Connection with Our Co-Parents

Finding time to connect in a big way is challenging. Especially when connection has been lacking for a while. 

My husband and I didn’t have much connection for a long time. And it was rough. Trust and cooperation are scarce when we aren’t connected. 

So now, my husband and I have a daily connection plan: after the kids are asleep, we spend five minutes together. 

Just five minutes.

Some nights it turns into longer, but there is no pressure for it to.

On the late nights…the extra challenging nights…those nights where we just want to fall onto bed… five minutes together won’t hurt our “schedule”. But those five minutes will be wonderful for our connection, our relationship, our family, and our lives. 

☮️🧡

Interesting Characters

by Dena Birmingham

Public transportation. There is always at least one interesting character when one rides public transportation.

A homeless person lying across a row of seats riding the bus aimlessly just for the warmth.

A young man in black clothes muttering to himself angrily and punctuating his comments with a fist to the seatback in front of him.

A plump, older lady wearing pink lipstick and a hat the queen could wear to tea.

As I looked around the bus, I noticed there were no interesting characters riding today. Everyone looked pretty bland. Bored, tired faces heading home from work. Some reading or listening to an MP3 player. No oddballs or quirky folks. Weird.

My stop was coming. I put my book into my backpack and slid my arms into the straps. My stop arrived. I bent down and heaved up my computer monitor. The place a worked was throwing it away. I was so lucky to snag it.

As I waddled off the bus with my 25 pounds of cathode ray computer monitor, I again found myself wondering where the interesting character was.

 

A Clean Kitchen

Last week, I cleaned the kitchen. I cleaned it in anger. My rage powering each swipe of the sponge.

My daughter was mad at me. She had shouted at me blame after blame. Everything that makes her unhappy is my fault.

I couldn’t hear her. Ego was screaming and running up and down the aisle of my Brain Bus. My inner child, the one that was forced to wear dresses with itchy lace, feels threatened and rages at the accusations. Her screams trigger Ego to a higher pitch and he gets louder and louder.

My daughter was struggling.
My daughter was having a hard time.

My baby needed me.

But the bitch inside my head, the scared, lonely, inner child was driving my bus and I shouted back. I defended myself!

I couldn’t hear my daughter’s message. “I need you. My feelings are too big and I need you, mommy”. The message was clear, but I still missed it.

So I shouted back at her until she stormed off and then I angry-cleaned the kitchen. Because that’s what kids really need from their momma: a clean kitchen.

Abolish the Police?

Has anyone else had a similar experience?

I saw “Abolish the Police” on a FB post and I found myself a bit angry about it. And then I started a reply that went something like: “I’ve been very glad to have the police the few times I’ve needed them.” Then, when I tried to remember those times and the details, I realised that the statement was untrue. I deleted my reply.

Anyone else have an overpowering feeling that the police have helped them yet can not come up with a single personal memory of it?

A policeman came to my house to accuse me of beating up a boy on the school bus (8th grade?). It was easy for me to disprove the accusation that I had scratched the boy’s face. I showed the officer my ultra-mega-short-bitten-down-to-nubbins fingernails. And the policeman left. Tewksbury, MA

I have called the police when my brother’s car was broken into. They refused to take fingerprints or do any sort of investigation. Tewksbury, MA

I called the police when someone broke into my car and stole my purse. They were nice enough, but they had no hope of finding the person who robbed me. I didn’t need two armed officers in my home just to take a statement. I would have been more comfortable with someone whose training focused on talking to people and supporting people in trauma. Westchester, CA

I called the police after I was involved in a hit-n-run on the freeway. The officer arrived, collected my ID, asked me to drive off the freeway, took my statement, and sent me home. A citizen had seen the accident and had followed the car that hit me. They called the police and were able to provide the license plate number to the police. The police claimed that everything car with that plate was not damaged. Fullerton, CA

In none of these situations did I need an armed officer to assist me. And they weren’t very helpful anyway.

I’m not suggesting that we don’t ever need armed officers. We would definitely want them for certain situations. I’m suggesting that maybe we have overburdened our police force with tasks that require a variety of different specializations. Most of which do not require a weapon.

When a person knows how to use a tool, and they spend a lot of time practicing the use of that tool, it should be no surprise that they reach for that tool when faced with a problem. Even if there is a better tool out there, it’s not the one the person thinks of.

We need to start using the right tools for the job at hand and not throwing the same, wrong tool at everything.

Interesting Times

"May you live in interesting times."   - Sir Austen Chamberlain in March 1936

I’m sure you’ve heard: there is a plague spreading though our modern and sophisticated world. Where I live with my family, we are currently confined to our house and our backyard. We can only leave if we are going out to obtain food, medical supplies, or medical care.

How My Family is Doing

As homeschooling unschoolers, this isn’t a drastic change for us. We did have all of our classes cancelled, our weekly park day is not happening, and we can’t go on any field trips. We can’t even go to the playground to play. However, we are still able to stick pretty closely to our usual “easy day” schedule.

Times are Flexible	Schedule
8:30am	Screens go off. Breakfast.Get dressed.
9:30am	Outside Play
10:30am	Snack
10:45am	Morning activity or board game
noon	Lunch
12:30am	Afternoon activity or board game
3:00pm	Snack
3:15pm	Free time
4:30pm	Screens are available. Mom makes dinner. Eat dinner. PJs.Freetime. Bed.

How is Everyone Else?

The rest of the country (world?) is not so lucky. Many families have both parents working from home while the children are also home. Nearly all the schools are closed and the schools sent work home for the kids to do. I can’t imagine trying to work a full time job while simultaneously being expected to not only care for my children but educate them, too. And on top of that, we are all trying to manage our own fears about what’s happening in the world and manage our children’s fears. They are little sponges and they soak up the energy we are giving off. It’s hard to give off positive energy when the world is such a scary place.

The Threat

Covid-19, the illness caused by the Corona virus, kills between 3 and 5% of people depending on how stretched the medical facilities are. So, for every 50 people I know, at least of them can be expected to die before this is over. Covid-19 is especially hard on people over the age of 60 and on people with lung problems or diabetes. It’s nuts that this sort of thing can happen today with all our modern medical knowledge and our understanding of virology and immunology. It just goes to show that nature is powerful.

History Class

When you read about the Bubonic Plague in school, did you ever think “wow, that could happen to us”? The Black Death was caused by bacteria that was spread by flea bites during the Dark Ages before we even knew that illness was caused by germs. Before we knew that washing our hands was important. Before we knew that illnesses were contagious. People thought that God was punishing the wicked. It was nuts.

And this is nuts.

Communicating

At the same time, this is a great time to be physically isolated from each other. Had this happened only 35 years ago, in the 1980s, we would only have been able to communicate via telephone. Not by snail mail even because the virus can spread on the letters. Today, we can connect over email, FaceTime, Facebook, MMORPG’s, Zoom, Skype, Discord, text messages, and dozens of video games that we can play with other people.

Reading

Had this pandemic happened in the 1980s, we would have had whatever books we had in the house at the moment. Now, we have access to thousands and thousands of eBooks via platforms such as Amazon Kindle and Overdrive. In the 1980s, we probably would have continued to receive newspapers because newspapers were the primary way that information about current events would have been distributed to the people, but that’s not a sure thing. Since the virus can live on surfaces for days (according to this), many newspapers may have been shutdown or been forced to do expensive and extensive sanitizing practices.

Watching

For video entertainment, we would have had whatever was on the three local television stations. Unless we were rich and had cable tv. Then we had about 40 stations of junk to pick from. Some people might have had a VCR, but whatever videos they had when the order to isolate came down would be all they had for the duration. Today, there is cable TV, satellite TV, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, YouTube, etc.

Playing

For video games, some of us had a Nintendo or an Atari. Those game systems required game cartridges and, like the VCRs, whatever games we had when the need to isolate hit would be all we had to play. Today we have World of Warcraft and other MMORPGS. We have Steam where we can download hundreds (maybe thousands) of games. We have the Xbox and the Nintendo Switch that can also download games. We have iPhone and Android Phones that can access thousands of apps to entertain and educate us.

Learning

For education, we would have had whatever worksheets the teacher could have mimeographed for the kids before the buses arrived to get them home. (For those of you younger than 40, the mimeograph machine was the precursor to copiers. They used this bright blue ink and the images were often so blurry the teacher had to read them to us.) Today, our teachers can email us instructions, worksheets, and links to other sources. Teachers can have group lessons via Zoom and Skype. There are dozens (hundreds?) of people turning to YouTube desperate to share their knowledge with others. Many of these are from the creative sector. Mo Willems and Ben Clanton are doing live videos where they draw with children. There are people posting themselves reading children’s books. There is a teacher doing a video about space every weekday morning at 9am. Our art teacher and our animation teacher are hosting their classes via Zoom. And the daughter of a friend of mine is getting private gymnastics lessons via FaceTime.

Hope

There is no denying that the world is in chaos and many things will not be the same when this is over. Perhaps, when the dust settles, we will notice how easily kids learn when we aren’t distracting them with worksheets and making them sit in a classroom. Perhaps we will notice that the time we spend creatively is what makes us come alive and allows us to weather all storms. Perhaps we will learn the value of spending more time in nature and less time in malls. Maybe we will see that screen-time is not as bad as some people would have us believe. My personal hope is that we all remember the ways that people are coming together during this time of isolation. How connected we all are even when we are separate.

Unschooling?

Have you heard of Unschooling? The first fifty times I heard they word it made me cringe. Education is very important to me. Knowledge about the world around us and the past seems necessary for understanding ourselves and our place in the universe. For me, the words “school” and “education” are so entwined that the sound of the word “unschooling” repulsed me.

Luckily, the word also made me curious. What is this unschooling thing? Well, I’m still just starting starting to learn about it, so don’t take my word for tiit’s a method of educating children where the interests of the child dictate what they do. It looks play. Builds confidence. Families that live the unschooling lifestyle report better relationships with their children, better relationships between their children, more peaceful homes.

Well, that was enough to make my ears perk up. I immediately started imagining how I would implement that in our family. After about a month, I was convinced that a) I could do it and b) it would be the best thing for my kids. So, I wrote a 31 page proposal and gave it to my husband.

I started listening to podcasts and reading about learning and unschooling. Talk about putting the cart before the horse. :)

My confidence about my ability to unschool our children rose when I noticed that a lot of what I had proposed was recommended by the experienced unschoolers. No limit to the amount to time they spend on screens. No strict bedtime. Provide materials for creative efforts. Take them out into the world to see and experience things first hand.

I’m convinced. What do I do now? Well, I have to convince my husband.

In my proposal, I explained my plan for the summer. We enroll in a charter school homeschool program and I will journal each day about what we did. What did we do? Where did we go? What was each children interested in? How can I offer follow up opportunities?

I want my kids to grow up happy. I want them to grow up to be happy. And I want them to have the confidence to follow their passions.

Unschooling sure sounds like the way to go, but it is so far off the beaten path. I have often been a rogue, am I brave enough to do this for my kids?

Home Improvement: Say nice things about each other

Anyone who has kids (or siblings) can attest to the fact that they will bicker. And bicker. And occasionally throw toys or even some punches. In my house, the bickering wasn’t limited to the kids. My husband was also bickering with the kids. And maybe I was, too.

One day I realized that the bickering was a display of their lack of respect for each other. They no longer saw each other as worthwhile people. They were only seeing each other through the lens of the bickering: they saw each other as enemies or at least annoyances. .

What I realized in that moment was that they needed to see other aspects of their siblings. They needed to see that their siblings were kind, generous, and funny. My husband needed to see that the kids were magical, curious, creative, generous, and courageous.

First, I stopped talking about the difficult moments I was having with our children. There are hundreds of moments each day that I could have been sharing, but I was only sharing the negative ones. All he heard about our kids was my complaining. So. I stopped complaining to my husband about our kids.

And, I  stopped making comments about the kids in front of their siblings. I stopped talking to my friends about my kids when the kids were even close to being within earshot. If I have something nice to say, I now bring the child over and ask if they’d like to tell their own story. If not, I ask their permission before I do.

Then I made it a point to tell nice stories about each of them to the others. I told my Snickerdoodle about a time when my Chocolate Chip spoke up and asked for an extra lollipop to give to Snickerdoodle. I told my husband about the funny joke Snickerdoodle made up. I told him about the sweet way Chocolate Chip shared his popsicle with Gingersnap. I told him the cute thing Ginger Snap did at the park. I told the kids what a nice daddy they have and how he brought home a game because he knew they would like it.

How does this help? Why does saying nice things about your family members to the others change anything? Well, my kids attend a standard school with a typical schedule. The only time they see each other is during the following times: getting ready for school time, after school decompression time, the witching hour, and bedtime. None of these times are conducive to cooperation, kindness, and caring. All of these times are conducive to rushing, dissatisfaction, and overstimulation. Bickering is the result.

Nearly all of the interactions they have are during these anxious times where we are often on a time schedule or at least following an agenda. The bickering is bothering a symptom and a cause. They feel yucky, so they aren’t as nice as we can hope. Then the other person feels more yucky and it’s even harder for them to be kind in the face of rudeness. Then it snowballs from there.

It’s difficult to see the kindness and compassion is someone that is almost always rude to them, bickering with them, or yelling at them. That’s where this talking then yo to each other comes in.

Imagine trying to get along with someone who mistreats you. Now imagine getting along with someone you love who is gentle and kind. Big difference, right? Telling my kids about the nice things I see the other do helps remind them about the good qualities of their siblings. Telling husband about the amazing things my kids do reminds him how wonderful they are.

When we see each other as kind, generous, and compassionate, we are less likely to take offense when they have a cranky moment and are unintentionally rude to us. When Gingersnap breaks Chocolate Chip’s LEGO creation, Chocolate Chip gets less angry with Gingersnap. When Snickerdoodle screams at the Baker (DH) in defiance, he will have a modicum more of patience when he knows how she helped me when Gingersnap scrapped his knee.

And since I’m looking for things to tell about, I’m looking for the good in my family. I’m focusing on the good and when they fail to buckle their seatbelts after the 100th time I’ve asked, I might be gentler because I remember how Gingersnap thanked me for putting on his shoes.

“Be the change you want to see in the world.” It’s an over simplified paraphrasing of something Ghandi said. It fits this situation though. I wanted to change how my family members saw each other. So I made it a goal to emphasize the good things about them, and to do that I had to change the way I view my family. I had to move my focus to their good qualities.

We all make mistakes. We all have fouls moods. Those moments should not define us and we should not use them to define each other.