is it the beginning? or middle? and where do we go from here?

I’m feeling a bit heavy-hearted this evening.  At first I couldn’t figure out why this, what I’m about to share, bothers me as much as it does today.  But I realize it’s been building.  Today was just additional, but weights on me now.

S was out sick for 1/2 of last week and the Friday the week before.  A couple of weeks ago, she came home to tell me that the water bottle that I put in her bag everyday for snack wasn’t there.  Hmmm….I was pretty sure about remembering to put it in there, but maybe I forgot?  maybe.  It isn’t likely, but it could be possible.  A few days after that she told me a girl in her classroom had her water bottle.  S wasn’t upset by it.  She didn’t say that this girl took it from her or her bag.  But she said she had it.  My daughter drinks out of a small poland spring water bottle.  I figure, that girl must have had the same one.  Then, Thursday I labeled the bottle with S’s name on it, in red Sharpie.  She came home and said there was no water.  I wrote a note to the teacher, asking about snack procedure, where it’s kept during the day, etc.  Maybe someone was just taking the wrong bottle.  Or maybe it was rolling out of her bag.  Friday, I peeled the label off the bottle.  I wrote S’s name on it 3 times, and used the label maker to put 3 more tabs on it.  There was no mistaking this was hers.  I pick her up, and she tells me there was no water again.

I ran up and caught her teacher before she disappeared back in the bottle and asked about it.  She had no idea how that happened.  Apparently, 1/2 the class takes the snack out of their backpack and put it on a shelf.  Since S’s snack is always there, and not her water, I find that a little strange.  Her teacher told me to tell S to keep her snack in her backpack for now while she does some digging around.  She was taken back how anyone can have this highly decorated and labeled bottle.  She did say that they were having an issue with a few things disappearing, but she never saw any water bottles anywhere.  She was definitely going to keep an eye on it, and wanted me to keep her updated.

Could someone be taking my kids water bottle and it not be a mistake?  Could someone purposely be hiding it?  Or even throwing it out?  Because why would you take home a bottle that so says S’s name on it?  At first, I was thinking just an accident, or it rolled out or whatever.  Now I’m wondering if they are doing this with intent.  I’m sorry….what the hell????

Luckily enough, S, doesn’t seem bothered.  But again, what the hell?  Especially coming off a really bad cough/cold, I wanted her to be able to drink the water whenever she needed to get to it.  But really?????

This bothered me through Friday and Saturday.  The more I thought about it, the more of a bullying, but sneaky dealing, thought was underway.  By this morning, I had let it go, mostly.

I took M to a birthday party of a friend today.  She was very excited to go.  She really likes this girl.  They were in school 2 years ago, and while they were very good friends, the other girl could get really nasty to M.  Very bossy.  With M at a different school last year, I did hear through other friends that this girl pit a lot of other girls against one another.  A lot of, don’t play with her, don’t be friends with her, etc kind of crap.  I know these are girls.  I know we will have many years of this.  But it is exactly that.  CRAP.  These kids were 4, 5, and now 6 year olds.  I actually did not want these 2 to be together for Kindergarten.  I wrote notes and everything.  Not that they have a bad relationship.  They are good friends.  But I knew there was potential of this, and we live in the same neighborhood.  I just didn’t want it all right here so close.  Still, they got in the same class.  SHIT!!!

I thought it was going okay.  Nothing too much going on.  Recently, I started seeing a few things go on on the blacktop afterschool.  I don’t want you to play this, etc.  I was teaching M to say, “Well, you aren’t the boss.  I’d like to play.  We are all friends.”  I even tried the “You can’t say you can’t play” route.

M had a great time with all her friends at this party.  so much fun.  Eating cake, I kept seeing her frown.  I thought she was having problems with her juice box.  I waved her over to me.  She told me that the bday girl, and another good friend told her they weren’t her friends.  And that they were telling lies about her.  I told her to go back and tell them what they said was not nice, and that she didn’t like it.  She did.  The other friend heard her, and turned her back to M.  But I saw her watching me the whole time M was talking to me.  The bday girl was in conversation elsewhere.  She tried again with her friend, and that friend got up and hid behind her mom who was standing 2 people away from me.  Mom didn’t know, although the woman between us heard.  We went to get our shoes on, and M sat next to her good friend, who got up and went to sit next to her mom again.  I shook my head.  I didn’t take this one to be like that.  But who’s judging?

On our way out, I told M to wish the bday girl a happy birthday and thank her for the invite.  Do you know what she said?
“Happy birthday.  Thanks for inviting me to your party.  I had so much fun.  By the way, I didn’t like it when you were telling lies about me, and then said you weren’t my friend.  That wasn’t nice. and I didn’t like it.  I thought we were good friends.”  Bday girl looks up at me.  What was I supposed to do?  I just sort of shrugged.  I wasn’t expecting that speech.  Birthday girl says, “I”m sorry.  I was teasing both of you, but the other girl thought it was funny.  I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.  Sorry.  We are still friends.”

Now, I know this girl.  If I hadn’t been standing there, I don’t think that apology would have rolled right off her tongue.

This is disturbing to me.  Both scenarios.  The water bottle.  That’s just sneaky and wrong.  The birthday party…that’s very girl behavior and we are going to have a lot of that going on.  I just feel so discouraged by it tonight.  I know it’s out there.  It’s not the first time.  Won’t be the last time.  I’m not saying either of my kids are perfect and don’t measure in this equation.  In M’s case, she absolutely could.  They said they weren’t her friends after she tried to correct them.  When they kept insisting that she did something, she got mad and called them liars.  and not just any kind of liars.  the big fat kind.  Thus came the, we aren’t your friends comment.  I let M know what she was responsible for.  I want them both to know the things that they can do to ward off these types of outcomes.  But they are still young.  It’s going to happen.  I hate it.  I hate it for my girls.  I would hate it if it were my girls that did that to someone else.  I hate that kids can be so mean and are like that.  And I hate that parents aren’t accountable for their children, either.  Parent involvement is tricky.  And most of the time, I don’t like to deal with that.  But you aren’t going to be accountable for your own kid and their mistreating others?  You are just going to look the other way, or think…not my kid?  I don’t get that.  I hate to judge. I really do.   But this road…..I don’t like it.  One of the few I’d rather not see what lies ahead.

couples

M has been playing house in her pretend play for a long, long time.  Recently, in the last month or so, she has named herself a husband.  Brutus.  Where she got this name, who knows.  I always assumed we would play names of our friends.  She has had a huge admirer over the past year.  But no, it’s not him.  My son-in-law is Brutus.  Brutus is a construction worker, turned handyman, turned jack of all trades, including logging in many hours on his computer.   Doing what?  I don’t know.  M and Brutus have 3 girls, too.  It’s M’s job to take care of them.  Taking time off from her fashion designing.  M takes all of her kids to swim lessons, karate, to the babysitting room while she goes to work out, and to school.  She drinks her coffee in the car while listening to music.

I’m honestly afraid of some of the things that might come up in play.

It’s very interesting listening to her play by herself.  Her daughters occasionally fight with each other, and she referees them.  And I hear sternness in her voice when she corrects them.  She is very loving to her babies, which is a comfort to me.  Hopefully, she thinks I’m loving to her, too????

S doesn’t do a lot of pretend play.  She expresses a lot of things in her drawings and stories.  Happy faces, very sad and mad faces.  Storytelling in an abrupt and non continuous flow.  But it’s all there when I’m asking about it.  The person is mad because they were not allowed to choose a MarioKart character by themselves.  This person is feeling anxious because the nightlight bulb went out while she was sleeping.  Life imitating art, or art imitating life.  There is less of a where it begins and how it ends, but more of a this is what is happening in the middle.

I saw this couple today in the parking lot at the grocery store.  I’d say in their 70s.  Plain old nasty to each other.  They bring 2 packed carts to unload to the car.  I was parked next to them, unloading my own car, wondering why they needed so much food?  Wife asked what was in the bag he was passing her.  He went off!  ”How the hell am I supposed to know what is in there.  I don’t have x-ray vision.  Open the damn bag and look at it youself.  Hell, you were the one who bagged these.”  It went on for awhile.  To the very end.  He put the cart away, and came back to open the door, it was locked.  Then they start yelling at each other.  And I can’t back out until he gets in the car, so I’m left waiting….listening.

What’s the point of this anecdote?

I often wonder what we leave behind for our kids, in the present.  I see how they play out in their work, in their play.  But life is not always happy happy, and marriage most certainly is not.  It’s a lot of work.  And if so far, we are able to pass off to our kids that we are a loving married couple with these 2 kids, great.  But how do we go from that to that couple I saw today?  We have fought and debated in front of the kids.  We don’t yell and scream at each other, but kids are perceptive.  They know when things are amiss between their parents.  I want them to know that these relationships are work, with a lot of give and take.

Seeing a lot of things lately have been bringing tears to my eyes.  That story of the father who fell trying to catch a ball at the baseball game for his son dies.  Seeing the video that his son went back to the Rangers ballpark, and threw out the first pitch at the Divisional Series Game.  Baseball pitch caught by the player who originally threw the ball up to his father right before the fatal fall.  Today, that crazy 15 car wreck in the NASCAR race.  I saw a picture of the driver who died, after he won a race in May, with his wife, toddler son, and tiny baby.  What will they take with them from their parents?

As my parents get older, I no longer take their presence here for granted.  How long will they remain in my girls’ life?  What will they remember of their grandparents?

I guess, I’m just wondering of what kinds of legacies we are leaving behind.  Do I want to be remembered for kissing them every night and singing a little tune at bedtime?  Or do I want to be remembered for bringing my daughters to tears because she forgets to bring her homework home.

I know this isn’t the most pleasant of subjects to be thinking about.  But it has been weighing heavily for a little while now with me.  Thought it might help to put it out there.

 

still trying to break through

When S was born, she was such a colicky baby.  Then while she was a very happy baby, she was still difficult to put to sleep.  When we conquered that with her, life was so pleasant.  She was very routine, and slept great when we put her down around the same time.  She could be flexible in her schedule, sometimes.  But then getting her back on was trying.  As a toddler, S was easy going and happy.  Looked forward to taking her naps, bath, and nighttime sleep.  We moved when she was 19 months and that was about the time the first of her anxieties started.

It started as separation anxiety and stranger anxiety.  We assumed it was because of the move.  Meeting new people, she always greeted them with a horrific screetch.  Once she settled in, she was usually fine.  We would see anxiety go up and down over the next year, definitely added with the arrival of M.  When M was on the move crawling and then walking, S got a little worse.  She would cry everytime M would come into the room on her own.  She didn’t want M getting to any of “her” toys.  We saw the spillover into school.  The first year of school we had minimal issues.  The second year of school things started to pick up.  New routines at school really threw her for a loop.  A true rigid nature began to emerge.  Yes, in some ways, S could be easy going…or appear to be.  In other ways, incredibly rigid.  The way she learned, how she wanted things set up, the way they played.  Any type of deviation began an emotional shutdown.

At that age, you kind of take it as…you have a difficult child, who is strong-willed and stubborn, and tantrumy.  But you take it as a phase or “just the age”.   At least we did.  After awhile, you look around and wonder why it’s only your kid.  Then as a year goes by, you realize, oh…it’s not just a phase.  It’s a personality characteristic.

Since then, we have been trying to get S to be more flexible.  New is still difficult, but it’s interesting how the timidly growing flexibility develops.  People will always tell you that a parent can’t force a child to do anything that they don’t want to.  It’s true.  You think you can.  But it’s not really the best way…butting heads to get them to bed to your will.  But neither can you just “let’s just wait until they come to it” when your child is so rigid.  So what did we, and continue to do?   We introduced new fun things to her, hoping she might enjoy it.  A new video game or a different aspect of a particular game she liked.  Mystery trips where we just don’t tell her where we are going, and we end up at Dairy Queen.  Things that may create a little anxiety because it’s unknown, but a place that S gets to and can see that it’s okay.  She loves ice cream, and learns to get over what she was feeling before.

Sometimes these efforts work, and sometimes they backfire in our face.  We can go on a long mystery drive to the Please Touch Museum in Philadelphia, and not say where we are going.  We get there, and also let her know that her friends are meeting us there.  Then it’s super exciting.  She’ll have the best time and say that was an awesome mystery trip.

Or my husband could introduce a new course, like the mirror stage, in Wii MarioKart. S was whining and yelling how she didn’t want to try it.  What a fuss she would put up.  A week later, she is playing it on her own while my husband and I have a quick dinner, and we see her doing the mirror race.  go figure.

For months, S was obsessed with playing Rock Band.  Then all of a sudden it stopped.  Really suddenly.  Tonight she didn’t want to play.  She had played Super Mario Brothers with my husband, and the deal was we all play Rock Band as a family.  Now to S’s credit, while she did whine, she did not breakdown and cry and really dig in her heels.  She whined and said she would watch.  Pretty soon, she’s singing in the mic, and then she’s onto the drums.

We went out for a walk today, and left the bikes behind.  It was starting to get dark.  M said she was going to ride her Razor around the neighborhood.  S said she was going to walk.  No big deal.  I asked her if I could ride hers with M.  She said fine.  I start to close the garage, and S is about to duck under it.  I ask her what she’s doing, and she tells me she needs her helmet.  I let her get it, and close the garage.  I’m still not catching on.  I carry her Razor to the end of the driveway, she takes it and rides away.

We still have times where S really flips out if things are not the way she wants them.  I changed their comforters over to warmer ones when the weather got cool at night.  The first night, I didn’t have the matching sham on her bed.  It was the one for the summer quilt.  I hadn’t pulled the winter one from the dryer yet.  She wouldn’t go to sleep.  On one hand, I thought….what’s the big deal?  Let me just change it.  On the other hand, I thought….the sham is not completely dry yet, and she needs to get over this.  Things are not always going to be the matching set, and we still need to go to sleep.  So, there were some tears, and some soft-spoken comforting words, followed by some sterner ones.  Was it smooth?  No.  Did she finally fall asleep, and withing 20 min, yes.  And did she ask me about it the following morning and night?  Yes.  Did I change it?  Yes, but not for another 4 nights.  By night 3, she stopped asking.  When I changed it without her asking me to that final night, S was ecstatic.

Honestly, I get no joy out of torturing my kid like this.  I know what it must do to her to have things out of place, for things to be off, or completely new.  I have my own issues.  And my friends will definitely vouch for that!  But life is always changing.  Things aren’t going to go as script.  or we won’t have matching sheets sometimes.  or we learn to play the same game in a different manner.  we have to learn to be okay with it!  At least a little bit.  People will not do things exactly the way you like, and you have to be able to live and not freak out over all those details every time.

I never know if what I’m doing is really the right thing.  I hate to cause anymore anxiety to S than she already seems to have.  But I’m hoping that the greater good is allowing her to learn to be even a little more flexible to different situations.  I hope that she can learn that there are many ways to do things or learn the same thing in different ways.  I want her to get the most of out of her life, now and in the future.  With that eye on that goal, I hope she learns that being flexible can allow her to be open to some new experiences that may enrich herself beyond the everyday.

We’ll keep you posted on that one!

 

fall blues?

We are officially at October 3rd, and a very chilly front has blown through.  It has been constant showers and rain for the past couple of weeks.  So I have to ask, is it too early for fall blues?

I love this time of year.  Pumpkin spices are everywhere.  I love to hear the sound of leaves crunching under our feet.  I like to wrap myself in a warm sweater while we are outside.  I like how crisp things are at this time of year.  While I don’t like to be cold, I love to lounge in my warm bed while the outside the covers, it’s a delicious chill.

October also means things are in full swing.  The kids are still adjusting to their days at school.  They are still puckered out at the end of the day.  This also means that the newness of going back to school and the initial excitement is over.

S, since the first day of school, on the whole has been okay.  A bit whiny here and there, especially at bedtime, but okay.  M, whiny through the late afternoon and right before bed, but she’s been okay, too.  Here we are in October, and S is STILL whiny at bedtime.  I got on my husband’s case last night because instead of walking right out as S started to say, “Something’s the matter,” he started making comments back.  He wasn’t sitting down for a full discussion, but keeping the conversation going.  I would love to hear her out sometimes.  I would.  But it’s so garbled sometimes and a mishmash of thoughts, and it’s difficult for us to really understand what it is she is trying to convey.  I mean, yes, I understand the actual words, but the thought that she seems to want to express is not all there.  It could be “I’m just confused.”  Or “something’s the matter.”  Then you ask what or why and you might get an answer about a book, or toothpaste, or medicine, or something completely unrelated.  This is where I feel bad that we can’t break through some of these expressive language delays.  I don’t know for sure if S knows what she wants to let us know, but she is having a hard time getting us to understand.  So then he sticks around for a couple of minutes to chat, but with each sentence, S gets more and more irritated.

I asked him last night why he didn’t just walk out.  He said that sometimes when he does, S gets even more upset.  So what are we supposed to do?  I don’t know.

Good thing, though, 8 out of 10 times, S falls right to sleep. 7 out of 10 mornings, though, she wakes up whiny.  She comes in saying, “I was just upset”  or “I was a bit confused.”  Then we start asking the what and why, and we are no closer to figuring it out than we were last night.

Is it just a habit now?  Is she getting more anxious?  Is it just her adjustment phase to her schedule?    Do we ever really know?  Tough love? or nurturing and some coddling?