UnchartedParent.com

Back in June, a Duke University/University of Arizona study announced that Americans have dramatically fewer close friends than they did almost twenty years ago.  People’s close ties are now more within the family than spread throughout a community or society as a whole.  The study reported that 25 percent of respondents said that they had no one with whom to discuss important matters; this figure is more than double the same statistic reported nearly twenty years earlier.

This trend strikes me as bad for Americans in general.  It’s awful for moms, especially moms of very young children.

Parenting can be isolating.  Before having kids, it’s hard to see that fact.  Who would guess that adding a small person to your life could cut you off almost completely from the rest of the world?  One might guess that a child would link you irretrievably to the vast numbers of people who have parenting in common.  A child, one might think, is a conversation starter; you can bond with other parents on the playground, in playgroups, even at the pediatrician’s office.  You can become friends with your kids’ friends’ parents.  A child should be a guaranteed path toward adult friendship.

But it doesn’t work that way.

There are, of course, some incredibly outgoing, energetic people who could find a way to make friends even if cast away on a remote tropical island.  But for the rest of us, a new baby means a near-end to adult conversation, a constant battle with laundry and an hour-and-a-half of preparation to leave the house for any reason.  Any spare time is devoted to sleep; there’s almost no time left over for anyone or anything else.

The isolation can continue past babyhood.  Eventually, you do find ways to venture out of the house and onto that playground, but any attempt at adult conversation is punctuated by interruptions at fifteen-second intervals such as, “Jane, I told you NOT to eat the wood chips!”  Finding the time, opportunity and people with similar non-child interests with whom to have meaningful relationships is a Herculean task that many moms simply can’t master.  Working moms often have the opposite problem.  Their weeknights consist of getting ready for the next day and their weekends are often crammed with errands.  Sure, they interact with adults at work, but these moms often find that no one at the office really wants to discuss the one thing foremost on their minds: their children.

Even existing friendships can change when one person in the relationship has kids.  Almost no one can predict the enormous metamorphosis parenting so often sparks in us, and frequently, the non-parent simply can’t understand their formerly engaging, rested and interested friend.  (I have noticed, however, that if the second person later becomes a parent, these relationships can suddenly be reborn.)

So what’s a mom to do?  This should be the part of this post where I offer a magic bullet, but unfortunately, I’ve none to give.  I have felt this isolation myself; I’ve experienced the loneliness and even despair that can come from feeling that my existing friends are too far away, too busy or too unable to understand my life with kids.  But I’ve also found that once I began to feel like I had a handle on this parenting thing, I could, with effort, carve out ways to bond or re-bond with friends.  Our vacations this summer have involved spending time with people who don’t live all that close to me, but who have been cherished friends for years.  Now that we all have kids, we seem to understand each other’s lives in ways that perhaps we didn’t for a while.  And without exception, spending time with my friends has left me happier and more confident about myself than I was before.  These are people who knew me and loved me before I was a wife or a parent, and the periodic affirmation of their friendship reminds me that though I may sometimes feel like my life consists of laundry and picking up toys, there is more to me than that and there are people who appreciate everything that I am.

I’ve also managed to make new friends who didn’t know me before parenting, though it took several years and a move to an entirely new region of the country to do it.  These friends generally have kids around the same age as my own, and so we travel through the various stages of parenting together.  Through them I have discovered the mood-improving benefits of meeting a friend for coffee after the kids are asleep, regardless of whether we discuss my kids, her job or the goings-on in our community.  Being with these people who never knew me before I became a parent reminds me both that there is more to me than just my kids and that I am not alone on this challenging, exciting, nauseating journey that is parenting.

The nuclear family is generally the strongest bond in our society, but friendships are precious, too.  Friendships can cheer us up, confirm our value to others and provide support when we need it most.  For moms—all parents, really—friends help us take much-needed breaks and remind us that we are not crazy, even when we feel like we are heading in that direction.  It may be tough to find the time for our friends; it may even be difficult to make friends.  But the time and effort is well spent, because our friends help make us who we are.

So stop reading.  Call a friend.  (But come back soon!)

Resolved: I, Mommy, will heretofore try mightily not to be so d*mned stressed out! 

My children’s behavior has been less than exemplary over the past few weeks.  Prior to last week’s trip to visit friends, I warned my former college roommate that I would be introducing two rather sullen and whiney children into her house.  “We’ve had lots of screaming, tears and attitude.”  I wanted to be sure she was prepared.

And, truth be told, I wanted to make it clear that I’m not the kind of mother who is satisfied with this type of behavior.  I wanted to make sure she knew that my kids are not like this all of the time.

I discussed the problems I’ve been having recently with my four-and-a-half year old son, “Jack,” while helping to set the table one evening.  “He’s grumpy, he won’t talk to me, he gets angry easily; he’s not the bubbly, cheerful little boy I’m used to anymore.  I feel like he’s turned into an adolescent overnight—and he’s only four!”  (Have I mentioned on this blog yet my fear of teenagers?)

“Well,” one of my friends began, “he’s got a lot going on right now.  You’re moving, right?  That’s stressful.  And you’ve been really busy lately.”

“That’s true,” I acknowledged.  “And I have been sleep-deprived, so I’ve had even less patience than usual.  I haven’t really had a lot of time for the kids, and I’ve snapped at them.”  I mulled the effects my behavior might be having on my kids.  Then I added, “Oh, and he’s leaving his preschool and starting at a new school next week.  And he’s lost some toys and things around the house as we prepared to sell it.  We sold the toddler playset that was in the backyard, we tossed some homemade projects like his puppet theater (constructed on a rainy day from a cardboard box), and about eighty percent of his toys are stowed in the basement.  And I insist that he keep the house neat and tidy all of the time in case someone comes to look at it.”  I stopped talking, amazed by the list of stresses I had just spit out.  “I guess that is a lot for a four-year-old to handle, huh?” 

My friends merely nodded knowingly; further comment was unnecessary.

Everyone knows that it is often easier to see the truth of a situation or a relationship when on the outside than it is when you’re a part of it.  For example, we’re all better at analyzing our friends’ romantic relationships than our own.  We can certainly see when another person is acting in an annoying manner, but it’s not so easy to identify our own personality flaws.  And if a spouse is coping with a major stressor like a significant illness, a job loss, a parent’s illness or death, we understand that he or she might not be his or her usual cheery, patient self, and we adjust our expectations of him or her accordingly. 

Why is it then so hard to see the causes and effects of negative turns of behavior in our kids?

Maybe it’s not this difficult for everyone.  Maybe it’s just me.  But this is not the first time that this has happened to me—it’s not even the first time I’ve written about it in this blog.  I’m so busy trying to ensure that my children grow up to be the kind, patient, pleasant people I want them to be that I sometimes miss the causes of negative behavior that I would surely be able to identify in anyone else.

Now that I’ve figured out this particular behavioral cause-and-effect—or to be more accurate, had what should have been obvious shoved under my nose like smelling salts—I can try to do what I can to ease Jack’s stress.  I can’t or won’t change the fact that he’s going to a new school, or that we’re moving and the house needs to be kept neat to attract buyers.  Part of growing up is encountering life situations like these, and Jack needs to develop the skills to cope. 

But I can be more understanding of his behavior.  Yesterday, he dumped every single one of his toy bins out onto the floor; twelve bins of toy litter crowded the family room floor.  I thought about scolding him, but instead, I smiled and said, “Wow, that’s a lot of toys, isn’t it?”  And I walked away.

I also ignored my to-do list yesterday and played with both kids.  And guess what?  These changes in my behavior have already netted me two happier children than I had the day before.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been condemning my kids’ behavior for the past few weeks; maybe I should have looked more closely at my own.  It’s too late to change the past, but I now resolve, for at least the foreseeable future, to be a less stressed-out mom.

If mom’s not happy, nobody’s happy.

It’s hot, it’s humid, and summer is coming to a close.  My son’s new monogrammed L.L. Bean school lunchbox just arrived in the mail, our town pools have closed (the lifeguards are going back to college), and our favorite apple orchard has opened for the season, although the first apples aren’t quite ready to be picked.  We’ve even had a touch of early fall weather lately, the crisp breezes filled with the promise of bright New England colors and mugs of cinnamon-spiked hot apple cider to warm chilly hands and tummies.

But I’m not quite ready to leave summer behind.  My family and I are taking one last little vacation to visit friends in the Berkshires.  Uncharted Parent will be back the week of August 28, rested (I hope) and ready to put nose to the grindstone–and fingers to the keyboard.

Here’s to the last days of summer!

This weekend marked the one-year anniversary of “Emmie’s” homecoming from Korea.  At sixteen months old, Emmie has fit into our family perfectly.  She long ago won the hearts of her parents and brother, and she has demonstrated over and over that she knows who her parents are, who her brother is, and that this family is hers, forever.

During the day.

At night, it’s a very different story.  What began as relatively minor sleep issues that might be experienced by any baby have morphed into serious problems that I am convinced have something to do with the multiple losses Emmie experienced before she was five months old.

(I should pause for a moment to stipulate that Emmie was never in an orphanage; she was in foster care in Korea.  All signs have indicated that her foster care was high quality, but, of course, no one can ever be sure about these things.)

Emmie has a night-waking problem that has not only left her and her parents constantly rubbing their eyes for lack of sleep, but has also worsened over the past few months.  When she wakes up, she screams as though she were being tortured.  The moment my husband or I pick her up, she snuggles against us and is content.  But it doesn’t matter if we hold her for one minute or sixty; as soon as we put her back in her crib, the screaming begins again.  She can do this for as long as two-and-a-half hours.  And lately, she’s been screaming at bedtime, too. 

We are all exhausted.  And I find myself battling between one part of my heart that wants to hold her all night and reassure her that she is okay, and the flip side that wants to roar, “FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, GO TO SLEEP!!” 

I have suspected for months now that these issues must be adoption-related.  Sleep issues in babies and toddlers are common, and we went through our share with our now four-and-a-half year old son, “Jack.”  But Emmie’s variety is so severe and so tied to being with either me or my husband that it seems highly likely to me that these problems must be rooted in the losses that Emmie suffered so early in her life.

Many people with whom I have shared this theory have politely questioned it, wondering how a child so young could remember anything from a time when she was even younger.  I agree that it is unlikely Emmie has actual memories from her newborn days that she mulls over in her mind in the middle of the night.  But I can easily imagine a more primal feeling, one that overtakes her when she is alone in the dark, particularly in the foggy state of having just woken up.  Why wouldn’t a baby be able to feel an overwhelming sense of confusion, loss and fear, of having everything she knows ripped from her more than once and remaining terrified that such a tear could happen again at any time?  And wouldn’t that fear only be heightened by her lack of cognitive ability to understand that this time, the people and things she knows are hers forever?

On a practical level, my husband and I have tried multiple techniques to deal with Emmie’s sleep problems, but none of them have worked.  We even decided to try letting Emmie sleep in our bed—something we have always strongly opposed for several reasons—but even that didn’t work because Emmie only wanted to kick us and play, so no one got any sleep.  So now I am calling in the cavalry: an Early Intervention family therapist who specializes in infant emotional and sleep issues, a post-adoption social services agency and, of course, our pediatrician.  (I should have talked to that last one some time ago, but at the time of Emmie’s 15-month checkup, things seemed to be improving so I didn’t bring it up.)

Everything about adopting a child has been unique; so much of our experience has been surprising.  I have often wondered how we would know, when confronting some problem or issue with our daughter as she grows, what would be a result of her specific, adoptive background and what would simply be a result of her being a kid.  I think I’m beginning to learn the answer to that question: we won’t.  We’ll just have to figure it out as best we can.  In this case, I really have nothing but my “mother’s intuition”—and a little confirmatory research—to inform me that we are dealing with an adoption-related problem.  All I can do is collect information and try and apply it to that one-of-a-kind little girl who is my daughter, and hope that we can find the right recipe to solve her dilemma as well as ours.

Come to think of it, that strategy doesn’t only apply to adoption.  That’s pretty much the definition of raising kids.

As I write this, the window behind my computer displays a dazzling August Sunday.  The weather is more like September northern New England weather: a blue sky dotted with cottony white clouds, a persistent breeze, temperature in the mid-‘70’s and blissfully dry.  It’s an ideal day for being out-of-doors with my family, and so my family has traveled to yet another destination designed for kids, Davis’ Farmland.  It’s filled with cute animals and a water area sure to push even the smallest tots to near-hysterical laughter.

My family is there.  I am home.

Our recent weeks of physical labor into the wee hours of each morning readying our house for sale have forced my body to call for a break, as I knew it would.  I can never work that hard, push myself that far, without a physical reprimand from my body.  For as much as I like to think of myself as endlessly enthusiastic and blessed with an indomitable mental spirit, I always run into my physical limitations, despite my earnest wishes that they would disappear.

I’m not just a mom; I’m a mom with a disease.

Actually, the Crohn’s Disease that has been my unwanted companion for more than 15 years isn’t the whole story; I also am plagued by chronic migraines that can debilitate me more than I would have believed if I hadn’t experienced them myself.  I take daily medications for both conditions—medication which, I can honestly say, has changed my life.  Before I began to take medicine prophylactically to reduce my migraines, my husband and I weren’t even sure we could handle a second child.  To make a very, very long and complicated story short, meds and lifestyle adjustments have enabled me to become a mother of two children and live, for the most part, the life I want to live.

But there are limits.

I know that if I push myself physically to meet some reasonable challenge, I will usually succeed.  More certain even than that success, though, is that there will be recrimination.  Our house sparkles and will show beautifully (if only we could get a potential buyer in the door), and I was ready to spend a fun-filled day with my two young kids, who have understandably been feeling neglected over the past couple of weeks.  But the second I rose from my bed this Sunday morning, I knew that it was payback time.  My head hurt and I was nauseous and dizzy, and though I tried to deny it—I wanted so much to spend the day with my family—I had to confront the reality that I needed to spend the day at home, resting.  Otherwise, my body would rebel further, as it has many times before.  I know what is required of me, but sometimes it’s very hard to follow these rules.

So my husband packed up the kids and they took off for a glorious day in the sun.  I move from couch to kitchen to computer and back to the couch again, trying to find today’s perfect recipe that will guarantee that I can be mom again tomorrow.

I have never been able to say this before, to anyone, and I’ll probably never be able to say it again.  So here goes:

My house is cleaner than your house.

Whoever you are, wherever you are, I’d put my house in its present state up against yours any day.  Of course, you’ve probably slept in the past two weeks and eaten food that didn’t come from Dunkin Donuts, McDonald’s or an Oreo package.  You probably also wouldn’t experience withdrawal symptoms if you cut your caffeine consumption down to four cans of Diet Pepsi and one coffee per day.  And I bet you haven’t driven Mr. Clean’s Magic Eraser stock up several points, either.

Our house is ready to sell, and I am thrilled to be done with the process of getting it ready.  As I discovered last night, the kids are even happier.  After dinner, I played a long tickle game with them and proved to them that I do in fact remember their names; I’m pretty sure they weren’t certain if my husband and I still remembered who they were.

Now comes the “easy” part.  We just have to keep everything neat and clean, all the time, until someone buys the house.  Piece of cake.  Of course, already this morning I’ve had to clean up cat puke and the remnants of some unfortunate toothpaste accident in the kids’ bathroom that left toothpaste glued to the bathroom wall and large sections of the counter and sink bowl.

Keep your fingers crossed for me that someone buys our house quickly.  I don’t know how long I can sustain this unnatural level of cleanliness!

No time, no time.

I’ve gotten eight hours of sleep . . . over the past three nights.

I am subsisting on Diet Pepsi and Oreos (reduced fat, though, so I can feel good about it).

My four-and-a-half-year-old son has now incorporated the following phrase into his pretend play: “We’re NEVER gonna sell this house!”

My sixteen-month-old daughter lets us know, each night between the hours of 12 and 3 a.m., what she thinks of the attention she is not getting from her parents.

Even the cat is fed up.

But the house, to my great wonder, is starting to look respectable.  (It’s amazing what vacuuming up a quarter-inch of dust off of the shelves will do for a room.)

There’s no point in my trying to be insightful or even coherent.  I’ll write better on Friday, when I am, I hope, at least conscious.

What a week.

Actually, I guess I’m really just thinking about this past weekend.  It only feels like a week.

Much like women allegedly forget the pain of childbirth over time (though I haven’t), I had forgotten how rotten moving is.  We’re not actually even moving yet; we’re just preparing our house to hit the market in three days.  Which is worse: packing up every single belonging you own while making sure you don’t bury the kids’ favorite toys in some irretrievable box marked “kitchen appliances,” or cleaning and tidying every inch of your house while relegating half of your stuff into bins in your basement?  Oh, and keep the storage area neat, please.

If you’ve been reading this blog since March, you know that cleaning is not my forte.  (See Cleanliness is Overrated.)  Yet, this activity occupied my every waking moment this weekend and for days before, and will continue to do so for three more days.  We took a few hours away from scrubbing the walls in order to unload our stuff on people who, miraculously, actually wanted to part with their money for it.  (The yard sale was a great success, despite the fact that I forgot to put on sunscreen and am now striped like a zebra.)  I’ve hired a babysitter for part of today so that I could write this post and scrub more walls.  Somehow, my husband and I are whipping this house into shape; perhaps I should credit the fact that my blood-caffeine level must now be somewhere up around 40 percent.

Despite my and my husband’s exhaustion, the people I feel a little bad for are the kids.  My husband and I have been focused cleaning machines, and we’ve been short on patience and good humor.  The poor kids have been foisted on the babysitter, planted in front of videos, stuffed with candy and snapped at more times than I’d like to admit.  Sure, my husband and I know that it’s all for a good cause: we’re buying a great new house in an excellent school district.  The new house even has an extraordinarily well-built tree house (it’s so solid it will probably outlast the house itself), though we have kept this fact from our four-and-a-half year old son; we don’t want to tell him until we’ve closed on the house, just in case something goes wrong with the transaction.  But the kids are too young to fully appreciate why Mommy and Daddy are too busy to play or read them books.  All they know is that we’re not the cheery, attentive parents we usually are. 

I guess we’ll just have to plan to make it up to them.  And while I’d like to end this post with a witty conclusion and/or a profound insight, I’m just too d*mn tired to come up with one.  So I’ll just stop here; anyhow, I’ve got to get back to scrubbing those walls.

My one-year-old daughter is a cherub of a child.  She’s sweet, cheerful, affectionate, and she has a smile that could melt the heart of a Klingon.  She gives fierce bear hugs and blows enthusiastic kisses, and it is a joy to be with her.

Except for when she is tired, sick or teething.

A visit to the doctor’s office yesterday confirmed that “Emmie” has one ear infection and two one-year molars that are about to cut through her gums.  I was relieved to hear the diagnosis because it explained her constant whining over the past few days and her lost sleep over the past several nights.

So Emmie is tired, sick and teething.

Of course I feel badly for her.  It’s a given that no one likes to see his or her child in pain.  I’ve always thought that it’s so unfair that a natural process that every human being must undergo—the getting of teeth—should be such a painful experience.  For Emmie in particular, teething seems to be akin to being tortured on the rack.  And I sympathize, too, with her exhaustion; boy, do I.

My own lack of sleep and the whining, whining, whining is driving me nuts.  For example, I consider my cooking skills to be quite competent, even talented, but last night I achieved new heights: I managed to get dinner on the table while holding Emmie and repeatedly prying her boa constrictor-like arms from my neck so that I could breathe.  (Yes, she’s really that strong.)

So much of the time, we gaze at our children in wonder and amazement and reflect how blessed we are to be able to call these miracles of creation our very own.

Other times, we’ve just got to ride out the storm in a boat carved from caffeine and chocolate and hope we make it back to the tranquil beach.

Hand me another brownie and a Diet Pepsi, please.

Feminist.

What image does that word conjure up in your mind?  A burning bra?  Women collaborating on how to beat down the men in their lives and relegate them to inferior status in the world?

I’ve just come from a reading by Leslie Morgan Steiner, editor of Mommy Wars.  Her book examines the condition of modern American motherhood via Steiner’s commentary and a collection of twenty-six essays.  Though I have not yet read the book—I’ve just begun Ann Crittenden’s The Price of Motherhood—I, like many moms I know, have dealt personally with the struggle to strike a work-family balance that will permit me simultaneously to spend substantial time with my kids and to find professional fulfillment—and a little income.  (See my June 26 post, I Can Bring Home the Bacon or Fry It Up in a Pan.)

There are so many issues to discuss here that I will save most of them for another time; you know, when I’ve figured out how to pare down the entirety of modern American socioeconomic and sociological dynamics into one or two brief, tidy blog posts.  But I would like to relay now a footnote from Steiner’s presentation, one that surfaced in a post-program discussion between Steiner, myself and another attendee.

Here’s the crux of the issue: most young women today would rather go back to wearing corsets than wear the label “feminist.”

But are all of those women really not feminists?

One of my favorite quotations is well known: “Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.”  (I have seen this quote attributed to various women; I am not certain which of these is the actual original speaker.)  Ask, say, a young college woman if she is a feminist, and the answer will often come back a resounding “NO!”

But ask that same woman if she thinks she should be allowed to work outside the home after she is married.  Or if she should get paid the same money for doing the same job as the young man who sits next to her in class.  Or if she should be allowed to run for office—even for the job of U.S. president, or if she should be penalized professionally for deciding to have children, or if she should have access to effective birth control if she wants it, and I suspect that in most cases, that same woman will return an equally emphatic “YES!”  Ask her if she and her kids should lose their health insurance if she divorces her abusive husband.  Ask her if she should be able to walk down the street feeling just as safe as a man walking down that same street.  Again, I’m betting she’ll answer in the affirmative.

The biggest problem with the word “feminist” is not the concept it embodies, it’s the etymology of the word itself.  As so often happens with political words, an effective (yes, I said effective) opposition has succeeded in hijacking the word so that for many people, it now only stands for its most negative connotation.  Thus, modern Americans—and, in my experience, many Europeans as well—think a feminist wants to abolish men from productive society and relegate them to the same back seat women have so often been forced to occupy.  They see feminism as destructive, man-hating, radical activism, and they want no part of it.

Unfortunately, I haven’t witnessed much success in winning back words once they’ve been claimed by the opposition.  It’s possible, but I think it’s unwise to put all of our eggs in that shaky basket.  So, for those of you who either count yourselves as feminists or, as is more likely, don’t or won’t think of yourselves with that term but do believe that women and men ought truly to occupy equal places in our society, I offer a challenge: let’s come up with a new word.

“Equalist”?  Not specific enough.  “Pro-women”?  Not broad enough.  “Humanist”?  OK, I think you’ll agree I need a little help here.

Any ideas?