The Barbie Syndrome

    I have been dealing with what I like to call "The Barbie Syndrome".  This entails people trying to dress you up into something you are not.  There were so many choices for Barbie's outfits!  There was Malibu Barbie, Harley Davidson Barbie, Bob Mackie Barbie, Ballroom Barbie, Crippled Barbie, Dr. Barbie, Exercise Barbie, Policewoman Barbie, etc.

                I sometimes wonder if Barbie ever got tired of being told who to be.

    Recently one of my daughters has been dealing with people labeling her or trying to put "clothes" on her that don't fit.  At that age it is so hard just to figure out who you are.  Other people trying to put clothes on you only confuses the issue.  It is so easy to get caught up in who people think you are or who people expect you to be.  In high school everybody is trying on lots of different outfits in order to figure out who they are.  One week you act one way, the next you are someone different.  You try on different boyfriends and different hairstyles, different attitudes and friends all in the search to see what fits and find your true identity.  It is a tough time of only momentary glimpses of the REAL you and lots of time spent wearing the wrong clothes.  Sound confusing?  It is...for them and for us.

    I clearly remember my own search and the painful and often embarrassing mistakes I made in order to figure it out.  It can be so maddening when people put things on you that don't fit.  Poor Barbie.  The trick is to let it go.  Keep on walking down your path and let those things fall right off of you.  Try to remember that the friends who like to remind you of your mistakes aren't really friends and that unlike Barbie, YOU are the one who gets to decide what you really want to wear.
                             

Turnabout Is Fair Play

     I was surprised this week when my daughter walked into my bedroom in her riding clothes.  She rides horses and spends a lot of time at the barn but I didn't know she had a lesson on this particular day.

       

            "Didn't I tell you?", she said.

     No, she hadn't.  Sigh.....well, I could rearrange a few things and manage to be there on time.  Now that my oldest is driving she has the freedom to create her own schedule, so for a while now she and the trainer have been making arrangements themselves.  For the most part she communicates the plans well. By the way,  I LOVE the fact that my daughter still wants me to be at the lessons.  

     As I was grumpily trying to figure out how to rearrange my day it occurred to me that this was exactly what used to happen to my daughter when I was in charge.  For years I had been in control (that word again...is someone trying to tell me something?!) of her schedule.  I made the dentist, doctor and much dreaded, alteration lady appointments.  There were many times that my daughter would climb into the back seat after a long day at school, only to be disappointed that we were going to the dentist/doctor/alteration lady....

          "Didn't I tell you?", I would say.

    Ouch...so much for good communication.  So now it's her turn to be in charge and drive her own car.  I am more often in the back seat now, just a passenger watching as she decides which way to go.  Mostly, I am grateful to still be in the car at all.  I can't wait to see where we are going next!

   

Out of the Blue

     So the other night I was sitting in my "soft pants outfit"  (to quote my good friend, Mindy Merrell) with my hair in a banana clip, just flipping mindlessly through the channels.  Dinner was over and I was half asleep in my bedroom chair with 2 dogs in my lap.  It had been a crazy day of errands, laundry and even a sick dog. All of a sudden the dogs started barking and as my husband headed towards the front of the house he said, "Someone is at the door.  Are you expecting anyone?" No....

   30 seconds later both of my girls burst into the bedroom and said "MOM, YOUR BOOKCLUB GROUP IS HERE!!!!!!!"  "IT'S YOUR NIGHT TO HOST!!!!!"                Oh, #*!*#!!!!!!

    I ran into the closet and was throwing on clothes and brushing my teeth and hair and that is when the miracle happened.

      Both of my daughters followed me into the closet and began to ask what they could do to help.  One said she would put out some fruit and cheese and the other said she would turn on lights in the living room and fluff it up.  I heard my husband in the hall leading my friends to the bar and making drinks for everyone.
     My daughters came back into the closet (yes, I was still primping) and said that they had put the dogs away, picked up the dog poop from the living room floor, wiped the kitchen counter,  put the dishes in the dishwasher and turned on lights in the house.  They had saved me!  I followed them out of the closet and had a big laugh with my friends about how funny it was that I completely forgot about them.
     We are all so busy juggling 15 different things at once and if you are anything like me,  thinking "If I don't do it, it won't get done".  I end up taking over and just powering through the day.  Sometimes it takes a moment of humility or vulnerability for the gift to have an opportunity.  If I hadn't totally "messed up" I might not have gotten to feel the wonderful gift of my family coming to my rescue.

                 
Humility, like darkness, reveals the heavenly lights.   Henry David Thoreau

Independence Day

     When my oldest child turned 16, instead of my driving them to school myself both of my daughters hopped into the car and with the music blaring, drove away. I am sure they were thinking, "Let Freedom Ring...!"  I was FREAKING OUT!   What if they got into a wreck?   What if they caused a wreck?   What if they...embarrassed me?

   Their Independence Day was the beginning of my rude awakening... 

                                     oh yeah, they are supposed to leave....

    Ever since then I have to constantly remind myself that I am not in control of it all.  That the goal of parenting is, in fact that they leave home and any mistakes they make will be lessons learned.  But knowing this in your head and actually letting go are two different things.  Especially when they are driving away....

    So I try to find the right balance between telling them that I worry but also that I DO trust them.  I aim for "I love you, be careful" instead of having a huge nagfest about red lights and texting drivers.  Yes, I nag about those things but I try to balance it out.  

   I'll probably never get good at letting go but I think letting go is just a gradual wearing away of my fantasy that it's all in my control, and isn't that the point anyway?

  Happy Independence Day!

   

   

     

     

Forgiveness

     I really blew it the other day.  I yelled at my daughter for obsessing about her boyfriend, where he was at that moment and why hadn't he called, etc.  Later, it came to me.  Why should she know how to handle that situation?
    She hasn't been in a relationship like this before now.  Isn't the whole point of being in these first romances to learn how NOT to be in a relationship so that later on you can do it the right way.  It was definitely that way for me!
   So I went to her and said I was sorry.  She was really sweet and said "No problem, Mom."  So we are learning together.  How to be parents, kids, humans.


 The bottom line is that we are all on a long journey for which we are not properly packed. 


 This is my first time to be a parent and their first time to be a kid.  The issue is not that we will mess it up along the way.  It's about how we handle it when it happens.

Summertime

Doesn't this about sum it up?

I know we are "supposed" to be enjoying every moment of this precious time.  But really, sometimes it is more like this cartoon depicts.  

I have decided to be okay with this and go with the flow from great moments to horrible ones.  I am not going to compare us to the perfect television families on perfect summer vacations where everyone is blissfully happy.  Instead, I am choosing to embrace our loud, messy and sometimes cranky and quarrelsome reality.  

By not insisting on perfection, I am quietly showing my kids that reality is always the better choice, instead of setting them up for future disappointment when their own family life doesn't look like a "Hallmark moment". 

I am setting the bar a little lower...slacking off...being an underachiever.  Come join me!

The Gift of Listening

"Mom, can you...?"
"Mom, will you...?"
"Mom, don't forget to..."
"Mom, did you......?"
"Mom, I need..."
"Mom, the teacher said you forgot to..."       !

       Sound familiar?  Some days I feel like I have been through the spin cycle!  Inevitably, there is something on the "kids need" list I couldn't get done or I forgot to do.  Occasionally there will be a day when I happen to get the whole list done.  I still don't get the same smile from them as if I had simply gone in their room and said, "How are you?" and just listened.

       What kids want most is to be seen and heard.  They want to feel that we want to know them.

       I  have found that when I invest time in listening to them the reward is their trust.  And that trust leads to them sharing all sorts of things with me.  If there is something concerning that comes out of this conversation I wait until later in the day or even the next day to bring it up.  This protects the "I'm listening" time and keeps it sacred.  The quickest way to get them to stop talking is to start criticizing.
     I give them all of my attention and let them decide when to kick me out.  Sometimes it's 2 minutes and sometimes it's 20.  The point is, they will know you cared enough to ask.

Trying to be Perfect

          The first time I saw her shining eyes and those 10 tiny toes I thought to myself, “She’s perfect.”  All I wanted to do was get her home and do nothing but look at her all day.  In many ways, I still feel that way about both of my girls.   That’s why it was such a surprise  when, at the age of 8, my youngest said to me, “Mom, I need a nose job.”  WHAT?! 

         I couldn’t believe they had already gotten to her.  By they, I mean the magazines, the movies and the television pushing their fairy tale of perfection.   It’s not only a message of  physical perfection but also relational perfection.  As parents, we are supposed to be patient, loving, good humoured and wise.  Children should always be respectful, behaved and polite. 

       We are in a fight for our sanity and our peace of mind.  We are deluged on a daily basis with images of perfect bodies, perfect marriages and perfect home life.  While I know we all recognize the falsity of these messages, on some level there is a part of all of us that still seeks perfection.  We know that perfection doesn’t exist but we are also disappointed when we don’t get it and we sometimes criticize others who aren't perfect.  

           We have a choice to sit in judgement or to love.     

     We would be better off teaching them how to fail.  Teaching them how to love themselves even though the world says they aren't perfect.  Teaching them to ignore the world and be themselves.  


"Be yourself.  Everyone else is already taken."   Oscar Wilde
      

Introduction

                                         

For years I dreamed about being a mom and how wonderful it would be.  In my visions I was the serene and together mom whose kids were delightful, constantly seeking and valuing my copious supply of insight and wisdom. Insert laugh track.  I will admit I watched lots of Little House on the Prairie and The Walton’s.  Great television though it may have been, it of course did not portray reality. Fast forward to my 20’s, I married a great guy and we had two daughters within 3 years.  Those first few years were pretty much a blur of diapers and bottles and not enough sleep.  
        The real turning point for me, as a parent, came when I took our oldest child to school for her very first day of kindergarten.  I had had visions in my head of the Hallmark moment that this would be. We would be smiling at each other in the rear view mirror and chatting about how excited she was.  Her brand new backpack would be beside her and her pretty blond hair would be in cute braids with pink ribbons.  It would, of course, be a reflection of what a great  and together mom I was! 

     Instead of this perfect moment I got a screaming, half dressed meltdown. She had no interest in her first day of school or any of the other trappings that I had dreamed of.  I barely got her shirt on and I had to force her into the car kicking and crying without her pants, belt or shoes.  At some point along the road to school I, too began to cry.  By the time we arrived in front of the cute, brick building I had managed to talk her  (read bully her) into putting her pants and shoes on but the belt remained firmly in her hand, not on her pants. When we arrived I apologized to the teacher for her state of undress and this messy, disorganized situation and what a pathetic example of a mom I was.  What the teacher said was my aha moment.  He replied, “We are bigger than a belt”.  I wanted to hug the man.  I even considered needlepointing him a belt that said those words. Seriously.  After I got back in the car and pulled myself together I got the point of his message.  It wasn’t about the perfect picture or the Hallmark moment.  It was okay to be a mess. Yes, it was okay to be a mess.  I realized that perfection was not necessarily the goal. 
    From there I came to see that admitting that I  wasn’t perfect  could be an opportunity for teaching my children.   What was important wasn’t how things looked or were perceived but rather what was learned from that messy moment.  I was trying to fit my parenting into a box that was not appropriate for it. Parenting is really more of a journey and in fact, my kids and I are on the journey together. I am on a long trip for which I am not fully packed….but neither are they!

     My daughter taught me a valuable lesson that day and I came to value her importance as a teacher for me.  I think we are given the children that we are given because they are to teach us the lessons that we need to learn.  I had control issues and issues with how things look or are perceived by the outside world. My children have done a great job of breaking me of that issue!  I was willing to receive the lesson they had to teach. My parents and their parents presented the façade of “having it all together” or being wise, god like, all knowing , “do it because I say so” parents. Certainly, we as parents have wisdom of years that our children do not yet have.  But being able to find the balance between passing on your lessons learned from those years and sharing your fragile moments or fears is important.  To allow your children to see you in your moments of humility and failure as well as success and triumph, to let them share in your own personal journey is to be a Transparent Parent.   Letting down my walls has allowed them to do the same with me. I don’t have the pressure of being perfect and neither do they.  Sharing these moments, good and bad has brought me a wonderful reward: they share themselves with me.  We have managed to break down the barriers and share our journey as a family together. I have 2 teenage daughters whom I continue to share very close communication with even though they are in the thick of the years when we are not supposed to be talking!  We have a great sense of family, we're a team, and feel that we are all in this together whether we are in a mess or in success. 

This has been the driving force behind the book I am now writing and will be sharing here from time to time.  Follow along if you are looking for a not so perfect mom/friend who is willing to share her mistakes and lessons learned.

Elizabeth