Strive for Balance – Page 31

Worn Down

I thought that having a newborn was difficult. And it was. I had a very “disorganized” baby. As time has gone on we have brought order to our lives. Together we have found a rhythm of sorts and though the disorganization is still there it is organized disorganization, if that makes any sense. It makes sense to me. It’s our life.

I thought that having a middle aged baby things were easing a bit. Or maybe I just found a way to function on four hours of sleep a night. And then he decided to wean himself and I lost the comfort tool. It wasn’t an option. I wasn’t ready. He was. End of story.

Now I have a toddler. Wow. Today toddlerhood has blown me out of the water. Today I am tired even though I got seven hours of sleep last night. I feel like I have run a marathon and he even took a nap. My brain feels like oatmeal.

I tend to get frustrated with myself for feeling tired and many times feel like I am not “doing” enough. Because how is it possible that one small child can drain ever last ounce of, well, everything out of me?

Really even though I have a very active child that really is not the reason for any of this. I don’t think that it matters what personality of child that we have. They seem to have been fashioned just right to completely wear down their parental unit.

I never knew that I could function with so little energy. How about you?

Reflection on How Couplehood Changes with Kids

It’s 11 at night and I’m preparing for a rare evening with my husband. He’s coming home from a four-hour round trip to pick up a bale of hay for our goats and sheep, and called to say he was stopping to pick up a pizza. I’ve got one kid in bed and the other sleeping on the couch.

I almost don’t know what to do with myself. Do I dare say I’m a little nervous? Except for an occasional dinner out for a birthday or anniversary, my husband and I are surrounded by children every evening – for the past nearly four years. By the end of the evening, we flop into bed exhausted with at least one child sleeping in the middle.

I remember, before having kids, how my husband and I would curl up with one another at night. I would usually lay my head on his chest, and he would curve an arm around my shoulders, and we’d sleep snuggled together. Now, my arms are usually wrapped around a toddler who is separating me from my husband. Our bed seems to be divided into two; in fact, we each have our own sets of blankets now.
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Tell The Truth

On the evening the Opening Ceremonies for the Vancouver Winter Olympic games were to start, I bathed my kids early and got them into their pajamas, then all four of us settled on the couch with blankets and popcorn to watch the show.

I knew that an athlete from Georgia had been killed earlier in the day and I expected there to be a mention of the tragedy at some point in the broadcast, but I was not expecting the topic to be at the beginning of the coverage. Nor was I expecting NBC to show footage of the crash. Bob Costas did say that the images might be disturbing to some, but 5 seconds later, the crash was shown, and my 5 year old and 3 year old were right there on the couch, front and center.

My daughter was pretty oblivious, but when I glanced at my son, he looked stunned. He asked what happened, he asked about the fate of the athlete.
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To Potty Consistently

Potty training. I had no idea what I was getting myself into! We started our potty training adventure last week and are having moderate “success”. I actually hate using the word “success” when it comes to potty training because, like all of life learning, there isn’t really a success and failure. I say that because there are many things in life that are automatic to us. Keeping ourselves clean, teeth brushing, using the bathroom, dressing ourselves, etc. All of these things seem like no-brainer activities. But we all learned them from someone; none of these are automatic behaviors and it took us all time to learn them. These are not success or fail-based things, they are life elements.

Back to potty training. It has been an interesting week and a half, to say the least. I have a very spirited child. I often wondered what that meant when I read that phrase in books. I no longer wonder. I completely understand. I have one and I am pretty much positive there may be a picture of him in the parenting dictionary as an example of a spirited child. The important thing for the both of us is to be consistent. I could have easily given up a couple of times this past week just because I was tired , wanted a day off, wasn’t quite sure I had made the right decision or if this was the right timing. Somewhere in my mommy-self I know that I have made the right choice for us at this time. We are ready. And now it is up to me to remain consistent for my sake and for the sake of my child. Spirited children may seem like they do well with change because they are constantly moving and changing every day. The truth is that they deal less well with change than a not so spirited child. Since he was a baby he has not done well with new stimuli and it remains so today. Consistency is key for us.

I know that there are many things up ahead of me in parenting that I will have to remain patiently consistent with. We have passed some of these things and we have hundreds more to go. Potty training is just another one of those steps and we are ready. So today I will purposefully, lovingly and consistently move forward.

And I just have to make a note that we are well armed with Potty Power! Which my son absolutely loves.

Jasmine is a co-housing community living mama with a passion for fierce writing she blogs at www.herscreed.wordpress.com

Photo: The Library of Congress

Progression Not Regression

My son is in the middle of a regression. I don’t really know what sent him there but I am thinking it may be the combo effects of another little one being added to the community as well as the fact that he is interacting more and more with my 8 month old niece. Whatever it is that is creating this regression it is beginning to take its toll on mom! My (almost) 20 month old son is suddenly waking multiple times a night, he is whining throughout the day, he has serious separation anxiety, he hollers “MOMA!” every few minutes, he is not eating very well and has begun chewing on his clothes and fingers as well as babbling and sometimes screaming, using mostly baby noises that were no longer part of his every growing vocabulary.

So what has happened to my son? Is this regression or is this just a part of his progression? Now that I think about it labels like “regression” are all over the place, many times when a child acts out or does something out of his normal pattern it is called a regression. According to the dictionary the definition of regression is: “the reversion to a chronologically earlier or less adapted pattern of behavior and feeling.” Now I know for a fact that we are not going backwards in time, my son is never decreasing in intelligence and his feelings are only on the incline, his behavior even though it may seem to be moving to an earlier state is now just a way to communicate in the state that he is in now. Now the work really begins because as his mother I must now realize that my son is progressing to a new stage in his life and it is now necessary for us to both learn ways to deal with things in this new stage. According to the dictionary the definition of progress is: “growth or development; continuous improvement”

I am by no means saying that I have the answers because I still am not completely sure what to do with the fact that “MOMA!” gets hollered every few minutes in my home, that he hardly lets me move several feet from him and that I can’t seem to keep him from chewing on all his clothes right now or that he seems to think that his baby cousin is a pillow or that some days he seems to have completely forgotten how to communicate in any way that I can understand him. The first step for me is to realize that we are not regressing but progressing and that this is just a new stage with new challenges for us both to meet head on! We are both (like the definition states) “growing and developing; continuously improving.”

Jasmine is a co-housing community living mama with a passion for fierce writing she blogs.

Definitions from: www.dictionary.reference.com/browse/regression, www.dictionary.reference.com/browse/progressing

The Conscious Parent

Positive parenting is hard. Why? Because you must be a conscious parent, always. Constantly. All day long. Every minute of every day. Even in the fuzzy gray of those groggy mornings after a night of restless co-sleeping–even when it’s late in the afternoon following a whirling day of no naps and fussy teething–and yes–even when it’s smack dab in the middle of bedtime and you are ready to go to bed much much more than the little one that you are struggling to soothe to sleep. You must be a conscious parent–a calm, gentle, thinking, and strategical parent, even then.

Positive parenting takes work, effort, time, energy, but most of all it takes brain power–lots of it–when you have it the least to give. As our 14 month-old son begins blossoming into a pre-toddler–that neitherland between infanthood and official toddlerhood at the age of two–we are beginning to consciously think about how we are going to handle the challenging behaviors that we know he is bound to exhibit. As we prepare by talking to other parents, reading books and articles, and attending parenting groups, our philosophy on how we are going to navigate through the wily world of throwing, kicking, biting, and tantrums is beginning to take shape.

Hitting, spanking, time outs, raised voices, and bribing with rewards are all routes we know that we do not wish to take. We know that these methods can result in a humiliated, embarrassed, isolated, externally rewarded, and defeated child and will not lead to the kinds of positive outcomes we are ultimately seeking–a confident, internally motivated, emotionally balanced, and secure child and teenager. And we know that it all starts now. We know that creating a child-friendly environment in our home is much healthier than constantly policing a home that has many things that cannot be touched, or that teaching empathy and giving tools to express frustration and anger early can curb a tantrum before it starts. We know that explaining to him now why he cannot do something is much more effective than overusing the scold “no”. Even at such a young age, we know that he is ready to learn from us and that anything but gentle conscious parenting during these challenging times will perhaps train, but not teach, him.

But during the long and fatigued days that are sure to be ahead, we also know that falling back on easier methods of parenting are just plain, well, easier–you don’t have to plan and think and explain. Using negative directives like “no” or “stop it” or “don’t do that” instead of explaining why or offering choices and alternatives obviously takes less effort and brain power. But at what expense? It will be hard to remember, always, that we will need to offer him the best of us so that he can fulfill his utmost potential–whatever he deems that to be. But we must.

Yes, it’s darn difficult raising a human, but, heck, whoever said it would be easy? And, we want a good human–a really good human.

Joni is an attached mom of one. She blogs over at her mommy blog, mama :: milieu, as well as, at her food website for families with hungry children, Feeding Little Foodies.

Co-sleeping Outside the Family Bed

I love co-sleeping, and I have co-slept in one capacity or another with both of my children. There are few things sweeter than curling up to sleep with my toddler and sharing a good night’s rest. Co-sleeping has made breastfeeding easier, it has helped my babies to sleep better and it has meant that I don’t have to wake up as fully or as often.

In spite of my love of co-sleeping, I occasionally wonder whether co-sleeping loves me. There are the mornings that I wake up sore, contorted in some awkward position because that’s the only way my little one would sleep. There are the infrequent but jarring kicks to my head or fingers attempting to pry open my eyelid. And there is the amazing ability that my toddlers have both cultivated that allows them to take up 75% of a king sized mattress.

My daughter Hannah, napping in her parents’ bed

I am willing to sleep with my kids for as long as they need me, but with both of my children I found that at around 18 months the family bed stopped working so well. The space grew increasingly cramped, and our babies stopped sleeping as soundly. However, my little ones still needed me throughout the night for breastfeeding or just for comfort, and so we had to get creative.
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Child’s Hierarchy of Needs

Parents often find it overwhelming trying to meet their children’s needs. With limited time, limited resources, and limited patience meeting all of their needs can seem like an impossible task. If we can’t do it all, where should we begin? Where should we focus? What is most important?

Last year, Meagan Francis from The Happiest Mom developed a Mother’s Hierarchy of Needs based on the work of Abraham Maslow who developed Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. In simple terms (from businessballs.com, emphasis mine):

Each of us is motivated by needs. Our most basic needs are inborn, having evolved over tens of thousands of years. Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs helps to explain how these needs motivate us all. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs states that we must satisfy each need in turn, starting with the first, which deals with the most obvious needs for survival itself. Only when the lower order needs of physical and emotional well-being are satisfied are we concerned with the higher order needs of influence and personal development.

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