I Miss Cigarettes

I know I’m not supposed to say it, much less want them, but I miss cigarettes. I miss the smell of them on my fingers, a cigarette with my morning coffee or after a big meal. As absolutely ridiculous as it sounds, I miss how they helped me to just sit down, take a minute, and breathe. Yes, I realize that all that breathing entailed inhaling carcinogens, that cigarettes are stupid and deadly and expensive, but they were for a time when the only person I was really responsible for was myself. If I did something dumb or dangerous, the only person I endangered was me.

Now, I’m conscious of changing my eating habits so my son doesn’t grow up craving the same kind of comfort foods I do, mac and cheese, ice cream, French bread with butter, high fat, high cholesterol, or sugar. What I feed him will shape his tastes, his cravings. What he watches me eat or drink gains admittance into his world whether I let him eat it or not. And the same goes for exercise. I don’t want him to grow up thinking it’s a chore, a means to lose weight because of above-mentioned comfort foods. I want it to be a fun part of his life: soccer, skiing, and walking so he can learn to work with a team (boy, do I wish I were better at that), get an adrenaline rush while being in nature, and have a method of relaxing  and taking care of his body that fits into his everyday life, that isn’t some add-on because it’s good for him.

Now, I wear my seat belt, only drive five or ten miles over the speed limit, and for a big thrill, I go out with a friend and maybe have two margaritas.  This is the definition of growing up, right? Putting the wild times behind us so that people don’t even know who we used to be or what we’ve done or gone through? What’s gotten me thinking about this is that I had three separate conversations with mamas last week, all of whom initiated the topic of who they’d been before motherhood. Every single one of them said they didn’t feel like they fit in with the other mamas because of what their pasts had been like. I commiserate a little. Mostly, I say that I think people, almost every one of us, has stories that, if shared, would be met with a chorus of me-too’s and “let-me-tell-you-about-the-time-I…”.

The reality for most of us is that this sane, conscientious, responsible role we’re playing now that we’re parents is not who we’ve always been, and isn’t exactly even who we are now. The shame of it is a bunch of people feeling lonely or like outsiders because no one’s talking about the past that formed them. They’re busy with potty-training and searching for pre-schools. As am I. But I’ll tell you when the diaper’s off and the poop comes rolling down the sweat pants leg and my toddler’s crying for me to “get it out,” you know what would really help some days? A cigarette break. A spur of the moment road trip with a carful of buddies who are also happy to blow off whatever they were supposed to do for the next few days. A mosh pit. I miss it. Some days, I miss that old life a lot.

How Was Halloween? Spooktacular!

Eeyore and Tigger have been waging a war in my brain since I was a teenager. Sometimes, the glass is not only half empty, it’s knocked over. So when I started thinking I had outsourced Halloween, I heard the low slow tones of Eeyore telling me it was all ruined and I should just go back to bed. But when you have a toddler, you can’t sleep 15 hours a day, so Eeyore gets reasoned with more often these days. Tigger gives him a pep talk. They hash it out. And if I’m in a pretty good frame of mind, the debate roars on and I can just watch it floating across my mind as I notice what’s actually happening in the present moment: my nearly-three year old asking for toast and tea for breakfast, the crunch of dried playdoh and rice under the coffee tale. A little bit of mindfulness and well I at least notice where we need to vacuum.

So I spent last week’s Stay-at-Home Monday cleaning the upstairs and the rest of the week cleaning downstairs. Just so you know, if you clean ahead of time, you can do random things on party day like finishing a landscaping project. I bought mulch, bagged compost and sand, and put most of the finishing touches on a garden expansion. I did not stress Cavanaugh out with any new vest fittings. Mike had his fantasy basketball draft and though he’d worked until 3 a.m., he left again at 10 in the morning, and didn’t get back till 3:30. If it had been one of our regular party days, I would have been bouncing around like Tigger trying to get things done, but our to do list was short. Bean in crock-pot, check. Rice in steamer, check. Spray the lawn with garlic mosquito repellant, check. I took a shower. I didn’t dress in a costume. I didn’t even feel bad about it.

Our friends began arriving with one delicious vegetarian dish after another, kids dressed as kittens, angels, and witches. They ran around the yard. Everyone got to eat and chat while the costumed toddlers roamed from playhouse to tool table, book shelf to plastic slide. No pressure. If there had been stress, it would have been because I made it all up. Cavanaugh had even fallen asleep at 6:30 on Friday after the party at his future preschool and a trip to Target for popcorn and caramels. He transferred from the car to the bed. When he woke up three hours later, he said, “I want attention from you.” I changed his diaper, put his pajamas on him, gave him a sip of water and he lay down and went back to sleep. When does that ever happen?

The second greatest part was letting myself off the hook. I didn’t even make the caramel red chile popcorn balls. I decided to take a shower instead. Cavanaugh wasn’t pressured to run all over town or keep himself entertained while I scrambled to get the party together. The small still voice in my head reminded me that the people coming over were friends and they didn’t care if I’d washed the tempera paint off the front porch or that I hadn’t hung the pumpkins Cavanaugh and Nena had painted. They just wanted good company and a place for all our kids to play.

And the greatest part? Trick-or-treating. Cavanaugh’s buddy Sebastian was also dressed as a fireman and they rode around the neighborhood in the cardboard box firetruck Cavanaugh made a few weeks ago. They shared with a ballerina, a dog, a ghost, and a tiger. A stream of fast little feet ran to the doors and soon learned that if the front porch light is off, no one’s bringing any candy.

Cavanaugh would get to the front door and keep standing there after he’d been given candy. He’d reach back in the bowl. He’d try to go into the house. He’d try for third helpings. I’d remind him each time that he could take the treat, say “Thank you” or “Happy Halloween” and go to the next house for more candy. Was he listening? No. Did I care? No.

The crew had dwindled by the time we got back to our house. But we had a small core contingent that came in to share their candy. Nathaniel repeatedly dipped his tootsie pop into his cup of water before taking the next lick. Freya spread her goodies all over the loveseat so she could see her take. Annika wanted Freya’s candy more than her own. And Cavanaugh? He ate candy until he started throwing it away himself. I used my friend Courtney’s policy and explained that candy was only for eating on Halloween so when he went to sleep all the candy was going away. He would unwrap a piece or have me unwrap it for him, take a nibble and try to feed it to me. When I said I didn’t want anymore, he’d throw the uneaten parts into the trash. He ate enough candy that he didn’t want anymore. He crawled up into my lap with his pink leopard and cuddled it while his friends got ready to go home. We went upstairs and brushed teeth and almost immediately fell asleep. No tummy aches or puking. No sugar rush and delirium.

All of it was better than I could have imagined. Especially while we were trick or treating. I just kept looking at this crowd of people, our friends and partners in parenting, and felt so lucky to have such a supportive community. It was heart-opening to watch the kids crowd together and try to reach the doorbells, delve into their plastic pumpkins for shiny bits of candy, and even trip then jump back up again to run to the next house because they were so caught up in this new fun thing. Halloween was definitely reclaimed at our house.

What was the highlight of your Halloween?

Outsourcing Halloween

Do you ever get so excited about something that your vision just about ruins the reality?

I got last minute inspiration for how to make a firefighter vest for Cavanaugh after debating whether to buy a $35 raincoat and have him dressed as a firefighter anytime the sky opened up. I did not like that option, nor any of the costumes we saw at thrift stores, Target, or online. We made a trip to Joanne Fabric for red, yellow, and black felt and big black buttons. I was feeling crafty and proud of myself for breaking through my Halloween-block.

The fabric store was hard. It followed too many errands and Cavanaugh was delirious, wanting to run the aisles and put his hands on everything. He was so excited to be getting his costume that he wasn’t listening to my options: you can walk next to me or I will have to carry you. He ran. I picked him up. He wriggled out of my arms. I finally grabbed the back of his collar because I couldn’t reach any other part of him. Not the best shopping trip ever.

So the next day, as I held the felt up against him to try to figure out how to make up a pattern and get everything attached while listening to my voices say I can’t even cut a straight line, I decided to plow through, make a practice vest if I needed to. I used the glue gun, figured out how to overlap the sides so I could add buttons. Cavanaugh’s nanny arrived and I showed her what we’d been doing. She started to baste the shoulders to make them tighter but I realized I didn’t want to share the project. I was excited to do it “all by myself,” as Cavanaugh would say.

When I sat down at my computer to print out coloring pages of pumpkins and bats, I glanced at my email and found a message from a friend I was supposed to meet for lunch two minutes before. Aaah! I called her and said I was on my way. I told Nena that Cavanaugh could go to the Halloween party at his future preschool in his hat, red shirt, and firefighter jeans and I’d finish the costume that night. I asked if they might like to cut out some orange construction paper into pumpkins. Then I ran out the door.

When I returned from lunch, she’d finished the vest. They had cut out pumpkins, painted stems, and drawn faces on them. I saw the “little ghosties” my friend Kira had made and Mike and Cavanaugh had hung up that morning and felt like I’d outsourced Halloween. Imagining looking at Halloween pictures of Cavanaugh years later in the vest costume his nanny had made, which didn’t look like I would have done it, I wanted to cry. Instead I took Cavanaugh to the Halloween party and considered making a second vest by myself.

On Saturday morning, as Mike and I talked about what needed to get done to prep for the party, I told him about the vest, the ghosts, my newfound determination to like Halloween and how everyone else was doing it instead of me. He said it sounded like I was snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. And I was. Instead of being grateful that I had so many people to help or that Cavanaugh had a costume and was super-excited, I was feeling sorry for myself, grieving my vision of being super Halloween mom. Friday afternoon, I might as well have been eating wet cigarettes in the dark, as our friend Genevieve used to say.

My husband’s perspective helped me realize I don’t have to have that old childhood reaction: it’s just messed up and there’s nothing I can do about it so I’ll feel depressed. Instead, I was grateful that the house was clean, the decorations and costumes were done. It meant I could use the day to finish a landscaping project rather than scrambling around all day with party prep. How was the party? Spooktacular. More on that tomorrow.

Do you find yourself having expectations that interfere with your being able to see the good things in front of you because they don’t look like you’d planned?

Reclaiming Halloween

Halloween has been my least favorite day of the year for about 20 years now, which is a shame because I loved it as a child. I lived in a small valley 20 miles outside of Taos, New Mexico that maybe had a population of 500. I knew everyone up and down my road. We trick-or-treated at each other’s houses, but that was just the precursor.

At the only crossroad in the valley, Eric Vom Dorp, who is over six feet tall, hunched in his long black witch’s dress, his pointy hat adding another foot or so to cackling crone. He had a huge cauldron of homemade apple cider, which we drank on the hayride to the community center. There we bobbed for apples, did cakewalks and walked through the haunted house, the highlights of which were “brains,” a bowl of cold spaghetti to run your fingers through, and “spiders” dangling things that tickled against my face and sent a shiver up my spine. After the community center, a bunch of us kids would go back to my house and eat our candy while we watched Halloween movies. We carried the tradition into high school, sitting in the dark and jumping as Freddy Krueger’s nightmares invaded our playroom. Truly, Halloween was about getting to hang out with a bunch of people I loved, getting sugared up, and looking up at a sky slathered with stars, reminding us how big the night was and what imaginary scary things were out there while we all huddled together, happy and safe.

Then I went to college and the first Halloween party I attended was a six-kegger or so full of wasted strangers in togas and terrifying masks. I suffocate in social anxiety at parties populated by people I don’t know. Not being able to tell who anyone was made it even worse. If I was convinced (read: strong-armed) into attending a Halloween party, I obsessed over the costume, feeling inept because I can barely figure out what to wear on a regular day and my costumes growing up were whatever plastic thing my mom could find at TG&Y or Piggly Wiggly.

Before I had Cavanaugh, I had gotten to the point where I would pretend I wasn’t home on Halloween. I’d lock the door, turn off all the lights, and watch TV on a low volume so no one would know I was home. Some kids would ring the bell anyway. I’d hear their hopeful voices on the stoop and feel guilty and lame and lonely.

Now I have a kid. He doesn’t really understand what Halloween is yet. But I want him to. I took him to a park party on the day of and borrowed his friend Aidan’s apron so he’d have something to wear. I topped it with a pumpkin hat my sister sent in the mail. Feeling the pressure to be festive, I donned an apron after Mike put his on too. That night we watched It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and trick-or-treated with our neighbors who also have small children. It was fine, but no memory maker. I was phoning it in.

Now, Cavanaugh’s starting to understand Halloween a little. I want it to be full of community and fun, not scary mean things or getting sick on candy. So when I walked the costume aisles at Target, I felt sad at the prospect of more store-bought holidays. I dreaded the end of this month and felt inept all over again because I hang out with a bunch of crafty mamas who can actually sew their kids’ costumes.

And then I started asking myself if this is it, if for the rest of my life Halloween will be automatically miserable, if I’m going to fake it for my son or pass on my loathing to him so he can hate it too. But I just can’t stand that. I’m not going to do it. Instead, we’re hosting a potluck party. I’m making Cavanaugh a homemade firefighter costume. And I’m debuting my red chile caramel popcorn balls. This is the year I’m reclaiming Halloween. I’ll let you know how it goes.

I’d love to hear about your own Halloween traditions from childhood and beyond. What do you do with your kids to make Halloween special? And how do you deal with the whole candy issue?

Learning How to Share

My son lay sobbing on the sun-room floor between our daybed and coffee table. If I tried to come near him, he kicked his feet and cried harder. His nanny was leaving and he didn’t want her to go. In fact, she had just told me moments before, “Your son won my heart today. He told me he loved me.”

Cavanaugh is nearly three. He has had a nanny six hours a week for the last three months. Besides the time he spends with his dad and the few months my mom lived in town and saw him a couple of afternoons a week, Cavanaugh is with me and has been with me pretty much all of the time for his entire life. So it was hard for me to watch him cry for someone else.

I’m excited he loves playing with her, loves her even. It helped that I’m reading A Secure Base: Parent-Child Attachment and Healthy Human Development by John Bowlby. I needed the reassurance that his ability to feel so attached to her comes because our relationship has provided such a secure base from which he can explore. But he didn’t even want me in the same room with him.

So I sat fifteen feet away on the living room couch and tried to figure out if it was better for me to face away from him and just sit there so he knew he wasn’t alone or look at him over the back of the couch so I would know when he was ready for me to hold and console him.

But I needed a little consolation myself. It took a lot for me to get to the point where I was even ready to have someone else take care of my child. The principle to provide consistent and loving care just seemed easier to manage if I was the one providing the care. Until I wasn’t being so consistently loving because I was getting burned out. Honestly, it took a while to get over my guilt at feeling so exhausted. But I’m human. I needed a break.

Then came the questions: How could we justify paying for a caretaker since I’m staying at home to be with him? How could we find someone who would honor his sensitive personality, be consistent with our parenting philosophy, and care for him–not just take care of him, but genuinely care about him?

As I worked out the logistics of finding another caretaker for him, whether to have someone in our house or take him elsewhere, if we should try a mother’s day out or a preschool, how large a group my introvert could handle and how to let him ease into a group and get used to another adult as a caretaker, I thought about how he would feel. I wondered about him learning how to share with other kids, or share his days with another caretaker, or share me so I could take some time for myself. I never imagined what it would feel like for me to have to learn how to share him.

The truth is he and I are both having to learn how to negotiate his having a nanny. We’re both experiencing growing pains and trying to learn what’s okay. When I walk out of my office to get to the kitchen or bathroom, Cavanaugh runs over from playing with Nena and pushes my bottom as he says, “Go back to work Mama” because he’s afraid I’m coming out to signal it is time for her to go home. Other times, he peeks his head in to see me and asks for a hug or finds some other reason to just see me for a minute, “Can I use the special marker Mama?” or “Nena and I are going to paint Mama.”

For my part, I have had to figure out how to spend my time, how to find a balance between needing a break and needing to be a productive human being with my own goals outside of motherhood. The first time he fell down and hurt himself while she was here, I went rushing in to comfort him and found him sitting in her embrace, the tears already waning.

We’re both having to learn new things and we’re both learning how to share. It’s hard work (except for the fingernail clipping. I’m happy to share that!).

I Want Some Attention

We’ve been working on a little something called, “I want some attention” at our house recently. In the zone between independent play and Mama-I’m-ready-for-you-to-drop-everything-else-and-only-be-with-me, Cavanaugh and I are apt to have some trouble.

Recent incidents include painting on the umbrella stand and daybed, putting crayons under the pillows in the bed, and dumping toys, instruments, art supplies, or whatever else is handy on the floor. The difficulty is that I’m not always in the room when any of this is happening. Cavanaugh will be happily building duplo block towers while I unload the dishwasher or carry the detritus that has gathered into a hazard up the stairs. Either an unlikely silence or much crashing has come to indicate that my presence is needed.

The first time I was aware this was happening (heavens knows how many it had occurred when it just hadn’t registered), I got out of the shower and heard no noise coming from downstairs. None. Here’s the thing about my son, he likes to chat. He narrates what he’s doing or talks to his toys as he plays: “Oh no, the tracks are falling apart. Percy crashed. Come to the rescue, Butch.”

When I walked downstairs, still damp and swathed in a towel because my mama senses had gone on high alert, I found ballpoint pen all over the couch. I reminded Cavanaugh that we only draw on paper. I asked “Why?” I took some deep breaths. But I know Cavanaugh knows he’s not supposed to draw on the furniture. He hadn’t forgotten. He had made a choice.

“I dinnen’t want you take a shower.”

So I ran through my options: yell, explain calmly why what he did was not okay, threaten to put all markers, crayons, pens, colored pencils, or any other marking device up so that he can’t play with them on his own, make him sit on the couch and think about what he had done. While I thought about which might actually be at all effective ad reminded myself that I believe in positive discipline rather than in punishment and fear tactics, I googled “ink stain removal couch.”

In my exasperated, totally not positive voice, I said, “Cavanaugh I need to be able to take a shower. If you want or need me, you can come upstairs and talk to me. We can sing a song. You can play with your cars. But you can not draw on the couch.”

Then it dawned on me that Cavanaugh was trying to get my attention. He didn’t want me to take a shower because he wanted to play with me. So I sat down on the floor where I could look him in the eye and asked him, “Cavanaugh were you trying to get my attention?”

He nodded and flopped into my lap in one motion. I so didn’t feel like cuddling. But that was exactly the point. He just needed me to slow down and be with him.

“Okay Cavanaugh, here’s the deal, we can’t play right now because we need to clean this pen off the couch. If you want my attention, do you know what you can do? You can say, ‘Mama I want some attention. If you draw on the couch, do you know what is going to get my attention? The couch is.”

So the couch got attention from both of us. (Hand sanitizer gel on microfiber works wonders, by the way.)

Though we’ve had a few repeats, for the most part they are de-escalating. Cavanaugh is intentionally doing something he knows will make me stop everything else, even if what I’m giving him next is my “mad voice” instead of some positive attention. I watched my high school students do this. I still do this, to my husband. When my blood sugar gets low or I’ve had a long mama day with no adult contact, rather than just saying, “I want some attention,” I’ll pick a fight.

Rather than the labyrinthine route most of us go through just to get a little notice, I’m working on teaching both of us how to straight up ask to get our needs met. My goal is as many ways to ask for positive attention as he can figure out methods to get the negative kind. I’ll list them below in case anyone in your house could use a little help with this too.

• “I want some attention.”
• “Can I have some cuddles?”
• “Be with me.”
• “I want to play with you.”
• “Carry me.” (Okay, I don’t actually use this one myself. But it works great when Cavanaugh says it.)

Our Failing Attempts at Toddler Dream Analysis

“There aren’t going to be any rollers again tonight, ” Cavanaugh said as he walked upstairs to get ready for bed.

Last night, he said, “I’m going to want to talk about the roller again” and the night before that, “There was a green roller by the fan. It came on the bed. There was a white garbage truck.”

Cavanaugh has been having nightmares since he was two months old, but this is the first dream he’s talked about. When his shaking body, fast breathing, and cries in the night started I read about sleep disturbances, trying to figure out what was happening to my son. Though it more closely fit the descriptions of nightmares than night terrors, no source I found even acknowledged that bad dreams could happen that early. Usually, I can just put my hand over his palpitating heart and his breathing slows. Occasionally he wakes up sobbing and needs to be held.

When he woke from this dream, he sat straight up and asked to go to “daddy’s bed,” the guest bedroom where Mike sleeps on nights he works late or on mornings he has to wake up super early. I misunderstood and thought he was asking for Mike to come sleep with us. We woke Mike up and he came in to bed and Cavanaugh fell immediately back to sleep, but the next night before bed, when he said we were going to have to go to daddy’s bed so the roller couldn’t get him, I started asking questions.

Cavanaugh explained the dream over and over, adding more emotional detail each time, his eyes getting wide, his arms waving around to show the roller moving across the bed. Apparently a green steamroller who doesn’t have any friends and is lonely tried to come up on the bed with Cavanaugh the other night. So did a garbage truck that is also not the roller’s friend. Cavanaugh’s prescription for the problem: “We need to find some machines that love him so he won’t be lonely anymore.”

Through many retellings, I still have not discovered what exactly the roller was trying to do to Cavanaugh: roll over him, be mad at him, sleep next to him, be Cavanaugh’s friend? And since Cavanaugh frequently talks about “all the people who love me,” especially since we put the memory board up in his room with pictures of “all the people who love you,” I don’t think this is some projection of himself.

For as long as he’s been having nightmares, he’s never been able to tell me about what happens in them. He hasn’t told me about the happy dreams either. Now that he’s telling me about this dream, I keep feeling like I’m not asking the right questions or saying the right things. This is not me being too hard on myself. I know that he’s benefiting from telling me about them so far, that his asking for reminders before bed the last three nights is a good thing. But I just keep having the feeling I’m missing something.

We’ve talked about how dreams are pictures in our heads and there is no real steamroller coming on the bed. I’ve suggested that he can say, “I don’t like that” in the dream, or “No.” We’ve discussed alternate endings in which a car carrier takes the steamroller to a place with other machines that will be his friends. The dream analysis unit in Psych 101 is not helping me here.  Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!

Do your kids have bad dreams? When they do, can you talk about them?

Read This: Playful Parenting

I’ve talked to quite a few parents who have never read a parenting book, or who read them and decided to stop because they said the advice of the experts got in the way of listening to their own intuition. I am not one of those parents. For one, my intuition (or interpretation of it) is informed by my own childhood, and I have absolutely no desire to parent the way I was parented. Secondly, for just about every job I’ve ever held, training has been necessary, whether through reading manuals, shadowing someone more experienced, or learning while on-the-job. Since I consider parenting to be the most important job I’ll ever have, I’m open to learning new approaches to it, theories about it, and tactics for doing it better. Third, I love to read. What all of this adds up to is that I’ve read a lot of parenting books.

Of all of them, Playful Parenting by Lawrence J. Cohen is my hands-down favorite. I just finished reading it for the second time and let’s just say many of the pages are dog-eared, especially the chapters “Accept Strong Feelings (Theirs and Yours)” and “Rethink the Way We Discipline.”

Playful Parenting offers a parenting approach I find tremendously valuable. It makes interactions with children more fun, fosters clearer communication and a stronger connection between parent and child, and offers an alternative discipline approach rather than the typical punitive or permissive models.

Cohen just understands kids, and his book combines strategies and examples in a way that teaches the reader how to be a more playful parent. I would recommend this book to all parents because the methods apply whether you have an infant or a teenager and are utilitarian in the sense that they will actually work in the real world: when you and your child are cranky at the end of the day, when you’re standing in line at the grocery store, when your nine year old says, “I’m bored” or your teenager is ditching school.

No more, “If you don’t do this, then I’m gonna…!” No more time-outs. Instead of power struggles, Cohen advocates connection. It’s well worth reading Playful Parenting to learn how to make and keep that connection even when your own cup is empty, even when your child is pushing you away. If you read no other parenting book, read this one.

View all my reviews.

I Don’t Play Like Daddy

I’ve heard and read claims that dads are more likely to rough-house with kids: wrestle, throw up in the air, and be generally more physical. That’s not true at our house. The difference between Cavanaugh playing with Mike or me is that I can not sit around for long periods unless I feel like we’re doing something.

Playing trains does not feel like doing something to me. The trains go around and around the track. I get bored quickly. If Cavanaugh and I make up some elaborate story about one of the trains picking up mail and delivering it to various other trains, my attention span lengthens a bit, so he may get ten minutes from me at the table instead of two before I start trying to multi-task.

Likewise, at the park or some other place where we might meet up with other parents and kids for a playgroup, I like for Cavanaugh to run up the ramps, slide, dig in the gravel loading his dump truck with his excavator. I’m happy to sit next to him or help him on playground equipment, if he needs it, but my preferred activity is to hang out and talk to the other moms. When Mike takes Cavanaugh to these places or even out into our yard, he is content to dig, climb, and otherwise play with Cavanaugh.

I don’t think I ever really played like this, not as a kid and not now. I’m trying to learn, but the truth is, I just don’t like it. In Playful Parenting, Lawrence Cohen writes about the messages we give our kids when we don’t want to play the games they like or when we say it’s boring (whether literally or by just checking out with our attention or physical presence).  Cohen’s advice throughout Playful Parenting has helped my parenting immensely. It helps me not get into so many power struggles, to change the dynamic with a silly voice, to elicit conversation, and to generally just be more present with my kid. I don’t think my parents were particularly playful either. They liked to read books just like I do.

I realized recently I buy toys for Cavanaugh as frequently for myself as for him. Wow, am I tried of building towers with duplo blocks; maybe we would like shape matching dominoes. Mostly, I just want to sit next to my kid and be with him, not thinking about something else, just looking him in the eye and being with him. I can do that while we do puzzles, paint, bake, or engage in other games or activities that lead somewhere and have an end.

My husband, on the other hand, went to the park with Cavanaugh today and just threw rocks into the puddle below the bridge. And grass too. Cavanaugh came home with mud all over him (something he gets with me when I’m gardening and have created a dirtscape for him nearby so he can play with trucks while I weed, plant or dig with a planned and productive end.  They’d drawn chalk roads on the bridge and sidewalk. Cavanaugh was thrilled. Mike had a good time too. I would have been miserable, looking for an excuse to come home and play something I liked.

Though I’m working on that, I’ve got to say, I’m so grateful Cavanaugh has his dad to do it differently. While you’re not likely to ever hear a tale of me spending an hour throwing things into a puddle, unless I was playing Pooh sticks and there was an elaborate story involved so I could stay engaged for that long, I realize it’s doubtful I would ever come home and find that Mike and Cavanaugh had cut sponges into shapes to paint with or made an egg hunt from origami birds, kid vitamins and Hello Kitty stickers. Thankfully, Cavanaugh has both of us, and his nanny to make boats with flags in them, and his gramma to draw buses on a dry erase table or sit in a sandbox and do “hard work.”

Maybe I’ve finally figured out that not everybody has to do it like me and I don’t have to do it all. What a relief. (You may need to remind me again later).

How do differently people in your child’s life play with him or her?

Motherhood is Making Me Brave

Do you find yourself doing things now that you’re a parent that you would never have done (or done with great difficulty) before having kids?

Last Thursday night, I realized that a healthy dose of social anxiety and a total fear of singing in anyone’s presence has melted (mostly) away since I had Cavanaugh. In my last couple of posts, I’ve mentioned going to a show by myself last week. The reason I keep thinking about it was that I really stepped out of my comfort zone to do it, especially because I knew the show was sold out and I might not even get in. What that meant was that I was going to have to arrive early — something I never do.

My memory from high school on is that I arrived everywhere at the very last minute. For a long time I thought I was a person that just ran late, but I’ve come to realize that it wasn’t my inability to leave on time; it was my fear of being early and having to hang out and try to figure out what to do with myself: read a book so I didn’t have to meet anyone in the eye, write (which I used to do at parties, concerts, or anywhere with a group of people–yep, I was the one in the corner with my notebook), make small talk, look like I was alone and didn’t have anyone to be there with me (as if being alone at the moment somehow equaled having no friends to be with ever). So having to be at this show early–a show I was going to by myself mind you–and then wait outside for as long as an hour with the possibility that they’d never call me in and I’d have to go home is something I never would have done before.

I felt the familiar pre-event fear starting to creep in a little bit and then my brain began its familiar churning of reasons not to go: I was running late, didn’t know what to wear, wouldn’t get in anyway, it cost $25, I would miss my husband while he was out of town and maybe should just stay home with him on his last night here, and on and on. I got in the car and drove. I didn’t have a lot of gas so began wondering if I should stop and get some, but what if that five minutes cost me the chance to get in? What if I didn’t stop and ran out of gas out on some back road?

My mind knew how to crank out the fear, but when I got to the venue (not having stopped for gas), I realized I wasn’t scared after all. I went to the doorpeople, gave them my name, and then sat down to look at trees. I’d brought a journal, a book to read, my iPod, and cell phone. I didn’t use them. I just sat there. As people walked by, I said hi while looking them in the eye. And once I got called in to the show, rather than taking my seat while everyone else roamed around and then eating myself up for not being brave enough to just mingle or wander, I checked stuff out. I ent into this cool tower upstairs and looked out at the Texas Hill Country. I walked down to the pool, into the library, over to the dessert table. At every location I made a little small talk with people. I wasn’t even forcing myself. All of a sudden, I realized I could just do this now. My brain thought I was scared before I got there because I always have been scared, but this time I wasn’t.

Then during the show, the singer asked the audience to join him for a chorus so it could go on the live recording. I was right near a hanging mic and a video camera so my voice was going to get picked up. My self-consciousness about my singing voice was so large that I didn’t sing to Cavanaugh for over a month after he was born because I couldn’t stand to hear myself, didn’t think he could stand to hear me. But I eventually just had to start singing. We needed stuff to do. I had a fingerplay and song book and to use it I actually had to sing out loud. In Gymboree class and now Music Together class, we sing as a group. My whole life when I’ve been somewhere that group singing was required (church, holiday events with carols, office parties), I have mouthed the words. Last week, just like every week in music class, I sang from my diaphragm loudly. And I realized I was no longer afraid.

I think parenting has given me this. For all of the challenges that come with parenting, my getting over the social anxiety and singing (and probably some fears I’m not yet aware of ) have come because when I’m with Cavanaugh who is sensitive and introverted and would rather stay at home with me than go out into a large group any day (unless there’s cake or bouncy castles), I need to model bravery. I just need to do it and not be scared. And he knows when I’m faking. So I just had to get over the fears. I didn’t know I was doing it at the time, but I’m so grateful parenting has given me this gift and that I’m being able to pass it along to my son.

Has parenting helped you overcome any of your own fears or otherwise helped you change your behavior?