"Goodnight, sleep tight, and pleasant dreams to you.
Here's a wish and a prayer that every dream comes true.
And now 'til we meet again
Adios, au revoir, auf wiedersehen." (Jack Elliott)
I had been looking forward to the conference for more than a month. I was taking the train to Pittsburgh - a place I had never been - to spend three days networking with other writers, listening to workshops and meeting industry people I’d only ever seen online. I’d have my laptop and a hotel room to myself, so I could write or nap or order room service whenever I wanted.
So why, the night before the conference, was I so sad?
I was fine all day, pushing through procrastination to do the packing I dreaded, meeting a friend for dinner, going to my critique group….
I was fine until I kissed my daughter goodnight.
Suddenly, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go. Suddenly, I missed my family, and I hadn’t even left yet.
Now, my daughter is a teenager and perfectly capable of coping without me for a few days. My husband will hold down the fort and will also be perfectly fine without me for a few days, so this whole mushy sentimental thing is completely ridiculous. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, right?
Yeah, well Wednesday night, if my heart had been any fonder it would have broken.
What is it about kissing our kids goodnight that stirs up a maelstrom of emotion? Most nights, it's a simple ritual. But some nights - the night before something significant, the night that ends a particularly trying day, nights when they are sick or upset or you are sick or upset - all that is right in the parent-child connection is intensified in that routine moment.
When they're little, we kiss them all the time - as much as they will let us. As they grow older, the "as much as they will let us" shrinks little by little - faster perhaps in boys than in girls - until the goodnight kiss is all that remains, all that they will tolerate.
The goodnight kiss is a sort of touchstone. We go from not letting them out of our arms to not letting them out of our sight to gradually letting them go farther and farther away from us as they grow more mature and more independent. Their need to touch base with us ebbs and flows as does our need to touch base with them. And though the ebbs and flows may not line up perfectly, they're usually somewhat in sync.
Except when they're not. Like at my house on Wednesday night.
In the simple act of kissing my daughter goodnight (one of the few times I am still allowed to make that sort of contact), I realized that I wouldn't be kissing her goodnight again for several days. And then, as it sometimes does when she spends a night away from home, my mind made the leap to the future. Usually, I kiss her goodnight every night. This time, it would be a few days until we shared this ritual again. In a few years, I'd be kissing her goodbye, sending her off to college. And how about after that? How long would it be then?
Yikes.
In the end, I shut the bedroom door, went downstairs and felt sorry for myself for a while. When I went to bed, I shed a few tears, but by the time I got up in the morning, I'd regained my senses and my equilibrium. Wallowing would be wrong on so many levels - a waste of energy, a poor example, a wet blanket on a warm, sunny day when a picnic tablecloth was a much better choice.
And so off to the train station I went, setting up my very own little office in the half-full train, filling my mind and my screen with writing and musings and doing what smart parents do - taking time for myself to pursue something I love so that someday, my daughter would give herself permission to do the same thing. And in a few days, I'll return home to re-start the ritual I love, enjoying it for as long as I can.
Who knows? If she's like her mother, she may never outgrow it.
]]>"Organizing is really just one big game of Tetris." (Alejandra Costello)
One of the staples in my teaching and speaking arsenal is a class called "Organizing By STYLE." Its seeds were planted by a (now-defunct) HGTV show called "Mission: Organization." They grew to fruition when a move from one office to another necessitated an attitude adjustment, and, inspired by a lot of reading on the topic of organization, they jump-started small groups and classroom lessons for kids on the topic of getting it together.
I started sharing the concept of organizing by STYLE with third graders in a small group setting, talking about how our personal and organizational styles influence the way we do things. The third graders in my group were smart, lively and, for the most part, in need of assistance when it came to organizing their stuff. The concepts of zones and pocket folders and pencil boxes had been modeled for them for at least four years, but, despite their intelligence and desire to do well, they hadn't assimilated these concepts into their daily life. These kids knew what they were supposed to do, but struggled to do it.
The third grade small group morphed into lessons in fifth grade classrooms, and the concepts began to trickle into fourth grade as well. As I taught these kids, a consistent and important part of my approach was the assertion that people who struggle with organization aren't broken or flawed; many of them -- perhaps even most -- are smart and creative and busy and just think differently.
I took these ideas to adults, via a school counselors' conference, then community education classes and a writers' workshop. While the concepts transferred across age levels with little adaptation, I began to make some observations about the makeup of my classes.
When I took this class out to the adult community, I nearly always ended up with a class full of women. Men were sprinkled throughout the audience when I presented to the writers and the counselors, but with the exception of one husband along for the ride in a class I taught for retirees, a female perspective dominated the room every time I taught this class in the community-at-large.
Some personality traits began to emerge as well. These women were vivacious. Gregarious. Busy. They were tightly connected to their families and friends, and these relationships mattered to them a great deal.
And nearly every single one of them was more organized than she believed she was.
As a school counselor, I've always been fascinated by the concept of developmental stages. While physical changes occur rapidly (think of the progress a child makes from infancy to kindergarten), intellectual and psychological development occurs more slowly. And teaching these classes made me wonder how organizational skills develop across the life span.
Most kids learn organizational skills through a combination of osmosis and modeling -- they copy what their parents and teachers do.
But for some, this approach doesn't "take". Sometimes it's because the tools are a bad fit (pocket folders and binders don't work for everyone). Often, it's because these kids think differently.
And these kids who think differently grow into adults who think differently. Smart and creative, they go on to succeed in many aspects of life, but continue to struggle with organization. Some marry and/or enter professions where someone else takes care of this piece of their life; others remain organizationally adrift.
And some of the women show up to take my class.
Did I mention that they're smart and creative? And nurturing?
For these adult women, a new wrinkle has invaded the fabric of their organizational systems: Family. They are wives and mothers and grandmothers, trying to juggle neatness and nurturing.
While teaching kids to organize necessitates a combination of the right tools, strategies and systems, helping mothers and grandmothers to organize centers around helping them to achieve balance between their stuff and their relationships.
This is an oversimplification, of course; finding balance is never as easy as it sounds. But if we fail to take the relational aspect of women's lives into consideration when we talk about organization, we overlook an essential ingredient that impacts not only their success but that of their children and grandchildren as well. After all, these women are organizational role models -- key players in the trickle-down/osmosis theory of organizational development -- the ones who teach their kids how it's done.
And a funny thing happens in this developmental progression (at least according to my limited observations). The older women often feel that they've become less organized with age.
In a typical pattern of development, facility with a skill expands and increases. Knowing that intuitively, these women -- like my elementary school kiddos -- fear that they are broken or flawed.
Little do they realize that their skill set has expanded. Valuing nurture over neatness, they think nothing of dropping what they are doing to help a child or spend time with a grandchild. Many hold on to items that are significant to their adult children, creating clutter in their own living spaces. In some cases, these adult children are unable to take charge of their own things for valid reasons; in other cases, it's time to pass the torch.
These women know what mothers everywhere learn all too quickly. Our time with our children goes by too fast. For those who organize traditionally, neat houses happen almost instinctively, but for those who organize in less traditional ways, organization is a constant balancing act between nurture and neatness. And on the days when neatness loses, if nurture is the culprit, perhaps we should cut ourselves some slack, bearing in mind what the older women in my classes know instinctively: There will always be another day to clear off the dining room table, but the days to play should be seized and held onto whenever possible.
Happy Mother's Day. I wish you every success in this game of Tetris, and hope that when clutter encroaches, you can keep in mind this thing we call organization is just a game.
]]>"One literacy researcher describes the current generation not as “digital natives,” but as “digital doofuses,” who retain very little of the information they glean from skimming." (Jenny Shank, Mediashift)
Everywhere I turn, there is discussion about e-books. Given the fact that I'm an author and educator who spends a lot of time online, I'm not surprised that I frequently "run into" these conversations, many of which demonize the rise of the e-book.
I'm at an age and stage in life where it's quite interesting to watch this development unfold. I grew up going to the library on a regular basis. My first job was a volunteer position in the children's room of my local library; I was in eighth grade at the time. My first paying job, just a few years later, was in a secondhand bookstore called The Paperback Exchange. Customers could exchange their used books for store credit and leave with a bag full of used books at less than half the cover price of new ones. Seems readers were looking for a bargain even then - and no one considered this subversive, or the beginning of the end of publishing as we know it. In fact, many people kicked themselves for not thinking of it first.
I went on to work in my college bookstore for five years, and to take a summer job at a local Encore Books, now sadly defunct. I loved books and magazines - still do - and collected them like many animal lovers collect strays - I know I don't need any more of them, but this one is just so promising - and so it comes home with me.
As an adult, I'm living out my dream of being a writer, having published two books traditionally through an educational publisher along with many articles, first in magazines and newspapers, and then online. My first novel is coming out next year - e-book and soft cover - a year or so after my first book went out of print, then discovered new life in an electronic version. It's ironic, but exciting.
What got me thinking about all of this today was a link I found on the PBS Facebook page to an article about documentary called Out of Print, which "explores how e-books are changing how we read." The documentary looks interesting, exploring the impact of e-books from developmental and neurological perspectives, as well as including the views of historians and authors, and the literacy researcher quoted at the top of this post.
As a parent of a child in this current generation, this quote gave me pause. Is my daughter destined to be a "digital doofus," unable to read anything longer than the length of text that fits on her iPhone screen?
Two Christmases ago, we bought her a Kindle so that she could continue to indulge her avid reading habit without our needing to add a library annex to our house. Like her parents, she loves to read, and is at loose ends without a good book at hand. Like her mother, she is a book collector, collecting books not for their monetary value but because of the value they have added to her life, and so parting with the books she has loved (and there are many) is difficult for her.
The Kindle has opened up a world of e-books that have taught her an important lesson: not everything that gets published is good. In her reading travels, she has stumbled onto fan fiction and many self-published e-books that have left her with an impression - and a resolve to stop reading and close the book. Books that would not have made it past the Mom censor have slipped onto her Kindle on those evenings when her desire to read was strong but her budget was faltering (we knew better than to allow her free reign with a credit card in a bookstore), and the access to subpar work was too good to pass up.
As a parent, I wish my daughter had not had these reading - ahem - adventures, but I realize that they've made her not only a more discriminating buyer, but a more discriminating reader as well. While I had no problem being the book police when she was small - I wouldn't have had it any other way - I realize that she needs to find her own way in the wide world of books. Besides, I trust her enough to know where to draw the line, especially since I've seen the expression on her face when she finds something that she deems inappropriate or disgusting.
Despite these forays into e-books good and bad - or perhaps in part because of them - my daughter remains an avid reader. When we make our weekly excursion to Target, she frequently makes a beeline for the book department, then meets up with us later carrying a stack of books that we narrow down to fit both taste and budget. Despite a love for texting and Skyping and access to many electronic devices on a minute-by-minute basis, my daughter shows no signs of becoming a digital doofus.
Will all of this e-access re-wire our brains, dumb us down and cause the collapse of the publishing industry? While I haven't done the research, I believe these things can happen only if we allow them to. As long as there are people of all ages who want to do more than text and Skype, who choose to buy books that they can hold in their hands as well as (or instead of) those that are digitally delivered, and as long as there are parents and grandparents and teachers who read to children and instill in them a love of the written word, literacy will flourish. It may not look the same, but not all change is bad.
And, because PBS does the research and assimilates it beautifully, I look forward to watching Out of Print. Perhaps I'll even be able to convince my daughter to watch it with me.
Unless, of course, she's wrapped up in a book.
]]>"Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each." (Henry David Thoreau)
Someone told me the other day that there were 30-some days of school left. While that doesn't leave me as panic-stricken now as it did when I was working in a school and realized how much I still had to do in that little bit of time, it brings me up short in a different way.
My daughter is nearly finished her freshman year of high school.
It seems as though she was just starting high school a few months ago, and now her first year is nearly behind her. Oh, sure, a few more weeks of classes, along with finals and Keystone exams loom on the horizon, but those are just the final hurdles between the start of a high school career and the beginning of sophomore year. And given the rate at which this year flew by, can graduation be that far away?
One of the benefits of being a late in life mom is that you don't take as much for granted. I've made it a point to enjoy something about every step, every stage. And, since she's an only child, I had the luxury of feeling that time moved at a less crazed pace than it might have if she had siblings.
Until recently.
I remember counting her age first in days, then in weeks, then months until finally that first birthday arrived. Even then, the milestones continued month-by-month, days flying by and achievements mounting. First tooth, first step, first bike, first day of school seemed to follow in rapid succession.
There were less desirable milestones, too - first stitches, first broken bone, first heartbreaking disappointment - but we usually didn't have to look too hard to find something good about every age and every stage.
Even now, on the days when "fifteen" causes me to grit my teeth and lose my cool, there is so much to enjoy. Still, it's bittersweet because as I watch her becoming the independent young woman we've raised her to be, I realize how hard it will be to let her go. Though I frequently complain about the noise level when she's here, it's sometimes too quiet when she's not. And when I look at the world I'm sending her out into, I just want to wrap my arms around her and never let her go.
But I won't - even if she'd stand still long enough to let me - because I raised her to stand on her own two feet, and she can't do that if she's constantly tripping over me.
And so, "fifteen" or not, I'm grateful that I still have some more time with her before she spreads her wings. It's going by too quickly, but maybe that's just God's way of reminding me to slow down and take time to enjoy this stage - warts and all - while I can, because while in some ways I'll be grateful to see "fifteen" go, I'll never be able to recapture its beauty again.
]]>He is richest who is content with the least. (Socrates)
It's vacation planning season. Those who are planning big trips, or who head to the same destination every summer have already made reservations and sketched out plans. Those in the mood for something different - or for whom vacation simply isn't a given - are still pondering. At least that's the situation at our house.
Vacation of some kind has always been a given in our family, at least since our daughter was little. The day trips and weekends away when she was small gave way to weeks at the beach, first as a family, then with company for her. Somewhere in the middle of those typical vacations, we took a cruise - a trip we talk about doing again, but so far, haven't planned.
This summer, we're all itching for something new, but with the exception of the excursion to Europe my daughter dreams of, no one has really come up with a fantastic destination. Since she turns 16 in the fall and is angling for a (chaperoned) trip to NYC with friends, that factors into the plans we'll make for this summer.
Yet even with options that seem endless, we're having difficulty. The beach, a longtime default that we've all enjoyed, was less than alluring to some of us this year. Accustomed to downsizing champagne tastes into a beer budget, we decided to look at local and regional destinations, only to find that hotel costs quickly eliminated the savings we'd hoped for by taking long weekends nearby.
By this time, I knew I'd discovered my blog topic, so I did what I should have done first - I googled budget vacations. The first several hits reminded me why travel sites are so popular. On a whim, I priced a 7 night cruise to the Bahamas, an all-inclusive trip that included a day at a private beach. When I compared the price to the price of the accommodations alone for our two "long weekend" (in the interest of variety) stays, there wasn't much difference - and when we factored in details like meals and activities at our local destinations, the difference was negligible.
And so we're back to the drawing board. I don't know where we'll end up going for vacation this summer (though I'm holding out for at least a weekend at a beach somewhere - private or otherwise), but having opened my mind to something beyond the "same old same old," I'm pleasantly surprised to discover I don't necessarily have to open my checkbook as well - at least not any more than usual. And whatever our destination may end up being, it's truly the least important consideration. What matters most is the memories we'll make wherever we are.
Even if it's not a private island in the Bahamas.
]]>"The difference between school and life? In school, you're taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you're given a test that teaches you a lesson." (Tom Bodett)
I had dinner with two of my former colleagues last night, and they reminded me that PSSAs begin next week. For the first time in more than two decades, I have no involvement in them whatsoever. They are, in fact, one of the things I don't miss about public education.
I hate what these tests have done to our educational system - I find the concept of teaching to the test abhorrent, and I don't know a single teacher who doesn't share that sentiment. Teachers didn't choose their career path so they could spend their time instructing a narrow curriculum that teaches kids to think a very specific way while effectively eradicating any trace of creativity from the teaching of major subject areas.
But PSSAs are a fact of life - at least until the pendulum swings back and the next educational reform is ushered in - and complaining about them is counterproductive. Opting out of the test for religious reasons is an option - but one that simultaneously punishes schools, who must meet minimum participation requirements or be sanctioned by the state.
So what is a parent to do?
If you truly oppose the PSSAs on religious grounds, do the research and consider opting your child out next year. If this is an avenue you choose to pursue, make sure you understand the ramifications inside and outside your own family before you do this. Will your child's school be sanctioned? What will that mean?
As I understand it, your child will still be required to attend school during these tests - what will he be doing while his peers are taking the tests? What impact will that have on him? The PSSAs are high stakes tests, and for most kids, preparing them for these evaluations that are as much about endurance as achievement is sufficient. Most kids would much rather do what their peers are doing than be singled out, and most elementary schools do the best they can to inject fun and relaxation into this week of school in particular.
Most kids will take this test. If your child is one of them, heed the school's warnings about enough sleep and a decent breakfast. For many families, this is a fact of life every day during the school year and will require no substantial changes. The main idea here is not to schedule that family vacation, late night out or overnight trip to Grandma's during testing.
But the biggest thing you can do for your child has more to do with your outlook on education, achievement and life in general than with this test in particular. Let your child know these tests are not life or death, that as long as she does her best, that's all she can do, and all you expect. Let her know that no one gets all the answers right. Make sure she understands that mistakes are a fact of life, and an important part of learning life's lessons.
Finally - and best of all - offer your child the experiences outside of school that financially-strapped schools can no longer provide. Go to the library, to museums and concerts. Pursue the arts in any way that interests your child - music lessons, dance lessons, art classes. Check with your local library, go online or subscribe to e-newsletters from arts organizations to to find out where you can access these things free of charge. If your child is so inclined, involve him in sports as a means of nurturing his physical self alongside his intellect.
Life is diverse, and full of tests. As adults, we seek balance by focusing on the positive during the times of stress. When we teach our kids to explore all of their potential, we keep these tests in perspective, proving the point that they aren't the be-all and end-all of their education - or their lives. For a week (or so), we treat the dreaded test with the necessary reverence, and for the rest of the year, we go about our business, showing our children how to live rich, full lives that refuse to be measured by - let alone governed by - a one-size fits all assessment.
]]>"The only routine with me is no routine at all." (Jackie Kennedy)
In writing, there are "plotters" and "pantsers." The plotters plot, planning out their stories in advance, writing logical scene after logical scene until they have completed a rough draft.
Or so I'm told.
Pantsers write by the seat of their pants, creating little more than a couple of characters at the beginning, then seeing where the story takes them.
These descriptions are oversimplifications, of course - creating the final product requires tenacity and finesse - but when it comes to rough drafts, most writers consider themselves plotters or pantsers. And the older I get, the more I believe this isn't just true in writing. It's true in life - and parenting - as well.
I am a pantser. As hard as I try to be a plotter, I end up pantsing my way through life. I'm okay with that when it comes to writing, but sometimes when it comes to life, I suspect I'm a frustrated plotter living the life of a pantser.
Take vacation days at my house, for example. I like to have a certain amount of flexibility to my day when it's a day off, but give me too much and I end the day frustrated by my lack of accomplishment, desperately trying to scratch items off my to-do list between 11 and midnight. Since I live with a plotter (my husband) and a happy-to-go-with-the-flow pantser (my daughter), my day is like a see-saw.
I begin the day with a tentative to-do list. I've learned that a definite list sucks all the joy out of the freedom inherent in a vacation day, but still, there's always something to do. I keep the list short, knowing a long list will be an exercise in futility unless every item on it is essential (which they usually aren't).
Then, I alternate between puttering and accomplishing, trying to strike a balance through the course of the day.
Invariably, when I have stopped puttering and started accomplishing, that's when someone needs me for something. Immediately, if not sooner.
Sometimes it's a quick question. Sometimes it's an impromptu project. Sometimes it's just routine - making dinner, for example.
The trouble is, the older I get, the harder it is (and the longer it takes) to recapture the moment that was interrupted, which makes me a less than happy camper when my name is called.
But good things come out of these interruptions, too. Yesterday, for example, when my daughter got "so bored I cleaned my room."
I was just getting ready to get into the shower when the call came from upstairs. "Mom, I need you."
"Now?"
"Yes."
"What for?"
"I'm cleaning out my closet."
I took a moment. I'd been here all day and now she needed me to do this?
Uh huh.
The room was a disaster. She had completely emptied the closet (which was necessary) and separated trash from treasure. I crawled into the closet and helped her go through the things that belonged to her only peripherally - in her mind, at least. Bedding. Outgrown clothes.
We relived the stories that went with some of the items. The Peter Rabbit toy that had been one of her favorites when she was little. Tee shirts from camps she'd attended. Toys she'd played with.
And then, when it was time to make dinner, the real conversation surfaced. Sports. Friends. Life.
I sat there on her bedroom floor hoping my husband wasn't starving, knowing I wasn't leaving this conversation for something as mundane as dinner preparations, and reminding myself that this was the perfect example of a time when a routine was meant to be broken.
When our children are little, they need a certain amount of routine. Its very predictability helps them to understand cause and effect and to feel secure.
But as they get older, they're better able to handle departures from routine, and to understand the inherent value of doing things a little differently from time to time. Often these departures help children to understand their own value - when we take a day off from work to care for them when they're sick, when we ditch the chores on a bright spring day to go to the park or make an impromptu trip for ice cream on a summer's night.
Closet plotter that I am, I'll never be able to toss routine out the window and wash my hands of it, but when that part of my personality takes over, I need to remind myself that sometimes routine is overrated. Sure, the tasks are important, but they aren't going anywhere. Sometimes, this is reassuring, but other times, the mere thought is exhausting.
Last night, her room still in upheaval, my daughter accepted an impromptu invitation to spend the night at a friend's house. My husband and I reminded her of all the essential routine tasks that she needed to complete today, and we all agreed that she needed to be home by mid-morning in order to accomplish them. Then we dispensed with routine and sent her on her way.
As I recall, she thanked me - further evidence that sometimes routines are meant to be broken.
My husband the plotter is likely to have a different take - let's see if she's thanking us when she's struggling to get things finished today.
But I think she's already learned another important lesson - that sometimes, spending time with people we care about is more important than getting things done.
Happy Easter, Happy Passover. Enjoy your time with your family.
]]>"Words of comfort, skillfully administered, are the oldest therapy known to man." (Louis Nizer)
Last week, I wrote about worriers. I touched on a couple of ideas that parents can use when their kids worry, and shared some resources that I had recommended to parents whose kids were struggling with overwhelming worry.
But what do you do when you're not enough? As parents, that's one of the most painful things we can face. Although logic tells us we can't do it all, we want to be everything to our kids. As they outgrow their night lights and move on to fears that aren't as easily chased away, we long to possess the same power we had when we kissed boo-boos and made them go away.
Asking for help can be one of the most intimidating things a parent has to do. Yet, when it comes to our children, we’re usually willing to do whatever it takes (within reason) to help them develop into happy, healthy adults.
Sometimes, that means seeking outpatient counseling. What many families don’t realize, however, is that all therapists are not created equal. Psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, counselors and pastors all fall under the “therapist” category. In addition, there are counseling psychologists, clinical psychologists, family therapists, play therapists, art therapists…the list is overwhelming. And, unfortunately, the framed degrees on the wall don’t offer any guarantee that a mental health professional, no matter how well-trained, will have chemistry with your child or your family.
Assuming the appropriate qualifications are in place, that chemistry is the key ingredient in choosing your right person. As a school counselor, I often told parents that therapy is a lot like dating. Both people can be truly wonderful in every way, but if there's no chemistry, the relationship doesn't work.
As a parent, the key ingredient in your chemistry with the therapist is trust. You need to regard the therapist who is advising your family with the same level of trust you feel for the physician who sees your child when he or she is sick. It's important that you trust the advice the therapist is offering and be willing to follow through.
While trust is a major ingredient in your child's chemistry with the therapist, other lesser ingredients matter almost as much. Your child needs to like the therapist and to be able to make a connection with him or her. If your child thinks the therapist is cool, so much the better.
Needless to say, these relationships don't develop overnight. At first, you'll need to trust your instincts, as well as your child's. Though it may take some time for changes to occur, it shouldn't take more than a few sessions for you (and your child) to know if you're in the right place. Still, change takes time, no matter how good your rapport with your counselor.
Sometimes, you won't have the luxury of seeking out the perfect situation. If your child needs medical intervention or emergency psychiatric treatment, you're likely to find yourself in the hands of the first professional who is available. Typically, psychiatrists oversee this sort of treatment, and they are often spread thin across a caseload which is larger than they might like. Psychiatrists differ from other mental health professionals in one significant way: they are medical doctors as well as being mental health practitioners. As such, they can write prescriptions and monitor medications - something a psychologist or licensed social worker cannot do - but because of the size of their caseloads, they often refer families to other professionals for counseling services.
As a school counselor, I've seen the benefits of outpatient therapy first hand, watching vulnerable kids gain their footing when all the adults worked together. Unfortunately, I've also talked with families who gave up when the counselor was willing but the chemistry was weak, because they assumed that all therapy looked the same. It doesn't. The confusing list of practitioners at the beginning of this post exists for a reason - when it comes to therapy, one size does not fit all.
In fact, when it comes to therapy, maybe we should all follow the Goldilocks path: take time to find the fit that is "just right."
The opinions expressed here are my own and are not meant to be taken as medical advice.
]]>"Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight." (Benjamin Franklin)
Do you have a worrier at your house? This time last year, I was conducting three "worry groups" - two comprised of second graders, and one made up of fifth graders. We were working through What to Do When You Worry Too Much, a book written just for kids by clinical psychologist Dawn Huebner. In a wonderful combination of stories and activity pages, Dr. Huebner walks kids through the concepts of worry and anxiety and introduces strategies to teach them how to keep their worries from growing like a tomato plant. This book was a lesson plan for my second graders, and a springboard for discussion with my fifth graders.
My worry group kids were smart and imaginative. In fact, we had a discussion in the fifth grade group about how imagination could be a double-edged sword. The same kids who were creating fantastic stories, poems and pictures were also able to imagine all sorts of horrible possibilities that most of us never consider.
At first, I was worried that all of this discussion of worries would increase anxiety in my group members, but together, we all discovered that quite the opposite was true. For most of my group members, talking about worries helped to normalize fears.
To a certain extent, worries and fears are a normal part of growing up, and even a protective mechanism. Fear of the dark. Fear of being left alone. Fear of strangers. But for some kids, worry is like constant static in their minds, a low-level annoyance that can spike to a distraction big enough to keep them from concentrating and even sleeping. These are the kids who need to talk through their worries - to bring them out of the recesses of their imaginations and into the light where they can become less frightening and more manageable.
As parents, we help our kids learn to manage these fears by reassuring them and giving them tools. Night lights that pierce the darkness. Reassurance that we are there, and ways to contact us when we are not. Understanding the difference between a stranger and a friend, and learning to perceive signs that should make us wary.
As our kids get older, we share the strategies that we use in our own lives. Logical thinking. Turning our attention to other things. Prayer.
Like anger, worry is a natural feeling - one that we need to learn to manage. In her book, Huebner compares worries to tomato plants – the more we tend to them, the bigger they become. Neglect, on the other hand, can cause both plants and worries to shrivel up and wither away, an outcome that’s obviously more desirable in the second case than the first.
If you have a worrier at your house - or if you are the worrier at your house, check out Dr. Huebner's book. Another great resource is Dr. Tamar Chansky's WorryWiseKids.org website. All of these resources are upbeat and designed to empower you to "put your voice of reason on your speed dial," as Dr. Chansky says.
As spring draws closer, keeping in the sunlight sounds better than ever.
]]>Several months back, my daughter and I began bantering on a car ride back from my parents' home in New Jersey. I don't remember how it started, but she was playing pessimist to my optimist, and we became engaged in a good-natured volley of comments "in character." Once we got home, the conversation traveled onto Facebook, and earlier this week, she brought it up at dinner, picking up in the middle of the conversation as though we'd just stopped it five minutes before.
As the daughter of one optimist (me) and one pessimist (my husband), my daughter could probably have played either role. Consequently, I got a kick out of this exchange on a couple of levels. The counselor in me liked putting the positive spin on everything she threw at me. The parent in me loved hearing my daughter's quick wit and verbal skills in action, thrilled that she enjoyed the volley as much as I did.
I think I've said before that car rides with my daughter are something I enjoy, especially when it's just the two of us. Playing chauffeur is a job that a pessimist could find much to complain about, but most of the time, I'm grateful for the opportunity because I know interesting conversations are likely to ensue. Car rides with multiple teenagers (only one of them my own) are equally enjoyable - and often infinitely more amusing - as I struggle to keep my mouth shut and let the conversation from the back seat wash over me unless I am invited to join in.
Several of my friends post daily gratitudes on their Facebook walls, a further testimony to the notion that optimism is alive and well. They range from gratitude for heat on a cold winter day to gratitude for sleeping children and devoted spouses, and these gratitudes remind me that it's sometimes the things we take for granted - like car rides -that are cause for great thanks.
Parenthood is a lot like those daily gratitudes. Sometimes, the big things - or the million tiny ones - that drive us crazy manage to silence the still, small voice of optimism. The pessimist hears the blaring music; the still, small voice of the optimist reminds us to be grateful for the presence of the noisemakers. The pessimist lives in the hurt feelings that overtake us when our kids walk five feet in front of us in public; the still, small voice of the optimist reminds us to be grateful for their independent natures. The pessimist is annoyed when our kids ask us to do things they're perfectly capable of doing themselves; the still, small voice of the optimist reminds us to be grateful that we're needed.
The balancing act that is parenthood requires tremendous optimism. Without it, we would focus entirely on the mistakes we make and worry over every mishap and misstep. Mired in pessimism, we'd be unable to allow our children out of our sight, let alone encourage them to take the risks required for their growth and development into first teenagers, then adults. Tuned in only to the voice of pessimism, we'd paint our children's futures in blacks and greys, unable to see the sunshine hiding behind the clouds.
But pessimism tempers optimism, too. This business of expecting only the best can lead to disappointment, and while the optimist is busy making lemonade out of the lemons of disillusionment, the pessimist remembers the tang of the citrus, reminding us that disappointment can come again, and so we need to be on our guard.
So, I guess it's good that my daughter has one parent who's an optimist and one who's a pessimist. Maybe we balance each other out. At the very least, we teach our daughter that there's more than one way to look at life.
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"The oldest form of theater is the dinner table. It's got five or six people, new show every night, same players. Good ensemble; the people have worked together a lot." (Michael J. Fox)
I love family dinners. I just hate cooking them.
I grew up with family dinners. Until teenage schedules interfered, my parents, my sister and I always sat down to the evening meal together - no television, no radio - just conversation. We never considered doing anything else.
And so ever since my daughter was old enough to sit at the table, family dinners have been the norm at our house, too. Actually, they started even sooner. From the time we got married, my husband and I always sat down to dinner together. No music. No electronics. Just conversation.
The food was basic - whatever could be put together in the time frame between the end of the work day and the time my husband got home. I thought that once I retired, my dinners - or at least my interest in making them - would improve. I envisioned homemade meals at a neatly set table, as opposed to whatever I could throw together in 30 minutes or less served on paper plates atop placemats slapped down among piles of mail and homework.
One can dream.
As it turns out, retirement has not inspired me to magically enjoy the things I didn't much like before. Consequently, cooking is still one of the things I do out of necessity, not desire. I make dinner every night (okay, more like five nights a week) because preserving the family meal is important to me.
Family dinners have gotten a lot of good press, and have been cited as a protective factor in reducing everything from stress and childhood obesity to drug and alcohol abuse. That's a lot of bang for a pretty small buck.
As a mom, I appreciate that. But the motivation to continue this family ritual, despite the fact that it means I have to cook, is that I enjoy our family dinners - most of the time - and I'm proud that I've raised my daughter to participate in them. Even as a teenager, she rarely balks at the rule banning electronics from the table (though she does try to slip in her version of dinner music from time to time) and she's an active participant in the conversation. Our discussions aren't the stuff of college lecture halls, but they do span topics from school and leisure activities to politics and religion. Table manners aren't always restaurant-quality. They're better than those displayed in her school cafeteria, but admittedly worse than those modeled on The Brady Bunch. Time at the table doesn't last for hours like it does for family dinners in the movies, but it kicks off our evening, and discussions begun at the table often pop up later on.
I think these dinners are one of the things I will miss most when my daughter goes to college. While my husband and I enjoy the occasional dinner for two when her school activities make dining as a family impossible, we feel my daughter's absence. Romantic dinners are certainly nice, but once our duo became a trio, the dynamic changed, and the allure of those meals faded. These days, they're like a rich dessert - something to be savored from time to time, but not the repast that sustains us.
I'm relieved that family dinners don't have to be complicated. They don't require gourmet entrees or linen tablecloths or even matching dinnerware because what's on the table is secondary to who is around it. And I'm even more relieved that such a simple thing can have such a profound effect. Unlike so many other aspects of parenting, it's practically foolproof - make dinner, add family, blend and simmer.
Now that's a recipe even I can handle.
]]>"Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young." (Henry Ford)
A couple weeks ago, my daughter came home from school excited by a presentation the counselors had done in her classroom. The topic? Learning styles. The students had taken an inventory and identified their predominant learning style and the counselors had given them information that outlined the best ways to study, categorized by style. At home, our conversation was punctuated by phrases like "Look at this one!" and "I do this!" and "This is so me!"
Earlier this week, I blogged about finding inspiration at the gym when a walk on the treadmill triggered a flood of ideas that created enough work to keep me busy for the rest of the week. Around the same time, I read an article in my alumni magazine on The Death of the Lecture, which cited examples of hands-on learning in college classrooms, typically a bastion of the traditional lecture format.
Learning styles aren't a new concept, and as an educator, I'm a firm believer in the idea that we don't all learn in the same way. And if I want proof, I don't need to look farther than my own home. When my daughter spreads out all of her study materials in the living room, then proceeds to add music to the mix while I'm in the office a few feet away (a great idea when she was little and I wanted to monitor her television viewing a bit more closely - much less appealing now!), I find myself channeling my own mother as I tell my daughter to "turn that down!" My husband, too, has little difficulty reading against the backdrop of music or television, leaving me to stalk our house, feeling a lot like Oscar the Grouch, as I desperately try to find a quiet place to work.
As parents, we often assume our children will adopt learning styles similar to our own. We don't always make this assumption consciously, but by modeling and provision, we set things up in a way that sends our kids the message that we expect them to do things the way we do them. Sometimes they will. And sometimes, they need to do something dramatically different.
A kinesthetic learner, my daughter needs to pace when she studies - and music actually helps her. The visual learner may need an arsenal of highlighters, the auditory learner taped lectures and conversation to solidify concepts. Felder and Soloman talk about learning styles in terms like "intuitive" and "sequential." Howard Gardner prefers the term "multiple intelligences."
But these theorists are just the tip of the iceberg. Information on learning styles abounds - the inventories, the descriptions, the strategies - all are available online. The simple combination of a little reading and a lot of at-home observation can help parents to quickly understand what comes most naturally to their child. Although we'd employed some off-beat techniques for homework in the past (playing hopscotch to learn tricky spelling words in first grade, for example) and encouraged our daughter to experiment with strategies to find the ones that work, I now realize that I dropped the ball on what arguably comes most easily to me - discussing it with her.
Why bother? Because helping our kids to understand themselves and the way they tick leads to self-acceptance, self-confidence and the ability to advocate for themselves as they go through both school and life thereafter. Understanding the ways they are smart helps our kids to combat self-doubt when they don't pick up a particular concept as quickly or in quite the same way as a classmate. And, from a practical perspective, learning how to study now while we're there to catch them if they fall, will help them to figure out what works best when they've outgrown our homework reminders and grade checks.
I started this post on my laptop at Starbucks, as I often do. I streamed music from my iPod, as I sometimes do. I took the occasional break on Facebook and email when the words ran dry. In the end, I needed to close the laptop, leave the public place and come home to finish this where it was quiet, and where I could get up and walk around if I got stuck. That's my learning style, and forcing myself to stay put and do what wasn't working would have meant taking much longer than necessary to accomplish the task at hand.
That's just how I roll. And we need to help our kids understand how they roll because school may end, but learning styles linger.
"She was an alien, really - a sort of eating, pooping, tantrum machine - and he didn't understand anything about her species." (Christopher Moore, A Dirty Job)
Every once in a while, I feel like an imposter. Despite nearly thirty years' experience as a school counselor, some days, the fifteen I've spent as a parent leave me feeling as though I know nothing. And if this is the case, who am I to be writing a blog about parenting?
But the fact is, it's my experience as a parent that colors this blog. The counseling background is the charcoal sketch, and life as mommy is what adds color, nuance and realism to that sketch - one that is, by nature, a little blurry to begin with. And if I weren't in the parenting trenches, but rather able to look upon all of it with rose-colored glasses, I'd be writing a very different blog.
And so I submit to you that parenting a teenager is hard. I am finding fifteen particularly challenging. Though we're past the pooping, toddler tantrum stage, I would (with all due respect to parents of two-year-olds) choose a toddler tantrum over the teenage version any day. Toddlers are distractible. Teenagers are single-mindedly stubborn.
A friend who has raised three boys to adulthood, swears that fifteen is the worst age. Next year, there will be car keys to confiscate, but for now, this person I am parenting is at once child and adult, mature in so many ways, but not nearly as ready to tackle life on her own as she thinks she is - prepared to rule the world as long as she has a maid, a chauffeur and a personal chef.
Come to think of it, that does sound a lot like parenting a two-year-old - only without the car keys.
And in case you're wondering, yes, this is the same child I was so delighted to finally be able to be stay-at-home mom to. In fact, I joke that every time I write a blog extolling the wonder of parenting, my daughter sets out to prove me wrong.
But such is the nature of teenagers - and kids at every age, to a certain extent. Louise Bates Ames, who has co-written a series of books for the Gesell Institute of Child Development talks about Piaget's periods of equilibrium and disequilibrium in all of her volumes on young children. She accompanies this discussion with a graphic that looks much like a stretched out Slinky, with equilibrium spiraling into disequilibrium and back again.
"Essentially, whenever the child's experience/interaction with the environment yielded results that confirmed her mental model [schema], she could easily assimilate the experience. But when the experience resulted in something new and unexpected, the result was disequilibrium. The child may experience this as confusion or frustration. Eventually the child changes her cognitive structures to accommodate, account for, the new experience, and moves back into equilibrium....And oftentimes "disequilibrium" can show up in very obvious and concrete ways: a child acting out of sorts, throwing tantrums, even requiring extra sleep. As a major skill is accomplished and/or integrated, the child moves back into equilibrium and interacts more smoothly with those around her." (Source: NNDB's entry on Jean Piaget)
Piaget came to these conclusions through his studies with young children, and when it's not my child having a meltdown in the grocery store, it's easy to step back and see disequilibrium in action in the form of a pre-verbal, tired toddler. Similarly, when I'm not the parent in the trenches with a teen who has dug in her heels, it's not much of a stretch to see that the same concept is at work, particularly if the teenager is tired, has hurt feelings or is coping with unfamiliar territory (and that's all without being under the influence of hormones).
If disequilibrium arises from a clash between a child's world view and her experience, teens are certainly as vulnerable as toddlers - perhaps even more so. They're exposed to much more information, a great deal of which conflicts with their experience and what they have come to understand. And, because their level of (desired) independence is even higher than that of a two-year-old, teens often have more difficulty initiating the discussions necessary to clarify all of that information so they can assimilate it.
But knowing that in the abstract and remembering it in the heat of the moment are two very different things. Fortunately, Ames concludes her discussion of equilibrium and disequilibrium with this bit of optimism:
"But take heart. As day follows night, so equilibrium will again return."
I certainly hope so. And if it returns before it's time to hand over the car keys, so much the better.
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"This above all: to thine own self be true." (William Shakespeare)
When my daughter was a baby, I longed to be a stay-at-home mom. I was so captivated by this tiny being that the fact that I had no idea what to do with her or how to entertain her had no bearing whatsoever on my desire to be with her twenty-four hours a day.
In part, this was a control issue. I was thirty-six years old, I'd been a school counselor for more than a decade and I didn't want someone else raising my child. Fortunately, after an exhaustive search and a last-minute change inspired by my barely nascent mommy instincts, we found a great day care. So, after many tears (mine, not hers), I dropped her off, leaving her in the hands of a woman I barely knew, and drove off to work.
She thrived there. True to the predictions in the baby books, she didn't care when I left. Stranger awareness and separation anxiety had not yet set in, and she was happy to go to the ladies who did such a good job of taking care of her while I went to work and took care of other people's children. (That irony was not lost on me). By the time she was in preschool, she expressed her displeasure quite clearly when I came to pick her up before she was ready to leave. She'd found her niche, and she liked it there. No mommies needed.
By the time she got to elementary school, she was an independent little soul. My part-time job had become full-time, and when she was in first grade and they asked for volunteers to work in the school library, I was broken-hearted that I couldn't be a library mom. A friend who had a daughter the same age as mine teased me, telling me those positions were for the moms who didn't work outside the home. She didn't seem to realize that her argument only intensified my sense of loss. Missing a PTA meeting wasn't a big deal, but missing out on the opportunity to get a glimpse of my daughter's face - to see her friends and her teachers and her surroundings - was a much bigger deal. My daughter, for her part, couldn't have cared less. She was happy at school, and I was an unnecessary accessory.
And I was proud of that. While it certainly hurt my feelings from time to time, I knew that independence and self-confidence were necessary ingredients for healthy development, ingredients my husband and I had stirred into our parenting recipe in generous amounts. The longing to be a library mom had much more to do with being in my child's world than stalking her or thwarting her independence. I didn't want to follow her around and watch her every breath - I just wanted a taste of her world.
When she got to middle school, "her school" was close to "my school" for the first time. Each morning, I dropped her off, and most afternoons, she walked over after school and I drove her home. She was delighted to have left the days of riding a bus behind her, and my students got used to seeing her sitting at my desk, walking through the building and generally making herself at home.
And I got quite used to seeing her every day before and after school. There were glitches - afternoons where she was anxious to leave, but I still had work to do, days with meetings that went on and on, leaving both of us glancing frequently at the clock, times when being the counselor's kid required her to behave in ways that ran counter to being a preteen - but the stolen time for conversation going to and from school more than made up for those times. As it turned out, we both enjoyed it.
And so when the opportunity to retire early arose at the same time that my daughter would begin high school, I immediately saw the brass ring - there, within my grasp. I could be a stay-at-home mom. Can you think of anything a teenager would love more?
Yeah, so could she. In fact, I think she probably could have made a list.
For twenty-seven years, I had loved both my job and my family, but as my daughter grew older, balancing the two had become more challenging. Part of the challenge lay in changing responsibilities at work, part lay in my daughter's burgeoning social schedule and part - I am loath to admit - lay in the fact that I wasn't getting any younger. As I moved from being a 30-something mom to a 40-something mom to a 50-something mom, it became more difficult to really put my priorities in the right order. Work got the best of me - the best hours of the day, and the lion's share of them as well. Increasingly, my family was getting the leftovers.
And so I grabbed the brass ring. The merry-go-round I'm on now leaves me time to write, to volunteer (under the radar) at my daughter's school and to be here when she leaves each morning and when she comes home each afternoon. When she has a bad day, she doesn't have to hope that I'll be alone in my office when she gets to my building, or take a number to talk to me.
Friends who are parents and/or educators immediately get it - this crazy idea of being stay-at-home mom to a teenager after working outside the home through her infancy, toddlerhood, preschool, elementary and middle school years - and they see what I now see, but could not see when my daughter was small. By being available to her now, I am helping her hone an already-established independence, while shoring up her home base before she takes flight in a few short years, as we've raised her to do.
Am I suggesting that this is what every parent should do - that those who stay home when their children are small have it all wrong? Of course not. "This above all: to thine own self be true." This choice works for our family, dovetails with where I am as a 50-something mom and where my daughter is in her journey toward independence. I can't be - and shouldn't be - the same kind of stay-at-home mom now as I was during summers when my daughter was a toddler. Living my dream now while stifling her independence is poor parenting, and I have to make sure that being available doesn't morph into being a nuisance.
But being available is nice. And even though my house doesn't look any better and my cooking is no closer to gourmet standards, I feel as though I'm in the right place at the right time much more often, and when I send my baby off to college in a few years, I will know that I've made the most of every year I had with her.
And that was worth waiting for.
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Homework! Oh, Homework! I hate you! You stink! I wish I could wash you away in the sink. (Jack Prelutsky)
Yeah, this is pretty much the tune we were singing at my house last night.
Wondering if I was the only one feeling this way, I sought the opinions of a variety of friends, some with kids, some without. As expected, I got an earful. While most of those who shared their opinions supported the value of limited homework that was responsibly assigned, some also shared their sentiments on homework gone wild. Busy work. Backpacks weighing nearly 30 pounds. Long-term projects assigned over vacation time.
One friend, the parent of an eleventh grader with Asperger's, shared her frustrations on group projects for kids with social skills issues, assignments that run counter to a child's learning style - and yet are an ongoing expectation in the class - and enforcing expectations for a teenager who has already put in a full day by the time he arrives home with a fresh pile of work to do. And this is in a "tiny private school."
"I can't tell you how many times I've told him a) homework is not optional, b) it doesn't really matter if he is interested or not, c) It needs to be done & done on time. I should just make a tape for all of the good it does." She likened getting him to keep a journal for one of his classes to performing a complex medical procedure: "I'd have an easier time performing open heart surgery on myself."
Parents aren't the only ones who feel this way. Author and speaker Alfie Kohn has built a reputation on opinions that run counter to the established norms in education. In a 2007 article in Principal magazine, he explores the downside to homework, and cites resources that make it clear he's not the only one with this opinion.
Having been an educator for nearly thirty years, I have to admit that I do see value in homework when it's truly a chance for kids to practice skills independently and solidify what has been done in class. But too often, even at the elementary school level, homework becomes a bone of contention, driving a wedge between parents who want to support the expectations of their child's school and children who are exhausted from a long day of school work and who - understandably - have no desire to tackle more of the same when they get home. And when those same kids need help from parents who have put in an equally long day - or who are unavailable to help because they are at work themselves - family life is disrupted and school success is jeopardized.
One friend who joined the dialogue raised the questions that leap to most parents' minds at one time or another: How long do homework assignments need to be? Does the student get the same benefit out of writing his/her spelling words two times each vs. five times each? And, the kicker: Is homework truly applying/using what is learned at school?
When that last bit of common sense wisdom is applied - homework is indeed, as one teacher described it, something that will "extend a lesson, improve a student's understanding, or enhance an aspect covered in class" - I know few parents who would complain. But in our test-fueled society, even the good teachers - sometimes especially the good teachers - are trying to cover more and more content and are quite literally running out of time to get it all in. When that surplus, so to speak, spills over into homework that requires students to teach themselves necessary skills, or do endless drill on programs designed to simulate "the test," kids become cranky and exhausted and parents are quick to follow. Worse yet, kids get turned off to learning, and even to school.
I've watched my daughter go from excited elementary student to tired teenager, weighed down not just by the contents of her backpack, but also by the expectations inside. As her mother, and a former educator, I feel it's my job to facilitate her homework and nudge her in the direction of completing it, but I'm concerned that her life is out of balance, and that we spend far too much time talking about the state of her homework and far too little time relaxing. And she's a conscientious kid.I can only imagine how exhausting this nightly battle is for kids who struggle to learn, who have no one at home to help them or who have become too defeated to care any more. If homework is supposed to be teaching life skills, I have to wonder what it is that kids are learning about life, particularly when they don't have time to experience it outside of a book or computer lab.
As parents, we may need to be the ones who help our kids to find a healthy balance. While it's important for me to continue to walk the fine line that runs between supporting my daughter and supporting the expectations that define success in the educational system she inhabits, I have to remember that there's more to life than school and homework. I will encourage her to do her homework, of course, but I'll also do my best not to nag her and to remember that even if I don't see the value in endless episodes of NCIS, she needs down time. In fact, rest is an essential ingredient in not only her intellectual development, but her overall development as well, as is time with friends and time just being.
As partners in our children's education, we also need to remember to thank the teachers who realize that not all kids learn the same way, the teachers who assign minimal homework because evenings are family time, those who adhere to the standards described by my teacher friend above and those who practice what one of my friends referred to as "upside down learning - homework at school and watch[ing] video, lectures, etc. at home." I have known all of these teachers, and many of them have touched my daughter's life in a very positive way. When these teachers send assignments home, it's easy for me not to roll my eyes (although perhaps not quite as easy for my fifteen-year-old) because I know there's a reason the work is coming home and there will be some benefit to its completion.
When I think back on the teachers I've known who had the sanest view of homework, I noticed that many of them had one thing in common - they were (or had been) parents of teenagers - those mysterious creatures who can spend hours on You Tube, but only minutes on a science project.
Coincidence? You decide. And please - feel free to leave me YOUR views on homework.
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