a brief word from the bickering boys...

Coming home from daycare, my children got into a knock-down, screaming fight about...the EXACT number of shady spots in our front yard.

Jabber (screaming): NAME the third one! NAME IT.
Monkey (screaming back): I'LL SHOW YOU WHEN WE GET THERE!
J (inhuman growl of rage): NAAAAAAME IT.
M: I'LL SHOW YOU WHEN WE GET THERE!
J: I DON'T BELIEVE YOU THERE ARE ONLY TWO SHADY SPOTS TWO SHADY SPOTS TWO SHADY SPOTS
M: THREE SHADY SPOTS THREE SHADY SPOTS THREE SHADY SPOTS
elissa: (explodes*) WHO THE HELL CARES IS THIS REALLY WORTH SCREAMING ABOUT I JUST FREAKING PICKED YOU UP FROM A MORNING AT DAYCARE AND I AM SUPPOSED TO BE FEELING FOND AND LOVING FEELINGS ABOUT MY LONG-LOST CHILDREN BUT RIGHT NOW I AM NOT FEELING THOSE FEELINGS AND I DO NOT CARE ONE FREAKING BIT HOW MANY SHADY SPOTS ARE IN THE FRONT YARD SO NO MORE TALKING NOT ONE WORD UNTIL WE GET HOME. GOT IT????
(long quiet pause)
M: Until we get home?
elissa: Be quiet.
M: Until we get home?
M: Until we get home, Mama, and then we can talk?
M: Mom? MOM. Until we get home?
J: MONKEY'S TALKING!
M: BROTHER'S BREATHING!
J: I HAVE TO BREATHE! IT'S HOW I STAY ALIVE! IF YOU DON'T BREATHE THEN YOU DIE!
M: BROTHER'S YELLING!
elissa: BE QUIET.
(quiet pause; we pull up at curb outside of house)
M: (pointing them out) one. two. three. four. four shady spots.
J: (shrugging amiably) Huh. There ARE four shady spots. YESSSS!

*I know, I know.  Mom of the freaking year I am not.

when everyone applauds...

This evening, after we had tucked in both kids and turned out the lights, Jabber popped up from his little blanket cave and said, "When everyone applauds for you, do you clap, too?  Because whenever people clap for me, this is something that puzzles me."

It's kind of a typical Jabber-question, pretty obviously something he's been turning about in his serious little brain for several weeks or possibly for the duration of his last three lifetimes.  "Well," said D, "I guess that depends on the situation.  When was the last time people were applauding you?"

And Jabber told us about the integrity assembly, and how "I didn't know what to do with my hands when everyone else was clapping."  I had to go over there and squeeze him tight because really.  What do you do with your hands when everyone applauds?

I am trying very hard to be more graceful at receiving compliments and congratulations (and improving, I think!), but it has always been a struggle. I know that the correct answer is always a smile and a "Thank you!", but that's always hard for me to pull off in real life, though it's getting better.  I remember at my confirmation in ninth grade, I stood on the staircase of my church in a receiving line, and the congregation filed past us, shaking our hands and congratulating us.  I realized afterward, in a state of dire embarrassment of course, that as I was shaking all those people's hands, I had also been nodding, smiling, and repeating, "Congratulations!" to them like a complete idiot. 

So there's my first possible response in the face of a compliment:  complete and total idiocy.  I'll usually get the smiling part down (probably with a blush to accompany it), and then something that makes absolutely no sense at all will come out of my mouth.  These moments are probably not that big of a deal--the other person probably forgets about it after a brief moment of thinking, "Oh, I embarrassed the poor dimwit.  Perhaps I'll saunter over here to the cake table."  But in my head, they replay over and over again.  Me, stammering nonsense.

Another common response is an attempt to deflect the compliment or make it sound like I don't really deserve it.  Oh, you like my hair?  "Gah! It's so unruly today, and it's a little too long."  My shoes?  "Oh, yeah, they were on clearance at Target.  Super cheap.  And look more closely--this buckle part is pretty ugly, no?"  It's worse if it's something I did or created that I'm being complimented on.  I did a wonderful job acting in that performance?  "Oh, I totally flubbed my lines in Act II, and did you see the way I tripped when I was supposed to be chasing Lysander?"  Well, no, Elissa.  They didn't notice.  Not until you pointed it out.

So what's the problem, responding to praise?  Do I really feel like I don't deserve it?  I...don't think that's it.  A lot of the time, I'm actually proud of the accomplishment, or I actually do like the shoes or the hair (after all, I bought them and...got the haircut, haha.)  And really, when someone puts forth the effort of pointing out something they like or appreciate, they really don't deserve to have it thrown back in their face like that. Is it because I don't want to seem like I'm proud?  Like I have a big head?  Does it come back to that thing all the girls used to start their sentences with back when I was in middle school:  "Not to brag, but..."  Or is it just that it feels awkward to have the attention--like Jabber standing at the front of the gym, seeing all the rest of the kids applauding and wondering what he should be doing with his hands? 

So I started thinking about this in terms of my writing.  I haven't been published before, except for one poem in a very small journal that nobody ever read.  The truth is, not that many people have seen my writing.  So I really haven't had to deal with the response people might have to my writing.  Writers whose books are out there in the world talk a lot about how to respond to negative reviews or comments (i.e. not at all!), but now I'm imagining myself at some public event related to my book (eep, hives!), and instead of managing a winning smile and a confident, "Thanks!" I'll be grinning, drooling, and muttering, "Congratulations! Yes, I love this weather!" OR I'll point out all of my misplaced modifiers and continuity errors if they dare to say nice things about my writing.  (I hope there won't be misplaced modifiers or continuity errors, but if there are, I don't need to call attention to them!)

Maybe instead, I could burst into applause?

*peeks out of cave*

This lovely image of Lily, the black bear star of the den cam at the North American Bear Center last fall is the perfect image to represent me tucked up in my editing cave--bleary-eyed, confused, hungry, and rather annoyed with anyone who dares to desire my attention.  (I'm sorry, family!)

So last night I sent another draft back to Melanie, my lovely editor at Marshall Cavendish, and I'm hoping that as she reads it she will find things that she thinks are improvements.

I'm now in the middle of the third week of school, and I'm working on my sixth graders, trying to get them all shaped up into middle school students.  They're a lively, spirited bunch, and my "homebase" group makes me laugh constantly, even when their exuberance gets a little frustrating.

So, reeling a little from a Friday afternoon session of craziness and everyone-talks-at-once and everyone-blurts-every-thought-without-filtering, I decided to put together a little list of talking points for Monday morning.  I called it How to Be a Human and a Sixth Grader Instead of a Little Monster in a Sixth Grader Uniform.  I don't really think my sixth graders are little monsters, but...we all have our moments, right?  rawwwrrrr.

I organized my points into "R" words.  Sort of.  They listened, and I think they thought I was moderately funny.  In any case, I feel like maybe we may have a future that doesn't involve growling at each other.  I'm pretty sure it still will involve lots and lots of shouting and jumping around, but they're getting used to my quirks, I hope.

1. REALLY. We are here to help you, not torture you. Give us a chance to do our jobs as teachers.
2. REMINDERS and REDIRECTIONS don't mean you're in trouble. RELAX and just do what we're asking you to do.
3. RESPOND with a simple, "OK". We're not interested in what you didn't do or why you were doing it or who did it first.
4. RESPONSIBILITY: take some. for your actions and your words.
5. RESPECT: we all have to earn it.
6. RETALIATE, and you will get caught. No, we won't see the person who struck first. That person's actions alerted our spidey-senses that something was off-kilter, and now we see YOU.

Then we spent our afternoon playing a team-building game that involved possibly excessive amounts of volume but also excessive amounts of smiling and cooperation, so that was cool.

/boring teacher post*


_____
* it's okay, though.  I was thisclose to boring you all to tears with a Teaser Tuesday, so you can thank me in the comments.  :)

save it

Yesterday I read CDP's post in which she describes her son struggling with some of the same issues Jabber has struggled with regarding banks. Specifically, the idea of a savings account.

For a child who was thrust almost three years ago into a perpetual state of acute possession-awareness ("Don't let Monkey get my stuff, Mom!"), handing over the cash and coin, which he has been carefully threading through the slot in his porcelain piggy bank all his life, is not easy. I mean, this is literally his life savings. Why would he possibly want to give all of that away, to some lady he's never met before at a place we had to drive across town to get to?

"But what if I want my money back?" was his biggest question.

We've been doing mini-math lessons for most of the summer--Jabber's been learning to write his numbers, tell time, use a calendar, and count by fives and tens. We've been practicing by counting the money in his piggy bank. And although he has a lot of money, we decided to start with depositing forty dollars into this mystical and poorly-explained place called the bank.

Jabber agreed to open his first savings account.

So we get to the bank (the name and location of which shall be kept top secret, for security reasons but also because you know who you are, lady. More on that in a bit.). David and Monkey are with us this time (not like the last time we tried this and I forgot Jabber's social security number), so Jabber and I take a seat at the woman's wide desk and start answering her questions. Jabber answers like a champ: He tells her his full name and then writes it clearly on a form she had him fill out. He tells her my full name and his dad's full name. He points out his "sosha scurty" number and lists each of the digits for her. He repeats his phone number three times while she enters the information into her computer. He counts out his money carefully--three tens and two fives--and although he stumbles a little between $30 and $35, he gets it the second time through.

"And what's your address?" she asks.

Jabber spits out his phone number again.

"Oh, no, sweetie," she says, flashing a weird look at me. What was that look? "I mean, what street do you live on?"

"Oh," he says, and he tells her the street and also mentions the avenue that we are close to.

"But what is the house number?"

He shakes his head. He can't remember.

She gives me that look, again, and now I get it. It's disapproval. Judgment. "You're five, right?" she says to Jabber. "It's about time for you to learn your address. Before you go to school. That's very, very important." She gives me a final pointed look.

He nods, and the moment is gone. We finish up with the savings account, but now I'm irritated.

Save it, lady. Save the judgment. He knows his name, his parents' names, our phone number, and the two streets that intersect 25 feet from his front door.

This was such a tiny incident, but I found myself still annoyed by the attitude hours later while David and I were cleaning up from dinner. He said something, and I reacted, and then I said, "You know, maybe I'm too sensitive. Did you know I was seriously angry at that lady at the bank today when she made it sound like I was the worst parent on the face of the earth because Jabber didn't know his house number? Was I imagining that? Am I reading too much into people's innocent comments? Am I putting more pressure on myself as a parent that is just imaginary stuff?"

David laughed and shook his head. "No," he said. "She was just a bitch."

This moment of momfail...

I have become a nagger. A ranter. A yeller. A font of negativity.

I have become that woman who rattles about the house flinging toys irritably in the direction of toyboxes while muttering things at a variety of volume levels--most of them sarcastic and an embarrassingly large number of them including the words "ungrateful" and "bend over backwards for you."

I have become a person who delivers long, angry monologues to a two-year-old. Who very obviously has no idea what I'm talking about anymore and clearly cannot remember the incident I'm ranting about.

I have become a mother who is out of patience, out of hope, out of tricks. Out of control.

This isn't meant to be a sad post, a poor-me post, really. I haven't ever really felt like being a mom is a competition. I'm not really interested in what my friends and neighbors think of me as a mom, as long as they keep it to themselves. I'm just interested in finding a way to actually enjoy being around my kids more often, to feel competent in my own right at being a parent. To feel like my kids are presentable--no, not in their appearance (so what if there's old oatmeal in Monkey's hair and Jabber has a snotty nose?), but in the more important things. Are they well-behaved in public? (No.) Do they have good manners? (No.) Are they, in general, kind to each other and other children? (No.) Do they listen to me when I try to keep them safe? (No.)

I know things aren't as bad as they seem. I know there are phases and extenuating circumstances. I know there are people raising twice as many, three times as many kids as me who are probably way more stressed out than I. I know I could definitely be screwing them up worse than I am.

But it's still no good. I feel like every moment I am with them (when they are awake) turns into a screaming match or a power struggle or a complete breakdown of everything good. I feel like I can't take them anywhere by myself, which makes me feel completely helpless and trapped here. When I do take them places--places I think will be a fun outing for us as a family--it ends up being a miserable disaster because they won't listen and be good and be safe, and then we get back to the nagging, the ranting, the yelling, the spouting of negativity. I don't know what to do.

So I'll just wait. And hope that eventually this too will pass. (And whine, I guess...)

Okay. Sometimes they're cute; I'll admit it. So here are two cute things they said lately to lighten this horribly negative and hopeless confessional of a post that I should really just delete.

One, I was talking to Monkey and used the word "frankly"--not exactly in most two-year-olds' vocabularies, I admit, but whatever, I'm not so good at speaking simply. So I said something like, "Well, frankly, I'm a bit surprised you managed to find that permanent marker and destroy yet another item that is precious to me in the four minutes it took me to shower." And he, indignant as only a toddler can be, stomped his tiny foot and said, "My name isn't FRANK! It's MONKEY!"

And two, (this one had David and I giggling for a while) Jabber was bouncing around the house, bored and determined that he should be watching television or something else we had forbidden at the moment, and he said, "There's nothing to do in this whole and tired house!" Well! I'd be tired too if I were almost a hundred years old and had to contain two fiery little boys, too!

I mean, I'm only 33, and they exhaust the hell out of me.

King Dork

This afternoon Jabber and I went to daycare to pick up Monkey from his solo morning, after playing with the new computer, going for a walk, failing to enroll him in a preschool (sadness), and watching several episodes of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the theme song of which has now been stuck in my head for over twenty-four hours ("Heroes in a Half-Shell...Turtle Power!").

That sentence simply deserves its own paragraph.

Anyway. So we walked in during the finale of storytime, which is perfect timing, right before all the munchkins head off to naps, and Jabber was wearing his monster truck shirt and a new pair of shorts that I bought him like two weeks ago but just managed to launder last night. Okay, David laundered them, but that's not part of this story. One of the "big kids," made some kind of comment when we walked in about how Jabber wore the same shirt yesterday. (Okay, two problems with this, Mr. Big Kid Extraordinaire: first, Jabber did not come to daycare yesterday because yesterday was our super fun library day, thankyouverymuch; and second, I just took the shirt out of the clean laundry basket this morning, so who the hell cares if he wore it another day?)

Our lovely DCP (that would be daycare provider, natch) scoffed at Mr. Big and pointed out that he had worn his shirt yesterday as well. "Yeah, well, not these pants," he said, lamely. (Uh...already said that Jabber's shorts were new and procrastinatedly washed!)

So then Lovely DCP comes over to talk to Jabber about what we did on our special morning, and he talks rather excitedly about the "Inja Turtles effisodes" that we had watched. Like best morning ever, dude. Lovely DCP proves she, too, had a young boy like twenty years ago by enthusiastically naming off many of the characters of the show (most of whom Jabber has never really heard of, since this is, I think, the first time he has watched those Injas.)

Meanwhile, back on the couch, Mr. Big Kid is teasing Jabber in a way that is so subtle Jabber is completely oblivious. He starts telling all the other kids, loudly, "They're Inja Turtles, guys, not Ninja Turtles." He repeats this over and over, laughing but pretending to be all serious. He's not being overly mean, and honestly through it all he seems like he actually really likes Jabber, although of course Jabber's only a four-year-old Little Kid and could never be taken seriously.

Jabberwock is, as I said, completely oblivious that he has been teased or taunted at all in this exchange. His earnest little self is all about describing the "effisodes" he watched and how he made a behavior chart on the new "waptop," and how excited he is to have playdate with his best buddy tomorrow. And Mr. Big is only performing for his Big Kid audience; some of them get what he's doing and some don't.

I get it. I don't dislike the kid for it. However, I kind of sort of want to say something to him, something like, "Hey, why are you making fun of Jabberwock for the way he says that? He's just a Little Kid." Of course, then Jabber would know. Plus, it would be silly of me. It was no big deal.

Then I thought about how it's going to be, years and years and years from now when my little Jabber is a Great Big Kid and comes to my school, maybe even is in my class. Middle school is like the epitome of teasing, taunting, and ridicule. Will I go all Mama Bear on some box-of-rocks eighth grader the second he looks at my little angel sideways?

I know I can't insulate him from teasing all his life. I know that he will DO his share of teasing, too. In fact, he already does. I'm reading the book King Dork by Frank Portman right now, which is a terrific YA book if you're patient and don't mind character-driven books without things exploding on every page (yeah, it doesn't honestly have much of a plot, but it's still interesting), and in it, the narrator gets teased and bullied quite a bit. That got me thinking about my kiddos and how I'm going to deal with them getting treated poorly in middle school.

What if my kid is King Dork? Well, I guess all I can do is make sure his shirt is clean, and try to stay out of it, if I can.

The Art of Silence

Another post on something I appreciate about my mom.

I really love a lot about my mom, especially now that I'm an adult. I try telling this fact to the middle school girls who confide in me how much they hate their mother. "Yes," I say, the voice of wisdom. "You hate her now, but someday she'll be so important to you." I share a few details with them, the truly explosive period during my own middle school days when it seemed my mom and I would just as soon kill each other as talk to each other. "Parents are just learning as they go along," I tell the girls. "They want to keep you safe and whole, and they also have their own stuff to deal with. Sometimes it all comes together into a big mess, especially for moms and daughters."

Most of them deny that it will ever get better, and I just smile and assure them that I would have said the same thing at their age, or even at age 18. Age 22.

Then, it happened. My mom let me grow up. She decided that's enough, Elissa's an adult now. Either that, or she was just so preoccupied with my younger brother (who was in the midst of his own adolescence at that time) that she couldn't spare the worry for me as well. Or, as I've sometimes thought, maybe she realized in raising a wild boy how easy it was in comparison to parent such a sweet, intelligent, wonderful, self-sufficient daughter like me.

Whatever the cause, the result has been wonderful. My mother has perfected the art of silence when it comes to my life and my choices. She does not criticize my decisions or cast doubts on my parenting methods. She keeps quiet while I vent about my problems and doesn't give advice unless I ask a specific question. She refrains from telling me about her own methods in a way that would suggest they are superior to mine. She has never said a word about my cluttered, dusty home, even when she has shown up unannounced, with the house in a shambles. She hasn't asked when I'll be getting Monkey baptized. She hasn't suggested that I should really plant something in the empty flower pots that are sitting in the backyard. She never said a word about Jabber's potty learning schedule. She hasn't ever raised an eyebrow about me still breastfeeding either child, even though she weaned me at four months. She doesn't question my decision not to feed hamburger to my children. She didn't even really raise much of a fuss when I told her I was getting married on the other side of the country in a purple dress with my best friend officiating outside in the forest and no family invited.

I think I appreciate this most of all about my mother, and I sure hope this is something I can remember to do when my own sons are making their way into adulthood. I hope my middle school girls' moms learn it, too, so they can someday experience the joy of a respectful relationship with their mothers, as friends and equals.