Tag Archives: family harmony

The week in review

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Things I did well this week:

  • Planning an appropriate amount of work
  • Planning work that BigGuy found interesting and engaging
  • Planning around events we scheduled
  • Reading our character building book
  • Working (unexpectedly) a consignment sale fundraiser (for a friend whose kids were sick) and although EX. HAUST. ED.  I really handled all my responsibilities well!  WOOT!
  • And on that note, bought some good shirts for BigGuy at above-referenced sale.
  • Nearly kept up on our new (or rather, return-to-former) laundry routine where nobody has hampers–all laundry is collected every morning and a load is done every day.  BAM!
  • Not losing my sh!t on anyone.  This is actually an accomplishment because my PTSD therapy in the last week was rough.

Things I did not do well this week:

  • Having backup plans when primary plans fell through–which left us kind of in a not-great situation sometimes.
  • Finding engaging things to do with Girly because truly, I didn’t realize how this whole new “wake up and work with Papa” thing would pan out
  • Reading to either of my kids
  • Doing the socratic discussions with BigGuy.  To be fair, this was partly my not wanting Friday to be C O N S T A N T discussion/analysis and partly because we had an emergency plan-change for Saturday that left me missing Girly’s soccer game (and a night out for someone’s 40th birthday that I was really looking forward to) and canceling attendance at a kids birthday party.
  • Apparently I may not have enforced the deodorant rules well enough to BigGuy because his Friday discussion group leader sent out an e-mail to all of us parents requesting some body odor enforcement.  I’m not sure if it was BigGuy (since I didn’t notice offensive odor… this week) or someone else.  But note to self: bear down on this one.
  • Definitely did not enforce the bathroom chore routine well enough with BigGuy.  But also didn’t enforce any chore routines with Girly, either.
  • Keeping my grumpy on the down-low at times.  Like when there was a detour for a field trip and I had zero contact numbers to find out where to go.  I’d been told “the big main entrance–parking lot is right there, you can’t miss it” only to find out 1) there were no less than 6 parking lots; and 2) we weren’t going to the big, main entrance.  And my car was out of gas.  In an area I didn’t know well.  And I was really, really grumpy about it to other people including adults.

Other things that happened this week:

  • Girly has become a brick wall goalie.  I seriously cannot even…
  • BigGuy decided that he would start going to bed without a parent laying down with him “so that he could start doing sleepovers”.  This is simultaneously an awesome day and the worst day of my life.  I knew it was coming just like when you KNOW someone is going to die of a terminal illness and yet, it blindsides you anyway.  So far, we have discovered that we need a “goodnight” routine as I wound up without a kiss goodnight.   Girly did her own hair
  • Girly decided to start doing HER OWN hair.  Have you seen this kid’s hair, folks?  This is a picture of what it looks like for her to “do her own hair”.  She pretty much flattens the top with water and I’m not really sure what hair “utensil”.  She does it often and is VERY proud of herself… so I compliment her every time and remind myself that we will absolutely HAVE to REALLY do her hair the next morning rather than slack.
  • We went on a crazy awesome field trip to a municipal airport and aviation school that included the control tower.
  • We wound up with 4 shares of Community-Sponsored Agriculture (CSA) farm shares to manage.  Two that we normally get from our farm plus two more that people did not pick up from our house (which serves as a host site for a local CSA farm).  This would normally be an awesome thing.
  • BigGuy and Girly are clearly fighting off illness.  Between Illinois being one of the 6 states with confirmed cases of Enterovirus and close friends kids coming down with Coxsackie… I’m concerned.  Last night, BigGuy let out a few coughs in the middle of the night (for more on why this is a big deal, see BigGuy’s background)

Overall, I think it was a decent week.  I would love to be downtown drinking with a bunch of happy women celebrating a 40th birthday right now, but I will take a hot bath and soft bed after this day of being on my feet ALL. DAY. and up since early (for a work-related meeting before covering at the sale).

Upshot is that BigGuy is happier and feels like the dynamics of the household have changed for the better with this recent change in who is getting up when and doing what.

I can’t lie that there is a very, very tiny part of me that is sad that Papa gets to connect with the boy instead of me.  I mean, I know he loves me and all.  I just wish I had the resources right now to connect with him more meaningfully.  Or that I was at least gaining something else in the absence of that connection.  Like maybe connecting with Girly.  They grow up so fast.  I just need to focus on the gratitude for having a husband that gives them that rather than my kids lacking it completely.

Dads homeschool, too

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It usually falls on the mom’s shoulders to homeschool.  But around here, Papa has been taking a hand in the homeschooling.   As I type this, he’s reading instructions for writing assignments from Tapestry of Grace (Year 1, week 2, level 5 if you’re following)

“This week, organize your thoughts for pre-writing two specific writing genres by completing two graphic organizers.  What does that MEAN?  I mean, I know what all of the words in the sentence mean on their own; but when they put them together in this order, it doesn’t make sense to me.”  He then bangs his first two fingers on each hand together and says “hashtag homeschooldad”

Truly, even in my house–the edumacating has always been Mama’s responsibility.  At some point I told Husbeau that he needed to step up and start doing bedtime stories (and that I could tell him which ones he should use to coincide with stuff we were learning or things I wanted the kids to experience) but that totally never happened.

Homeschool moms face a lot of the same situations and emotions as stay-at-home-moms (SAHMs) of all kinds.  Dad is off all day working (sometimes at a job he doesn’t love, and in a subset of those cases–with resentment for the mama that’s staying home and not having to deal with it).  Culturally, we have undervalued parenting as “work”–so SAHMs are loathe to load any MORE work onto the husband.  In the case of homeschool moms that are doing any level of prescribed academics, we at least feel like we’re doing WORK; but some of those moms are dealing with husbands who are barely supporting the decision to homeschool.  So those moms dare not say “I worked all day, too!” lest their husband reply with “Well then put them in school and go do a job that brings in money!”.

None of this is my situation.  However, I see it often enough.  Not even just with homeschooling, but with all kinds of life and parenting choices where a husband and wife aren’t on the same page.  It’s hard.

But I digress… (because “me”)

Papa is still on this tangent of getting up early with BigGuy and we’re just hitting a point where BigGuy has actual work to do that Papa needs to be engaged in.  It’s getting interesting, folks.  BigGuy has started really looking forward to their time together in the mornings, too.  That’s no small feat since this morning it was FUH-REE-ZING and the day before it was raining.  And today, Mama mistakenly told BigGuy he could have his electronics and Papa nailed him on not doing graphic organizers… and then they sat together and worked through it.  Wow… my husband seriously rocks.

For the rest of you, here are some things you can potentially offload to Papa:

  • Read alouds masked as bedtime stories (or after dinner stories instead of TV shows)
  • Science experiments (maybe on the weekends–try this cute kit of 20 experiments with supplies!).
  • Building stuff (also maybe on the weekends or in steps on different nights)
  • Physical education/activities
  • Watching documentaries together
  • Socratic discussion (picking apart something they’ve learned or read)

Or really, just have your kids help dad with whatever and have dad make it a learning experience for them.

Yes, yes… everyone needs a break and a rest.  But guess what?  We’re a family.  Doing stuff together counts.

A new routine

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So this morning, Papa got up with the boy.  EARLY.  Like 6:30am (which is when BigGuy usually gets up).  Apparently they walked the dog and then Papa sat in the classroom (an office on our first floor behind the garage) and did e-mails while BigGuy did his schoolwork.  And apparently, this went swimmingly.

Some things to note:

  • BigGuy had very little schoolwork assigned to him today because we needed to leave the house at 10am and we were going to have company in the afternoon.
  • The weather was good.

I wonder how this would work on a regular basis and with a regular day’s workload. I guess time will tell.  But “da boyz” liked it.

IQ vs. Self-discipline

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Needless to say, a morning of scheduled schoolwork is bound to NOT go well in this house.  Mama gets all panicky and goes into teacher/project manager mode rather than Mama mode.  It’s like a flip of a switch.  And then when BigGuy does anything other than sit at a desk and belt out work as if he were in a classroom, I lose it.

Suddenly, he is 20 years older and a bum or a prisoner or living with me for the rest of his life and I’m hearing everyone tell me all the things he could’ve been “if he’d have been in school”… as if this trajectory could be backed by evidence.  And of course, if he enters now and fails miserably it will be because he needed to be in school earlier.  Of course.  Because ya know–it’s not like we had a reason to pull him out, people… right?  People don’t see that.  And those that do would say “But you could’ve put him back in before now.”  No matter what parenting decision you make, it’s just going to be wrong.

Whatever.  His complete lack of discipline or perseverance towards a goal (keep in mind that this was all his idea) make me LOSE. MY. SH!T.  I know what makes a successful person and it’s the ability to face a difficulty and take it on.  Even if you don’t overcome it, just having the ability to attempt getting through it is so huge.  And he completely lacks that.  And it’s so polar opposite to the person I am at my core that I cannot even understand how he will function in life.  Ever.

BigGuy’s IQ puts him in the 99.9% percentile of human intelligence.  This is beyond Mensa.  There are organizations that I didn’t even know existed for this kind of intelligence.  Sometimes, it’s hard to NOT see that he’s a bright kid.  But he also has Asperger’s and sometimes the connections between work and reward/success or other relational connections are completely absent.  I can’t bank on the neurotypical developmental trajectory that would say “He’ll get it someday… maybe at 22, but it will come” because for BigGuy, it truly may never come.  When he was younger, the therapists were so lost because there was no consistent “currency” to work with him–no consistent motivator.  There is no carrot you can dangle in front of him to bribe him; and nothing he loves enough to motivate him on his own.  Truly.  Now, at 10, there are definitely some motivators, but nothing that pushes him hard.  Even his strongest interests do not push him to do simple things if he just doesn’t feel like doing them. So losing his Minecraft time is not enough to make him brush his teeth.  I don’t think you can grasp the gravity of that statement.  It will result in a one-hour meltdown with begging about his being willing to “do ANYthing” to get his Minecraft time, but the offer to let him brush his teeth to get his time back results in him running up the stairs and playing with a Lego or his stuffed Tepig or reading whatever text-based material is within view.  And the reminder that this is what he needed to do to get his Minecraft time results in “OH YEAH!”, but no movement.

You cannot wrap your head around this.  I know you can’t.  And it’s not just frustrating–it’s scary.

I was so thankful to see Time put out an article that (at least a tiny bit) addresses this oxymoron.  Even without Asperger’s at play.  In their article “How To Make Your Kids Smarter: 10 Steps Backed By Science” they note that IQ is kind of worthless without self-discipline.

“Self-discipline predicted academic performance more robustly than did IQ. Self-discipline also predicted which students would improve their grades over the course of the school year, whereas IQ did not.… Self-discipline has a bigger effect on academic performance than does intellectual talent.”

How do you teach a kid to have self-discipline?  Seriously?  How do you instill perseverance?  We are not indulgent parents and there is a good structure to how our house operates.  We’re not helicopter parents nor permissive parents.  We facilitate our kids making their own choices (and having to stand by them as long as the consequence was foreseeable and not excessively/downright cruel or harmful).  Some kids are just not going to get it.  Especially those with impaired relational skills (and “relational” doesn’t just mean “between people” it means “connecting less concrete things”).

I’ve watched other kids with these issues in the schools and I’m not going there.  People like to tell me that I don’t know that MY kid will wind up like that, but ya know what?  I’m not rolling the dice either.  I’m watching a rather brilliant young man who is VERY similar to BigGuy pretty much fail out of high school for the exact same problems and a mother who has given up trying to find his currency.  I’m thankful to be able to see how his life is unfolding and seeing how removing the things he lives for or holding them hostage are doing absolutely nothing to move him.  Just like BigGuy.  I feel like I can learn from this and feel confident that this is just not going to be the route.

But I don’t know what the route is yet for my guy.  And part of me is heartbroken because I often wonder if the last 4-1/2 years of moving and my less-than-engaging/encouraging/supportive behavior have squashed any potential inspiration and motivation or willingness to chase after his interests with more fervor.  I can’t think about it.  That’s over.  We were in survival mode.  It happened and I can’t change it.

I just need to get back on my horse and leave it alone.  I need to focus on Girly.  I need to do more with her.  If he doesn’t want to work, nobody’s going to make him.  Not here and not at school.  That Cell Biology lab motivated him and I just cannot find a place like that for him to be full-time.  I ache for that for him.  Explaining to him that doing this work would get him to such a place is too far out for him to grasp.

Maybe his sister surpassing his achievements will be the motivator.  Because that kid’s going to knock it out of the park.

And really, if I go back and look at MY goals for my kids, I could give a rat’s ass about any of this crap.  But trying to meet his needs as he has explained them has been rough and it means doing this kind of crap.  Maybe I just need to change my attitude about it.  I don’t know.  I’m having “a day”.  And I love him so much.  I just want to meet his needs.   And hers.

As I sit, planning the week…

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It’s Sunday night.  Girly is out cold and Papa is giving BigGuy some reiki (more power to him because I’m so completely unable to wrap my head around that stuff).

Every Sunday night we have a family meeting.  The agenda is like this:

  1. What happened last week
  2. What is happening this week
  3. Old business
  4. New business
  5. Money stuff
  6. Something wonderful my family did for me
  7. Something wonderful I did for my family
  8. Comments/questions about anything anyone needs to talk about

As we went through item #2, Papa noted that he goes back to work this week and BigGuy jumped on the end of that with “and we start to do REAL schoolwork this week”.  I looked at my husband–whose eyebrows denoted his equal surprise.  He asked my son “Haven’t you already done ‘real’ schoolwork?” and I then took over so as to make my life a lot easier and said “Well, we’ve been figuring things out this August and then you had vacation; but we’re ready to get down to business now.” (I GUESS!!  *whew*  Nice save, Mama!)

But of course, now the pressure is on.  On ME!  GEESH!  This kid is no joke!  He wants to do some serious learning and I need to move my ass and get to it.  I just seriously cannot figure out how to accommodate Girly!  Ugh… I need to get it together.  I think I’m going to photocopy some of the pages from the Ancient Egypt coloring book for her tomorrow and tonight I need to sit down and lay out a daily time schedule so that I can work with BigGuy as needed and then work with Girly when I don’t have to work with BigGuy.  But I also really need to sit down and plan out HER activities, too.

Wasn’t I just spending the month of August trying to figure this out?  Wtf?

 

Our weekend in a nutshell

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BigGuy and Papa left the house at 7am this morning for an all-day choir retreat meant to introduce the boys and get them better acquainted.  Papa (thankfully) put out a forgotten box of CSA food that someone e-mailed us about yesterday to schedule picking up today.  So Girly and I “slept in”… which means “Girly slept and I laid trapped under her because I couldn’t fall back asleep”.  But it was nice.  It was so crisp and cool and all of the windows were open… it was just lovely.

Girly and I ate some of the deviled eggs Papa made last night to facilitate a speedy breakfast, and then I showered and we did Girly’s hair (for. an. hour.)  Then leftovers for lunch, a trip to get a Mama-Girly pedi, then we watched Robin Hood.

She has a soccer game at 3pm, the boys come home at 5, and there’s a block party on our former block that we’ll head to for dinner.

Tomorrow there is NOTHING. ON. THE CALENDAR.  Which is good because mama needs to prep for the week and we really need to preserve a LOT of produce.  Srsly.  In fact, I think we’ll be making another batch of ketchup because we just have so many tomatoes.  Cray-cray.

Mulligan

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I feel like a truck hit me this morning.  My back is still hurting so badly that I’m going to my first ever acupuncture appointment later this afternoon (the only time I could get an appointment AND child-coverage).  Papa had calls starting at 8am but had made deviled eggs for us for breakfast.  I proced to sleep on and off until 9am.  We did our morning snuggles and the kids went down to eat deviled eggs.

I wish I could tell you WHAT the heck happened after that, but I have no idea.  All I know is that it was quiet.  So I laid in bed, realizing that I had not dug out (or purchased) the stuff I needed for BigGuy’s notebook; I did not go through the mountain of books that just arrived in the mail (okay, “mountain” is obvious exaggeration–but probably about a dozen); and I didn’t write anything in the boy’s planner.

And they were really quiet for a REALLY long time.

So I got up, got dressed, washed up… and they were still quiet.

They were so quiet that I went downstairs to investigate.  Or to look for my earbuds so that I could potentially meditate.  Whatever.  No kids.  Whaaaaa….?  WHERE ARE THE KIDS?  And then I caught the light under the (closed) basement door.  HA!  They were playing in the basement.  TOGETHER.

So I ran upstairs and started my meditation (Chopra just kicked off a new free 21-day challenge and they’re made for newbies… I highly recommend it).  And then I got to printing off stuff I need to teach my kids.

But dude… it’s Tuesday.  Maybe we’ll just mulligan this and start again on Monday?  Eh… maybe not.  I’m sure I’ll have my crap together by the week of Labor Day.  And since I grew up in the Northeast–that’s about when we would be starting school anyway.  So this is all just “practice”.  We’re easing in.

And I really hate Egypt.