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Just One of Those Days

Posted on by Amy Pybus
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It was Wednesday. It started out with me melting down at my own kids, then one of them melting down, a melting down baby all morning, and a different one melting down all afternoon. It was not a pretty day.

I slogged through it the best I could, repeating the mantra: This is not my fault. Just get through it. (Then I realized how awesome that mantra is for much of parenting.)

I have always said childrens’ behavior is affected by the barometer, and meltdown-day was a perfect example of that. The weekend was crazy beautiful spring warm. Then we had two below-30-degree nights. On Wednesday rain clouds were coming, it got humid, and you could actually feel that air pressure growing.

Kids are like horses, forest animals, and Spiderman. They have these weird extra senses that make them act crazy for no apparent reason. Loud airplanes make them cry. A drop in air pressure makes them unbearable. A full moon – fuggedaboudit.

But the best part about a day like meltdown-day is, I know that really, it’s not my fault. I’m not doing anything wrong. In fact, I’m doing a lot of things right. I know which cries to let go, which to challenge, which to hug. I know who wins the toy in the tug-of-war (the boy who was being ganged up on by two girls) but I know to call said boy on his bad behavior a few minutes later when he hits someone.

What’s the best remedy for a day like this? Early nap. (But even then one sleeps for an hour, wakes up, and starts melting down.) Other remedies: patience. Distractions. New toys. Singing, music, and dancing. Sitting quietly and letting them each come to you in turn for attention and hugs. Chocolate.

A few years ago I would have beaten myself up relentlessly for a day like this. I would have felt like I was letting it happen, that somehow I had set the stage for everyone’s miserable mood. Or that all the hard work I’ve put in with these kids was just washed away. That I was failing to entertain them enough, to control their behavior, or just even do the basic job of child care.

Now I’m smarter. I know that when it gets bad, there’s pretty much nothing I can do except keep everybody safe. I know that every bad day ends, and on the next one everything will feel easier and better. You just have to get through the hard ones with the least amount of damage possible.

Thursday came, a new day, and it was beautiful. A perfect sunny spring day. We were outside all morning, everyone having a grand old time. In fact at one point I literally thought: “I am really good at this job.” Then had to laugh at myself, remembering the day before when I had the sneaking suspicion that I was unfit to care for children.

Protecting Our Children

Posted on by Amy Pybus
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For years I’ve wrestled with how protective I should be of my children. This has been a particularly bad news week for a mom who worries. When it feels like there’s terrible news everywhere I look, it’s usually time to take another news blackout. Or just continue to rely on Jon Stewart to sort it out for me.

But the question remains, how do you protect your children from random violence, and how do you explain it to them when they get old enough to understand?

The wonderful news of three women being released from their captivity in Ohio was nothing but a triumph. At the same time, I can’t stop wrestling with the chilling questions this event leaves in its wake. How many more are there? What happens to missing children? How well do we know our neighbors?

A new hero emerged from the publicity around this news. It was Elizabeth Smart, whose story I was transfixed by years ago, but I had thought faded into a much-deserved quiet life. No, in fact she’s out there advocating and has unbelievably brilliant things to say. I am still transfixed by her.

In this clip she describes a safety program for kids called radKIDS (Resisting Aggression Defensively). The program is not just for preventing abduction but also addresses bullying, molesting, and child abuse. Even if parents don’t want to think about this topic, I cannot imagine a better way to give our kids tools they need to defend themselves.

I knew one child care provider who did a safety training with her kids. She had them sit in a circle and – after warning her neighbors what she was up to – would grab each child and have them scream for their lives. I was torn about this practice. My first reaction was, how gruesome, and aren’t they scared? Her response was, “They should be.”

I hate it. I hate that we have to raise children in a world like this but it’s just reality. And here’s the interesting part. She said the kids loved it, and they felt empowered and happy when the training was over. Well, what kid doesn’t love the chance to scream as loud and long as they possibly can?

But the training made them feel like they had strength. And one of the things Elizabeth Smart said was that she’d never said no to an adult. We need to teach our kids that they damn well can say no to anyone, anytime.

One of my sons took a year of tae kwon do and gained immensely from it in a variety of ways. While I think it would help him if God forbid he was ever attacked, his learning was beyond the self-defense capabilities. It was about having strength and confidence in yourself, and that’s what our kids need in any situation, on a daily basis. (Especially in middle school.)

This is about turning fear into empowerment. For parents, it means we must stop being in denial and simply have direct conversations with our kids. It is said that we should take this talk as seriously, and have it as often, as we talk to our kids about sex and drugs. But at an even younger age. And we should not just give dire warnings of “Look out for bad people,” but instead ask, “What would you do in this situation?” And then, here’s what you do: flip out as if your life depended on it.

Ironically, at at time in their lives when people tend to be incredibly overprotective of children, I give the toddlers and preschoolers in my care immense freedom. Our climbers are really climbers – with kids not just using the steps but sitting on top of them yelling, “Mommy! Look at me!”

It makes everybody nervous but I say, let them explore while they still can. I think about the freedom my boys don’t get and the skills they may not be learning from being simply alone in the world and figuring it out.

I’ve bemoaned this with many parents over the years. We all spent hours alone, riding bikes or wandering in the woods, or running through the neighborhood with our crew, away from the prying eyes of our parents. This way of life doesn’t exist anymore and I worry about what my kids are missing out on.

At the same time, we do awesome things with them. We challenge them in different ways, be it soccer games or hikes where they can climb five stories up on rock walls. I have to come to a point where I realize that it’s OK to be as protective as I want to be. I’m done living with the stress of somehow failing to give them enough freedom.

In the end, every time I send them out the door, they will go with my prayers for their safety and blind hope and faith for the best. They will only be armed with whatever skills I’ve given them to be smart and protect themselves. This is one place where I cannot fail.

So What IS Discipline?

Posted on by Amy Pybus
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After my last piece about finding a balance in parenting styles I had several people ask, well how do you do it? How do you reach that magic place where your kids are behaving without having to beg, negotiate, or yell at them? How do you get kids to do what you want them to do?

In my mind, we’ve got it all wrong. Let’s look at the word discipline. Merriam Webster has this definition:

1: punishment
2 obsolete: instruction

And there you have it. Somewhere along the line, we twisted the idea of discipline from teaching to punishment. I’m not surprised. We’re pretty good at warping stuff here.

Dictionary.com has this definition:

discipline: activity, exercise, or a regimen that develops or improves a skill; training: A daily stint at the typewriter is excellent discipline for a writer.

Ha! Love that. It really said that. What’s a typewriter?

And finally, the Latin root for discipline is:

disciplina: teaching, learning. “Instruction given to a disciple,” from discipulus.

Have I made myself clear?

When parents begin to see themselves as teachers rather than disciplinarians, things are going to get a lot better for us.

Kids worship their parents (up to a certain age, of course). Your parents are the ones who tell you what’s right and wrong. They give you their outlook on life. They interpret what happens in the world and filter it for you. They make the rules and show you – with their actions – how to behave.

Now, if you had to be governed by your very own demi-god in your very own home, wouldn’t you want that god to be a benevolent one? One who understands how you feel and tolerates your mistakes? Who gets your whims and truly forgives your transgressions?

The behavior you want to see from your children is the behavior you should be teaching them. If you yell at your kids, are you shocked when you see them yelling? Really, that shocked? So it’s not only teaching, but demonstrating. Living. And you have to teach it over, and over, and over, and over, for years and years, until they get it. Practice and discipline.

Seriously. I’ve never said parenting was easy.

I can list off my cardinal rules for parenting, but unless you have the discipline to use them, it’s not going to work. (Bazinga!! See how I did that?)

So. Cardinal rules for parenting:

1. Remain calm. I cannot stress this enough. Kids throwing rocks in a pond want a big splash. They’ll find whatever makes you go splash and use it to their heart’s content. No splash – no rock thrown.

2. Don’t hold grudges. For God’s sake, have a fight and then be done with it. If you keep bringing up the lie he told when he was seven, how do you really think that’s gonna go over? Somehow that’s going to improve his future behavior? Let. It. Go.

3. Do not be moved by nagging, begging, whining, and all-around annoying behavior. Ignore it. Be moved by politeness and direct communication. Teach your kids how to be respectful by being respectful to them. Talk to them like they’re human. (Newsflash: they are.)

4. Reward the behavior you want to see. Constantly. Always. Whenever you see it. Don’t see them do something right and have that smug little I-told-you-so attitude about it. Celebrate it. Tell them how well they’re doing. How proud you are. This makes so much more of an impact than any other thing you will do as a parent. I swear. Even if they don’t respond, and just turn away like they didn’t hear it – they heard it. And they’ll do the same thing again within 24 hours, I guarantee.

5. Practice gratitude. We are lucky enough to live in a place where we have everything we need. Security. Freedom. Food. Shelter. Hot showers. Medical care. Protection by a virtual army of civil servants who are willing to rush to our aid at the drop of a hat. And yet, kids are outraged because they have to go to the store to buy the latest game release on DVD instead of downloading it instantly. Wow.

6. Have boundaries. Enforce them consistently, but not cruelly. This is where that whole “discipline” thing gets tricky. You don’t have to yell, intimidate, or punish your kids to get them to behave. Just mean what you say. If you say, “Don’t climb on the table,” and your child climbs on the table, remove them. Repeat steps one and two until they stop climbing on the table. After about seven or eight times they’ll get that you’re not gonna let them climb on the table.

7. Use logical consequences. We make this so complicated, but if you start practicing it, it will begin to be more obvious after a while. In fact, that’s the trick: go for the obvious consequence. When our kid breaks a window, he pays for it, and either helps fix it, or owes us time for how long it takes us (my husband swears that fixing a window is a one-man job). Taking away Xbox for a week doesn’t make sense. Did he break the Xbox?

And really, in so many situations, the true, natural consequence is simply having to make it right. Saying you’re sorry, that you regret what you did, or going back to someone you wronged and finding out how you can fix it.

We ground our kids and expect them to learn a lesson when so often the real lesson is humbling yourself enough to apologize to someone. Trust me – way scarier, more effective, and they will actually learn something that will benefit them throughout their life, instead of being pissed off and sulking around the house for a week with nothing to do.

They may even learn that being direct about what you did wrong, showing some remorse, and feeling someone else’s forgiveness is way better than carrying guilt around on your shoulders.

Coincidentally, this week I found out that the state of New Jersey does not allow its child care providers to use timeout. I mentioned this to one of my dads and he said, “Well of course, that’s because you just spank ‘em.”

I humbly disagree with the state of New Jersey. One of the hardest things about being a parent today is telling your child when they’re wrong. Because we’re never supposed to do that, we’re just supposed to “re-direct” them. But if you don’t address the problem, how is wandering away from it going to help?

Humans – especially small children – are quite full of natural arrogance. At the risk of sounding a bit militant, it is our job as parents to tamp that attitude down every once in a while. Yes, you are the light of my life and the most precious creature I’ve ever seen, but you’re also acting like a total ass right now. Let’s work on that.

But most importantly, to balance all this tamping and rule-setting and deep breathing and understanding, Cardinal Rule of Parenting #8: just laugh. Please, I beg you, make it fun. Don’t take it all so seriously. My husband and I allow our kids to be outrageous at home so they don’t have to try that particular skill out in public. And when we get going, our dinner table time is hilarious. We laugh so hard. These are the best moments of my life.

And PS – put down the screens. Right now. Go hang out with your kid.

Losing Our Grip

Posted on by Amy Pybus
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There’s nothing like taking a vacation to make you wonder about our parenting culture.

As we were laying in bed in our hotel room at 10:30 at night, listening to the patter of little feet run from left…to right…to left…to right…BAM jump off the bed! And left…to right, my husband looked at me and said, “Maybe we’re too hard on our kids. I guess we should just let them do whatever they want.”

I told him at least we aren’t as bad as the lady at the pool. When her son disappeared for thirty seconds, she suspected he stole a butterscotch from the bowl on the front desk. “Where did you go?!” she demanded. “Open your mouth! Stick out your tongue!” While he whined about “Maaaaaaa-ahm, I didn’t do anything! I just went through the other door!” she actually grabbed his cheeks and inspected his mouth. “You better not have gotten any candy!” “Maaaa-ahm, I DIDN’T get any CANDY!”

My sons, who had been joyously running between the cold pool and the hot tub, stopped in their tracks, came to sit with me, and said, “Isn’t it time to go?”

I said, “Yea. As long as we can stop for butterscotches on the way.”

I don’t know. Maybe she had her reasons. But it seems to me that the messsage parents hear today is that we should care more about what our children eat than how they behave.

I understand where this comes from. We all want what’s best for our kids but don’t know how to get it, so we over-parent. And over-parenting is, of course, the style du jour. We’ve bought the idea that they can grow in a warm bubble of nurturing and have the best childhood ever experienced by any person in the history of time. That we are so enlightened, we will make them be superhumanly awesome by being superhumanly awesome parents.

I wonder if you can actually pinpoint the moment bubbles burst.

Is it the first time your child stamps their foot and says, “NO!” Is it your first fight? First lie? First broken window?

I think we’ve forgotten that we’re only human, our kids are ONLY HUMAN, and we’re all just doing the best we can. We’re all going to get mad, make mistakes, tell a lie, make a bad choice, regret something we did and not know what to do.

I actually love it when my kids come to me with a problem and I can say, “I had the very same thing happen to me the other day. I felt really bad about it. What can we do to make it right?”

We need to stop seeing our children as “other” and treat them like ourselves. We have objectified them to the point of thinking they are either little robots we can control, or nether-beings of a higher order who should never be denied their heart’s wishes and desires.

How would you like to be treated? That’s how you should treat your kids.

At Storyland, Glen, NH

At Storyland, Glen, NH

As a culture, our expectations for perfection have become too high. We need to find a balance. We have to be able to say, “You need to do this because I’m your mother and I said so,” but also, “I think I handled that wrong. How can we work together to make it better next time?” 

Balance means making them eat vegetables but also giving them candy. Taking a hike, AND letting them play video games. Telling them when they’re wrong and giving consequences. But then making sure they know that we love them no matter what. Unconditionally.

For the rest of the vacation I pondered this never-ending question, the idea that maybe I’m not doing as good of a job of parenting as I could be. Which I spend a lot of my time doing. You hadn’t noticed?

One night we went out to dinner and sat next to a woman who seemed a little grumpy – I thought we were irritating her with our raunchy boy jokes and reminded them to keep it down (not to stop, of course).

At the end of the meal she put her hand on my shoulder and said, “I just want you to know…” (oh crap, here it comes), “how well-behaved your boys are. They are so polite and well-mannered, it’s lovely.”

Yes!!! Gold star for me!!!

Sorry. What I meant to say was how gratifying that was to hear, and how it made me feel not only proud, but relieved. It’s really ok – appreciated even – to require good behavior from our children. I whispered to the boys, “DID YOU HEAR WHAT SHE SAID?!” like I was SO excited and half-shocked. They smirked it away, but I know they felt as good as I did.

And that in itself is enough of a reward.

On Trying to Stop Time

Posted on by Amy Pybus
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The other day at school pickup a friend asked me if I was sad that my youngest would be done with elementary school next year. At the time I was pushing the buggy full of three kids, wrangling three walkers through the school parking lot (where cars fly in barely looking out for children who might actually be at the school), trying to greet my son and ask how his day was, and figuring out if our after-schooler had Girl Scouts or was with me.

I looked at my friend and said, “I can not WAIT for this to be over.” I’ve spent ten years carting my own kids plus any number of others back and forth to school. I’m more done than I could ever be.

So I’m patting myself on the back for not feeling sad about my little one growing up, when suddenly it hits me in ten other places.

On Saturday morning I was on my way out to drop the bi-annual dresser cleanout in the clothes donation box (it’s hard to keep up with a complete wardrobe change every six months) when I passed what’s left of the snow pile. It has melted to half its size, and that in itself is a sad moment. The sled runs have disappeared, and another winter has come and gone.

I thought about the snow pants in the donation bag and wondered if I’ll even need to buy the boys new ones next year. Will they still want to sled and build tunnels and have snowball fights? Or would they rather just lay around inside in their pajamas playing shoot-em-up video games?

Next stop was the bank, where the teller told me about his grownup daughters who don’t do Easter anymore. His young niece was coming over so he was happy about that, but he reminded me, “It goes by so fast.” I know that, dude. Don’t make me even more depressed.

Then while I was getting gas three boys came riding up on bikes. I always play the “in a few years” game – i.e. those are my kids in a few years. This trio could be Older, a friend, and Younger tagging along behind, roaming around town on their bikes and stopping for treats at the convenience store. My heart ached.

Pulling into the driveway back at home I noticed some eggs had blown off the tree that I decorated with the littles. Older can’t wait for me to take it down. I remembered we hadn’t even colored our Easter eggs yet, and the boys didn’t care or ask about it. Sadness.

But the worst came when we went to Grammy’s for Easter Sunday. Nothing makes you feel old like going home and seeing all the changes. My husband and I were both stricken at the sight of one of our early hangouts closed for good. It was a favorite diner, the perfect place for a bite after a long night, and a last few minutes together before we both had to go home. I loved this damn diner so much I actually wrote about it here once. Now – all gone.

Maybe we’ll drop what we’re doing, buy it, become restaurateurs, and change our lives entirely. Then again, neither of us has the faintest clue how to make spanakopita. And I’m far too busy with my cutting-edge physics project of trying to figure out how to slow the passage of time.