Provide Consistent & Loving Care – Page 23

Totin’

A story about standing in line at CVS, baby fingertip kisses, stranger germ phobia, infertility, and magic you can share with a stranger.

Totin’

I was just at CVS and an older man was behind me in line. I stopped to get some chocolate, specifically, Bliss chocolate Easter eggs.

“Do you want to go ahead of me?” I asked.

“No, I’m in no huree. I ain’t been in no hurree since I retired,” he purred out in a deep Southern drawl.

“Oh, alright. It’s nice not to be to be in a hurry,” I said back to him with a soft smile, warmed by the thought, I, too, am not in a hurry and have not been since I decided to stay home with Ben.

“Sure is. I just feel real old, since I turned 80.”

“Well, turning 80 is quite a something to be proud of, Sir.”

“I turned 81 last year, in fact.”

“If it makes ya feel any better, I feel old ever since I had a baby.”

I studied his red wrists and purple lined palms. His old age reminded me of my father, long gone, up on the roof of Heaven.

“Hello there little guy,” he chuckled, as he grinned and held out his finger. I tried not to cringe thinking of other mom friends who wear plastic circle signs on their purses that say, “Are your hands clean?” and ‘Love, Not Germs.” I could see the dirt under his yellowed finger nails, dewed with time and wrinkles, invisible like earthquakes holding decades of history. Those fingers are alright, I thought. I’ll let Ben decide if he wants to touch him. Ben smiled some more, showing all eight teeth and reached out with his ET pointer finger and fingertip kissed the old man’s yellowed, storied, wrinkled, finger.

It was kind of magical — in the moment’s lack of worry and judgment. Old and new, youth and wisdom, fresh unwrinkled skin and leathered, layered skin.
Continue reading “Totin’”

In a strange land…

Imagine you’ve just had done some dental implants in Chicago. Your deadened nerves make your mouth droop on one side. You’re drooling, but you don’t know you’re drooling because you can’t feel your face. Your tongue feels like it doesn’t quite fit in your mouth. For more tips, you can refer to this site.

And then, the phone rings. Someone’s calling about that job you’ve had your eye on, or the hard-to-reach medical billing department has just one more question to resolve the expensive mistake on your statement. You try to respond. You carefully coordinate your mouth muscles, but it’s useless. As much as you try to form words, they just don’t come out right. After a few tries, you start to sense frustration in the voice on the other end. The other person makes a snide comment before giving up and hanging up.

Imagine hiking in a new place, exploring as you go. You’ve just discovered the most fascinating artifact. You climb a few rocks to get a closer look. You’re able to reach it, touch it, marvel at it. Then suddenly, someone twice your size appears out of nowhere, pries it out of your fingers and hides it, for no apparent reason. He mumbles something in another language, and disappears.

Imagine dozing off after reading your child’s favorite book about giants. You start to dream about wandering around a strange, large world built for giants. The stairs come to your waist, you can barely peer over the dining table, and your drinking glass is the size and weight of a landscape planter. You spend your day trying to navigate this world, only to find that you’re constantly falling, running into things, breaking things, and spilling things.

Now, imagine these annoying obstacles are here to stay for a while. And imagine every time you make a mistake, a policeman pops out of nowhere, starts barking through a bullhorn and whacks you on the rear with a billy club.

Am I that far off from the way a young child experiences life?

The next time our frustration starts to peak, let’s try to remember how new, complicated, fascinating and big this world seems through the eyes of our little ones.

Quiet Time

When my four-year old and I were on a trip recently, he usually managed about ten minutes out with the family we were visiting, the mom, two kids, and two dogs eating and talking and walking around, before he’d say, “I need privacy.” He first learned the term when we were visiting my mom last summer. He wanted to be with her all the time, even when she was in the bathroom and had the door closed. So, not really thinking about how the concept of privacy would be further interpreted, I gave him the message that when the door was closed that meant he (or anybody) should give the person behind said door some time alone.

Fast forward nine months and my son is behind a closed door. Privacy is now his word for space. Though I was a little concerned that his buddy’s feelings would be hurt when he looked at her, said, “I want privacy” and closed the door in her face, I was happy that he had the words to ask for space when he needed it.

We worked on how to politely ask for it during the rest of our trip. It felt somehow in alignment with the other lesson we’re working on right now (one I and many adults need as much as our kids): we can decide what we want to do but we can’t decide what other people are going to do. So when Gilly would come to knock on the door and ask, “Do you want to play now Cavanaugh?” my son learned to say in his nice voice, “I still want some privacy.” We didn’t quite get to, “Thanks for asking. I’ll let you know when I’m ready” but he’s four, so that might be expecting a bit much.

Though the lesson in privacy came because Cavanaugh didn’t want to give my mom a second alone, now that she’s here visiting, he tried out the concept on my mom this morning. He didn’t ask for privacy or space. He just clung to me and said that we were playing LEGOs with instructions. He knows Gramma doesn’t do LEGO instructions, but buildw “out of her imagination” instead. Here was another way of saying, “I don’t want to play with you right now.” We were in the living room and there was no door to close, so he adapted. I was surprised at his request and impressed with his knowing he needed some alone time with Mama.

With our recent two-week trip to visit friends and now an eight-day visit from my mom, figuring out how much time with other people is something I need to do too. This morning after our LEGO session, I went upstairs to shower and be alone. Then I cleaned off the bathroom counter, made the bed, and put away some laundry. When I’m maxed out, I need to be alone in an orderly environment. I didn’t know that growing up. I didn’t understand privacy. We weren’t allowed to close doors unless we were changing clothes. Now, I understand that the closed door is a healthy boundary, as is asking for privacy or taking space and time when one needs (or wants) it.

Without realizing it, I passed that understanding on to my son. It’s one of those lessons that reminds me he watches what I do and say and learns from it–so I need to watch what I do and say too. In this case, I’m happy with the behavior I modeled and thrilled to see my son trying it on for size. It fits him quite nicely.

How have you taught your kids the concept of taking space when they need it? How was it taught to you?

Interview Series: Dave Taylor

We are continuing our interview series with API Contributing Bloggers with Dave Taylor of APparenting.com. Read on to hear more about his life as a single dad of 3, and his thoughts on parenting preteens and teenagers!

Tell us about your family.

I’m based in Boulder, Colorado and am a single Dad to three terrific kids: a 14yo daughter, 10yo son and 7yo daughter. They’re all very artistic and talented athletes too: the older girl is a star of her school volleyball team and my son is one of the leading players on his YMCA basketball team. In fact, his team made it to the championship just a few weeks ago, but, alas, ended up in second place.

What led you to Attachment Parenting?

I was definitely not raised in an attachment parenting household. In fact, my childhood is better characterized as an English “stiff-upper-lip” philosophy where I was left to my own devices from an early age and my parents were involved, but less and less as time went on.

When we had our first child, I was prepared to continue that same parenting philosophy when their Mom suggested that a more affectionate, more hands-on approach to child rearing would garner benefits for both them and us. Honestly, co-sleeping, slings instead of strollers and the like just felt natural and it’s a heck of a lot of fun to have that close a connection, that much proximity, to a wide-eyed new life. It’s all felt very natural and empowering.

How do you deal with friends/family/strangers who don’t understand or who disagree with AP practices?

I am blessed to be surrounded by family and friends who accept my parenting choices and are supportive of the children. We get an occasional confused comment about our sleeping arrangements (it’s not unheard of for my 10yo or even 14yo to grab a sleeping bag and bunk on the floor of my room on a stormy night). Even better, the school they’re in has many parents of a similar philosophical bent, so the child pushed into being independent at a very early age is the oddity, not the one who is still held, loved and nurtured by their parent.

I don’t really feel like I’m an evangelist for AP, but I will admit that there are times when I watch someone pushing a shrieking infant in a stroller and bite my tongue rather than say “y’know, if you just held them, they’d stop crying…”. Why? Because I don’t want people to judge my parenting choices so I extend the same respect to them. I can’t know why they choose to parent the way they do, so it’s better – in my opinion – not to get involved.

What does 2011 hold for your family? What goals do you have for your kids/ family in the coming year?

Goals? Our goal is always to attain as much peace and harmony in our lives as possible. It’s tough for them with two households, we try our best to minimize it, but it’s not as smooth as being in one house with two parents who get along well and enjoy each other’s company. But somehow we make it work, with a pinch of humor and a dash of silliness. At least, most of the time. 🙂

How has attachment parenting evolved as your kids get older? I don’t hear enough about parenting teenagers and preteens and would love your insight into the new challenges and opportunities that come with older kids.

I have to say that like many parenting approaches, I think AP is more suited for younger children, toddlers and babies, for children in the developmental phases where they seek to stay attached, not detach and explore their world. On the other hand, we all appreciate someone who can listen to us, respect us as individuals and give us a hug when things aren’t going well, so the core concepts underlying AP are still quite relevant for parenting adolescents. For me, it’s about listening, respect, and being straightforward with them. When we get into a tussle, I explain my perspective and do my best to then be quite and listen to theirs. We discuss solutions, come up with compromises that meet both our needs (as best we can) and go on our way together. It’s not always easy, but parenting isn’t easy. But it’s worth it. I will add this too: I think it’s critically important for parents to be their *parent*, not a child’s friend. That always influences my interaction with my children, but that also helps them know that they still have that great safety net as they learn to explore…

Thanks for your insights Dave! Please check out Dave’s Attachment Parenting Blog for more on his great kids and his journey as a single Dad.

Mother to All

“Becoming a mother makes you the mother of all children. From now on each wounded, abandoned, frightened child is yours. You live in the suffering mothers of every race and creed and weep with them. You long to comfort all who are desolate.” — Charlotte Gray

Since becoming a mother, the above quote rings true with me, and with lots of mothers I’m sure. I was a lot colder, unforgiving, proud, and stubborn as a person before becoming a mother. A crying child had almost no affect on me. Any mother, aside from my own, wasn’t interesting to me. I didn’t want to hear their problems, or screaming children, or the amount of long hours that they put into their day. Quite simply, I wasn’t interested because I didn’t understand them. I didn’t understand what it took to be a mom. And therefore, their trials and tribulations didn’t hold my attention.

I can pinpoint when not only my attitude towards mothers changed, but also when my compassion for a mother came to the forefront. It was when I found out I was going to become a mother myself. To say that my life changed when reading the pregnancy test would be an understatement. Seeing two lines on a stick meant that I was going to become someone’s world. Their ENTIRE world. I would be responsible for this person in every way. Every move I made would be analyzed by someone.

During the nine months of my pregnancy, I became instantly aware that I was much more emotional. I cared so much more for strangers’ children. I would see other moms out with their kids and if I witnessed a bruised knee, tears welled up in my eyes. The rush of these new emotions scared me, I’m not going to lie. If I was this emotional being pregnant, I couldn’t even imagine where my tears would gather once I delivered my child.

The day came, however, when I did deliver my son. I cried the whole day. This being my first pregnancy and delivery, you can imagine that I was scared…and that too is an understatement. I cried because I was scared, because I didn’t know what to expect, and because I knew there was no going back. This was it. I was about to deliver life. A life that I made from scratch. From his eyebrows to his toenails. I made a human being inside me. Amazing. I still can’t really believe I did it…or that it’s done daily by women everywhere. The whole “sperm and egg turn into a child” thing still baffles me.

Once I settled into the daily routine of being a mother, although it’s anything BUT routine, I noticed that I was still emotional about children, especially infants. They’re so utterly helpless and dependant on their caregiver, that anytime I heard about a child abuse story or an abandoned infant, it just about stopped me dead in my tracks. I cried, I said “how could anyone hurt a child”, it bothered me immensely and still does.

I have grown more compassionate to children and mothers. I now understand what a mother’s job is all about, how hard it is to be a mom, how grueling and, at the same time, rewarding the process is. I feel for moms and children everyday. My tears and I have become friends instead of strangers now because I am so emotional since becoming a mother.

What Charlotte Gray says in the above quote is 100% true. Once you become a mother to your own child, you are now a mother to everyone’s child. And until you experience motherhood firsthand, you will never be able to understand the bond that forges between a mother and child. It’s so intense and so unwavering, that to describe it as unbreakable is even an understatement.

It’s so much more than that. It’s spiritual, metaphysical, and down right otherworldly. There are no words to depict the love between a mother and child. To say there’s nothing in this world I wouldn’t do for my son doesn’t even begin to bring the statement to life. I would kill, lie, cheat, and steal for my son in any way that I needed to. I am a normal person in every day life, but make me have to flex my mothering and I, like all moms, become supernatural.

We can take on the world and anything that is thrown at us. We are the strongest and most important women in the world. We are mothers to every child. And I firmly believe that there is nothing in this world that can rise above that.

Please, share your comments and stories. Hearing what other parents have to say is empowering to all mothers.

Maintaining Attachment Parenting As They Grow & Become Big Siblings…

My 20-month-old daughter is very easy to parent. Okay, well, that’s not entirely true. She’s aptly-nicknamed “Aurora the Destroyer” for her desire to explore and investigate, and her physical and mental abilities to not only climb to higher places, but figure out how to position things to climb to even higher places. But her needs, those are still simple. In her universe, most problems are still limited to being hungry, tired, dry, or bored, and most solutions are limited to food, a diaper or a breast.

My son Rowan, on the other hand, will be 7 in April, and he’s the one I struggle with. As a toddler, he was less physically draining but much more emotional than his sister, and that’s carried on into childhood. To compound things, he is in first grade with a less-than-emotionally respectful teacher, he’s a big brother, and I work from home as well. And of course, with age comes much more complex problems, and naturally, more complex solutions. With his emotional tendencies also comes some emotional outbursts — from him and me.

Being an Attachment Parent to babies and toddlers is very simple, and logically, you’re setting the groundwork then for childhood and adolescence, but maintaining the same relationship gets tougher and tougher. As we know, you can never be perfect at parenting — as your child always grows and changes, your parenting does as well. With a toddler, a job, and an upcoming move, I often feel like my changes as a parent, my growth alongside his has fallen behind, and we’re butting heads and struggling more with maintaining positive discipline and respect, both towards him and from him.

However, every time I start thinking, “What have I done wrong? Did I break our relationship?” I also stop and think, “What am I DOING wrong?” Then, the basics become clear again. Regardless of age, some things still stand true:

1. You have to stop and listen to their needs. The more distanced you are from them, the more complicated figuring them out will be. Also, the bigger they are, the more aware they are of whether or not you’re really listening and caring. Sometimes you’re going to need to have someone remove the little sibling from the room or wait for a nap so your child can really know all the attention is on them, and only them. But of course, as long as you follow through, nothing is wrong with letting your child know you need to wait until ___ time, and then you’ll sit down and talk.

2. You have to accept that you aren’t always going to be perfect… and neither are they. Sometimes you’re going to suck. Sometimes you will be really distracted, concentrating hard on something, and will say something in a less-than-ideal manner… and chances are, your kid will respond in kind. A very important lesson for you to learn is that there’s no erasing mistakes, but there’s learning from them. In fact, almost as important as what you do the first time is how you handle things when you’re patching them up.

3. Remember the behavior is only a symptom. Just like with infants, you still need to remember that they did whatever they did, or didn’t do, for a reason, and that’s what you need to figure out. Getting down at their level, with a sympathetic face and tone, is very important, but so is respecting when they’re not ready to talk. Nothing irritated me more as a child than trying to walk away so I could calm down and being followed, which leads me to…

4. Respect their autonomy. Allowing children to have a space that’s theirs, and letting them have it as somewhere they can request to be alone is invaluable. If you’ve been respectful and open and available with your child, they’ll start becoming independent all on their own, and with that comes the request for certain autonomy, like being able to have a space of their own that a sibling can’t destroy. If Rowan is annoyed with Aurora, he knows his room is a place he can do things without her interference.

5. Try to make as much time just for them. This one is particularly difficult in my household as childcare isn’t readily available or desirable for us, but even just playing a game with my son while she’s napping or nursing can make all the difference.

Overall, the general mantra is: Be patient, be present and be respectful. Life can really start making things difficult, but the longer you let the distance grow, the worse things will get. Taking the time, even when you feel you don’t have it, so close that gap again is so, so important.

What do you feel is most important when dealing with older children?

Growing Up Kind

Recently I have run in to several circumstances where my son caught the brunt of another child’s anger. He was hit and he was scratched and yet when my son hit this child later he received discipline. Why? Why would I discipline my child when seemingly the other child “deserved” retribution and somewhere in there I wanted my son to “defend” himself.

It was as I was discussing this sticky parenting situation with my husband that I remembered that I was not raising the other child. The other child was not my responsibility. What is my responsibility is my child. I want my child to be kind. No matter what. I want my child to treat other people kindly even though other people may not be kind to him. The fact is that people are not going to be kind to him all of his life, but I don’t want him to be the person who lashes back in anger. I want him to be compassionate and I want him to think about his response.

So we talk. I am so glad that he is old enough now that we can discuss some things. We talk about being nice, about being kind, about not wanting to hurt other people and why. And then, as patiently as possible, I discipline my son every time he lashes out at a child because I want him to be kind.

AP on the Road

Rubyplane — Heading to Chicago, Summer 2010. (Flying as a lap child - enjoying a few minutes in an empty seat during boarding!)

My 22-month old daughter zooms around the living room like an airplane, making whooshing noises. “Mama!” she says, “Whoosh!”

“That’s right, honey, Mama’s getting on an airplane soon. But I’ll be back in two days, OK?”

“Uh-huh,” she smiles, and hugs my leg tight. She knows I’ll come home, and that I’ll miss her terribly while I’m gone – we’ve done this before.

I think there are sometimes misconceptions about how feasible attachment parenting is for working parents, or in my case, a working and traveling mama. But for my family, AP has been nothing short of essential to maintaining a strong relationship with my daughter and organizing our family’s priorities.

I work from home and travel in the U.S. and abroad to visit clients. In many ways it’s an ideal arrangement – when I’m not on the road, I can be at home with my daughter during the day, every day. But the travel… well, after Ruby was born, I dreaded the day I’d have to get back on the road.

My husband and I talked a lot about how we wanted to handle it. We ultimately felt that our daughter was too young to be away from me that first year. Nursing in particular was non-negotiable for us. I hated pumping (crazy respect for all of you who do!) and worried about my supply dipping during separations. My daughter never took a bottle (we never really tried), so in some ways that was our excuse to haul her along.

So haul we did. When Ruby was six months old, I started traveling again on a limited schedule. Bless his heart, since our daughter was born, my husband has used every minute of his hard-earned vacation to travel with Ruby and me on work trips. None of it was easy, and most of the time, it wasn’t even very fun.

“This is our priority right now,” we’d repeat to each other, when the packing, flying, hotel food, exhaustion and 1 a.m. hotel fire alarms (yes, this has happened more than once…) started to get to us. “Someday it will be different, but this is what we need to do for our family.”

At conferences and client meetings, I would race back and forth to our hotel room every two hours to nurse Ruby before my next event. I was stressed to the max trying simultaneously to be mama-me and professional-me. And though he loved the time with our daughter, trying to maintain sanity in tiny hotel rooms with a baby wasn’t exactly easy for my husband either.

But all the chaos has been worth it. Because we co-sleep, even at conferences and meetings where I hardly saw her during the day, at night my daughter would snuggle up against my side, tucking her fingers and toes under my body, and make up for not nursing during the day as much as she might have at home. Though I do work a full-time job requiring a fair amount of time away, I wasn’t away from my baby overnight until she was 18 months old. Our nursing relationship is STILL going strong as we close in on her second birthday.

I do travel without her most of the time now, though we try to go together if there are too many trips in close proximity to each other. She’s at an age where she mostly does better with keeping her routine and her surroundings at home, even though she misses nursing and misses me. I just pump for comfort while I’m away, because it doesn’t really matter if my supply dips. She still co-sleeps with my husband when I’m gone, which reinforces their bond and the centrality of his role in her life.

I am also appreciative that all our running around when she was tiny made my daughter a great traveler. She’s been to a dozen states and overseas. She is comfortable in new places. She loves flying. I think what she learned through all our mobility is that home is where the three of us are, not just in our house or our town. Home is the family bed and the comfort of nursing, wherever they might be located.

All this is to say that I am a firm believer in AP even for, and maybe especially for, working parents. While some see AP as a constant physical connection, what AP has helped us create is an unbreakable emotional bond that withstands even physical separations.

What about you? How important do you feel AP is to you as a working parent?