Monthly Archives: April 2011

Apr 28 2011

“Let’s Go!”

Today I found myself speed-walking to the car, my six-year-old son trailing behind me, saying to him over and over again, “Come on, come on, come on. We’re late.” I obeyed all speed limits, did not run any red lights, but by the time we got to my son’s school, he was a mess. He isn’t used to seeing me late for things, and he found my overall demeanor to be strange and upsetting. He didn’t want to get out of the car, and while sobbing, he asked me if I was okay. Not a proud parenting moment.

Prior to my daughter turning five, I had finally adjusted to being a parent to one child, and I thought we weren’t doing too badly; we had a routine, she could dress, feed, and play by herself. Then, a few months shy of her fifth birthday, my son was born. The first four months were blissfully happy—he was an easy baby, always laughing and he even started sleeping through the night by the time he was three months old. . . But then I had to go back to work. As it is for most mothers, to say it was a difficult adjustment would have been an understatement—it physically pained me to be away from him. It was made even worse by the fact that he would fall asleep for the night at 7:00—giving me less than an hour with him each day. As you can imagine, I quickly became a walking, sometimes crying, disaster. But, like anything in life, I adjusted.

When he was nearing the age of two, I was promoted. I suddenly had to start traveling for work, which increased my level of stress. Each evening, I found myself sprinting, in heels, to the car in order to not be late picking up the kids—especially my daughter whose after school program ended at 6:00—saying to myself like a mantra, “Please don’t let her be the last one, please don’t let her be the last one.” By the time I arrived at my son’s daycare (his was closer to my office), I was a disheveled mess—hair sticking to the sweat on my forehead, my shirt or blazer completely wrinkled, and more often-than-not, a run in my stockings. I would arrive in his room, spot him playing, and say “Hey, honey. Ok, let’s go. Let’s go. Let’s go,” as I opened my arms and repeatedly gestured for him to run to me so that we could still make it to his sister’s school before every other child had been picked up. Instead of him running to me with sheer happiness, as I thought he would, he would hug the legs of the daycare provider and start to cry. I would have to pry his fingers from around the woman’s body, and physically carry him out of the school crying. By this time, I would have been deeply upset that my son didn’t want me and my daughter would be beside herself waiting for me to get her.

Whether I made it to the school on time or not isn’t really the point—sometimes I made it, sometimes I didn’t. No matter what happened, it didn’t make things better—my evenings usually went downhill from there. I was always thinking, and usually stressing, about the next thing I had to do: the laundry to be washed, folded, and put away; the dinner that needed to be cooked; kids that needed to be fed, bathed, and put to bed—and didn’t want to; the house that needed cleaning. Just as my outside was in complete shambles, my mind was in an even worse state. Then, one day I arrived at the daycare—and rather than the usual frantic gestures—I walked over to my son, squatted down so I could look directly at him, and I smiled. And he smiled back. It was a revelation: the crying at pick-up wasn’t because he didn’t want me, he just didn’t want the stressed out crazy me. From then on, I wouldn’t run to the car, I wouldn’t stress about all the things I had to do, I would pick up my children with a smile on my face, and bring them home where they could spend time with a mom who loved them, and wanted to be with them. I stopped saying “Let’s go.”

My advice is for both of my children. Don’t rush through life always worrying about the next thing, and never treat it like it is a list of have to’s, but instead enjoy each moment, especially those you are fortunate enough to share with someone you love.

Apr 27 2011

Mean Girls

Yes, I am afraid of the time when my daughter finally becomes a teenager—that is true—but it goes way beyond that. I am afraid of teenage GIRLS, in general. The vision of my daughter being one sends chills down my spine, but more frightening than that is the idea of her being hurt by one. Teenage girls can be M-E-A-N—mean! I see them walking home from school, from the back, they all look the same—skinny jeans, Ugg boots, plaid shirts, and long hair—they look like clones. So, what if you stray from the accepted norm—will you be ostracized? rejected? tormented? Having a daughter, I want to shield her, protect her from girls who could possibly damage her self-esteem, and at the same time I want to be sure that she never, EVER turns into one of them—a mean girl. For this reason, I have attempted to help prepare her for the teen years in a couple of different ways (unfortunately, I won’t know if it worked for another six or seven years—so you’ll have to check back for an update then).

The first way was by having her embrace her individuality. Although I didn’t really have any other choice but to let my daughter be herself (she is too strong willed to have it be any other way), I have tried to influence her whenever I could. At the age of two, she decided that she would only wear dresses, and for me—a former tomboy—this came as a bit of a shock. It got worse from there, she only liked Disney Princesses, and once  she even asked for a Barbie—but that’s where I drew the line. My childhood was spent playing outside, digging holes, building forts, and wishing I were a boy because being a cowgirl wasn’t good enough. A dress-wearing, princess playing, girlie-girl was not what I imagined when I first had a daughter. So, you can imagine how my mind would jump ahead 15 years and see my daughter as a possible future mean girl. From then on, I nurtured anything I saw in her that went against the norm. If she wanted to wear a pink plaid skirt with a bright yellow polka-dotted sweater and blue socks, I would be happy that she wanted to create her own style, no matter how odd. I let her do her hair however she wanted—or not at all—it made no difference to me. As she’s gotten older, she has toned down the interesting clothing combinations, in favor of more traditional choices—like the pair of Uggs she begged for for about three years until I finally gave in—but she likes to have a little flair with what she wears—maybe some pins that describe her personality, suspenders worn with a pair of jeans, or a brightly-colored scarf. She doesn’t want to be like anyone else—she is not a follower—and she isn’t afraid to both standout and be herself. I don’t know if this alone will prevent her from becoming a “clone,” but I think it’s a good start.

I’ve also watched movies with her that focus on the kind of meanness that I most fear—like Mean Girls. The first time we watched it, she was probably five or six—I know, completely crazy—BUT she was so young that most of it went right over her head, so I took the opportunity to show her how mean girls behave. I wanted her to see what they looked like, how they acted, and to understand why others might be stupid enough to follow them. Even at such a young age, or maybe because of it, the movie made quite an impression on her. Over the next few weeks, she wanted to talk about it again and again, asking questions about why someone would want make others feel so bad. I loved watching her form her own opinion about how you should never act. Since then, I’ve tried to find ways to prepare her for being on the receiving end of this kind of meanness—explaining to her that meanness comes from a place of insecurity. My advice to my daughter is to be brave throughout life—especially when faced with people who want to tear her down, and to always be herself, even when others might ridicule her for it.

Apr 26 2011

Report Card Day

Today is Report Card Day. It is a day that requires capital letters, and it’s own place on the calendar—highlighted in yellow, maybe circled in purple. For my daughter, today is a good day. For me, it is a day that—as a girl—filled me with apprehension, and made my sisters and I find one another in school to share our anxiety and fears about going home. For my mother, it was a day to dread, one that she wished she could erase from the calendar. Yet, for my father, it was day to come home early from work, to have dinner with all of us together—he at the head of the table with my mother to the right, and all of us sitting around him, silently waiting for the moment that he called us back to the table one by one. He would start in birth order, so I was second in line. It’s not that he really yelled, he just stared at the report card, unable to speak for moments at a time until he would force out the words “Why a B in Science? What were you doing these last two months?” It was worse if the grade was anything below a B, then the overwhelming thoughts of “I am a failure,” “I will never do well,” “I’m just not smart” would set in, and tears would come to my eyes, but fear of further humiliation would stop them from rolling down my face. I don’t know what my father hoped for in the moment, the first time he saw that marking period’s grades, but inevitably each one of us always found a way to disappoint him. I know that this sounds dramatic, and possibly slightly overblown in its description, but this moment—sitting down with my father one-on-one on Report Card Day—was a defining moment in my life, in all of our lives. It was at those times that I felt that my father’s love and acceptance of me were tied to the number of A’s he saw on my report card, and I ultimately grew to believe that I would never be good enough.

When I became a parent, I was consumed by the fear that I would somehow inadvertently turn into my father on Report Card Day. I was haunted by the question: How do you set expectations for your children, and then on the day that their success is measured, not show your disappointment if they don’t do as well as you had hoped? Fortunately, my daughter didn’t start to get letter grades until 4th grade, so I had a few years to prepare myself. During that time, I did one fundamental thing differently than my father—I paid attention to her. It wasn’t difficult to do—I asked her about what she was learning, I knew it when there was something she didn’t understand and then worked on it with her, and I quizzed her to prepare for tests. So, when she finally got a report card with actual letter grades, I had a moment of clarity—I had found my answer. The report card held no surprises for me, I had seen every test, read every paper, checked each homework assignment, all while never making her feel that she couldn’t do it, never criticizing or losing patience. That first report card was really for me, as her parent, to show me how well I did (or didn’t do) supporting her throughout the school year. Now, I write “Report Card Day” on our calendar—ours in green—but it is  day to look forward to, a day to celebrate my daughter’s success . . . and maybe to celebrate a little of my own.

My advice to my daughter is something that I tell her all the time: There will always be things that are difficult to understand—subjects that might seem impossible to learn—so don’t be afraid to ask for help, and never let your own self-worth be equal to a number found on a report card.

Apr 24 2011

Spend time with me!

Sometimes I look at my daughter and I see the teenager she will someday be. It isn’t a clear picture—I have no idea what she’ll actually look like, and I have a very hard time picturing her taller than me—but I sometimes envision a teenage girl who will want nothing to do with me. My future daughter will find everything I say to be completely wrong, and she will spend all of her waking moments—when not in school—in her room talking to friends or on the computer. Life with my daughter as I know it will have come to an end, and she will no longer want me around. This is my fear, and something that I sadly believe will more than likely come to pass. Because of my absolute phobia of the teen years, I have sometimes taken a possibly odd tack when it comes to parenting her. It may sounds strange, but I tell her about my fears, not in a “please don’t do this to me” kind of way, but in more of a questioning sort of way, like “When you are older, are you going to make me walk 10 feet behind you at the mall?” She usually laughs at my questions, and I smile inside knowing that she finds the idea of it somehow difficult to imagine. Part of me is just trying to prepare myself for the inevitable, while the other part of me prays that by telling her how she’ll behave, she somehow won’t do it just to prove me wrong.

Up until my daughter was about ten—maybe a year ago or so,—I had a nighttime rule that the living room became a “child-free” zone at 8:oo pm. I didn’t mind it if the kids stayed up watching television in their rooms, but I desperately needed some time to myself—my husband didn’t get home from work until about 10:00 each night—and I would look forward to an hour or two without anyone asking me for anything. Even with that rule in place, there were many nights when my daughter desperately wanted to stay up with me, wanting to watch something that I would otherwise have DVR’d for us to see the next day. She would come into the living room and ask me if she could spend time with me. I was adamant about my “alone time,” so I would say no, and she would slowly drag herself back to her room. If either of the kids came out a second time, then the threats would start: “If you come out once more, tomorrow night you’ll be going to bed at 7:00!” It usually worked, and the rest of the evening would go by quietly.

I will be honest, I didn’t feel guilty about sending her away, I know that the quiet helped me regenerate my burned out body and mind for the next day’s work, and to prepare for life in general.

This is how life used to be.

One night, maybe a year ago, I was about to send her to bed when I looked at her—I mean really looked at her—she had changed so much. She was growing so fast, and it suddenly occurred to me that the teenager I feared was closer than I had realized. At that moment, what I wanted more than anything in the world was to hold onto her youth, her sweetness, and her desire to be with me. So, I have given up my time to myself in favor of watching television with her in the evenings, listening to her insightful commentaries, and laughing at her occasional interpretive dance to the songs in commercials. Each evening I am thankful that I have been given one more night with her in which she still wants to spend time with me.

My advice to my daughter is to recognize the times in her life that are fleeting—those moments that will eventually end—and to cherish them, enjoy them, and most of all to not be afraid of them coming to an end, as ultimately they will become a part of her.

Apr 22 2011

Patience?

I am not a patient person. I am one of those people who start pacing the floor five minutes before the person I am waiting for is actually late. I am neurotically early for everything. When I am reading a book in a series, I often go on Amazon to read the description of the next book just to find out what’s going to happen. I used to speed everywhere I went, that is until I got pulled over one too many times. This is why I was so surprised when my daughter was born, I seemed to have an endless supply of patience: I didn’t really need sleep; I could read the same book over and over again; I could sit for hours just watching her in her crib. I thought to myself, “I’ve got this—I’m a ‘natural’!” Then, my daughter turned about 15 months old, and started to show signs of a new personality, one we liked to call spirited, strong-willed, intense, . . . you see the trend? My sweet, somewhat docile, baby was now becoming a person I didn’t know how to handle. As the months went by, this side of her only intensified: she refused to eat foods she didn’t want, and subsequently lived mostly on milk; she learned to climb out of her crib and nothing we did could get her back in it; she would throw what I called “silent temper tantrums” in which she would fall on the floor—this could be at the daycare, the grocery store, our kitchen, just about anywhere—and not make a sound until she got what she wanted (it took me about a week to realize what was happening and to warn the daycare providers not to give in). I’ll be honest, I didn’t understand the concept of time out, and I was at a loss as to how to get her to do what I wanted. As she got a little older, once she could talk in full sentences, I thought it would get easier . . . but it didn’t. In fact, it may have gotten worse. Here is an example of a conversation with her:

Me [calmly]: Ayse, if you don’t let me brush your hair, we won’t go to the park.

Ayse: No brush hair! I want PARK!

Me [losing patience]: We aren’t going to the park unless I brush your hair.

Ayse [screaming]: No hair! PARK! PARK! PARK!

Me [freaking out]: Forget the park! Go to your room!!!!

Ayse [crying in the background]: I want PARK!!!!

I was stuck in a constant losing battle. I couldn’t fathom how a two-year-old—one who seemed rather intelligent—just couldn’t understand “if” clauses. I would think to myself, “I’m speaking clearly. She knows all of these words. Why doesn’t she understand me?!” It took me awhile to learn that children—until the age of maybe four or five—don’t really understand consequences. So, when I would use both the thing she wanted AND the thing she didn’t want in the same sentence, she would react to both. Unfortunately, knowing this fact didn’t actually help me, since I was still unable to get her to do what I wanted, but it did help me to understand her more. At some point during this period of frustration, I found an article about strong-willed children. Here is the gist of it: Parents shouldn’t try to “break” their children to their will; the same child who won’t give in to you is the same child that will also stand up to peer pressure. I took this advice to heart, although it has been a delicate balance between letting my daughter “win” and having her respect her father and I. The best way to describe the way I parent her since reading that article is to say that I choose my battles carefully—I don’t need to win all of them. She is now 11, and the same strong-willed child she first showed us back at 15 months, but we argue less (although, she still doesn’t like to clean her room, load the dishwasher, or pick up her clothes off the bathroom floor). My advice to her as she gets older is to keep being the same intense, strong-willed, and determined person that she is—it will serve her well in life—but to know that it’s okay to give in sometimes, the challenge is knowing when to do it.

Apr 20 2011

What Not to Do

Since becoming a parent, I have spent a lot of time analyzing my own upbringing to see what worked and what didn’t. There is no parenting book out there that could have been as beneficial to me as the time I spent reflecting on my own childhood. That being said, I had a happy, normal childhood. I am the second of four children—the middle girl—just before the only boy (an important distinction—but I’ll come back to this later). My mother, sometimes overwhelmed by the four of us, showed her love in many ways—by tucking us in each night, rubbing our backs as we watched TV, catering to all of our pickiness with food—we were the worst eaters—and by being there anytime we needed her. We lived in a nice neighborhood, with lots of other children. My childhood was like a movie from the early ‘80s, all of the neighborhood kids riding around on bikes with tassels on the handlebars, moms yelling from back doors to come home for dinner once the sun started to set, and children meeting up once it was dark outside to catch lightning bugs in empty bottles, trying to make lanterns. In so many ways, it was a perfect childhood. I don’t think people can really see the dysfunction of their own families unless something pivotal happens. For me, it was my father leaving. I wasn’t a child, in fact, I was a sophomore in college, so the effect on me was somewhat different from the affect it had on friends whose parents divorced when they were children. Because so much of who I was, was defined by how I saw my family, I had no choice but to look more closely—to see where the cracks started—to see what could bring about the end of my family as I knew it.

My father is an intelligent man—a lawyer, a former judge, the founder of multiple businesses—an all-around career-driven, successful person. As children, he spoiled us, wanting his children to have everything he didn’t have in his youth. He sent us to private schools, trying to give us the best education possible. His intent was for us to be four perfect representations of his success. Looking back, I don’t think his intentions were flawed—there is nothing wrong with wanting your children to be successful members of society—the problem was with his execution. There is no such thing as perfection, and to put that expectation on your children can only lead to failure. And as we failed to live up to his ideal, which we were destined to do, his faith in us—his belief in our ability to be successful—slowly diminished. It has taken me a lot of years (and I’ll admit, a lot of therapy) to realize, and eventually accept, that my own self-worth is not tied to the way my father saw me growing up. What I have learned since becoming a parent, is that I can have dreams for my children, I can believe that they will make the most of their lives, but in the end I have to see them as they truly are, and nurture them in a way that is unique to each of them. My advice to my daughter is to strive to know herself, to have dreams, and to work towards them with the full belief that they are hers to attain.