Category: Parenting

Play Dates

I’m writing this from the basement.

Upstairs are 5 children under the age of 12. Two of them are mine.

We’ve been having a pretty quiet Sunday morning. I even got coffee on the couch. We started moving around a bit and then the request came, “Can we go see if the kids around the corner can play?”

Sure. We don’t have plans until after lunch. Go run and get your wiggles and sillies out.

A few minutes later, “They can’t play.”

No problem. They settle in. M asks if she can go for a walk. T asks if he can play Spider-Man. Yes to both. I keep moving, cleaning bathroom, moving laundry from dryer to hamper and pretending someone else is coming to fold it all.

A knock at the door.

“Zac, they can play!”

Great!

“They said they just have to be home at 2.”

I look at the clock. It is 10:30 in the morning.

Admittedly, I am relatively new to this play date thing. But, sending your young children to a neighbor’s house for 3.5 hours feels like a big move, right?

I’ve met these kids’ mom one time.

I just realized lunch is within that timeframe. Am I supposed to feed these three?

I mean, of course I’m going to take care of the kids and make sure everyone’s having fun and being safe. I’ll make sure they have a good lunch. I’ll help my kids clean up the messes that follow my specific “you can play with whatever you want as long as everyone picks it up before they go home”.

I’ll parent the hell out of this play date.

And, I’ll keep wondering about the wisdom of this move. I’ll work myself to being okay with assuming there won’t be any reciprocity.

Because, I have two kids and know how much it all feels like on the second day of a weekend when they keep looking to you for what’s next and what they can do and snack. I know what it’s like to have two, and can imagine what it’s like to have three who are all even younger.

Because, sometimes, it’s all so heavy that I understand how a parent brain might think, “That guy with the kids around the corner passed muster in the three minutes I talked to him. Maybe he and his kids can carry this weight for a little bit.”

18 May 21 – The Dentist

This afternoon, we were supposed to go to the dentist. Again.

We were at the orthodontist Friday for my daughter. She had the choice of getting her braces off Friday or keeping them on for a few months longer to really straighten some teeth. It may not surprise you to know she chose to get them taken off.

It did surprise her – and me and her brother – to know the process of having your braces removed. Pliers to pull off the brackets, that drill thing to remove the glue, weird foam in your mouth for retainer impressions.

What I thought was going to be an early morning check in turned into two hours of crying and hugs and “I don’t want to do this. Let’s leave now.” She was saying it, but I was thinking it. Because it was an early morning appointment, we’d not eaten breakfast either. The plan was to check on the braces and pick something up on the way to school.

Dental work can be triggering for kids from trauma. It is invasive and requires you to give up control. These are things folx with no history of trauma find problematic, now multiply that exponentially.

We made it through Friday. The braces are off for a year or so until we head into Phase 2. And, I am incredibly proud of my kids. She made it through and she knew I would be there. She knew she didn’t have to be the bravest person in the room because I’d do that for her as long as she needed to.

And she was still so brave. Brave and trusting.

About my kids and kids in general I’ve heard or read this line several times in the last year, “They’re so resilient.”

And, yeah, they are. But that’s not a reason to ask them to be. My kids, and all kids have proven their resiliency. So, when there’s the chance to not ask them to prove it anymore, I say we take it.

So, I re-scheduled today’s dentist appointments. Pushed them back a few weeks. Decided we could use a night of not proving our resilience to anyone.

29 Jan 21 – She ran up a wall

Starting a good many months back, I signed the kids up for Ninja classes through a local gym called Warrior Playground. It’s an obstacle course gym in the vein of American Ninja Warrior or my favorite Ultimate Beastmaster.

In these pandemic times, classes are limited to 4 students, which is pretty amazing. Among all the obstacles, the warped wall has most been the focus of both kids’ efforts. It’s what it sounds like. In the first weeks, they were able to run up and summit the 8-foot wall. No problem.

Next, Coach Glenn challenged them to get to the top of the 12-foot wall. So, for more than 4 months, that’s what they’ve been trying to do.

Well, today, the 11yo did it. For week’s she’s been within 6-8 inches. But those 6-8 inches have proven too much. It has led to many a “Can we go home now?” midway through class.

Running into and up a wall more than twice your size can take the spirit out of you on a normal day. When it’s the wall you’ve been running up against for months, it can feel literally insurmountable.

Tonight, at dinner, she said, “And, Coach Glenn said, ‘Believe you can do it.’ So, I closed my eyes and decided to believe I can do it. And, I did it.”

Simple as that.

I don’t need to list all the walls she’s faced. I don’t need to warn her of all the walls ahead. She knows what they were, and she’ll know them when she meets them.

“So, I closed my eyes and decided to believe I can do it. And, I did it.”

Keep going, love.

27 Jan 21 – Tonight was jam-packed

I made this for dinner tonight. It was delicious.

The 9yo did not think it was delicious. He also did not have the tools or capacity tonight to say it in a way that was kind. So, it was “gross,” “disgusting,” and “horrible.” I told him it was okay that he didn’t like the food, and that those words hurt my feelings.

And, then he was worried that I would get angry. “Now you’re not going to let me have any food. I am going to starve.”

black trash bin with full of trash
Photo by Markus Spiske on Pexels.com

Not getting any food if you don’t eat what’s for dinner is not a rule in our house. Everyone gets to always know they will be able to eat and no one in our family will ever go hungry.

He just couldn’t see it.

It took a few rounds and several minutes of him balled up on my lap hugging me before we got to the words he needed and thereby a bowl of cereal with bananas. We found the light and our way out.

Then.

Tucking in 11yo, I went to kiss her on her forehead and she moved her head forward. I saw stars and both lips were bloodied. I’m at the foot of the bed taking breaths, remaining calm, quietly saying, “Owwwww.”

She’s at the head of the bed, holding her forehead, ramping up because she’s scared I’m mad at her.

I cannot talk because my mouth hurts.

I pull myself together and hug her. “What do you have in your head that makes it so hard?” I ask in an exaggerated voice. It is enough to tease out a giggle. Light and our way out.

After books and rubbing her back, I get up to go.

“Hey, Zac!”

This is our ritual. She’s trying to find something to hold on to the day, the ritual, the time together. Some nights, the “Hey, Zac!” gets out before she’s thought of what she’s going to say or ask, and I stand in the doorway waiting. Tonight there’s no wait.

11yo: Hey, Zac!

Me: Yes, love?

11yo: You are the best dad ever.

Me: You are the best daughter ever.

11yo: Love you. Goodnight.

We find the light and our way out.

26 Jan 21 – Ugh…feelings

I’m working really hard here. It turns out, when parenting, your children pay particular attention to your non-verbal communication signals and then, get this, respond based on what they interpret those signals to mean.

AND, get this, they’re children, so they don’t have a whole ton of coping mechanisms when they decide what they’ve read in your signals is that you are angry or don’t like them, or don’t love them.

So, this may not surprise you, their reactions tend toward the negative.

I’m working really, really, really hard on something anyone I’ve ever dated will tell you I’m not great at – telling you how I feel when that feeling is not a positive one. My guess is it’s all attached to some pre-coming-out habits.

photo of man leaning on wooden table
Photo by Andrew Neel on Pexels.com

Being gay felt like it was a bad thing to be. It would, in the very least, make people feel uncomfortable around me. So, to keep those around me comfortable, I’d better stuff that truth way down deep.

Along the way, this rule started to apply to anything I perceived as negative. If I’m angry, that could make someone uncomfortable around me. I’d better do what I did with that other big thing I was worried would make people uncomfortable. Eventually, the habit became so easy to repeat, any negative feeling I might have was internalized so as not to make things rough for others.

Healthy, right?

The good news is I’ve been working on it. The better and slightly more uncomfortable news is being a parent has fast-tracked that process.

When one of my kids asks, “Are you angry at me?” and I respond, “I am not angry at you. I will tell you if I am angry at you,” I damned well better be sure to communicate that when it happens.

In the last few months, I’ve done a lot of telling my kids how I feel. My use of “I statements” is the strongest it’s ever been.

You know what else? I’ve also been following those statements up with, “And that’s okay.” Because, turns out, it is okay when I’m frustrated because someone yelled at me.

The world does not end when I get angry. My ability to love and be loved remains as strong and constant as ever. I can love a person and be infinitely frustrated at that person at the exact same time.

This is a lesson everyone in our family is learning – over and over.

24 Jan 21 – Did you offer to help?

My son was closing the medicine cabinet, toothbrush in hand, and smeared toothpaste all over the mirror. He then tried to wash it off by splashing water from the faucet to the mirror. This did not help.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he told me as I walked into the bathroom.

“He got toothpaste all over the mirror, then he got water on the mirror, then he started to smear it all over the mirror, then he got it in my sink. Everything he’s doing is making it worse,” his sister said in the tone of voice reserved for older siblings exasperated at their younger siblings.

“Did you offer to help?” I replied.

“I told him he was doing it wrong, and he kept doing it even more wrong!”

“Did you offer to help?”

“No.”

“Next time, will you offer to help?”

“…yes…”

Now, thinking it over, I need that tattooed on the back of my eyelids. I need it as an out-of-office message. I need it in every moment I’m working with someone learning something new, and I need it in any conversation where an adult complains about a child.

If the answer is “yes,” then we are halfway there.

In What on Earth Have I Done? Robert Fulghum writes “I have more than enough. They do not. And here were are, face-to-face.” Fulghum’s words are in an essay tackling the moral and practical question of whether to give money to those asking for it in intersections and on street corners.

It comes down do, “Did you offer to help?”

It is not my job to judge them. It is my job to judge me.

Sure, if I give something to each and all of them, I may in the process give to someone who do not really deserve help. That’s the chance I take, but I will have not missed anyone whose need is real.”

– Robert Fulghum, What on Earth Have I Done?

Teachers will often talk about the real world and withholding assistance or the benefit of the doubt to students because such second chances will not be afforded students in the real world. Most of these conversations concern issues of great import in the fiefdoms of their classrooms. In the grand schemes of students’ lives, they are little, insignificant things. Late work, a missed citation, not showing how you got to your answer. The real world. Ugh. Even the IRS will give you an extension.

Our classrooms are the real world, certainly to the students compelled to be there each day. They are the laboratories of civic and social interactions, imparting implicit and explicit norms of what they should do when life’s training wheels are off. Withholding the offer of help and the benefit of the doubt models behavior our students will surely remember, and mimic, when they reach that mythical real world.

They will not remember the late homework assignment, but they will remember whether we helped when they asked.

What if we were to give to all whom ask? Yes, some will game the system, but that’s the system’s lot to contend with. Ours is to contend with who we’ve shown the world we are each day. Or, as teachers, what we’ve shown our students the world could be each day. “It’s my job to judge me.”

The photo below is of a card now taped to the lamp on my bedside table. I can think of few better questions of accountability to end my day with.

21 Jan 21 – Morning Meeting

We have a family morning meeting. The boy suggested it a few weeks ago. There are three standing questions:

  1. How do you feel?
  2. How are you feeling about your day?
  3. What do you want to get done today?

I struggle every morning trying to find a difference between my answers to #1 and #2, but I find a way to make it work. Yesterday, I got to explain optimistic.

white clouds under orange sky during daytime
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More than any of it, I look forward to their answers. Happy is the most often shared feeling in the morning. It’s when we get to #3 that I get a sense of where their brains and priorities are. It bounces around. Sometimes, its seeing friends. Sometimes, it’s a specific friend. It could be as general as “get my work done” or as specific as “tell my teacher you beat the Spider-Man game”. (I did, and I’m equally proud.)

My moments of self-control happen when their responses are vague. It’s all I can do not to ask for more detail to “get my work done.” I hold back because I know that will come. I hold back, and I model that detail in my own response. I know they are listening because we share our progress when I pick them up from school. “Did you write that thing you wanted to write and send the message to your friends at work?” (I did.)

They are playing with goal setting, and I want it to be just that. Our morning meetings are space for them to mess about with checking in on their own feelings in the moment and experiment with setting a course for the day. There are so many parts of their lives when I and other adults ask them to do it differently or better or again or never again. Our morning meetings are a place where I want them to know none of that will happen. It’s a space where whatever answer is the correct answer.

It’s also a space where I try not to say happy all the time. It’s a little tough, because I usually am. When it’s true, though, I’ll say I’m frustrated or anxious or any other more negative emotion. I do it, one, because it’s what I’m feeling, and, two, because I want them to see I or they can feel those things and the world will not end.

“I am feeling anxious because we got out the door late today, and I’m worried we won’t get to school today. I’m feeling hopeful that feeling will pass and the rest of my day will be better.” Something like that.

All of this has also been a little jarring for me. More accommodating than I’d like to admit, I’m much more likely to put my own emotions on the back burner so as not to get in others’ way. It’s a trait I’m actively working not to pass on to my kids. It’s also personal growth I’m trying to make transparent to them. Grown ups learn too.

I hope the other grown ups to whom I entrust them each day are making similar spaces for them. In between math and reading, I hope they have moments surrounded by peers and teachers where the community checks in with itself to see what it needs to support its members.

Mine aren’t the only kids hungry for these spaces. I’m not the only adult who needs to learn how to answer these questions honestly. I hope our schools and classrooms recognize the value and extent to which doing this work can make the academic work so much better.

20 Jan 21 – One Good Question

For those keeping track, I went on another lunch run today. That’s three in the last four work days. Running has always been where I get my thinking done. I ruminate.

Today, I was thinking about classrooms – physical, digital, and those who have yet to make up their minds – and how I know they must be struggling to create the communities that must be established as foundations of learning.

I started thinking about what I would do. I came up with questioning. This is not surprising for a guy who really hangs his hat on inquiry. For this, though, I was trying to think of something a teacher could implement with absolutely no prep and yet reap a deep benefit in shoring up community.

The idea is to challenge students to come up with one good question they would be interested in hearing their peers answer and would be okay with answering themselves. Then, they pair or group up and share their questions and answers.

Sure, sure, there can be reporting out, sharing, and asking who had similar questions or answers. But, there doesn’t need to be. All that’s necessary for community to begin to form is for people to try to find out about one another and to share a piece of themselves.

Not having a classroom of my own, I used our dinnertime conversation as a testing ground this evening. “Think of one good question you want all of us to answer, and we’ll take turns answering.”

They wanted a model, so I went first. “What’s one thing that can almost always make you smile when you are sad?” Tickling was a popular response.

My daughter was next, “What do you like about doing our gratefuls?” Our “gratefuls” are our nightly ritual of putting a coin in a mason jar and sharing at least one thing we are grateful for that day. Hearing what both kids thought about the process was wonderful.

The boy went last, “Are you afraid of heights?”

I had to think about my answer. I wasn’t sure. Turns out, yup, sometimes.

So, with one text audience of kids who will definitely let me know if one of my ideas is bad or stupid, I had a 100% success rate. You will too.

Try it tomorrow. Even if those you’re learning with are adults. All it takes is One Good Question to bring us closer.

17 Jan 21 – My Daughter Likes a Book

If you know me, this won’t surprise you, but I treasure reading to my kids each night as they go to bed. There’s a connectedness in reading at bedtime I can’t seem to scrape together during the day. It’s also one-on-one time with each of them, something each of them would like to have, but not necessarily like the other one to have.

While, I love reading to them, neither one of them has shown a great interest in reading beyond the mechanical, “I guess I should learn how to do this.”

Then, Friday morning, my daughter made me cry.

“Do you want to know what we’re reading in class?” she asked as we were driving to school.

I told her yes, and words and ideas burst forth from her in ways I’ve never seen in relation to a book. She turned around mid-sentence to tell her brother he’d probably like the book too “because there’s space in it”.

She pulled it from her backpack to show me the cover. Then, started flipped through pages to find something. Once, there, she determinedly read a sentence aloud. This was the sentence she’d used in her writing about the book, she told me, pulling out her school work to show me where she’d written that same sentence.

“And, I said yard was the most important word in the chapter because, well, the whole thing is about the yards, so that’s definitely the most important.”

She talked about this book for nearly 10 minutes. I’m grateful she didn’t stop to ask questions because I was trying to drive and hold together how proud I was for those 10 minutes.

I didn’t hold it together later. Sitting at my desk, I emailed her entire teaching team, tears running down my cheeks, to let them know what happened. These are the people who have made her feel safe, capable, and smart. She knows she’s protected in the school, and that gives her brain the security it needs to start to learn. What a remarkable thing. What remarkable people.

She likes a book.

15 Jan 21 – Friday Night Rites

I didn’t have a lot of traditions and rituals in mind when I became a parent. Holidays and the lot, sure. But I don’t know that I had anything in mind apart what might come marked on calendars.

One surfaced in our first weeks as a family, though.

Every Friday, we order pizza and watch a movie. Which movie is on a choice rotation from oldest to youngest. The pizza is almost always Papa Murphy’s. (Every Friday, $5 large thin crust cheese, sausage, or pepperoni pizzas!) And, the movies can be television shows, holiday specials, or pieces of a few things until the chooser finds just the right film.

I’ve seen Season 2 Episode 2 of Netflix’s Ultimate Beastmaster more times than I can count. Same for Disney’s Zombies and Zombies 2.

Part of the fun of Friday Movie Night is its transgression against one of our other rituals – dinner together at the dinner table. Quite a little bit of research speaks to the importance of eating dinner together each night, but it just sort of happened for us.

Stealing from another movie The Story of Us, we take turns each night sharing our “high” and “low” from the day. Right now, it’s a lot of modeling from me. We also learned in our first couple goes that someone naming you in their description of their low for the day was not that person trying to make you feel bad or pick on you.

Many nights, the kids say they don’t have a low. Then I share mine, and they say, “Oh, that’s my low too.” This happens even if my low was about something that happened at work. I know what’s going on developmentally, so I never comment on it.

I know, if I let things develop organically, when we enter adolescence, this piece of ritual will give me some rare glimpses into their lives.

It’s also why the transgression of Family Movie Night is so important to us. We get to eat DOWNSTAIRS! We watch TV while we eat. We get to stay up late, though one of us tends to be zonked about 45 minutes in.

When we have visitors on Fridays (which used to be a thing), the kids are excited to welcome them into our tradition. It’s special for us, so it will clearly be special for our guests. It’s a testament to my friends that they’ve stuck out some pretty heinous choices.

In both these cases, it has struck me how easily these rituals came into being. No special forethought to get them started, no real planning. How easy these little things became big and important parts of who we are.