Letting Go of Control as a Mom

The Demas family had a bad morning getting out of the house the other day. Or, perhaps, it's more accurate to say I had a rough start. 

We were off to a family get-together and the stars were not aligning for a swift exit. Usually, my stellar time management skills make up for the added tasks that a child implies. Bad circumstances, along with poor strategic planning, made this trip different. 

First, Claire decided she absolutely, 100% needed mama's undivided attention. George and I usually attack getting ready by handing off our daughter to one another, like a baton in a relay race. On this day, Claire had other things in mind.

As did the weather, which decided to change seasons overnight. Dividing my attention between Claire and locating new clothes in the hinterlands of the closet was not part of my to-do list.

While working half-brained and one-handed, I thought I might have just entered a sadistic challenge devised for a competition reality show like Survivor (except that I had no chance of winning a million dollars for my multi-tasking efforts). 

What's more, I was shuttling between the bedroom and the kitchen to make the dish we had promised to bring (nothing like waiting 'til the last minute). In general, chopping, mixing, and stirring, while a child hangs on my apron strings, wears me out. Add a deadline to get out the door, and I feel I'm going to boil over like the pot on the stove.

I know what you're thinking: "Couldn't the free-handed husband cook and/or clothe the child?" 

To this query, my martyr self replies, "No. He would have ruined it."

I was actually pulling off most of the shitshow. It's part of my controlling nature, an illness, really -- trying to push myself beyond my own limits to see what I'm capable of doing. I end up feeling sickly proud of myself.

The flip-side of the coin is that I feel exhausted and resentful as well -- bad for me and bad for the people I love. I remind myself of Mussolini, actually. Yes, Mussolini kept the trains running on time...while losing track of humanity altogether.

Sure, we got to our destination like clockwork. My family got left behind, though, metaphorically speaking.

Children have a way of finding your Achilles heel. My obsession with productivity can make me forget that love exists in the doing. I lose faith that the result will follow. I need to remember to slow down, and take my eye off of the proverbial prize.

When I breathe, allow people to help, and let things be less than perfect, that's when the space for relationships opens. I find myself surprised that the present really is enough. Everything seems to start falling into place...or  it doesn't. That's just fine too.

Photo Source: Collins110, Fickr, this photo has been adapted and does not suggest the licenser endorses its uses or this blog.  License

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Welcome to The Sunday Parenting Party, hosted by Dirt and Boogers, Play Activities, Crayon Freckles, Taming the Goblin, The Golden Gleam, Prickly Mom, and The Tao of Poop. The SPP is place for readers to find ideas on nurturing, educating, and caring for children, as well as honest posts about the stresses of being a parent or caregiver. Links to reviews and giveaways are welcome as long as they are relevant to the topic. All parenting philosophies are welcome with one exception: please do not link to posts promoting physical discipline, as this is something we would feel uncomfortable having on our blogs. (P.S. By linking up you agree that your post and photos are Pinterest, Sulia, G+ and FB friendly. We will be showcasing ideas on The Sunday Parenting Party Pinterest board.)

Developing a Child's Sense of Self...or Celebrating Bed Head

You know how kids get so excited to show their stuff to people who come to visit? It’s like they're under the impression that their own tiny hands actually stitched the teddy bear together, or that they slowly chiseled their toy duck from a block of wood.

Indeed, the other day, Claire fancied herself the architect of her favorite playground, and needed to give her Uncle Tom a tour of her brainchild.

Uncle Tom happily agreed to check out her swings and slide. That was fine, except Claire looked more suited for an afternoon nap than for the playground. She was still wearing pajamas, and she had bed head: her hair was smushed to the back of her head in endless tangles.

I usually don't care how Claire looks. There are only so many toddler battles I can face in a day. Why fight her when she wants to keep on her bow pajamas? (I did let her go out with underwear on her head one time, though. The funny part was that no one even batted an eye. Remember: we live in NYC; people are thankfully non-plussed.)

But Uncle Tom and Claire decided a trip to the park was imminent. And Tom is a photographer. When he grabbed his camera before heading out the door, I looked at Claire and said to him, “You’re not going to put these on Facebook are you? I don’t want anyone knowing I let Claire go out this way.”

Ah, yes, my child as brilliant extension of me. Those time when I see my daughter’s looks or her behavior or her intelligence as a reflection on me.

It got me thinking about the boundary that begins developing between parent and child the second they leave the womb. And, consequently, how we grow a child's sense of self.

I read somewhere that the relationship between a parent and child is unique, because it’s the only one in which the purpose is to love and nurture enough to let the person go.

A good place to start the slow, sometimes painful, process of separation is letting my daughter choose what she wears.

But, sometimes, I'm more concerned about myself than Claire's sense of self. Like the days when we are going to go visit Grammy or taking a picture with Santa. Those days, I am full of bribes and threats to have my sweet innocent reflect her beauty back on me.

Other days, I let her be. She did go to the playground in all of her bedheaded, pajamaed glory. And I have a brilliant Uncle Tom photo to prove it. I barely even notice the pajamas in it. If I do say so myself, I couldn't ask for a better reflection on me...

Photo Source: Tom Bruso

There's more...Jane Marsh of Nothing by the Book got me thinking about this topic. She has a definite opinion about hair brushing that I can safely say would go in the "Celebrating Bed Head" category. What's your opinion about how a child should look? 

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Welcome to The Sunday Parenting Party, hosted by Dirt and Boogers, Play Activities, Crayon Freckles, Taming the Goblin, The Golden Gleam, Prickly Mom, and The Tao of Poop. The SPP is place for readers to find ideas on nurturing, educating, and caring for children, as well as honest posts about the stresses of being a parent or caregiver. Links to reviews and giveaways are welcome as long as they are relevant to the topic. All parenting philosophies are welcome with one exception: please do not link to posts promoting physical discipline, as this is something we would feel uncomfortable having on our blogs. (P.S. By linking up you agree that your post and photos are Pinterest, Sulia, G+ and FB friendly. We will be showcasing ideas on The Sunday Parenting Party Pinterest board.)

 

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Check out this week's fabulous features:

Cristi, Motherhood Unadorned, Mother Freakin' Funny (you'll laugh, oh boy, you'll laugh!)

Stephanie, Mommy is for Real, When Your Child is Anxious (such good advice!)

The Gaze of a Child

The sewing box is misleading in its compact squareness. The knobs on the top, like those on a picnic basket, lift outward to reveal three, winged tiers when opened. Small compartments within are meant to serve as a boundary between buttons of various shapes and sizes, shiny pins and spools of thread. Yet the tools of sewing have spilled into each other, the colorful disarray betraying a human touch.

Claire looks in and asks for a safety pin. I wager that the combination of nascent two-year-old fine-motor skills and my close eye will remove any threat of injury. I watch her rub it between her fingers, while I unwind brown thread and ready myself to stitch the back of the teddy bear that’s come loose at the seams from rough, toddler hands.

Claire watches me too. She wants the thread I've just cut. I give it to her, and start unraveling the spool again for the real work. I stop and look up at my daughter, though, the thread wrapped around my hand now. She licks the end of her piece and pretends to thread the safety pin.

I’m surprised.

Claire's so accurately mimicking me. I hadn’t realized that she’d been studying me so closely the few times I’ve sewn on a button or hand-stitched a hem.

But then I remember.

When I was a little kid, I thought everything my mother did was magical and mysterious. Really, my mother was magical and mysterious. In her hand, anything was capable of transformation -- just like the sewing box.

My mom could kiss my skinned knee and make it better. She could take the sphere of a smooth egg, and expose a runny inside with one swift tap of the wrist on a hard surface. She could untwist her hair from a roller to display a perfectly bouncing curl.

I don't remember watching anyone the way I watched my mom, like my daughter watches me now.

Cracking an egg, sewing on a button -- a mom’s humble, everyday toil. Some people might dismiss these tasks as "women's work". Others might overlook them as commonplace, domestic duties. Still others might value individual expression and personal achievement over life's daily chores.

In the eyes of a child, simple gestures make a mama. In turn, they grow a child.

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Linking up with Finish The Sentence Friday, "When I was a little kid, I thought..."

The Power of Family Rituals

Bedtime routines for American parents are all probably variations on a similar theme. The components -- pajamas, bathroom, books, stuffed animals, kisses and lights out -- are nightly
commonalities that all families share.

On the other hand, bedtime rituals are much more likely to be distinctly individual and uniquely yours.


Take my two year old, Claire, and me. We have a nightly ritual that I love to call our own. Indeed, she doesn't even share it with her father at bedtime.

I don’t know how our nightly ritual started or who started it….

We lie down together in the quiet time between day and night. Claire is all snug in her Dora PJ's with that freshly-washed baby shampoo smell. She looks at me wide-eyed and begins with the same expression each night, “Let’s talk about the day, mama!”

I always say back, “OK, would you like to go or should I?”

Sometimes, she details her favorite part of the day first; sometimes, she wants me to share; sometimes, she asks me to guess what hers is.

When I guess, I’m often wrong. To my surprise and delight, she doesn’t pick the piece of cake at Uncle Ben’s birthday (my kid loves cake even more than most kids, if that’s even possible to imagine). Instead, she says that her favorite thing was seeing Aunt Ana and JuJu (her cousin Julian).

I love that she picks people over cake. I love hearing her talk about her day -- even when I've been around for most of it.

Then, she asks me to share my favorite part of the day.

I want to say,  “Right here. Right now.” I want to say, “This time that we share is by far the best part of my day.”

I doubt she’d understand, so I usually pick something like “cake”, instead. Anyway, I’m not really sure whether it’s important what we say. What's important is that Claire and I do the same thing every night.

Our nightly ritual is about more than relaying the facts of the day. It's how we bring the day to a close, how we mark the transition from day to night. We stand outside of ourselves and outside of time. My daughter comes into focus, and I forget my silly circumstances -- the sink full of dishes and the bills waiting to be paid.

It's our time to reflect, Claire and me. We slow down. We stop and listen. We find each other in quiet, in-between moments.

A ritual has the power to sustain relationships across time. Its continuity affirms our loyalty to one another, despite the exigencies of the day. Our commitment to it, night after night or day after day, becomes something bigger than each of us.

Yes, the bedtime ritual that my daughter and I share is the best part of my day. Beats cake. Hands down.


Do you have rituals with your kids? When and how do they resonate in your life?

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Photo Source: Kain Kalju, Flickr, this photo has been changed, The licensor does not endorse this website or the use of this photo 
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Helping Kids Negotiate Their Own Relationships

“Don’t touch my butt, Mary Louise!” Claire says, as I hold her in my arms in solidarity.

“All I did was go like this,” Claire’s cousin says, patting her backside gently.

“I know, ML. You didn’t do anything wrong," I say. "Claire’s just telling you what she needs."

I’m completely down with helping my two year old advocate for herself in the face of her nine-year-old cousin. It's part of learning how to negotiate relationships in life. But it’s hard not to laugh at the content of the conversation. I haven’t taken butts so seriously since I was a kid myself.

But, today, I’m in the role of referee and spirit guide. It’s about the fifth time in an hour that Claire’s raced up from the downstairs playroom to scream bloody murder about some indignity that one of the two of her much older cousins has done to her.

A few times, Claire couldn’t keep up with them and they were too rough for her two-year-old tastes. Other times, Claire was doing something typically toddler, and the cousins decided she was completely wrong and needed to be strong-armed into reconsidering the error of her ways.

Let’s call it a mini-generation gap.

The adults sit in the living room, sipping wine. Each time Claire runs upstairs, her Grammy worries that she’s going to get pummeled and/or will have an existential crisis about not having anyone her own age to play with. Grammy wants someone to go downstairs and supervise.

I get it. It was much easier when Claire was a baby and social negotiations only happened between her and adults.

But navigating relationships is a lifelong occupation. Claire might as well get started learning social dynamics now. The reality is that I won't always be there to help her, so it's best that I teach her how to speak her mind when she needs to.

And she’s doing a great job so far, in my eyes. Today, the pupil did well, regards butts and such.

Plus, I’m happy to have a few moments sans child to converse with adults about things other than butts, while a couple of ersatz babysitters watch Claire. They might be a little rough around the edges, but, as the saying goes, “You get what you pay for.”

The bigger issue is that Claire's going to have a lifetime of being the much younger cousin. That’s her lot in life. There’s no way to predict the outcome – good or bad. Actually, it’s probably more likely that her relationship with her cousins will result in both good and bad.

Claire’s older cousins will probably push her in ways that will teach her resilience and make her stronger. Sometimes, they will just plain push her.

It’s hard to sit back, and wait to see whether Claire will blossom or falter in her relationships -- cousin or otherwise. But it’s part of that inevitable mom process of letting go. Just like I can’t predict what’s going to happen, I have a limited ability to control it too.

Hopefully, Claire will read this post one day when she’s older, and let me know how it all turned out. I anxiously await hearing about it. My fingers are crossed that her journey is filled with more blossoming than faltering. Only time will tell.

One thing's for sure...I will be here to celebrate the triumphs and to catch her when she falls.

I'll be here in case she needs to have more conversations about butts too.

Photo Source: Tups Wanders, Flickr This photo has been adapted and does not suggest that the licenser endorses me, its use or this blog. License

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Welcome to The Sunday Parenting Party, hosted by Dirt and Boogers, Play Activities, Crayon Freckles, Taming the Goblin, The Golden Gleam, Prickly Mom, and The Tao of Poop. The SPP is place for readers to find ideas on nurturing, educating, and caring for children, as well as honest posts about the stresses of being a parent or caregiver. Links to reviews and giveaways are welcome as long as they are relevant to the topic. All parenting philosophies are welcome with one exception: please do not link to posts promoting physical discipline, as this is something we would feel uncomfortable having on our blogs. (P.S. By linking up you agree that your post and photos are Pinterest, Sulia, G+ and FB friendly. We will be showcasing ideas on The Sunday Parenting Party Pinterest board.)

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Check out this week's SPP features from two of my faves,

Lanaya, Raising Reagan: It's Only My Fifth Outfit Today: Letting Go

Jen, My Skewed View: Wimpy Babysitters Need Not Apply