiple.

And something else - my headaches creep in the afternoon. (sometimes they assault with heavy artillery rather than creep, but again, usually in the afternoon.) I'm much better in the morning. Frances is better in the morning. She and I can hang out together during the time when we are our best selves!

Suddenly the afternoon assignment sounded like a blessing. Besides, she will be home on the bus around 3 in the afternoon which means there will be plenty of afternoon left for Clark and Frances to have time to themselves. I did wonder about that - they are such close playmates; what was it going to be like for them to be apart so much? But in the end, they will have a couple of hours every afternoon to play Baby Sam and Sisters.

Sisters is the newest game. They both dress up in Frances's clothes and have tea parties and go on vacations and cook dinner and put their babies to bed. The story line does seem to come out in Frances's favor, which is interesting. They never play Brothers, or Knights, or Pirates.

But I digress.

In addition to alone time with the kids, I think the schedule is going to help me maintain a rhythm (at least in the mornings) better than I have been. We will do the same things each week. For example, Mondays we go to the gym (and they go to the kid play area), Tuesdays grocery, Wednesdays can be bread day (in order to keep to some of the waldorf schedule and activities, we will make bread), Thursdays library and errands, Fridays crafts. Or something like that. I don't know that the afternoons will be so orderly - will have to see.

I'm actually excited about it. How funny. How funny it is when we think we know what we're going to feel. It's for one year. I wonder if at the end I will wish it could go on like this?

world waldorf

As an addendum to the last Waldorf post I must add this photo of my daughter. It was taken the last week of school when someone brought a BABY FREAKING LAMB to school for the children to pet and eventually pose with for photos. I love how Waldorf this photo is - the colors, Frances's bonnet, the adorableness of that animal on her lap. Sheesh. 

reading the kid

This is a post I wrote in the beginning of June, right as school was ending. I don't know why it didn't get posted, as it was supposed to appear before the last one. Well, here it is.

June 9, 2012

The thing we worry most about with Frances is that she's pretty controlling. When she plays with Clark or has friends over she announces what the play is going to be and assigns the roles. She's pretty good at it, and the kids mostly go along with it - interestingly. The problem is that when other folks don't want to play the same thing, she gets manipulative. Her teacher talked with us about this at the mid-year conference and we tried to figure out what was going on underneath that made her feel the need to control, but it was beyond me. 

Then, yesterday, after her not being nice to Clark all week, I had a little breakthrough.

The end of school is an emotional time for everyone. Clark's last day was last Friday, and I cried when I gave the director her little sea salt chocolates present, as we've been there three years now (one for Frances and two for Clark) and we're moving on. Clark has been sad, telling me outright that he wants to stay at his current school rather than move to the Waldorf school where Frances has gone for the last two years. There's a post about that to come.

Yesterday was Frances' last day of school. She has been a little off all week, mostly being unkind to Clark. Also, Mitch is out of town at a conference, which was unfortunate timing. Yesterday morning when we hung up from a phone call with him, Frances clawed at Clark because he was the one who got to push the button to turn the tv off. I sat down beside her and said, "I'm thinking you might be feeling a little anxious because school is ending." She immediately teared up. I talked on for a while about how it's okay to be both excited about her school next year (which she is) and also sad to leave this one, and how it's confusing to have different feelings at the same time, etc, etc, and she just sat there listening to me, tears running down her face. Then I said something about how the reason we feel sad when something ends is because we love it and don't want to let it go, and she really started crying then. Poor girl. Afterwards she seemed much calmer and the trek to school was fine. 

I talked with her teacher that afternoon at the school picnic. Her teacher told me that for the past week or two Frances has been playing school during free play time, being the teacher and taking care of the students. She has been (of course) organizing the play, but it's been good, not at all manipulative. But then today during free play time, Frances wanted to be the baby, wanted to have the other girls take care of her. 

So it occurs to me that all this controlling is really her trying to control her own emotions. It's a transfer for some emotion she's trying to suppress. And it shouldn't surprise me - one of my biggest limitations is knowing what I'm feeling when I'm feeling it. She's an awful lot like me, and suppression could be her most logical approach. I hope I can find a way to help her with this. I forget to scan the playing field, forget that it's helpful if I have my eyes open for the trauma coming. I just forget. I'll forget again, but perhaps I can recognize it as it appears. And each time, I suppose, I'll get better at heading it off, at teaching her how to head it off for herself. Onward we go. 

waldorf, quakers, and us

My head hurts. Funny - I thought this blog was done, but here I am in the middle of my stuff. It seems just posting after a month unlocked the door, and now I've got a couple of posts halfway done, a couple more in my brain. I thought I didn't have anything to say, and now I've got plenty. For the moment, anyway.

How do we make decisions for our children? How much latitude do we give them to make decisions? At what age? Research (and common sense) tell us the brain isn't fully developed for a loooooonnng time after they seem pretty functional (like age 21 or something) and the young brain's judgement simply isn't able to distinguish blue from yellow.

When my son was two I sent him to a lovely Jewish preschool nearby - the same place Frances had been for her three-year-old year. I love this place; it's very sweet and warm and caring and it has a lot of integrity. I love that my kids learned a Hebrew prayer for before meals. I love that they brought coins and dropped them into a tzadaka box to give to those who have less.

We are not Jewish. I am a Quaker, and by extension my children are Quakers. (Super Cliff Note Description: derived from Christianity but only loosely connected now, Quakers have no ministers, no songs or readings. We sit in silence for an hour, believe strongly in "that of god in everyone," in the power of silence, and are probably most well known for our political stance on nonviolence. Here's more.) Mitch agrees with all the basic Quaker philosophy but can't get on board with the quiet, and he uses Sunday mornings to work. (He's chasing tenure - sneaks in hours at the office whenever he can find them. Ugh ugh ugh.)

Mitch and I had no problem sending our kids to a preschool of a faith different than our own. We liked that it opened up the conversation with the kids about how different people believe different things, and Hebrew is a pretty cool language to learn.

The school wasn't a perfect fit, however - I posted about some of that here - and while Frances was there I started looking around. What I discovered was Waldorf education, about which I am known to rave endlessly but won't this minute. So Frances was only at the Jewish school one year. When she turned four she started at the Waldorf kindergarten.

** I guess I need to pause here for some Waldorf details, to catch you up in case you're unfamiliar. Really, this should point to another post where I wax on, but I don't have one already written, so what you get are random details to give you some sense of the landscape. In no particular order.

1. At the Waldorf kindergarten the kids make bread every Tuesday: grind the grain, kneed, grease pans, churn butter, chop apples for apple sauce. And that's what they have for snack that day. 
2. They spend a half an hour outside first thing, and then go out later for an hour and a half every day - rain, snow - and let me remind you that last year we had 120 inches of the latter. We parents just make sure the kids are in appropriate clothing.
3. There are chickens in the back yard. 
4. They don't play on playground equipment, but take walks to the woods, or to a nearby park that's hilly and good for sledding or rolling down hills. 
5. The children aren't allowed to wear characters on their clothes or lunch boxes or whatever. A generic cartoon princess is fine, but a Disney one is not. 
6. Frances is often returned to me covered in mud. 

I always assumed Clark would go to the Waldorf kindergarten, RiverNorth, as soon as he was old enough. But this year he wasn't, so he enjoyed himself very much at the Jewish preschool.

In addition to the kindergarten, this past year RiverNorth did an afternoon program once a week. The kindergarten ended at 12:30 and the afternoon program started at the same time and began with lunch the kids had brought from home. On those days Frances also stayed for lunch (There was no way she could have been a part of the afternoon program - that would have meant she would be there 8:30-4:30 and whoa that would have done her in.) When Clark and I came in to pick her up on those days he got to play some with the afternoon kids who were already done with their lunch. One day as we were getting ready to leave Clark asked if he could stay for the afternoon program. I knew a slot had opened up, and the question made me pause. He was now old enough for the program - had turned 4 a month earlier. I thought it might set him up well for school next year, get him used to the space, maybe a small feeling of ownership of it, and the transition in the fall would be smoother. It sounded like a good idea.

Well.

It was a good idea in theory. In practice it was a disaster. Afternoons in general are hard for him - he's just so tired. His allergies are terrible and I'm sure exhausting, plus he's in that stage where he really needs his nap, but if he has one he stays up til 10pm. After his first day he said he didn't like it. Among other things, he said he sat in the loft by himself and didn't play with anyone, which wasn't at all true; when I talked to the teacher she said he played the entire time, seemed completely engaged, was seeking out other kids, and they were seeking him out too. But clearly he felt lonely. I get that. He was walking into a social group that was already established, friendships already made. What was I thinking?

In any case, his three afternoons there left him with a bit of a bad taste in his mouth. And at the end of this school year Clark said outright that he didn't want to go to RiverNorth, that he doesn't like it there, that he wanted to stay at the Jewish preschool, that his (adorable, sweet) friends were important to him and that he likes it better there anyway.

For a couple of days I was all twisted around, thinking that maybe temperamentally the Jewish preschool is better for him, and wondering if the gain keeping his friendships outweighed my reasons for wanting him at RiverNorth. Besides, was I just trying to fit him into my view of what's important to me? Was I trying to make him someone he might not be? (And yet, let's not forget that he is FOUR. Who is to say who he will become?)

In my confusion I wondered if Waldorf early childhood education is geared a little more toward the strengths that are girls', that maybe he really wouldn't thrive in that atmosphere. I talked with the moms of the boys in Frances's school and I thought hard about the activities they do. Things like dying silk capes and finger knitting definitely lend themselves to Frances's temperament more than Clark's. But there's so much large muscle movement - big heavy wooden blocks that they use to build walls for their imaginative play, rocking boards, logs to heave and move, wheelbarrows and shovels and push brooms, and all the outdoor play, which around way up here in the snowbelt  means a lot of sledding and snowball throwing. He would love that. I have no question.

Then I tried to think about my role as a parent. What I came to is that what is important to me is not beside the point, but is perhaps exactly the point. My role is indeed to shape the glass through which my children view the world. To show them the world's Truth as best as I am able. The issue is not where he will be more comfortable, but what experiences do I want him to have, not just for enjoyment's sake or attachments's sake (though both have their place), but because each experience influences the person he is to become. Turns out it is my job to make those choices for him at this age.

Of course.

And THEN it dawned on me - all at once in a rather dramatic and comedic realization - that we're not Jewish. Oh right! In fact, we are Quaker, and the Waldorf approach jives completely with Quaker beliefs, with the core of what I believe to be True. Why would I not send him there? In addition, because Waldorf aligns itself so well with Quaker values, I can use Quaker language to talk to him about why I want him there. This is who we are as a family, as a people. It is my job to frame that for him. When he's grown, he's free to convert to Judiasm, but for now this will be the view out his window.

Whew.

I haven't wavered a bit since that moment of clarity. And now that I've got it straightened out within myself, Clark seems to be settling into it as well. Although I know his adjustment this fall may be hard, and he may not like it at first, coping with change is a good skill for kids to learn. He will be fine.

The blessing Clark learned at the Jewish preschool is in Hebrew, and is beautiful. But the one that Frances says at RiverNorth is

Earth who gives to us this food

Sun who makes it ripe and good

Dearest Earth, and Dearest Sun

by you we live

our loving thanks to you we give.

Blessings on the meal

This is who we are. This is the world I will offer to him. 

May Day celebrating

Yesterday was the Mayfaire. It's this big event put on by the Waldorf school my five year old daughter Frances goes to. The previous 2 years it was organized by the head teacher and one main other parent (on whose property it took place), and last year I signed on as general coordinator. I was a lovely affair. There were maypoles and ribbons and singing and dancing about them; musicians; games; face painting; a puppet play; a may king and queen; raffle; jump rope maker; potluck; a performance by Morris dancers; as well as rain and a gigantic puddle, which was the hit of the day. This year there was no rain and puddle. In fact, the weather was so amazing I almost wonder if that's why it came together so nicely. 

So this year: I volunteered to coordinate again since I'd done it before. However, it needed to be entirely parent-run if it was going to happen. I called a meeting of parents to see if there was enough interest to go forward, and two - TWO - people came. Thank the earth for them. We decided to cut back so it wouldn't be quite so much to do. Out went the raffle, the puppet play, the jump rope maker. The Morris dancers weren't available. In the end I could only find a queen (one of my younger babysitters), but she reigned quite well alone. 


Organizing this thing has been making me crazy. (and is one of the reasons I haven't been here on the blog at all.) I've been completely attached to my phone - fielding texts and emails and voice mails. As the coordinator, my main tasks were to bully and cajole and track down; to put out fires and grovel and wonder if I should cancel. This past Thursday the teacher - who was going to act as general MC and lead the singing and dancing - hobbled over to the doctor to be told she had a bronchitis PLUS a sinus infection PLUS an ear infection in BOTH ears. I almost hyperventilated. 


BUT! It was so wonderful! It all (somehow) just came together. YAY!


Today I woke up tired. I feel like I haven't slept in a week, which I have. I knew I was stressed about it, and I knew it was taking up a (very) large portion of my waking hours, but I didn't see the tiredness coming. Relief. I knew there'd be relief, and there certainly is. 


This is Frances's last year at the school, but Clark will start there in the fall, so (sort of) by default I'll be doing it again next year. Oh my. Hopefully I've got it down now. And hopefully I will believe that his can come together without so much damn stress.