Homework sucks, but learning doesn’t

Homework sucks, but learning doesn’t

May 24, 2013 by · 2 Comments

Yesterday was a day of learning. The bummer thing about learning is it’s often preceded by a wave of insecurity. At least when it comes to parenting. Not for you? Okay me either, totes kidding.

I wish.

In the wake of the theatre production, we’ve found ourselves with extra time at home after school. It’s been sooooo nice. Five o’s. That’s a lot of nice. We take our time, snack before dinner, lollygag around the house, and eventually work in homework.

Just for the record, I’m not a fan of homework. It’s ghastly to expect children to sit through 7 hours of school every day and then bring that shit home with them too. Big projects? Okay, let’s tackle it at home. Mundane grammar exercises? Hell no.

Daniela’s become increasingly independent with homework, but she struggles with grammar. Lucky for her, I diagram sentences for kicks. There is something OCD about diagramming that really tickles my fancy. I have to be very careful that I’m helping her learn instead of just doing it for her. Yesterday she was instructed to (among 3 other PAGES of grammar homework) identify each word in a series of sentences. Subjects, verbs, predicate nominatives, direct objects, the works. Not her favorite — she finds grammar abhorrent — but she usually does well. Ten minutes later, not a pencil mark to be found on her paper.

I get it. We’re 2 weeks away from the end of the year. School is basically over. But we still preserver to the bloody end, right? Try our best and all? Nope. She’d thrown in the towel and stopped trying. I sat down to help her through it, but she dazed off while I explained. She slumped her shoulders and mumbled until I basically did the first two sentences for her. She wasn’t cooperating and I was getting frustrated, so I took a time out. For me. With a Peruvian chocolate, but that’s neither here nor there. I was feeling all “Why is this so hard?? What am I not saying to make her understand?? Why isn’t she getting this???” That’s when it hit me; I’m a mother loving WRITER and I don’t use this stuff! I craft sentences out of words EVERY DAY and yet no one asks me if my predicate adjective is modifying the right noun or whatever. I walked back into the living room with a smile on my face and looked her straight in the eye and said “Screw language. We’ll deal with it later. Let’s move on to Science.” She giggled and grabbed her science book. Science, she gets. Blows my mind.

Five minutes later I looked up from making dinner and her normally excellent posture was slumped once again. I walked over and saw the tears threatening to fall. I moved her science book aside, scooped up my growing baby girl, and we laid in my bed and talked about the day and some things she mentioned earlier that had bothered her at school. Her soul is sensitive and compassionate and so easily wounded. It was all just a little too much for her right then. I told her that sometimes, we just need to distract ourselves from the frustrations. Friend frustrations, homework frustrations, all around LIFE frustrations, and asked her how she would like to do that. She chose to read. I kissed her forehead and left her looking so small, yet so grown, reading in my bed while I made dinner.

I’ll be honest, I missed her while I was in the kitchen. I thought of some things I could have said differently, and wanted to go talk again, but something told me she needed her space. It was hard. Everything in me wanted to fix the problem for her, but I know she has to feel these emotions and find her way through them. She read alone for about 10 minutes then brought her book out to the kitchen and read while I cooked. It was perfect. She took the time she needed, and then she joined me. We didn’t have to talk, we just had to be together. Sharing space. I had texted Marco earlier and debriefed him on her day and that beautiful man came home with flowers. Just for Daniela. Baby girl felt so special and I fell more in love with both of them. The rest of the night was golden.

We learned whats important yesterday. It wasn’t homework — although the perfectionist in her asked to be woken early today to finish. And you know what? Today she was ready to try again. With a fresh perspective. And she did great. But the real lesson was in handling the homework, not in differentiating between parts of speech. My lesson was thinking it through before I reacted. I know there’ve been times when I pushed her to finish homework and we both walked away resentful and unhappy. I’m learning to focus on the bigger, more important lessons and in turn, that teaches Daniela to do the same.

Happy Friday. Do some learning this weekend!

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A Star Wars Birthday

A Star Wars Birthday

May 21, 2013 by · 4 Comments

Marco’s birthday was this past weekend, along with Daniela’s 4-performance theatre production of Mary Poppins, but we’ll get to that later in the week. I don’t know how 5 days held so many memories. We left Sunday for Orlando and spent the day at MGM. I think it’s called Hollywood Studios now, but whatever. To top things off, it was Star Wars weekend and incase you forgot how much my two love Star Wars, you can click that orange sentence and watch the video. They drank the kool aid and lived to tell about it. I have never been inducted into that particular obsession. I only know Chewbakka’s name because I made the mistake of asking who the hairy guy was. I could feel the judgement and eye rolls all around me.

Some things I learned this weekend:

1. While watching a dance off between Star Wars characters during Star Wars Week at Disney, do not put a child on your shoulders in an attempt to help her see better. You will be swiftly castigated by die hard Star Wars fans who really need a life. I made the mistake of ignoring the first verbal affront. The crowd ripped her from my shoulders and demanded my death by light saber. It was brutal.

2. There are way too many Yodas. It’s an epidemic. Survival of the fittest needs to do it’s thing.

3. There is no food that Disney can’t shape into a light saber.

4. Chicken nugget light sabers do not look like anything that should be eaten by children. Don’t ask why. Use your imagination.

5. Chewbakka can dance. Like, he’s got serious moves! See minute 17:57 of the video below.

6. Star Wars dance offs are weird. Weirder that Sunday night’s Mad Men episode. No lie, they all do gangnam style. And some KKK looking dudes dance to Thrift Shop.

7. Star Wars fans don’t recognize the awkwardness of all of the above.

Happy Birthday Marco. I love you more than Star Wars peeps love a Yoda costume sale. *Spoiler Alert* The bad guys win the dance off.

Yes, let’s get our children’s picture taken with the high tech Nazi suit. That right there is sure to be a winner. 

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Adoption: Supply and Demand

Adoption: Supply and Demand

May 15, 2013 by · Leave a Comment

Soooooo. Anyone else read this post on adoption ethics by Jen Hatmaker? It’s a doozy. Read it. It’s right here, or you can click on the picture below.

Jen writes a post about the ugly side of adoption. The unscrupulous ways business people in 3rd world countries are meeting the US’s demand for adoptable babies and why this is abhorrent. I was going to just link the article to Facebook, but more people need to see this. It breaks my heart, but knowledge is power. Power to think, power to change, and power to BE. I have scores of friends who’ve recently adopted children and I love them all tremendously. Their littles are entirely blessed to be in their forever families and I could never, for even a moment, consider that there was something shifty in their adoptions.  But I see where opportunistic people can create supply for money and it makes my heart so sad.

Tara is a (real life!) friend of mine who blogs at MommyHaha. She posted an essay a while back about her adopted daughter’s first steps and how many mixed emotions were coursing through her. She said something to the effect of how proud she was of her daughter, but how sad she was that her birth mom was missing all these moments. That stopped me in my tracks. I’d never given any thought to what birth moms were missing. For obvious reasons, adoption PR has always focused on the child’s new life. Not the family that was left behind or the circumstances behind it. Tara’s compassion and love for her daughter’s birth mom speaks volumes of her heart and I thought of her immediately when I read Jen’s post. I also thought about how much a post like Jen’s could hurt adoptive parents’ hearts. No one wants to think that the beautiful child they prayed for and loved and brought home could have a mama far away who mourns her decision or ignorance. It’s too terrible to dwell on for long.

And of course I want to stress that this is not always the case. Diligent parents do their homework when adopting and bring home kids without a chance of reunification. But it’s scary to think of the why behind “no reunification”. Do me a favor and read the post. Be informed. Hold space for those coerced or misinformed mamas, and absolutely watch for the second part of Jen’s post.

 

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I dropped the ball

May 14, 2013 by · 1 Comment

Life has been moving at a frenzied pace. There’s work to do and invoices to send and words to be written. It’s a beautiful cycle, but sometimes things get missed. It just takes one ball you’re juggling to go kattywompus and the whole slew of them crash down. I messed up the juggling balls today. Actually it was a while ago, I just didn’t realize it until today.

Kelle Hampton of Enjoying the Small Things recently released the paperback copy of her endearing and cheeky book Bloom. Over on her Instagram feed, there were requests for the book from mamas who couldn’t afford to splurge on themselves at the moment. Mamas doing without for their babies always tugs at my heart and I quickly arranged to send some books. I ordered them, I packaged them, I addressed them, I even printed shipping labels. All that was left to do was drop them off at the post office and they would be spirited away to 5 different mamas in 4 different countries. Pretty magical when you think about it. Spreading love and Light and stories across the world! That was over a month ago.

I found the packages in my car this weekend. [head hung in shame]

I’m not sure how it happened, but I dropped the ball and now I feel embarrassed. In the midst of life, I shuffled those books to the back of the car and promptly forgot about them. I think the worst part about the whole thing is having to email those mamas and explain why they haven’t received their books. Believe it not, I still haven’t done that. Because you see, in a moment of self preservation, I came up 1,001 stretches of the truth that I could use to invoke sympathy and understanding. It wouldn’t be lying exactly, it would just be explanations other than “I plumb forgot”. Save face, you know? Of course I’m not going to do that. wink wink. 

We’re all human and sometimes we just forget. We get too many things going, too many balls juggling mid air, and something is bound to fall. How we handle those moments says a lot about us though. Do we make up excuses and paint ourselves as the victim of circumstances? It’s tempting, I know. Or do we own up to our mistakes and take whats coming? I don’t expect any of these mamas are going to be too terribly angry with me. The consequences of this mishap is really just my own pride, but how we handle the small things sets a pattern that will be repeated with the big things. Incorporate grace, love, and honesty  into the small moments of your life and that’s what you’ll have to draw on during the big moments of life.

Be always honest, upfront, and gracious. It’s quite becoming.

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Dear Daniela On Mother’s Day

Dear Daniela On Mother’s Day

May 12, 2013 by · 2 Comments

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Love is All You Need?

Love is All You Need?

May 10, 2013 by · 2 Comments

I’ve seen this video pop up twice, and both times didn’t watch it because of the length. Then I was on Dan Pierce’s blog and he had posted it, citing my same reason for him almost not watching it. I gave a little laugh and decided to watch the first 5 minutes and go from there. I’m not really a video-watcher, so it’s hard to keep my attention. But this one did. It’s powerful. And I don’t use that work lightly. I sobbed.

Truth be told, I wanted to share it with you immediately, but then thought of a thousand reasons not to do so. In the end, I feel like it needs to be seen. Parents, watch alone before watching with your kids. You know your kids better than I, so I’m not even going to attempt a rating. I don’t know that I’ll watch it with Daniela. She has a beautifully sensitive soul and it would tear her apart. Maybe in a few years.

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Because I’m Procrastinating

Because I’m Procrastinating

May 9, 2013 by · 3 Comments

I am a procrastinator extraordinaire. I will do about anything other than what I really need to do. Case in point, I have this beautiful alone time tonight in which I planned on penning some thoughts that have been rattling around in my head. My writing time has all but disappeared lately and I went through great pains to carve out a few hours to myself tonight. Yet I can’t tear myself away from Pinterest long enough to write a decent sentence. I try, but then I can’t focus, so I run back to Pinterest for inspiration. Ha.

Instead, enjoy some humor. We all need more humor. Cheers to procrastination. May you always have tomorrow.

Via

Via

Via

Via

Via  Seriously, is this not the best ever?!

Happy Day Before Friday :)

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The Rest Can Fall Away

The Rest Can Fall Away

May 3, 2013 by · Leave a Comment

Last Tuesday Daniela and I went on a Mommy/Daughter Date. This doesn’t happen often during the week because of homework and theatre, but there was nothing scheduled after school, Marco was working late, and I didn’t want to make dinner. You would have thought I handed this girl a blank check. She was so ecstatic at the prospect of our date! 10 year old girls have a gift for showing enthusiasm and I was eating it up. I suggested she do some homework on the way to Barnes & Noble so we could at least get that out of the way, but she asked to do it later, saying “I just want to talk to you” awwww. heart melted.

We browsed our way through the bookstore and settled on a few books. (Obama’s Of Thee I Sing is fabulous. Our new favorite book, hands down. We’ve read it at least 5 times since!)

On our way to dinner, I handed her one of her new books because she usually spends the car ride reading after we leave the bookstore. She took the book, but continued to chat with me. We sat down at the pizza parlor, and I noticed she didn’t bring in her book. Normally when Daniela gets a new book, you can’t pry it out of her fingers. She reads in the car, she reads while waiting for the pizza, she is voracious. I asked if she wanted me to go get the book from the car and she said “Can we just talk? I’ve been craving just talking to you!”

My momma heart exploded with love and pride (and teensy bit of guilt!). After she went to bed that night, I thought long and hard about how my time with Daniela looks and it made me sad. After theatre gets out (anytime between 5 and 8 during peak practice) it’s rush home, rush dinner, rush homework, rush bedtime routine, rush sleep. I am more of a home manager these days than a momma and my baby feels that. Even at night when I lie down with her, I’ve been cutting the conversations short because it’s important to me that she be rested for her full days. We need a break from the rush. School is gearing up for finals and theatre is working hard toward their production, life at home must balance the chaos. It’s necessary and healthy.

This weekend is going to be my life break. Absolutely no work of any kind shall take place. No writing, no editing, no filing, no, no, no. This weekend (and maybe Monday too, if I can drag it out that long) will be for relaxation and family. I won’t stress about dinner; we’ll eat whatever is in the refrigerator. I won’t stress about cleaning; crumby floors never hurt anyone. I won’t even stress about missed bedtimes; she’ll survive with an hour less of sleep. I will make time for conversation and hugs and lots of cuddles. Remembering the important things this weekend. The rest can fall away.

>>>>>>>>>>>

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Step Parenting Conflicts

Step Parenting Conflicts

April 28, 2013 by · 2 Comments

One of the biggest issues facing stepparents is the complex decision of when to stand up and when to step away. It’s a classic flight or fight and because of it’s broad application, it’s best to set up some helpful tips now. Rarely do these situations give an advance warning so that we can plan our response, which leaves us with oft times disastrous knee-jerk reactions. Especially when it comes to the other parent.

I was faced with just such a circumstance recently and while I chose to step away, Marco felt that I should have spoken up. It was nothing major, and I still feel like I made the right decision, but with only seconds to make that decision, I thought it would be beneficial to walk you through the thought process of standing up vs stepping away.

4 questions to ask yourself when faced with a challenging parent-to-parent moment:

1. Must this be taken care of now?
Sometimes the best thing to do when in a confrontational situation is to give it time. By allowing yourself the luxury of walking away, you not only keep yourself from reacting to the other parent, you also model positive conflict resolution strategies for all involved. While there are always situations that must be taken care of immediately, I’d venture to say 95% of them would benefit from a little distance and time.

2. Are the children present?
This should be a no brainer for every parent in the history of parents, but children should not be a captive audience to their parents fight. That’s not to say every disagreement must take place in a private spot, but we all know the difference between the disagreements that will resolve themselves in a sentence or two and the ones that are likely to boil over into a major fight. True story:  Marco and I sometimes role play small arguments just so Daniela can see us work through them positively. We want her to experience positive conflict resolution by our example. This is good for within marriage, but I don’t recommend it between blended parents. It’s just too easy for it to get out of control in front of the kids. Keep disagreements between yourselves.

3. Do I feel criticized?
The natural response to criticism is defense. In an already tense situation, responding from a defensive position exasperates the other party and causes emotions to quickly escalate. Make every effort not to respond defensively, but gracefully. This is probably the hardest thing for me to do because I speak before I think, but ultimately this is the one that keeps me from saying things I later need to apologize for.

4. Is my response fair?
Sometimes it’s very easy to be critical of the other parent just because it’s the other parent. It’s a natural trap to fall into, and one I feel that society sets us up for, but be careful. Evaluate the situation as if the other parent were a casual acquaintance and see where the chips fall. When I looked at my own situation from that perspective, I saw how my knee-jerk response was just because I disagreed with a  parenting style and certainly was nothing I should confront. My first instinct was to step up, but I am so glad I stepped away (figuratively, not physically).

I am an outspoken person with lots of opinions to share, which can often be taken the wrong way. Stepparents, when it comes to the other parent, it’s usually best to keep unsolicited opinions to yourself. And parents, the same goes for your communication with your child’s stepparents. When in doubt, let grace rule your tongue. If you still feel like the subject needs to be addressed, send an email. A well thought out email without accusations or blame will often keep the peace that a verbal response would annihilate.  And for the love of all that’s good and holy, leave the children out of it!

I want Daniela to look back on her childhood and have no idea that I ever disagreed with her mom or stepdad in anyway. She can experience conflict resolution between her dad and me, but as far as I’m concerned her mom is off limits. Children should never be put in a position where they feel the need to defend a parent. As parents, it’s our job to make sure our blended family relationships only promote love and security in our child. Because love wins.

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Filed Under: Blended Families, Step Parenting Tagged With: , , ,

A College Story

April 23, 2013 by · 7 Comments

I want to tell you a story from my sophomore year of college. The freshman year stories are way better, obviously, but this one stuck with me instead of fading away as beer fueled stories tend to do.

I went to a very conservative Christian college. Think of the stuffiest church you’ve ever been to and add a college to it. Skirts below the knee, no open-toed shoes, and those gawdawful pantyhose. True story, first week of freshman year I took a pumice stone to the top of my foot until it bled horrendously just so I could get a note from the campus Dr excusing me from the pantyhose requirement. The note was only good for two weeks, but I strategically changed the date so many times that it lasted me the whole two years I was there. Naturally, I majored in debauchery and canny deception.

Anyway, each Spring semester, there would be a campus wide Spring Cleaning. Now, it’s not the type of spring cleaning that involves chemicals and scrubbing. This Spring Cleaning was more of a spiritual Spring Cleaning. More students were expelled during the first 2 or 3 weeks of the Spring Semester than any other. This house cleaning, so to speak, made it very easy to get expelled;  too many “bed not made” demerits, doodling a voluptuous fairy instead of taking notes during chapel, staying at Cordova Mall past 5pm, visiting a Blockbuster — all of these petty offenses resulted in friends being expelled from college. Somehow, I made it two years. It still amazes me. (And no, I wasn’t kicked out!)

The spring semester of my sophomore year, I sat in the lobby of my dorm waiting for a friend. A girl down the hall had been kicked out of college the day before for sneaking a kiss with her boyfriend and I saw her there in the lobby, in the middle of all her boxed up things, looking lost, alone, and scared. Naturally, I watched her and imagined myself in the same situation. Her face was puffy and her eyes were terribly bloodshot, the tear stains still on her cheeks. She was barely into her 5th month of college, and now she was expelled. The front desk clerk walked over and somberly said that her father had just checked in and would be around to pick her up shortly. The poor girl burst into fresh tears and buried her face in her hands. I felt sick for this girl and wanted to comfort her, but there were strict rules against talking to students in the process of expulsion. I dared not risk it.

Sure enough, a dark SUV pulled up in front of our building and a middle aged man got out. He looked road weary and anxious, squinting into the sun to make sure he was at the right place. He walked around the far side of the car and opened the back, preparing to load all his daughter’s things back into the car that took her to college just a few short months ago.

That Dad, saddened, frustrated, and probably a little angry with his daughter, walked into our building carrying flowers. Freaking flowers, people! He didn’t lecture or glare like I’d seen a lot of the parents in that situation do, he tenderly handed his daughter flowers and held her while she cried. I could hear him saying “I love you so much” as I walked out the door, swiping at my own tears.

I never saw that girl or her dad again, but I’ve always kept that story close to my heart and felt privileged for having witnessed such an intimate moment.

There are so many things to take away from this story, but no matter the situation in your life today, live your story with compassion and love. It will make more of a difference than you will ever know.

 

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