Tag Archives: stress

It’s All Downhill From Here

Posted on by Amy Pybus
2

Today was just hard. I jinxed myself. The boys were counting the days to Easter and I said “It’s Wednesday – hump day. Once you get over the hump it’s all downhill from there.”

I didn’t think about just how big the hump would be.

I woke up with a splitting headache – never a good way to start. The morning was so busy that I didn’t get the chance to down some ibuprofen until 10:00, and by then the tone had been set.

One girl followed me around all morning saying my name every 15 seconds, and if I didn’t answer she just increased her volume until she was yelling, almost demanding that I acknowledge her.

The big boy was mad that I wouldn’t let him go on the toddler swing so he started slamming it into the girls who were riding the big kid swings on either side of him.

The toddler is obsessed with the infant and every time I put him down she lays on him. If I pick him up, she follows me around saying “Carry! Carry!”

The baby threw up all over my shoulder while we were outside, so I couldn’t change my shirt (or answer the phone when my sister called because - how do you put the phone on your shoulder when it’s covered in puke?).

At one point three kids were screaming in the driveway because they all wanted THE DARK BLUE CHALK!!!!!

At lunch time I brought the bowls and drinks out before the mac & cheese was done, and started setting up the beds for nap time. When I came back in the girls were standing on chairs, scaling the toy shelf to reach the bowls they wanted. (I should point out that they know they are not supposed to climb on chairs. OR on the toy shelf. And that they fight over the bowls, and the spoons, and what chair they’re going to sit on, and who they sit next to, and where the chair should be located. Every day.)

I scolded them for climbing (which made one girl cry – oh great, now I’m making them cry), got them to sit down and served the food. The baby woke up and needed a bottle. I knew I put it somewhere….oh yes the toddler saw it and made off with it. While I went in quest of the bottle the kids were taking a bite of their food and then strolling around the house. Which they also are not allowed to do. I rubbed my aching head and could feel the vein pulsing in my temple.

Now as I sit here during quiet time with a perfect baby face in my lap cooing at me, I don’t remember why I was so mad. I am melted by the happy noise he makes when he sees me walk in the room. I’m consciously soaking up some baby-love and taking a few deep breaths, because I know I’m girding up for the rest of the afternoon.

And the girls are throwing toys in the NAP room, and I’m trapped under the sleeping baby. Thank goodness there are only 3.5 hours left to this hump.

**Addendum so you know I’m not a terrible person: yes, the moon was indeed almost full last night, as many people suspected. But today I woke up sick as a dog. That would explain it.**

Spying On Your Child Care Provider

Posted on by Amy Pybus
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Came across a disturbing search on my blog recently:

can i audio tape my childcare provider in her home

Seriously. Seriously?! Wow. I find that so offensive. Whether or not you can, you shouldn’t. Just don’t. It’s wrong on so many levels.

Having been a parent and worrying about what was happening to my child at day care, I understand the concern. But it’s nothing that a chat with my provider wouldn’t clear up. And invading someone’s privacy – someone who I trust to be almost a part of my family – is certainly not the solution I would come up with.

If you don’t trust your provider, leave. There are plenty of others out there.

If you don’t trust anyone that much, either stay home with your child or get a relative to watch them, because you will never be satisfied with someone else watching them.

If you think she’s doing something seriously wrong, drop in unannounced and see what’s happening. You are allowed to do that in most states, and your provider should have informed you of this. If you witness something awful, you have the right to call the state department she works for and they will come check on her. But don’t send in a nanny cam in a teddy bear!

Out of curiosity I had to look and find out what the law says about taping people. It’s illegal in my state, thank goodness. But the scary thing is it varies widely from state to state. You actually can record people without their knowledge in a lot of places. That’s unfortunate. Remember back when our right to privacy was something we actually valued? Now we get more upset about our right to guns.

The other thing I found out is that there are an amazing number of items out there for recording care providers. Ladies and gentlemen who do this job: beware. You may be like me and already feel paranoid all the time that someone is watching and judging you (when largely they are not, but then sometimes they are, at your worst moment).

And guess what? They really could be watching you at any time. Not just audio, but video recorders disguised as alarm clocks, lamps, thermostats, even boxes of tissues.

What a scary freakin world we live in.

I’ll admit that sometimes awful things happen in child care centers. But that doesn’t mean they’re all evil, and sadly that’s what happens in this field. Every time some jackass puts Benadryl in the kids’ milk we all pay the price. You know by your own instincts and by watching your child’s behavior whether something is really wrong.

Here’s a nice alternative to this situation: ask your provider what’s going on. A lot of things happen in child care that when reported by a 2- or 3-year-old can be construed in an ugly manner. And it’s important to know that the bigger your reaction, the more the child is going to say it.

If Jenny comes home from day care and says, “Joey hit me,” of course you’re going to be upset. But if mom and dad give her a lot of attention for it, and spend the rest of the evening talking about it, and processing it, and asking her over and over about it, and asking her every day if it happened again, Jenny’s gonna keep talking about it.

I joke about this because it’s exactly what I did. It was the first question out of my mouth every day when I picked up my son. “Did Joey hit you today?” What expectation was that setting up for him?

Of course be concerned, ask the provider, talk about how to respond. But don’t make it the focal point of your life.

And here’s the key: ask your child what the provider did when Joey hit her. If Joey got a timeout or the provider hugged your child or even talked to them about what was going on, she did what she should have.

Much of the time I don’t report all behavior to parents because I believe in addressing it in the moment and not tattling. The old “Just wait until your father comes home!!” doesn’t work because it takes the power out of my hands. The child feels like I can’t handle it alone, spends the whole day worrying, and mom and dad get hit with bad news about their kid the moment they walk in the door. If a problem persists, I’ll talk to the parents about it and ask how they deal with it, and ask what insight they have into their child’s behavior that could help me.

But if I’ve worked it out and given an appropriate consequence, there’s usually no reason for me to report it. So if a child goes home and says, “Johnny kicked me!” I would hope that the parent hearing this would trust that I handled the situation. When I talked to my provider about my son being hit, she helped me feel better.

Here’s the thing: kids hit. And it’s normal at this age. That doesn’t make it any nicer, but often they don’t know another way to get what they want. They can’t talk, and they can’t negotiate, and they can’t even tell the provider what they’re thinking. If she’s a good one, she can take one look at the situation and figure it out. And she will, like I do, spend most of her time teaching them better ways of behaving.

Keep in mind that a hit from a two-year-old is not going to do permanent damage. And sometimes, I know you don’t want to hear this but, your child may have been the instigator. That doesn’t make them bad! It makes them human. Normal, human, two-year-old children with all the faults and foibles that come with the territory.

And the sad reality is that as our kids grow older, there will always be someone out there who will hit, or tease, or taunt, or otherwise assault our kids. It’s up to us to teach them how to respond.

One of my moms was asking me a lot of questions about how her daughter behaves for me. It was mostly out of concern because she was afraid that her daughter was showing me some of the beautiful behaviors that she showed mom (i.e. tantrums, stubbornness, not listening, etc). I told her that her child is a doll. And yes, she does all those things. And that’s OK, because she’s TWO YEARS OLD.

She asked, but how do you handle it when she does that? What do you do to make her cooperate?

And we went through a bunch of scenarios and tools that I use that may become another post someday, but she ended the conversation with, “I wish I could be a fly on the wall at Amy’s House.”

Now THAT’S what I want to hear. What a great idea! To be able to disappear and see how her child is interacting without being a distraction, because as long as mom is around that child is thinking about mom and nothing else (and usually acting out because it’s transition time).

So if Mom was a fly on the wall, here’s what she would see. That her child can share toys and notice when someone else is upset and ask if they’re ok. That she has awesome imaginary games where all kinds of crazy things are happening in her world. That she can get into a screaming match with other kids over who is 2 (“No I’m 2!” “No, I’M 2!” “NO! I’M TWOOOOO!” Ad infinitum, I swear to you I’m not making it up. When one of them is really 3, by the way). That sometimes she is incredibly self-sufficient, and sometimes I have to beg for her cooperation. That she and her BF made up a game where “The LIONS!!! Lions are coming!!!” and they run away screaming with glee.

And if she wanted to see what I was doing, she would see a human being working with nine kids who sometimes loses it, not a super-powered angel of mercy who never has a moment of frustration. She would see me correcting behaviors all day, chasing kids around and making sure they’re safe, asking them five times to do something and occasionally on the sixth time having to speak a little more sternly. She would probably notice that when I raise my voice, it’s because someone is hurting someone else or is in a dangerous situation. And that the kids respond to me – and actually love me, I think – because I’m predictable and trustworthy. She would even hear me laughing at silly things the kids do or see me giving them kisses and hugs and cuddles.

My child care provider friend Karen has a great response any time someone doubts their provider. She says, “My advice to all parents is this: make unannounced visits to the place you choose for your child. I would be happy to have you find us making muffins, playing play dough, or doing the Hokey Pokey.” And once in a while, instead of asking who hit them, ask who they played with and what was their favorite part of the day. You may be pleasantly surprised.

Winter Break: A Providers-Eye View

Posted on by Amy Pybus
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Any provider knows school vacation weeks are extra challenging. In my case, it’s the usual number of little kids plus my two boys plus my after-schooler, and various friends dropping by here and there.

On top of an unusually warm and sick winter. Every child has had some illness, and I’ve had them all. So I’m at the end of my energy. Wait, maybe if we could use the amount of germs to convince people that global warming is a problem! You don’t want to be sick? Vote for wind power.

While I was making lunch…wait. While I was making lunches: one for the smaller kids, one modified for the after-schooler (Miss S) who didn’t like the first choice, one each for Older and Younger Son, who will never eat the same meal, one for the visiting friend who didn’t like any of the other choices, and one for me – I got tired of being pestered for seconds by Miss S. I said “You’ll have to wait. I’m making lunch for nine people here.”

She looked around herself at the day care table and said, “No, only five people.”

I said, “There are nine people in this house and they all have to eat.”

She counted all the kids again and said, “Oh, you mean eight.”

So that about sums up my feelings during a week like this. No, I don’t actually exist or have needs, I am simply here to meet yours.

The weather’s been mild enough to get outside a bit, but still cold enough to chase us back in after a few minutes. I can’t do a proper circle because Miss S wants to be me, my sons continue everything they’re doing regardless of my circle (i.e. Wii games, wrestling, and interrupting me to ask for second breakfasts), and I can’t really read or sing anyway because of my sore throat.

So in an effort to entertain all the kids I did one of our fairly easy but fun crafts – I Spy jars (old water bottles filled with rice and fun little things to find). While I gathered the supplies I opened the giant box of rice to let the kids play with it (this is an awesome tactile activity btw).

I can predict what happens with these projects as easily as I can predict that – well, that I’ll be sick in February. Every child is ecstatically thrilled with the rice for about four minutes. They are engaged and enthralled, freeing me up to gather all the fun little things that go in the jars. Then the giggles get louder and the rice starts flying around the room. Miss S is following me while I gather the supplies, asking 100 questions and starting the project without me by filling her bottle, which is still wet on the inside.

Mr. R, after tossing some rice, is done with the project and is banging on the glass French doors in the living room. After I bring him back to the project, he dumps what I’ve put in his bottle all over the middle of the table and everyone’s work. While I recover from this disaster, he heads over to the desk and starts touching my computer.

By the end of the activity, it’s been over an hour of impatience, pestering, fighting over who gets the kitty cat or the purple flower, and my “helpers” abandoning me. The morning is summed up when I look under the table and find the entire dumped-out box of pom poms which I left out of reach. I’m cleaning rice from every surface in the room and trying to re-sort all the pieces back into their homes while the kids are using their now-complete I Spy jars as weapons.

And Miss D is sobbing and screaming because when she wailed Younger Son in the back with her bottle, it split open and everything poured out.

Yippee!!!!!

Still, the jars came out awesome. And I look to next week with mixed feelings. I’m happy to know I’ll have my quiet time back without having to entertain big kids who don’t nap. And not having to drag everyone back and forth to school is heaven. But other than that, I’ll miss my boys. They were nice to have around, despite the trail of food wrappers and dirty clothes that they leave in their wake. They were considerate and helpful, and they’re at the point where I can yell out “Older – get Mr. R away from the French doors,” and – he’ll do it! That’s a miracle right there.

As always, the stress of the week is balanced with something nice, which happened Friday morning around the snack table. Everybody was getting wound up: our newest big sister is having a hard time adjusting to life with a baby. Someone touched someone else’s snack. Another was crying because no one would give her a chance to talk uninterrupted. I said, “I think everyone is just in a cranky mood today.”

Miss D looked at me and said, “That’s OK, because Amy’s here.”

My heart melted, as it always does when one of the littles looks me in the eye and gives me back some of that love. So maybe I do more than just meet everybody else’s needs after all. I am a calming presence. A leader who sets the tone. Or as Dave would say, “Yeah yeah everyone knows you’re a saint. What’s for dinner?”

To Liz, On Having her Second Baby

Posted on by Amy Pybus
11

Many families in my day care program have had babies over the years (and then I automatically get new customers!). But I didn’t have a blog then. So Liz, you’re the lucky one who gets to hear this lecture. I look forward to the arrival of your new baby with love and excitement! (And I know you can’t wait to get it the heck out.)

I remember expecting my Younger Son. I was thrilled and excited and so much more confident than I had been the first time around.

But I was also consumed with the thought that I was ruining his older brother’s life. Towards the end of the pregnancy my belly was so big that I could barely even hold him in my lap, and it killed me that I couldn’t give him the attention that he craved. That child who had been the center of my universe was going to have to adjust – big-time – and I thought he would hate me for it.

It was probably mother nature preparing us all for the baby who would be in my lap nursing for hours. And Older would have to cuddle next to me, instead of right on my lap. I knew the transition would be hard for him, but it was hard for everybody.

Well, when is having a baby NOT hard?

And when the baby was done nursing and tucked away in his bouncy seat, Older could have me all he wanted. Life would go on, and we would find new ways to enjoy each other’s company.

The best thing I heard while expecting Younger was that when you have your second child, “the hardest part is giving yourself over to parenting.” I thought, what have I been doing for the past three years of spending 24/7 at the beck and call of this child? Was that not giving myself over? Was that not going to be ENOUGH?

But if you have two babies, you might as well have ten, because that’s how big the difference is (I’m sorry to put that so bluntly – don’t be afraid). There is never a time when you are not needed by someone. The laundry and dishes multiply tenfold. It’s much harder to enjoy a quiet naptime (because even if your first is young enough to still nap, they’ll never do it at the same time). Even sneaking away for a few hours gets more difficult. Plenty of friends are willing to hang out with your one child. But a toddler and a baby? Not so much.

There’s the fear – as long as the baby was in my belly I knew he was safe. But as soon as he was out, and I was saddled with him in a car seat or stroller or nursing, and my toddler went running off into the woods, what would I do? How would I keep both of them safe? Just keeping one alive was hard and stressful enough.

Then I had the thoughts of, will it be my last baby? My day care provider at the time had two boys, it’s all she wanted, she was done and happy and so sure of herself. I was jealous of her confidence and always torn about making a commitment to another child. Then Younger got to be about three years old and I said yeah – that ship has sailed. But you’ll know when you know, it’s as simple as that. If times were different I’d have five kids, but this is what my lifestyle fits. And I am more than blessed and eternally grateful to have two fabulous, healthy, kind, caring boys who were meant just for me.

In fact just the other night I had a dream that I was nursing a baby and I woke up with a shudder. I told Dave and he said, “That’s disgusting.” (We’re joking, Leche League.)

Oh, and some good practical advice is to try to minimize how much the baby needs you when your older child does too. Of course that sounds impossible but you don’t want to bring home this squirmy, loud, smelly thing who’s getting all the love and attention while your older child mopes, and then to top it off keep reminding them that they can’t have you anymore because now you belong to the baby.

The best trick I found for doing that is saying something like “My hands are busy right now. I’ll help you in just a minute I promise.” Try to avoid “I’m busy with THE BABY.” Your child is going to be so sick of that damn baby – try not to point out that you’re neglecting them to play with the one who they think is replacing them.

Let her come to her own opinion about the baby. Don’t force her to play with it or say how much she loves it or help you change diapers – yet. The time will come when she’s interested (and maybe that will be right away, who knows), but let her set the pace.

And read Siblings Without Rivalry by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish, it will save your life I guarantee. It’s also probably a good idea to stock up on “The new baby is coming!” books from the library so you can talk to her about this in a non-in-your-face way.

I remember the first night in the hospital with Younger. Everyone had gone (remember the first baby, when Daddy’s hovering over you every moment? By the second one he’s home sleeping before the nurses tell you lights out) and it was just me and this beautiful, scrawny, pruney, stunning, perfect baby. I grabbed him out of his cradle and scared him to death – I was used to handling a wild 2-1/2 year old toddler boy.

I held him tight and told him, “We’re going to be great friends.” I felt a warmth I hadn’t had with Older, because for that poor boy I was just in a slightly constant state of panic and confusion. For this one I knew exactly what I was doing and it made the ride all the more precious.

When I look at my boys now, the unit, the inseparable pair, the brothers who have a bond I can’t even fathom, I know any worry I had was a waste of time. They have that sibling relationship that is so vital through life. You may love or hate your sibling, but there is no one else in the world who shares the same experiences and history as you. And as my friend once told me, “Everybody needs a sibling to gang up on your parents with.”

My second child was a gift to my entire family, one that I probably still don’t quite understand the magnitude of. I can’t remember what life was like before he came. I know I wondered how I could love another baby as much as I loved my first, and then I found out that my own heart had depths I couldn’t have imagined.

What More Can I Say But…WWE

Posted on by Amy Pybus
5

OK. I’ve done it. I’ve been to the dark side…and come back to tell the story.

I went where I swear I would never have gone, and had no desire to go, in my whole life – if I didn’t have two sons in it.

A real-life WWE cage match.

This is just the latest thing I banned from my kids’ lives and they insisted on having, so eventually I caved. Just like how I said there’d never be war toys in my house and now we have an arsenal – literally. There are so many guns and swords that they had to be moved into their own room (you know, the office/guest room/armory).

BUT, as I learned with the guns, the toys you play with don’t make you who you are. It’s how you treat other people. And teaching my boys how to treat other people has nothing to do with toy guns. So I do my usual daily work of guiding and teaching, and I let the WWE seep in. Or come crashing in, literally and figuratively, as it did for my boys. And we continue to talk about how you don’t resolve your problems by throwing someone through a wall.

Older Son was angry when I told him how I felt about professional wrestling. Here he’d found this awesome, intensely cool thing that spoke to him on a level I can’t understand, and all I could do was say how bad it was. I told him I can’t stand to see people beating on each other.

He put his hand on my arm, looked in my eyes, and in a tone of real concern asked me, “You do know it’s fake, right?”

I had to admit it – he’s a pretty smart kid. So I let it play. In a matter of months they’ve obtained toy wrestling rings, a collection of action figures, and a soundtrack that must be cranked whenever we’re in the car. So Santa decided it would be fun to take them to a real match (against my will). I decided to look at it as a sociological experiment (which I guess is pretty much how I see most of my life these days).

I figured the crowd would be entertaining and boy was I right. There were a few who were really downright scary – you could see the security guards keeping an eye on them (and in real life they’re probably the sweetest people but put them in the right situation and they look terrifying). The 65-year-old lady and her 35-year-old son gesturing wildly to each other when the announcer said the next live match would be in March. The (again, adult) lady behind us yelling and screaming and making the most hilarious comments – to people who don’t take the WWE seriously enough (“Oh yea, he’s dirty like always!” “Look out behind you!! The chair!!! HE’S GOT THE CHAIR!!!”). Full-grown men wearing WWE championship belts.

And I loved how the wrestlers had security guards escorting them down the aisle to the exit. You, John Cena, man of muscle, who just lifted a 275-pound 7-foot tall man on your back and slammed him to the ground AND won the match, need this scrawny dude to protect you from the weaklings in the seats?

The wrestling actually looks more fake in real life than it does on TV (sorry everyone who believes it’s real – and there are SO MANY of you out there). But even I gasped and covered my eyes several times when people were being body slammed or worse. And of course there were moments that got the teacher and protector-of-children in me going, like when they showed the video montage of the WWE’s anti-bullying program.

Really? A sport that is based solely on bullying, and they’re sending the stars out there to tell kids not to do it to each other? They actually had the nerve to say “It’s all about respect.” Because when you kick someone in the face, that’s respect!

And the fact that they kept making a big deal out of their shows being “PG.” What’s PG about people slamming other people’s faces into walls or smashing chairs into their bodies? Michelle told me, “The G is for Guidance, and as a Parent, that’s WHAT YOU DO.”

I told her to shut it.

And then we got in a divas cage match right there in the car on the way home from the show.