Playing

The hot thing right now is having things be play-based.  Everywhere you look preschools are touting how they are play-based.  Play is the thing. It’s how kids are learning.  WE LOVE PLAY is screamed from pamphlets and school descriptions.  This is great!  It’s beautiful!  It fits directly into what our family is trying to do through unschooling – to let our kids learn by playing.  

Well, kind of.  

The parenting world is so focused on success, on goals, on achievement, and instead of letting that go to truly let kids play, and to let them learn by playing, play is co-opted by these bigger issues that people have.  Let the kids play, but only if that means it will increase their chances of getting into college.  And at some point it’s not about fun and games anymore.  Play-based programs are great but in the end parents want results.  They want security.  They want to know that their kid is going to be okay.  

It’s time to redefine okay.

One thing I’ve discovered is that play-based does not mean unstructured.  And while no play based program is going to have the drill and kill approach of a skill-based program, I promise that the play being offered is almost always being offered with an agenda.  Because it’s fine to play, as long as there is proof that the play is leading to reading, to science, to art, to some type of quantifiable learning moment so parents can feel that yes, YES, their kids will get into college because this moment of squishing hands into clay is truly developing pre-reading skills and yes, YES Sally will get into Princeton.  Whew.  

And if Sally isn’t reading by 6 or 7, watch out play-based education.  You’re tossed out the window.

Looking for a play-based program that is truly about play is hard, because it’s almost impossible to find.  I want my kids to play, and I mean play.  Not play with the intent to learn, not play with an agenda.  Just play.  Because the human condition is to learn no matter what.  As long as your basic needs are met, meaning your belly is full,  you are warm and cared for, your parents hug you and kiss you and tell you that you’re loved, you will learn.  You will learn while playing legos for the one millionth time.   You will learn watching that Curious George episode yet again.  The connections will be made while doing something that adults may not see as actually worthwhile.  

Play-based is good, I guess.  Except that the agenda to push, to mold, to send our kids in a direction of our choosing, not theirs, is pervasive.  Our parental anxieties are pervasive.  All these things take hold and play based education becomes about play on the outside and about achievement on the inside, about parents needing to feel okay, not about what kids really need.

If we can look at ourselves, as so many families who decide to unschool really do, and figure out how to let our kids be okay on their own, following their own agenda. If we can let go of goals and achievement, let go of our own dreams of college and success. If we can alter our views to have following your dreams and passions be as important as making lots of money. If we can redefine okay to be about our kids and not about our anxieties. If we can do all that then we can let go and really let play happen as it should.

Short Term

A long time ago I had an in-box. It was pretty much the bane of my existence. It was piled high with all sorts of crap: crap I needed to do, crap I ignored, just crap, crap, crap. It was crap that had no possible end and every day more crap piled up. Then one day I got up and walked away from my in-box. Quite literally. I got a phone call that I’d made it into nursing school and I quit my job at 4 o’clock in the afternoon. I haven’t looked back since. No more in-box.

Notes from a Dragon Mom, an essay by Emily Rapp, was recently published in the New York Times. It’s a heart-breaking essay from a mother whose son will die. She knows this. She lives every moment, every breath knowing this. And it has changed her goals in her life. There is no long term, it is only short, the right here and right now.

This is how I want to live my life.

What a gift to come from living with a terminally ill child. A gift of focus. A destruction of the in-box and the on-going tasks and worries of life. A deep understanding that nothing matters except this moment, sitting at this computer, writing this blog post, listening to the sounds of my children sleep. Tomorrow nothing will matter but holding Finn in my arms, laughing with Zivia, spending the day with my family. Nothing matters but now.

I walked away from my in-box and into the now. When I walk into the report room in the morning, still a little groggy from a night with too little sleep, I am in the now. There is nothing like having someone’s life in your hands, whether it’s your patient’s or your child’s, to keep you present. The only thing I can do is work in the present because what happens tomorrow is not relevant. Addicts will keep using. Alcoholics will keep drinking. People will continue risky behaviors because they are too broken inside to consider themselves valuable. If I worry past this moment I will collapse from the weight of it all. I will cease to be effective or useful. I will have something that sounds odd to dread: expectations. I have twelve hours and I will do what I can to be an advocate and then I will walk away, because I will not keep even an emotional in-box.

Being in the here and now means you have to stop worrying about tomorrow, means you take yourself out of the outcome, and you are set free to just be. And since I’ve been able to do this, I’ve found that often just being in the moment is what people really need. My patients don’t need me to stop them from shooting up, they need me to hold their hand through a painful procedure. They need me to make sure they get the most effective narcotics. Finn doesn’t need me to worry about when he’ll read. He doesn’t need me to plot his course to college and socially defined success. He needs me to lie on the couch and watch TV and listen for the one millionth time to his storie about robots and buy him cake pops from Starbucks. Zivia doesn’t need me to make sure she has a sturdy foundation of math. She doesn’t need me to ensure she gets certain grades. She needs me to chase her around the house and toss her in the air and sing her silly songs and drench her eggs in ketchup.

I will stick with the short-term, just like the Dragon Mom. Because even though I don’t know when my child will die, I do know I want every moment to count in that same way. Because, as she states to beautifully, “Parenting, I’ve come to understand, is about loving my child today. Now. In fact, for any parent, anywhere, that’s all there is.”

Yes.

This is Not the Baby I Ordered

I’ve been debating about this post for about a week now. What I want to write about is not easy, and it involves my son. The last thing in the world I want to do is hurt him, and someday when he’s older, for some random reason, maybe he will read this. If he does, I hope he knows that there is not a cell in my body that doesn’t love him, not a part of my soul that isn’t knit together with his. It’s just that life isn’t exactly what we always expect, and that’s when it’s time to truly step up. I hope I’ve stepped up for him.

Before you have a baby you have your idea of your baby. You put in your order. First off, they might sleep (ha). They will coo at you and smile. You will go to classes and have fun. You will make a million wonderful mama friends. Then your baby arrives and you realize that there’s one thing you kind of left out of your fantasy: the actual baby. Maybe that baby won’t really want to sleep. Maybe she’ll cry all of the time instead of cooing happily. The actual baby will have actual opinions, actual wants and needs, and those might, most likely won’t, be the same as yours.

It can be kind of a shock.

It didn’t take long for us to figure out that Finn was not going to come lightly into this world. He arrived with is eyes wide open, nursed with his eyes wide open and it was only a matter of time before the world simply became too much for him. So instead of cooing and mama friends and classes, we became the parents who kept leaving. We left restaurants. We left play dates. We left family gatherings. We left classes. We left story time. All because our son was incredibly overstimulated and overwhelmed. And this didn’t just happen for a few months, it happened for years. There were moments where I wanted to scream:

THIS IS NOT THE BABY I ORDERED.

A couple days ago we carried our four and a half year old son out of Target as he screamed, his face red and wet with tears. I wrapped my arms around his thin back and my heart ached for all the pain that he was unloading onto us. He was in the grips of something so big that nothing could tear him away from his sadness, not even my embrace that so wanted to take all this away.

This is my son.

He’s intense in most everything he does, responding in big ways, living on the edge of normal at all times. Life with him is not what you might expect. It’s full of changes, surprises. He’s four and a half and there we were, right back where we we’ve been over and over, with everything grinding to a halt as we stop and deal with Finn. Again. Leaving. Again. And the feelings were there again: anger, disappointment, resentment, exhaustion.

…this is not the baby I ordered…

Parenting Finn has forced me to face my own disappointment. He is an unstoppable force in the world, and his intensity is not lost on his parents. He is not the average happy kid. His feelings are big: his joy is huge, his sadness fills his entire body. These are wonderful things but they are also things that bring incredible challenges. I could collapse under disappointment and resentment, I could disengage, pull away, and sometimes I want to. But parenting Finn has made me step up.

It doesn’t matter that this is not the baby I ordered. My disappointment is something I can live with, because it’s nothing compared to my love. This is my baby, our baby. Our first baby. We were brought into this world to parent this child and if there is one thing Megan and I are, it’s big enough, strong enough, solid enough to be the parent our children need us to be so we don’t force them to be the children we want them to be. From the moment he came out of my belly I have known this child and I will know him the rest of his life. Even if we never go to another story time. Even if I have to carry him out of Target a million times. Even if it exhausts me, I will step up over and over. I honor my disappointment, I mourn all those missed opportunities, but I still step up. Because as parents that’s just what we do.

Even if it hurts sometimes.

Read more: Love Makes a Family Blog Carnival

hovering

There’s a term that bounces around the media today to describe what society has deemed a problem parent.

Helicopter.

These are the people that are too involved with their kids, too enmeshed. The ones who defend their every move, plot their every class, make sure their kid is living out their parents’ dream, not their own. They argue with teachers about grades and write their kids college essays. I’m not defending the helicopter parent by any means. What I hate is that the term indicates that the desirable way to parent is to not hover.

The anti-helicopter parent is the side-line parent. Step aside, watch from afar. From the side-line parent springs common themes, like….

kids have to work things out themselves

it’s the idea that good parenting does not hover, just steps away and leaves kids to figure it out. Because parenting isn’t about nurturing and loving, it’s about teaching the hardness and pain of life, and you do that by backing away and abandoning your kid to the social winds.

Here’s the thing. I hover.

We are attachment parents. This means that we do not leave our children’s’ sides. We are there. We are present. It is not our job to separate from our children, it is their job to move away from us when they’re ready. So why would I not hover? Finn and Zivia do not need to function in this world without us by their side, but it is our job to know our kids and know when it’s time to gently step away. This is not at the age of one, which I think is pretty clear to most people. I also don’t think it’s really at the age of four. Or five. Or six. Maybe not seven. In our fear of enabling we end up setting our kids free from our influence and guidance so much earlier than they really need.

I am ready to step in if I need to, and it’s my job to do that. To help moderate a disagreement. To model conflict resolution. And as I do this, my kids will watch and learn and one day they will do it themselves. But not the way most of this country does it, which is at the age of five or earlier when all of the sudden you leave your home life, the cocoon of safety and stability that has been wrapped around you, and are dropped into the world of mean girls and playground politics. These worlds exist even in the most progressive, forward thinking schools. Then we wonder why bullying happens. Perhaps some of it stems from the erosion of attachment when very young kids are sent to school and away from their parents.

So call me a helicopter parent (although I am truly not) because I am not going to step away from my children any sooner than they need me to. I will hover, maybe sometimes closer, maybe sometimes a little further away. I will hover because I truly believe it is the absolute best thing for me and my family.

If You Offer Your Sperm to a Lesbian…

The topic for this week is donor sperm. What I’m going to share is about our destinies, our fate, how sometimes things just work out and about people taking offers of sperm seriously.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about fate lately, and the way our lives travel along these paths that we really cannot see ahead of time. What has truly triggered this for me is my parents car crash. It was waiting for them, along their journey in life, but no one had any idea that one moment they would be driving down a highway in California and the next minute they would be crunched into a tree. It is their path, their journey and sometimes we don’t know where that journey will take us.

It’s funny how life falls together, the pieces drifting around until somehow they become a picture and you have this “aha” moment. This happened for us in 2005 as Megan and I were discussing how to make our dream of a family actually become a reality. Some may find it amusing that I actually felt quite strongly at the time that I not only wanted an anonymous donor but I wanted one without ID release. I had this idea that this stranger, a man without a face, would become too tempting for our children, too much a fantasy figure that would save them from what they were sure to feel was some sort of hell their parents had plunged them into. I didn’t want them to be able to access that person who I was sure they would feel completes them. Then Megan brought up the possibility of using Rainbow Flag and suddenly I did a complete 180 degree shift in attitude. It wasn’t that person who was threatening me, it was my kids lacking knowledge, and I realized the best way to protect our family was to provide knowledge from the very beginning. In one moment the conversation shifted from where to get sperm to WHO.

This is where life is funny. If my life had gone any different way, our donor would not have been out there. I would have never uttered his name as someone we could ask. We would have never said, “no way, not him” then considered it again. This is where I’m amazed how our path has travelled to where we absolutely should be. This is why I feel our children are our destiny. One different decision, one different step, one different experience, and we would have never collided. There was no one else out there, it was just him. We asked (it was nowhere near as simple as I’m portraying). He said yes. We have two amazing kids and two men in our lives who we love dearly and who our children love dearly as well. And all I can say is Thank You Universe.

This is a serious post with a not very serious title, so I will end by telling a story. Our donor offered his sperm in a very casual way. In a very public place. If he had never done that, I would have never thought of him, I would have never asked The Question. It seemed like a joke, but DUDE, don’t even casually offer a baby-hungry lesbian your sperm. She’ll want to take you up on it. And if she takes you up on it, you might actually end up making a baby. Or two. And if you make a baby, you might end up with a couple of eternally grateful lesbians on your hands. Forever. So watch out.

And the carnival rolls on – read more entries about donor sperm here…

Spoiled

I admit that I love to spoil my kids. It’s unpopular to have this position, people will warn you about the ultimate outcome, but dangit, I still love to make their dreams come true. It’s probably good that we live on a small salary because if I had unlimited funds I would be in a lot of trouble. There are way too many things that the answer comes down to “why not”.

What I have come to see in my children is joy. So much joy and I want to preserve that as long as possible. So while it’s my job to provide structure and boundaries, and as much as I don’t like these things, I think we do a decent job of making sure they’re part of our lives and our parenting, I also think it’s my job to spoil as much as I can as often as I can. So I do.

We have dessert first. A lot. Backwards day is declared on a regular basis.

We have a list of fun things Finn wants to do. We’ve accomplished about 50% of them.

I buy little presents for the kids. A few bucks isn’t going to break the bank and it makes them happy.

Birthdays are blow-outs, extravaganzas. Well, not in the expensive sense but in the sense that we really think about what will make that kid happy. And it’s their day, so they get to do what they want. Even if it means eating Jell-o all day long.

We do the unlimited ride thing at the fair. Because it’s not astronomically expensive but it feels like you have a million bucks when you can ride any ride you want to. And I swallow my fear of heights, falling, going fast down anything, to be able to ride them with Finn.

So yeah, my kids are spoiled. They get treats. Once Finn ate dinner on the couch and I swear the kid was in heaven. I love to spoil them if I can, and so when I can, I do it. Because childhood is about being a kid, not being trained to be a responsible adult, having the unfairness about life drilled into you. It’s about going on the rocket ship ride for the one hundreth time and being entirely filled up on life. That can’t happen if I don’t make it happen. So I do.

Destroyed by Baby

Welcome to my very first Love Makes a Family blog carnival post. Basically, a group of queer TTC/Parenting blogs are taking on a specific subject. Today, how a baby can affect your relationship! Read away. At the end, follow the link to the next participant.

I often say that we had a great relationship then we decided to ruin it all by having a kid. It’s sadly not too far from the truth. Until we had Finn and then Zivia I knew only one couple who had disintegrated in front of my eyes. Now I can count way too many.

This week I learned of yet another. Betrayal, infidelity, unhappiness. All those words came to mind as I discovered the details of how yet another couple has been Destroyed by Baby. You might think that this is a black and white way to look at things. After all, how can a sweet chubby little bundle of joy be the thing that brings down people who have spent what feels like at least a lifetime together? After all, isn’t it the time when your relationship is most solid that you make that big decision to go from two to three? You love each other, why not spread that love around, why not have a baby.

Sometimes I think our relationships are like mighty rivers that have been dammed. We are not unfettered gentle streams that meander through life together. Things build up, come between, and no one is perfect. Resentments build, but somehow we are able to hold back all those feelings, the nastiness, the anger. Until something comes along and starts to poke holes in that concrete structure that holds us back from truly resenting the person we’ve decided to spend our lives with. This something often comes complete with a layette, drool, night wakings and babbling. It’s really cute. It’s really hard to deal with the fact that something you love so deeply and completely is such a threat to something else you love. Each other.

I have been with my wife for close to 19 years, and wouldn’t it be nice if somehow time provided some type of immunity from the dangers a baby can bring to one’s primary relationship. It didn’t. In April of 2007 he landed right smack between us and all of the sudden there was this tiny vulnerable being who we were both willing to go to the mat for, willing to sacrifice each other over. After a year of parenting, of being immersed in the most fabulous joint project I had ever conceived of, I realized that our relationship was the worst it had ever been and I began to have moments feeling that I might be better off alone. That feeling had never once crossed my mind and there I was thinking things would be better without the person who I had married not just once but twice, who I was truly devoted to, who I loved. My dam had started cracking.

I often joke that my long-term-relationship is a creature of its own. After all, it’s officially old enough to buy porn and cigarettes. The one thing I can say I’ve always had is a deep and abiding respect for my wife. Even when things are hard, she is a person who I truly LIKE. She’s smart, she’s funny, she’s a giant pain in the ass. She’s not perfect but like all people who have weathered time together, you learn that about each other and you decide that the imperfections are worth having that person in your life. It’s not about changing, it’s about accepting, embracing, sometimes coping through specific moments.

Things did even out. Those leaks healed, although the dam is still there in so many ways. As Finn grew older and more nuanced (a nice way of saying he got to be so much more of a pain in the ass) Megan and I reoriented to each other. A second child didn’t have the same impact. We made it and today I can report that while not every day is rainbows and unicorns, I feel pretty damn lucky to have an amazing person by my side in this life and I look forward to what lies ahead.

Things don’t heal for everyone. Then you’re left standing in the rubble of a relationship that once was the paramount of importance, left without the person you promised to love your entire life. Children in the picture make all those things we were able to tolerate because we could fight our way through them or turn our backs on them become intolerable. We either find a way to find each other again, or we just don’t. Sometimes this means the end of our relationships. Other times it means we live in a state of unhappiness with each other, the flood of emotion barely held in check. Rarely do we emerge from the experience of having children the same as we went in.

Read on: And Baby Made Three…and Then Two…

math whiz

The question is always the same. Exactly HOW will a child learn if someone isn’t teaching. The answer is one that people don’t want to hear. Children will learn because that is what they are born to do. They will read. They will do math. It will just happen. This answer puts into question the need for teachers, our very education system.

I have never taught Finn anything. Well, not intentionally. I am his parent, not his teacher, and it is my intent that things remain this way. Still, in the back of the car today he was able to tell us the following.

A nickel is worth five cents. Two nickels are worth ten cents. If he has a dollar and two nickels he has a dollar and ten cents.

Holy schmoly, he’s doing math. Because without the pressure, with out the books and homework and tests, he still learns. We actually all do, until someone, whether it be a school or a parent, sends us the message that learning can only take place under certain circumstances with certain trained leadership.

No.

Learning takes place by breathing and being alive. It takes place on cloudy days, when the sun is shining, by the edges of creeks, in living rooms and bedrooms, in the pages of books, on the screen of televisions and computers. It takes place as they play, cover themselves in mud, push paint around on a piece of paper, create, destroy, recreate. The sparks fly, the synapses fire, and somewhere in all of that children start to (ha ha) put two and two together. Then you have math in the back of your car as you’re driving to the bowling alley. Then your four year old tells you that two nickels make ten cents. That is learning.

Not Back to School

There is part of me that likes this time of year. I remember how much fun it was to shop for new school supplies. I mostly remember how much I would covet a Trapper Keeper every single year. And every year that Trapper Keeper would eventually turn into a shelf in my locker.

There will be a collective sigh about the end of summer tomorrow. All those wonderful supplies will be tucked into backpacks, new clothes will be put on, and I remember all the excitement and fear that a new year would bring. It wasn’t all bad. The beginning was always kind of fun.

In the meantime, we are not back to school. This means searching for creatures during low tide, maybe a bon fire for roasting marshmallows. The fair, gorging ourselves with fair food and rides. Picking strawberries in a field on a hot sunny day. It means holding onto the very last slivers of summer as tightly as we can, because the rain is coming, the long days of drizzle. We might as well enjoy, and I’m so glad we can.

But tomorrow we will celebrate the “end” of summer with everyone else. We might as well. It’s always nice to have an excuse for a party.

and in a moment everything can change

two and a half weeks ago I was riding my bike home when my phone rang. I try not to bike and phone, but I did look and see that it was my parents, who had been vacationing in California. I answered it and it was my dad who then said, “your mother and I have been in an accident. She’s been airlifted to a hospital in Redding.”

I couldn’t breathe.

As an RN who works at a level one trauma center, trauma scares the living shit out of me. It’s one of those things that can happen in a single moment. One moment your life going one way, the next it’s entirely changed. So there I was, hyperventilating,images of worst case scenarios spinning through my head. I called the hospital, I screamed at the staff, I had to find out more about my mom’s condition besides her being “stable”. It was a nightmare. I threatened them, I told them to call the nursing supervisor, and they finally had me talk to my mom who was NOT doing well. It was a nightmare. This would not be the first time that the staff in this hospital put my mom between themselves and me. Not cool. I finally got information. I will now spew in nurse chat:

dislocated finger, broken humerus, six broken ribs, T12 burst fracture, pneumothorax

What I didn’t hear: head injury, paralyzed. It could have been so much worse. It could have been so much better. I then had to call my dad, who was at another hospital, and tell him the extent of my mom’s injuries.

Since then we’ve added something to do with the ball and socket in her shoulder, bilatral pleural effusions and a hemothorax. She has three tubes coming out of her chest. She’s in a brace.

Last Wednesday I said to my dad that enough was enough. My mom was not improving. He was down there alone. It was his birthday. It was time to come home. I wasn’t happy with mom’s care, but besides that, my dad had been through enough. My brother and I are in Seattle, they have friends who could visit, I work at the hospital we would transfer her to. It was just time to come home. On Friday we airlifted them both out of Redding,CA and back to Seattle, to finish my mom’s care at Harborview Medical Center.

Tomorrow my mom will go in for her third surgery. She’s out of the ICU and in acute care. She’s on room air. She can only say a few sentences without pausing, but with the surgery this should get better. We are probably facing another couple weeks before my mom could make it to rehab, but she’s making progress.

It’s hard to take care of your parents and your own family, to be a nurse and a daughter. For the first few days I couldn’t eat. My sleep has been crap. I’m distracted. I’m on the phone constantly. When I’m not at work I go back to work to visit my mom. Yesterday I was finally able to let everything go and be a mom and a wife. My kids miss me, my wife misses me.

In a moment everything can change. I am so deeply grateful to all the amazing people around me, to the competent people who staff Harborview Medical Center, to the flight nurses who kept my mom safe as she came up here, to the people on my floor who have brought my dad food in the ER and visited my mom’s bedside. How blessed is a person allowed to be?

In my case, very.