Five Things My Five Year Old Has Taught Me

1.  Use your words...less. Whether it's giving E. directions or answering one of her many questions, the less I say, the more I get. Commands are simply and gently stated, but they are still commands ("Brush you teeth," versus "Could you please go brush you teeth?"). Questions need answering, but she doesn't need my somewhat exhaustive answers, rooted in history or science. Sometimes those sweet fairy tale-esque answers are just fine or even the occasional, "I don't know."

In life the words you leave out are just as important as the ones you include. I'm a talker (you may have picked that up if you've read this blog enough), but I've had to learn to parse and watch my words and this whole "thinking before you speak" stuff has helped me beyond making sure E. gets herself together before we step out of the house.

2. "But Mama, you're so pretty!" Sometimes she might saying it to suck up to me, but you can't deny that earnest and slightly baffled look when E., queen of the selfie, begs me to let her take my picture and I'm more than a bit reluctant. It's easy to forget sometimes that I am E.'s first standard of feminine beauty (I promise I'm not as arrogant as that just sounded) and body image confidence. It's also easy to forget I'm not quite as hideous looking as I seem to think I am (despite my husband reminding me pretty frequently I'm not hideous at all), but having E. around has reminded that not only do I need to at least pretend that I think I'm beautiful, but there might even be some truth behind it.

3. Get out and meet people! I'm a huge homebody and despite my pretty gregarious personality, I actually hate meeting new people. When E. was a baby and toddler, it wasn't such a problem. All she needed was me and daddy! But now that she's older, play dates are starting to become THE thing to do, which means mama has to *gasp* talk to other parents who I might not already know. It's been hard, especially when I really have no idea who a kid's parents are and I have to make a phone call in order to get together (I haaaate making phone calls), but I've been doing it.

4. It's not a race. If you're a parent you probably already know this, but kids, especially the small ones, really feed off your energy. If you're stressed out and racing around, they're going to be very much out of sorts. It took me a while, but the mornings where I was more relaxed and took my time getting everybody ready for the day, the more likely we were to actually get out of the house and to school on time. If I was a crazy lady, pushing through things as quickly as I could, those were the mornings where everything went to hell, and we'd even had forgotten the hand basket.

5. You can say please...But you don't have to be a people pleaser. Well, E. could still use some work on her manners, as is the case for most five year olds, but I've given up on having one of those smiley, ever-so-sweet little girls. E. knows what she wants and is very confident in telling people. She'll tell you she really liked something or really didn't. No, she will not hug/kiss you if she doesn't want to (and I'm not going to make her). And while she will certainly wait politely for her turn for a piece of birthday cake, she'll certainly make the request for the one with the purple flower.

E. has a confidence about her that I never had, and I always felt like I was a pretty confident kid and then adult. While she does care, to an extent, about what people think, I don't think it's on the top of her mind, like it has been for me for much of my life. Having E. for a daughter has shown me to take joy in myself and to worry less about the opinions of others and that it's not always my job to make sure people are happy.

Itchy

I have a very bad tendency to spread myself mentally thin. I take on so many projects in my head (even if I'm not actually doing anything) that I become overwhelmed, which is usually quickly followed by feeling angry and then feeling out of control.

I have lots of wants, lots of things I'd like to do, all piled on top of an extensive list of things I need to do, but are a whole lot less desirable to start than the likes and wants. And when I begin trying to mentally sort it all out I hit a pretty thick brick wall of frustration.

Then I want to run away. I talk to my husband grad school in another state. I suggest he take up long haul truck driving (he does have the license for it) and we all live on a big rig and travel the country. I think about just leaving, just me, and going away somewhere, like Europe or Antartica (a la Where'd You Go Bernadette - I feel a certain kinship with the title character).

What usually happens, though, is I get mad, have myself a mini break-down and a bit of a cry. I leave, though my body is still there. I just can't be present. If I'm lucky, like I am today, my husband's home and I can get in my car and drive around by myself. Today, I drove to a gas station and bought pretzels, chocolate, and milk. I ate in my car. Then I came here, to the library.

I don't know if I feel better. I feel...okay. But I also feel like I'm wasting time, and those wants and like and needs are still pressing in on me a bit, though perhaps they are a bit more barricaded and I'm safe for a bit longer. I feel like I need to get something done, but I just don't know what that something is. It's like having an itch. You feel horribly itchy, but no matter where you scratch, how hard, how long, it just doesn't go away. The itchy feeling overwhelms you until you just want to curl up in a ball.

Here is a list of all the things I'd love to do, which I keep thinking about, but can't seem to settle, can't seem to start, for lots of different reasons (and often because they contradict themselves):

• Homeschool E. and M. either for a year or two or forever
• Teach full time
• Stay with Adult Ed. 
• Get my certification to teach at a Waldorf school
• Move to another state
• Live off the grid
• Buy a new house
• Write a book
• Have a veggie garden
• Have chickens and pigs and cows
• Live in one of those crazy tiny little houses that are only, like 500 square feet or something
• Be debt free
• Start a private or charter school
• Work in education at the state and then national level
• Actually have enough inventory to open my Etsy shop for realz
• Put together the nursing cover I designed (yes, I designed a nursing cover)
• Learn to knit really, really well
• Go to graduate school (Harvard and Antioch University are calling my name...)
• Hike places
• Travel internationally
• Travel nationally
• Sleep

You see what's floating around in my head? These aren't the things that I sit back and think, "Oh, someday..." This is all what I want now, knowing full well I likely can't have half of these things now, if ever. Yet in my head they stay and scramble to sort them all out or tell them to be quiet for a bit. And it so badly pulls my attention away from tasks at hand, people at hand, that I sometimes wonder if I'm starting to become transparent, because I am so not there. 

I often wonder when our futures will look more clear. I don't know what's going to happen a year or two down the road and perhaps it's that which makes the above list so insane. There is so much flux in our lives I wish I could just make one big huge change or have something big and huge to work towards in the not so distant future to help bring my whole life back into orbit.

Yes, I think I'm missing my gravitational center. Now I need to go find it. 

Things I Learned in Kindergarten

The months before Kindergarten were a struggle for me and my daughter. It's easy to be deceived by her similar appearance to me and penchant for big words and dramatics. It's easy for me to be tricked into thinking, She's just like me. Oh, but she is not. She is so, so different. And it was in the forgetting of that which caused a great deal of strife in that nerve-wracking and tumultuous time before school started.

Before Kindergarten, I would constantly ask myself (or even aloud), "Why is she doing that?" And the behavior I just couldn't make sense of would frequently be framed in a negative light, no matter how I tried to be positive.

Things are different now, after a few months of school, watching her in her classroom as I volunteer, seeing other children, talking to other parents, newbs like me and old parenting veterans, and speaking with her teacher, someone young, enthusiastic, and with a fresh eye on my kiddo that I don't easily have access to. 

That stubbornness? Independence. She doesn't need anyone's help, not mine, not yours, not that random kid who thinks he knows it all. That callousness? Well, it's not that she doesn't care, because to see her with her classmates, she does. She helps those in need with gentle reminders and doesn't tattle. But she's not beholden to anyone. She's not here to please and she wants to be happy. She hasn't yet, and I hope she never will, fallen into that horrible female trap of needing to please. She'll be nice, she's going to help the needy, but she'll be damned if she's going to change her life to make you  feel better.

We're different, my little girl and I, but we're different in a way to puzzle pieces are. They're differing shapes allow those pieces to snap together to form a connection and a fuller picture. I will help her find her balance, and she'll help me find mine. Raising a child, raising a daughter, is a long journey for any mother, but the more willing I become to see all her differences for the beautiful things that they are, the ever so slightly easier this all becomes.

Because, in the end, opposites attract. 

Back to School

I think I really need to start taking some grad courses. You know you have school deprivation when you easily pick up a textbook-grade paperback and flip through it like it's Us Weekly (you also know you've been out of school too long if you debate whether or not you ought to italicise the name of a magazine, both because you care and because you don't know the answer).

A few weeks ago I showed up at our library with a list of seven books. Seven books that did not contain characters that were married to sexy Scottish warriors, scheming dwarves (who also somehow manage to be sexy, in that smart guy kind of way), or have anything even remotely to do with Edwardian England (hello, Downton Abbey withdrawal). They were all books related to Waldorf education, either from a parenting or a curriculum/education perspective.

Over the next few days the books came in and I spent a lot of time at the library, schlepping small children, who both love books, but would have preferred to be outside (well, I suppose the baby didn't care, but E. most certainly did).

I don't know that E. would agree, but I'll say, so far, it's been worth it. I'm about halfway through the pile, having read three and a half of the books (I'm literally smack in the middle of my fourth) and I have learned so much. There is a sense of empowerment that comes with being presented with new tools in life, particularly in parenting. There have been so many areas where I have felt helpless and have known in the back of my mind that my way of doing things needed to be changed. Now I understand why I need to make changes, and I'm attempting to make those changes. It's not easy, but it feels so good to try and to see positive results.

I doubt all this sort of vague hinting about at what I've learned and am still discovering is terribly interesting, but I hope to eventually synthesize it into more bite sized (and interesting) bits here, if only for my own reference.

So, after I become an expert in Waldorf education, I fully intend to return to my "fun" books (including and not limited to presidents' killing vampires, more hot Scottish warriors, dragons, and maybe moving back in time to Victorian England, either with Austen or Dickens, not sure). Learning new things is undeniably good, but one does need a bit of variety, right?

What are you learning about?