My kid and notes from Year 4.7
October 28, 2019
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Parenting Comparisons
I don’t generally worry over how other parents are doing things. We all make the best decisions that we can for the children we have. But sometimes I wonder “HOW??” There are moms who (and it’s usually moms, though we have a surprisingly even gender split on the parental dropoffs and pickup) do things like prepare goody bags for all the kids in the classroom when their kid has a birthday, or farewell gifts when their kid leaves a classroom, or create t-shirts for all the kids. They might plan huge birthday parties or volunteer for classroom related work. And some of them have multiple kids! And they work full time! I can’t quite wrap my head around how on earth they fit those things in. I feed and bathe our child daily and send zir to school with uncombed hair and clean clothes. That’s it, that’s all I’ve got on the parenting front (granted I’m doing a HECK of a lot with our entire family: household stuff, dog care, financial planning, working full time). How on earth are they fitting in all these extras?
I don’t know anything substantial about their lives but it sure does bewilder me.
Ignore the child
This isn’t something I do if ze would be in danger or gets what ze wants when ze is acting out. This is what I keep in my back pocket for when ze is acting out for attention and discipline is being perceived as attention. Ze has a particular streak that begs for attention in any way ze can get it. It may not be a conscious manipulation but I’ve seen kids do this: if they do something wrong and get the emotional payoff they want, they’ll do it again. It’s just logical.
Instead of rising to the bait, I ignore the behavior.
One morning, ze was clearly trying to needle me with contrary and “mean” statements. Stamping hard on my temper, I only responded to non-provocatory comments, completely ignored the provoking ones, and lo, after no reward for the provocations, ze stopped!
Talking about death
With two buried grandparents and a beloved departed dog, and many chosen family who’ve buried parents, we’ve always been straightforward with JB about death. We have friends who tell their kids that dogs “went away” or “moved” instead of telling them about their deaths and I get the urge to sugarcoat for the kids but I’ve heard from other friends that this was a traumatizing tactic used on them when they were kids. They thought that their beloved dog or grandparent didn’t love them anymore, and chose to leave them! I’d much rather tell the truth and deal with that processing.
We’ve never shied away from saying “X died” or “X is dead now”, no euphemisms. We’ve had multiple conversations about my mom being dead and the fact that it was sad for me, but JB has not yet had any questions as to what being dead means. Ze doesn’t seem to think it’s an impermanent thing, ze understands that it means forever. But lately ze has been having some real concerns about it.
It’s sinking in for zir that we’re mortal and ze is pretty concerned. Conversations about memories of my mom generally lead to zir tearing up a bit over how sad it is that Grandma is dead.
This took a morbidly funny turn as ze became terribly concerned about bear attacks (see below).
But it took a much more morbid turn as ze worried about what to do if we got sick and died.
Health stuff
To my chagrin, ze now needs eyeglasses. I’ve had no experience with kids and eyeglasses since my eyesight was good all through childhood so I’ve got a lot to learn about how to help mitigate zir need long-term. Unfortunately it seems we don’t know a lot but what we do know should help: mandatory outdoor time daily (which I think ze already gets anyway every day of the week) and reading glasses. On the plus side, I’ve finally learned from a reliable source how to have opticians fit the glasses properly so they’re not uncomfortable. I’ve had “as needed” reading glasses for some years and never knew why they always felt bad after a while. I’ve always had lazy (or uninformed?) opticians who didn’t bother to fit them properly.
Precious Moments
Deciphering
JB: Mommy, there is lice in the ocean.
Me: Um. What?
JB: There is! Jay told us, there is lice in the ocean.
Me: Usually lice lives near hair, on heads…
JB: AND in the ocean! And whales eat it.
Me: OH YOU MEAN KRILL.
JB: Yes.
I SAW the trap but I still walked right into it.
JB: Mommy can you pick my clothes so I can undress?
Me: no, every day I’ve picked your clothes, you’ve whined that you didn’t like it and wanted something else. You know what you want, go get it yourself.
JB: I won’t whine! I will wear what you pick.
Me, the idiot: fine. Here.
JB, sobbing: but I WANTED to be a [gibberish of specfic things]!!
Me: ARGGHHHHH FRAK THIS
JB: MOMMY IS THE BAD GUY I DON’T EVER EVER LIKE HER AGAIN *SCREEECH* I WANTED to be a [specific thing].
Contingency plans
JB: Daddy, if a bear gotted you, you would die.
PiC: Uh
JB: I would be sad.
PiC: I would hope so!
JB: If a bear gotted you and Mommy, I would run away!
Me: You know we wouldn’t actually bother a bear, right? We leave them alone, they leave us alone?
JB: RUN AWAY!
Aw, shucks
JB: YOU ARE THE STRONGEST IN THE WORLD!
Me: *headtilt*
JB: Except also Daddy.
Me: Yeah ok…
Aw, shucks, part 2
JB: YOU ARE MY BESTEST MOMMY.
Me: Yep. I am.
This again
JB: I had to poop.
Me: Ok.
JB: Momma?
Me: What?
JB: What if you and Daddy got killed?
Me: Why would we?
JB: If you fight a bear.
Me: I don’t think we’re going to fight a bear.
JB: You might. Then I have to find another owner.
Me: You what?
JB: I have to find someone else to live with.
Me: how about we don’t get killed.
JB: you might.
Me: If something happens to mommy and daddy, we’ll make sure someone will take care of you.
JB: Ok.
Me: Are you worried about that?
JB: Yes.
Me: Why are you worried?
JB: If a bear comes.
Me: How about if a bear comes, we’ll plan to close all the doors and not let it in.
JB: What if it punches the door and it breaks?
Me: We’ll get in our car and drive away.
JB: With all my toys?
Me We’ll lock your bedroom door.
JB: What if it punches THAT door and it breaks? What if it breaks all my toys?
Me:….
JB: Momma? What if the bear breaks into our new house though? Then we’ll have to find a new house and another one and another one.
Me: You think the bear will keep following us?
JB: Yes, then daddy will need to drive a lot.
Variation on the death theme
JB: Seamus will die. And that will be sad.
Me: yes that will be very sad.
JB: your other dog died, when I was a baby.
Me: yes, Doggle died when you were still in my belly. My uterus.
JB: and I didn’t want to come out.
Me: it’s true. When it was time, you didn’t really want to come out.
Oops, that one was sad
Me: My mommy used to give me kisses like THIS *kiss*
JB: Your mommy died?
Me: Yes.
JB: How old were you?
Me: 28, I think?
JB: Not that old! *tears streak down zir face*
Me: Oh dear. Um, not old, but not young, either. I was a grownup.
JB: *silent tears*
Awww, poor JB! Learning about death is rough. Though the bear attack thing is really funny.
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I felt bad at the same time as I was tickled by the bear attack thing. It went on for a while 😀
We’ve talked openly about relatives’ & pets’ deaths as they have occured (though of course how much the kids understood at each age varied). We have our wills drawn up & guardians chosen, and have discussed that with the kids from a young age too. It helps SO much with children’s anxiety about parental death if they have a concrete “X person would take care of you” to cling to! On the flip side, two of my young niblings know that I would be their guardian if anything happened to their own parents. I think it’s added a bit of sweetness & trust to our relationship, just to know that we have that promise of protection in place. (In the extended family we also have a brutal example of what NOT to do, when a parental death w/o a will led to a nasty guardianship fight with the devastated children as helpless pawns. Write! Your! Wills! People!!!) Hopefully it all stays safely theoretical; but if the worst case scenario does happen, they’ll be as well prepared as they can be for such a brutal transition.
We’ve also explained a little bit about life insurance to our 9-10 year old because she’s old enough to have logistical questions like where they’d live and would they keep all their toys, etc.
We do have our wills set and a guardian chosen for both our child and our dogs. Still, my own anxieties are such that I can’t help but focus on needing more and more back up plans because even our currently best laid plans can be overturned with just one or two missing pieces! I think I can sense where ze gets this from.
I feel this so hard! I come from a strong family culture of anxiety, leading to either over-preparation for disasters big & small, or guilt for not being over-prepared enough… except there IS no such thing as “enough”… so just take a double scoop of anxiety AND pre-emptive guilt to boot. 🙁
I’m trying to change the script for my kids by building confidence in our own resiliency. Like when packing for a trip: I used to pack half my medicine cabinet “just in case” but now I only pack Benedryl+Tylenol+a few Band-Aids, and instead focus on how easy it would be to swing by RiteAid if we need anything else. And it did happen, and we bought Pedialyte, and we were totally fine.
Oh I love that idea!
DC2 did some major clearing out of her room this weekend and boy oh boy do those goodie bags add up. So much plastic crap from the Oriental Trading Company. One year we had to send things to put into stockings for every student and that didn’t even make the tiniest dent in DC2’s small plastic crap collection (of course, she got other small plastic crap back in her stocking). /end rant
Emphasizing what Bethany D said re: wills for the gaishan readership. I was just talking to a friend who has a high schooler and a toddler and had never thought about who should get her children if she and her husband die. If you have kids, write a will! You don’t have to be rich to need to make it legally clear and simple about who will have custody of your kids. (Also have a partly written post reminder on the topic– great minds think alike.)
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I have snuck out a bag of those toys and I’m going to donate them this weekend.
Picking a guardian is SO the first thing I thought of when we had JB.
We’ve talked about death, but no one she’s known has died. I don’t know how real it is to her yet.
Re: how other mothers accomplish so much: I have no idea. And I’m more in awe of stay at home mothers who accomplish things than I am of working mothers who do. I take PTO or cram things into bits and corners of daycare-not-busy-working time. I have no idea how anything would get done any other way.
I’m basically surprised by most parents out there doing everything, working or staying at home, it’s such a lot to do and yet, they do it all it seems. Who knows!
We have talked about death with TwC with both sets of great grandparents passing away before he was born but no one that he has met has died. He knows about it but he probably doesn’t know how it will affect him when someone he met passes away. We do not try to beat around the bush about it because we want him to know that we speak to truth to him about topics like this.
Lol about the JB talking about bears attacking!!
It’s definitely an abstract concept for younguns!
So I don’t know what your school is like, but based on Baguette’s first school–a public school in a very expensive neighborhood–those moms? Yeah, they have nannies and housekeepers, and chances are good that goody bags were curated and/or assembled by one of those employees.
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