Beautiful, isn’t it? And the colors are just perfect.

For a few weeks now he has been talking about the fact that he has become “fat”. Now this is the boy who used to be on the skinny side. He had the usual stages of childhood, growing taller, then broader, then taller, and lately quite a bit broader. Add to it his fondness of sweets, and tendency to spend all his time in front of screens or books, well, yes, he has grown a little protruding tummy, but nothing major in my eyes.

After talking for a while we found that it was my mother-in-law who kept telling him he had been growing fat, and needed losing weight. Now, even if he were obese, which he isn’t I wouldn’t want him to start dieting.

The only thing a diet is pretty certain to make you is fat in the long run. Especially with people like my son and me. We are contrary. If anyone tells us what we’re allowed to eat or not, even if it is ourselves we’re bound to become all stubborn, and eat even more of the things we shouldn’t.

Now, you have to know that my mother-in-law is a person who still thought I was as slim as the day we met even after I had gained 20 kilos in the meantime. (That’s 44 pounds for those of you who don’t use metric.) She didn’t even realized that I had grown quite a bit bigger.

Now this woman is telling my son that he is fat. Why’s that?

With a bit of detective work we finally got it. There were two factors to it:

First, my son these days often has these massive eating binges at mealtimes. You know how sometimes even little children eat more than you? He sometimes does that. It doesn’t bother me because he doesn’t do it all the time, and for every time he eats like a starving teenager there’s another time when he doesn’t eat much at all. To me that’s a sign that he is in touch with his body’s need. Now my mother-in-law is of a generation that believes in portion control. She fixes dinner (with ridiculously small portions for a growing boy), and if he says he’s still hungry she thinks he can’t really be because there’s no dinner left.

Second, my son has this belly. His jeans have grown a bit too tight, and so his belly is sticking out. There are several things to this. Yes, he has become a bit stockier than before, and second he doesn’t really have the abs to have a firm belly. Which isn’t unsurprising in a boy his age.

I hope that the thing I’m telling him makes a difference. The thing is, I have seen this many times before with students. Once they are approaching their tenth birthday, some a little earlier, some a little later, all of a sudden children come up to me saying, “I need to lose weight, I’m fat.” And then they tell me that they are already weighing [insert some number between 35 and 40 kilos here], and that their friends are weighing less than that.

And then I tell them the things I always tell: Children grow in spurts. After every time they’re getting taller there is usually a time when they get stockier, and maybe even a bit chubby. Especially at this time when their bodies are almost getting ready for puberty. Just look at children between 9 and 12 and you can see it. A lot of them are becoming rounder, and heavier, and almost denser at that age. And then, a few years later they transform in front of your eyes, going from a child to a teenager.

If they start dieting at an age that young it won’t make them better looking, healthier, or even slimmer. Chances are they probably end up fatter, unhealthier, and screwed up.

I really hate it that this world is tending to a beauty standard that is unobtainable for most of us. I hate it that being a certain body size, and shape has been become the one indicator for being attractive, happy, and healthy. And I really, really hate it that my beautiful son, this charming, intelligent, witty, and funny 9 1/2 year-old thinks he’s ugly and fat.

Yes, I wish I were slimmer too. I have become pretty fat myself in the past few years. I would like to fit into size 10 pants, really. But I can also tell you that there are many, many things in the world worse than being fat. And that being fat does not equal being stupid, or a loser, or unlovable, or even unattractive. Yes, advertising and magazines are telling us so. But every single one of them wants us to feel bad so they can better sell us things, and ideas. They don’t want us to be happy the way we are because happy people don’t buy as much.

So I myself have been concentrating on becoming as strong, and fit, and healthy, and happy as I possibly can. And to find clothes that fit the body I have instead of pining for the size 10 jeans.

For my son we have talked, and keep talking. And I will have a stern talk with my mother-in-law later. And we are trying to help him lose the “have to have sweets after every meal”-habit that my mother-in-law installed, and help him to go outside and run around a little more. Because those are good things regardless of how big or small someone is.

I’m really, really pissed, I don’t know if you can tell. And I’m also sending you to the “Dances with Fat“-blog again, and to the concept of health at every size because obviously it needs repeating.

He really is very slow in dressing and undressing himself, and in getting ready for anything. He – like me – has a problem with transitions. He – like me – also has a problem perceiving time. He doesn’t really feel how much time has passed, or how long things are taking. This is a real problem when he needs to get ready for school in the mornings, when he has to get home after school, and when he has to get ready for all his extra-curricular activities. His teacher even wrote about it on his report card. How much she doesn’t like reminding him every single day to get ready, get dressed and get home. Even the women who volunteer to help the children crossing streets are getting annoyed with him because he’s always the last one, and they stay there waiting and waiting instead of going home.

We have tried a lot of things, counting, setting a timer, not doing anything and sending him to school without breakfast, but what I mostly do is this constant nagging. It’s totally automatic by now, and I guess neither my son nor me listens to it. It’s just an unpleasant background noise. Sometimes I wonder why I keep doing it since my son has turned deaf to it anyway but then I found I keep nagging because at least that’s a way to release some of my frustration. So I nag, nag, nag, and then I get angry, and tap my foot.

The other day, when he was telling us that the volunteer women had threatened to report him to the school we thought about how he could become better at this. His problem is that he is easily distracted, and so when he puts on his shoes and clothes after school, and chats with the other children he won’t do both at the same time. He either chats or gets ready.

All of a sudden I realized that he doesn’t have a way to measure how much time has passed. He doesn’t know if he is going fast or slow, he is just doing one thing after the other when it occurs to him. He lives pretty much in his head so the fact that he is still standing there in slippers while most of the other children have already gone home doesn’t register with him. And it doesn’t help that the friend who walks with him is about equally slow.

So we talked it all through and for the first time ever I asked him about the other children. He said there were quite a few who were as slow as him. And we asked, “And do they live as far away as you? And do they have volunteers waiting for them as well?” Turns out that those boys live just across the street from the school. So I asked him about the children that are getting ready much faster than him. And there is one boy, his best friend who gets ready very fast. So I told my son to watch him, and try to match him. And he did, and at least he is only late coming home from school, not extremely late.

The problem is that apart from us and the volunteers waiting for him, and getting worried because there might have happened something to him, he also has two days when he comes home, has 15 minutes to eat lunch, and has to leave for school again. Now, this was his choice. We told him not to sign up for those things but he really wanted to, and so we sit there, wait for him with lunch ready on the spot, and then tell him to hurry up because he’s late.

Evenings have been getting better, and then I remembered that that was when I told him the exact time when he had to be in pajamas, and then when the lights had to be out. Of course he couldn’t know. My husband and I knew that we wanted him to turn out the lights at 8.30 but nobody had bothered to tell him. The minute we told him he could look at the clock and see how many time he had left. Of course it helps that he can read time now. You can’t really do that with most younger children but with a second-grader you can.

So yesterday evening I sat him down and told him that he has to wake up at 6.45, get out of bed at 7.00, be dressed and ready for breakfast at 7.10, brush his teeth and get ready for school at 7.25, and leave a little later than 7.30.

Well, today it worked like a charm. He did struggle a bit, and then I know it’s quite a tight schedule, but he made it. I sat the clock next to him while he was putting on his clothes, and for once he realized that he does not have time to read or play in the morning. He could sit down for breakfast and instead of me telling him, “You’re late, you’re late, you should be brushing your teeth now.” he was the one glancing at the clock saying, “I only have four more minutes before I have to brush my teeth.”

I know that our schedule in the mornings is a bit too tight but I also know that neither my son nor I are ready to get up earlier than we do because that would mean to going to bed earlier as well. And having more time does not always lead to having less stress. I know that when I have the feeling to have plenty of time for something I often end up doing everything so slow that I have to hurry up in the end anyway.

Of course, now that it worked (once) I’m a bit angry at myself for not realizing this earlier. And I’m a bit afraid that this might be one of those things that work once, and then nevermore. But then I know that when I, as a grown woman, finally realized that catching the 7.05 bus meant leaving the house at 6.55, and that meant brushing my teeth and putting on makeup at 6.45, and that meant having breakfast at 6.15, and that meant getting up at 5.45, and that meant setting my alarm for 5.30 – that felt like a revelation to me. “You mean in order to catch the bus at 7.05 I have to set the alarm more than 1 1/2 hours earlier? Oh, that’s why my timing never worked. No wonder I had to rush and scramble every single morning. Duh.”

Duh indeed. I really hope that I will cease to resent the way my son – slowly and diligently – pulls up the zipper of his jacket. Or fastens and unfastens the velcro on his shoes not once, not twice but at least four times each time he puts them on. And I really hope that I can become more than a nagging device for him.

So it works like this: the teacher tells the ‘Elternsprecher’ (insert long-winding explanation, that’s one of the parents of the students in my son’s class who was elected to be our spokesperson) that she wants an informal meeting, we all get nice photo-copied invitations, arrange for baby-sitters and such and meet at a restaurant. A greek restaurant this time which was a bonus. Especially since I had to go there directly after work without having had dinner. Then we have a meeting that doesn’t really feel informal while eating pita and feta cheese, and drinking wine. Then you chat, and then you go home.

In my case I chat, I feel bad, I drink too much, I go home, and then I grab my poor long-suffering husband only to rant about all the other parents, the system, and modern times. I was quite good at first. This time I only ordered water since I was really tired and exhausted after a long, long day of teaching, aka talking to people. I know what happens if I sit down in front of a beer when I’m tired. I a) don’t ever get up again, and b) talk about twice as much as usual which goes on everybody’s nerves, mine included. I like talking but really, I already know all my stories. Well, most of them anyway.

So I was good, I ordered water, I brought something easy to knit because that makes me more patient, I ordered something nice to eat because I was hungry. Also I knew that drinking water would bring me home earlier because I could have a beer at home later. So all was fine. Then the teacher announced that there would be a kind of spring celebration at the end of May. Everybody is invited to participate, maybe play a nice song (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). I already knew about this so I was totally prepared to bring my guitar and sing the one song that I know by heart. It should have been something about spring or animals but I thought since this is a love song, in a way, all would be fine.

The celebration thingy of course would be held in the afternoon so that the parents who work (out of home) can attend too. Nice thought. It will start at four o’clock in the afternoon. On a Wednesday. – I’m sorry but I burst out laughing. Wednesday is one of my busiest teaching days, and my first thought was, “No way can I make this, well, you just have to celebrate spring without me.” Next thought (and the mothers among you will recognize that one). “If I only move three students, and then get home early I could make it.” I then made the mistake of saying that I might be able to reschedule something and come after all. Then I thought, “Susanne, are you crazy? That would mean prepare food for that while you don’t have time, move three students around, rush there, play a song nobody wants to hear anyway, grab my child telling him that we have to go now, no matter if everybody else is still staying because I have to teach my last student of the day, and then run home to work again.” Also there are no empty slots in my timetable to move the three students to.

When I came home and told my husband about this he said, “Are you crazy? You can’t do something like this on a Wednesday afternoon, you’re working Wednesday afternoon, why did you even think about it?”

Why I did? I did because I hadn’t seen my son for more than twenty minutes at a time that day, because I have the feeling that he will feel bad if everybody goes to the spring thing but him, or everybody goes with their parents and he has to go with a friend or with his grandmother, and that I’m a bad mother.

Of course. Again. Because, you see, all these other mothers know every single homework that their children had had, and how they spent every single minute at school. My son when asked about his day in school says, “It was fine. Can I read while eating lunch?” (To which the answer is no every single day but that’s another topic for another post.

I don’t see his homework nor do I want to, I don’t really know what he did, and it’s hard enough to coax him into giving me all those pieces of paper that I’m supposed to read or sign.

And my son doesn’t find school particularly fascinating, interesting, or challenging. Just now he is sitting outside in the sun, taking turns reading a comic book aloud with a friend. The other child is in third grade. Guess which child is the better reader.

Yesterday at the meeting everybody was going on about a test the children had just had about telling the time. Evidently only three or four students in the whole class had answered the second question correctly. When we talked about this yesterday I assumed every child had made the same mistake as mine but no – the mistake he made didn’t count because the others didn’t even get what the question was about.

All the other parents (well, all that talked at that moment) were all about how the test had been too hard, and how the children are too young to learn to tell the time, and how children are supposed to start school at a younger age than before but they’re still supposed to learn the same things. I did say something, and maybe that was a wrong move, because while the official policy is to have children start school earlier the unofficial policy that parents and kindergarten teachers seem to follow is having them start school later. When you look at the children’s birthdays you find that most of them aren’t that young. One boy is turning eight in May, my own son is already 7 1/2. That’s not particularly young for first grade.

So the general consensus is that school is too hard, and that the children can’t learn all this stuff because they’re too young. Like one of my student’s parents said last week, “He couldn’t do his homework, it was too hard.” To which I should have replied, “Madam, the homework is hard, I know, but I know that if you’re son who is more intelligent than you give him credit for would just try a little thinking now and then he could have done it. Just because you can’t do it doesn’t mean he can’t.” What I did say is, “I have been teaching this for decades now, I know he can do it.” And rightfully so, he said down at the keyboard, started playing the song, it sounded terrible I said, “Why are you starting the right hand at G?” he really looked at the music and had it. Yep. Too hard, definitely.

I often feel like a bad mother. Right now I should probably be outside and share some incredible mother-son experience with my son, only he wanted to play with his friend instead. And I’m fine with that. Today I felt bad when he gave me another test they had had in school, math this time. He had everything right but two sums. And my first thought was not, “Wow, he was almost perfect.” my first thought was, “Why did he make these stupid mistakes?” Because those were only lack of concentration. He made those mistakes because he couldn’t be bothered to check. Now I get why my mother was always angry at me for not applying myself enough, like, at all. I also remember that it didn’t feel like that from the inside. So I didn’t share my first thought with my son, I said, “Wow! You were almost perfect!” but I couldn’t help adding, “Look at these two mistakes, I think those were lack of concentration. You could have had a flawless test here.”

When I was among all these other mothers yesterday evening I suddenly felt lacking because my life is not like theirs. Because comparing myself to them, which is a sort of sin in itself, I felt inadequate and as if I weren’t loving my son enough. Which is clearly bullshit. Sitting next to my son every day when he does homework does not make him a better person or even a better student. Quite the contrary. And it’s not as if he had to sit there doing it all alone, his grandmother is there, she makes sure that he does all his homework, and there’s always someone to ask. I really would like to have a job where I don’t have to work afternoons when my son is home but on the other hand he really doesn’t need me hovering about him all the time. Also I think doing homework together is overrated as a bonding experience.

The problem is that when I spend time with all these other parents, these ‘full time moms’ (there were a few dads too) I feel like an alien. I say something, they don’t really get what I’m saying, I feel inadequate, they probably feel inadequate too, you know how it is, and so my husband is right:

I have to stop going to these things. It doesn’t do anybody good. I usually go to show that I’m willing, and that I want to participate in school life but I’m fooling no one.

I really like the teacher, and I don’t have anything against the other parents, when the class is going on excursion to the museum I’m in. That’s easy to fit in for me because I have mornings off. For things like that spring celebration? I’ll buy a dozen bagels, and send my son off with his grandma while I teach. Everybody will have a good time.

Sorry, but I can’t be a full time mother. I can’t be a full time anything. But it’s still bothering me, of course.

And then I remember that I went to another ‘Eltern-Stammtisch’ the week before. A really informal one, and that I had a great time there.

It all started at the beginning of November (yes, that’s three months ago, almost) when he sat in front of TV to watch something about a zoo. At 5 in the afternoon there was a trailer for a murder mystery. In this trailer there was a tiny blip showing somebody wearing a halloween costume with a green mask and devil’s horns.

The night before was the last night my son has slept in his bed since then. And if that wouldn’t have been unnerving enough he is also afraid of being alone. So when, for example, he is playing in his room, and I’m sitting in the kitchen, and then I want to get something from the basement, and I’d be unwise enough to open the actual door and get down the stairs there would be a wailing child running after me. And when I’d get up again he’d stand there, mad at me and screaming, “How dare you leave me alone? You know I’m scared!” On the other hand he will totally go to the supermarket alone and buy a toy. No problem there. It’s just being alone at the house. Or rather somewhere where he doesn’t see or here another person because we never ever leave him alone at the house.

When he is going to sleep there has to be someone with him in the next room (we have drawn the line at being in the same room) at all times. So I’m no longer allowed to watch DVDs in my very favorite chair in front of our big old TV, no I have to sit on the hard and cold kitchen bench with my laptop who then decides it doesn’t like this particular DVD. After that I go into my bedroom without having talked a word with my husband (who is in the annex, working on his new album) and get to bed, the bed I share with my son. I’m not allowed to turn off the light completely, and I have to push him back to his side of the bed repeatedly and with force because for some strange reason I don’t like to share my pillow. Also, repeatedly through the night there will be a clear, ringing voice calling, “Mama?” in near panic. Which makes me more awake than him and then, just when I have gone to sleep again, he asks again.

My husband and I have been taking turns in “night duty”, and once or twice a week he sleeps at my mother-in-laws place to give us a break. I only really realized how much I feel like being on a leash when yesterday while my son was away with his grandmother I sat in the kitchen knitting, and then wondered what my husband was doing. I sat there for a while and then it hit me: I could just stand up, leave the room and go over into the annex without someone yelling at me! Wow. Sweet freedom.

Now, for those of you not familiar with my son, he is not 18 months old, no, he’s 7 years. He knows perfectly well that he is safe in the house. Ever since he turned three we could leave him playing in one part of the house and go to the annex, at least briefly. He has always been afraid of the dark so he there’s a light in his room, and for quite some time now there had to be someone in the next room when he went to sleep. Once he had fallen asleep whoever was on duty that night could walk out, and then only return when it was time to got to sleep ourselves.

I have a big problem with this. I can’t sleep properly. When I hear anybody scream “Mama?” I have to suppress the urge to slap that child whoever it is. I have told everybody I’ve met for the past three months about this. I’d say I have a problem.

Now, I know that he is really scared. I know that his fear isn’t rational and I remember how it is at that age. That’s why he has a light on while falling asleep, and that’s why there is someone near. But then I also remember that even though I was afraid there were bears in the basement I still went there. Telling myself, “There are no bears in the basement, there are no bears in the basement.” all the time. And you know what? I never saw a single bear there.

My son on the other hand, my son who knows perfectly well that there are no strange devils lurking in the corners of our house, my son ends every talk about how we just please want to sleep again, and how we know that he is scared but that he is perfectly safe with the same sentence: “But I’m scared.” Yeah, we knew that already, thanks.

I bought nice educational books, I elevated his stuffed giraffe to a monster-slaying super-toy (worked for half an hour), bought him a magic slumber mouse (he was set on trying to sleep alone but then he went off to his grandma’s and the next night he was – too scared again).

Everybody we have talked to so far has said the following things:

• every child is afraid of something
• there are a lot of children who still sleep in their parents beds
• this too will pass
• maybe stickers will help
• and the final thing, when we kept on saying, “Yeah, we tried that but it didn’t work.” or “Yeah, I knew that already.” then people say, “You have to get help.”

And you know what? They might be right. On the other hand it’s not as if I didn’t know anything about behavior modification or parenting. And our son is really, really stubborn. You know, I’m a pretty stubborn person but that’s nothing compared to him. I talked to a student who happens to have a son the same age as mine about what to do when your son is really rude and threatens to hit you, and he said, “Well, then he has to go to his room until he has calmed down.” And I looked at him, blinking for a couple of seconds with a blank look, and then I said, “And he just goes there?” And he said, “Well, if he doesn’t I make him.” That made me laugh really hard. I can, of course, lift my son up and carry him to his room, and I might even manage to close the door behind him but since we don’t own a key to that door there is nothing to keep him in there. I put him to his room, he comes out again, I put him back, he comes out again, I start screaming, he’s howling, I put him back… One time we spent 90 minutes pulling on opposite side of the door both of us screaming, and then he was only three years old. And when everything fails he just runs off to his grandmother.

Still I have decided not to let him oppress me any longer. He wants to wail behind me when I’m leaving the room? So be it. I also told him that he has to sleep in his room again. He’ll get a sticker for every night he spends in his own bed, and after two weeks we’ll go ice skating. Yesterday he actually fell asleep in his own room. My husband was lying next to him, but still. I went to bed at 11. At 11.30 he started calling me. Then he called again. Some time later he started crying. Then he called again. At 1 o’clock in the night I allowed him to sleep in a sleeping bag on the floor of my room…

Tonight we’re signing a contract, both of us. He will either sleep in his room alone without making a noise or he will go to my bedroom on tiptoes without disturbing me and stay in the sleeping bag. When he stays in his room until 6.45 there will be a sticker. 14 stickers equal a trip to the ice skating rink. There will be no discussions , no wailing, no nothing. I might have to add that we have a “no discussions about things I should do or buy for him after 6 in the evening”-rule. This child will have a debate about whether or not he will eat breakfast, come to the table or dress himself for school. I told him he’s free to not eat and walk to school in his pajamas, whatever he wants. Then he yelled at me for no making him stop reading when it was time to get ready. Very funny.

Wish me luck.

I’ve been looking forward to this for weeks now. It’s not that I actually wanted to get rid of my son, it’s just that I imagined an almost three day break from parenting to be quite delightful. And it was.

This time I managed to pack in advance and without stress, I think I’m getting better at this traveling thing. We ended up having to borrow the biggest suitcase my mother-in-law owns for his things. We got a list of things to pack, among them hiking boots, rubber boots, regular shoes, and house slippers. Three times everything and about as many towels as I would pack for the whole family. The list wasn’t unreasonable though, it just took care of possibilities like him getting wet or dirty every day.

When I sent him off on Tuesday I once again was struck by the tendency of modern society to make everything into a huge drama-filled event. Fortunately only one child started crying when entering the bus but there was a lot of forced smiling going on with the mothers. Instead of dropping my son of with his suitcase in tow, like I had imagined, I got to stand around for half an hour. When the bus finally disappeared around the corner I overheard several other mothers talking about how hard it was to let their precious children go away on their own for two nights. And I thought, “Huh?”

Of course it is weird to have him stay away from home without relatives but then I know he’ll have a blast. And while I do miss him I miss him much less than I thought I would. When all the other mothers went away wiping their eyes I put on my ipod and set the music to loud while thinking, “Yeah! I’m free!” There was a swing in my step and it hasn’t really left me since then.

I’m used to not having my son around all the time. He spends his day in kindergarten until 4 in the afternoon, and then he is at his grandmother’s three days a week. And on weekends he frequently sleeps at her place too. So I really didn’t think that I spend much time on caring for my son. Often I only see him shortly before bedtime, and in the mornings for breakfast. So I went on about my day on Tuesday as usual when suddenly after my last student left I realized that, no, I didn’t have to rush off to fetch my son. I could just stay at home, watch the Tour de France on TV and spin. Very relaxing.

In the evening I waited for my husband to finish work before having dinner. We spent a delightful meal talking and eating. Afterwards we did the kitchen and just when I thought, “Oh my, it’s bedtime.” I remembered that it wasn’t that day. Instead we went for a long walk and still had enough of the evening left to watch Torchwood in my case, and obscure bands on youtube in my husband’s. I went to bed at midnight, feeling slightly guilty for staying up late, and then I realized that I didn’t have to get up in the morning. No alarm clock! I just slept in until 8.30, and woke all rested and relaxed.

The next day again there was time for talking with my husband, eating lunch at a leisurely pace, watching a bit of Tour de France and spinning before teaching, and after work, instead of rushing off to fetch my son to put him to bed before having dinner myself I could just play the piano a bit before eating with my husband. (Wednesdays my son stays with his grandmother after kindergarten and I fetch him in time for him to go to bed. In order to get him to bed on time I postpone my own dinner until 8.30 or something. Usually I start getting hungry around 6.)

I got to watch two episodes of Torchwood this time, knitting away, I went to bed at twelve again, and again, I got up in the morning somewhere around 8.30 feeling fresh and well.

I have to say that I’m a bit shocked about the amount of time and energy I have when my son isn’t home. I didn’t know it was that much. I’m also quite shocked at how peaceful I feel without him. Yes, there is someone missing, and I really don’t want him to stay away, only I suddenly find that my life works better without him.

Of course I spent a lot of the past days musing about whether I am a heartless, and unfeeling person. I watched the other mothers when their children left the parking lot. They weren’t looking elated, they were sad. Or maybe they were just putting on an act, driving home in their cars afterwards, closing the doors to their homes, and pulling out the champagne, but I doubt it.

I find that I spend a lot of time thinking about why I don’t feel like people expect me to feel. Like the “they’re growing up so fast”-sentiment. That’s always uttered with a sense of loss. Like Beck did in one of her parenting posts. And I really believe that she – and all the others – are feeling it, and yes, I even can understand the urge to keep my child close, only most of me shrugs her shoulders and says, “So what?” Yes, he’s growing up, yes, he will be going away someday, and you know what? I love it.

I don’t want my son to stay at my side forever because, frankly, he’s got better things to do with his life. And I’ve got better things to do with my life too. Of course I want to stay in his life. It would be very, very sad to have a son who refuses to speak with me when he’s older. I hope that we’ll always love, respect, and cherish each other, and that we will seek each other’s company.

I didn’t quite know if I should write this post. Because in all this you have to keep in mind that if anyone came to take my son away from me I’d probably try to kill him. We’re speaking of my own flesh and blood, about a person I love more than my life. But still, having a break from being a parent feels nice once in a while.

Oh, and the best thing was when about two hours after the children had left I found two calls on my answering machine (we almost never answer the phone). First was a message from a fellow mother saying, “Oh, you’re not home, well since we agreed on calling each other when the children are safely at their destination…” (I didn’t agree on anything, I didn’t know I was supposed to sit next to my phone until someone told me my child had survived a 90 minute road trip.) The next message started with, “Hello, this is Verena from the kindergarten…” and my first thought was, “Oh God, something has happened!” because why would she call me otherwise? Well, she called to say that – the children had evidently survived the trip. Please, I don’t need an hourly update on my child’s status. Really. I’d like to hear from you if something went wrong. When I hear nothing I’ll just assume that he’s alright.

He’s probably having a great time. He’s surrounded by all his friends and teachers he loves, they have been hiking, and playing, and telling stories, and sleeping all in one room in their sleeping bags, and eating delicious food. And as everybody knows, the only thing better than having a nice vacation is coming back to a nice home again. He’ll be back in about three hours. Until then you’ll find me enjoying my time. And then I’ll give my son a great big hug.

I know that I have subscribed to too many blogs, I really know, only I don’t know which to unsubscribe from.

This week was supposed to be a week of rest after months of sickness, and hectic life. It’s carnival break after all. Well, it started with – yet another bout of sickness which was thankfully brief, and now I find myself sitting lethargically at the kitchen table, knitting frantically without much enjoyment, drinking tea or beer, reading a book that I don’t particularly like, while the dirty dishes are staring at me, and dust bunnies accumulate in the corners.

Family life at the moment consists mostly of me and my son fighting over things like putting on clothes, or going to sleep. He isn’t good with transitions (is there anyone who is good with transitions?), I know that. But it’s really no fun that getting him to change his clothes is a 30 minute drama twice a day, complete with yelling, tears, howling, and tantrums.

I am a teacher, I know my pedagogy, and I have tried all the tricks and strategies I know. I have given up, sometimes, and dressed him myself only to have him yell at me because he wanted to do something else instead. I have tried the “do what you want, if you’re still in your pajamas by 8.15 you’ll wear those to kindergarten”-approach only to have a howling 6-year-old scrambling into his clothes at the last minute. Sometimes he has to go without breakfast because of the dressing debacle but he never went without his pants.

We have the same sort of conflict in the evening. Asking him to put on his pajamas, or any clothes results in him pulling down his pants, and then standing there staring into space for the next twenty minutes or so. The funny thing is that I remember being the same as a child, only I don’t remember any conflict. I remember that in third grade I realized that it often took me so long to put on my socks that my feet were ice-cold by the time I got around to it. Also I finally realized that taking such a long time to dress made me late for breakfast, and then I decided to learn how to dress myself faster.

So I totally understand having difficulties with transitions, and being slow in things like dressing, only the transitions don’t get easier by procrastination, they get harder, and more hectic. When, for a short time, using a timer my son had to beat was an effective method to remind him about the passage of time while dressing oneself, we found that it took him less than six minutes to dress himself. On any given day it takes him between 20 and 30 minutes while two adults nag him, and he whines, and we all get angrier by the second.

The other thing is his falling asleep, or better, his lack of falling asleep. Sleep has always been an issue with him. But there have been times when we could tuck him in, turn off the light in his room (not in the corridor, never in the corridor, and the door has to remain open), and go off to watch TV, or play music, or talk, or read blogs. Not anymore. For months at least somebody had to sit in the kitchen until he fell asleep. Which may take more than an hour. With him getting out of bed just when you thought he’d surely be asleep, asking you something, and then needing you to guide him back to bed because he is afraid to go back into his room even though the light on his nightstand is on.

To minimize anger throughout our family we devised a new tactic yesterday: I’m helping to put our son to bed but my husband will be the one sitting in the kitchen. So that I have the feeling of not being on duty 24/7. We only remind him once about changing into his pajamas, and such, and then he’s on his own. When he isn’t into his pajamas by 7.50 there will be no story-reading. Likewise I talked to him yesterday, and reminded him of the conflicts we used to have about washing hands before meals. At some point he just gave in, realizing (with a bit of help) that we always insist on washing the hands, and that if he just did it life became much more pleasant. I made a deal with him about the dressing and undressing. In the mornings my husband will stay in bed until we are finished with breakfast. He’s not a morning person, and having to eat breakfast while two people yell at each other ruins the day more effectively for him than for any of us. So he gets to stay in bed a little longer, and I get evenings off.

This morning my son fetched his clothes, and dressed himself without any conflict whatsoever. It took him 11 minutes. I felt an intense happiness. Until we started to fight about the “cutting of the fingernails because of recorder lessons” half an hour later.

Yesterday evening, by the way, ended with my son falling asleep next to my husband in our bed while watching soccer an hour after his bedtime. We’re working on it.

You might think that he needs less sleep, and that’s the reason why he can’t fall asleep but against that stands that a) he falls asleep in about 5 minutes when he’s sleeping in our bed, and b) on weekends he always sleeps at least half an hour longer than on weekdays even though he goes to bed at the same time.

Life’s not all confusion and conflict, though, on Tuesday I met a friend and we went to this very special sauna. It was very nice to meet my friend again, since we hadn’t seen each other for months, and the sauna was very relaxing.

I also finished a lot of knitting which I will get around to show you eventually, and finishing means that I can start new things. I made a hat, finished a shawl, a beret, a pair of mittens which make me very proud because I learned how to do two-handed stranded knitting for them, and two pairs of socks. Oh, and a cardigan.

And who knows, maybe my son will learn to dress himself without drama like he learned to wash his hands without drama. He’s an intelligent chap, he’ll figure it out eventually.

• I spent the whole weekend dreading the dolphin costume (you know, the one I’m making for my son for carnival), and then cutting and sewing. The good news is that the body of the costume is done, and it looks great so far (after I had erringly sewn the dolphin’s back fin to the inside). The bad news: I still don’t know how I will make the head, I’ll figure that out next weekend.
• just when I had the feeling of almost recovered health my son has a cold – again – with fever and everything.
• my son having a fever equals him sleeping next to me, or rather him tossing and turning, and rousing me about every fifteen minutes (no kidding) by tickling my nose and asking, “Can we get up now?”
• after the second night of this I was a bit, um, irritated today; also I can’t seem to stop eating
• the Finanzamt send me a letter claiming that I hadn’t paid my tax for December, and it turns out that I indeed did pay it but I, myself, was stupid enough to label it “January 09″; argh. Of course something like this has to come up now of all times, not last week or the week before – and of course they can’t just think about it for a bit like “Why is she sending this in when a) she hasn’t paid for the month before, and b) the month she is paying for isn’t over yet?”; I know there aren’t many people who get paid to think on their job
• for once I wanted to get grip on my monthly story deadline, so I had planned to write my monthly story – which is due next Thursday – today; then all of a sudden I was on 24/7 mommy duty (on the other hand I get to write this because my mother-in-law is having my son right now)
• while having a sick child is bad for things like blogging, writing, and making music it’s really good for knitting; I’m finishing things right and left
• at least I’m really happy that I had the brilliant idea that I can watch DVDs on my laptop in the evenings while I’m waiting for my son to fall asleep; he falls asleep earlier because he knows I’ll be there for a while, and I don’t have the feeling of being on the job forever; also I can watch two episodes of Farscape at night instead of just one
• now I have to sign off because I have an unexpected feverish kindergartener sitting on my lap.

See you in a few days, I hope. How are you?

again, I’m not even mentioning your name in this letter, and I’m writing it in English which you can’t yet understand. But then, you can’t read German either, and you’ll probably be grateful to me that I didn’t make your adventures in diapers (back when you still wore them, and my blog was called “diapers and music”) google-able for your future friends and enemies.

You turned six today yesterday. A birthday that was only slightly less looked forward to than your fifth. It was overshadowed by the importance of becoming a “Vorschulkind” (entering the last year of kindergarten before elementary school), and of losing your first tooth on St. Niklas day, and therefore earning the privilege of pocket money.

This year wasn’t easy for all of us. Last winter you were happily part of a group of friends who played together every day at kindergarten, and you finally had found a best friend who liked much the same things as you. His mother told me that she saw you circling the sandbox over and over, talking and talking like old men taking a walk together. You dreamed up adventures, you wanted to go to the north pole in a sledge pulled by a unicorn, and reach the stars in a rocket that you built yourself. Then came the time when all of you realized that your friends wouldn’t be with you in kindergarten forever. That they would be going to school in the summer and you wouldn’t. In preparation for that you began to bicker, and quarrel, and what had been an easy and safe situation grew complicated.

During the summer I almost thought you were depressed. We fought a lot, about every day, you were angry at everything and everybody, and then, suddenly you’d turn around and be really needy. For the first time ever in your whole life you didn’t want to let me go in the mornings. Where all your life you had been waving goodbye to me with a happy smile and the certainty to see me again after work, now, you would cling to me and plead, “Mama, don’t go, stay with me.” You’re very much torn between your desire to grow and become independent, and your desire to be small and cared for. I have tried to help you feeling safe and loved, to hug you often, and to tell you how much I love you.

Over the past year you have grown 7 cm but you have only gained one pound. (I’m not worried, though, you’re looking fine and healthy.) Since spring you have been growing out your hair, you wanted it to grow long. You also wanted to dye it black but I think kindergarteners shouldn’t dye their hair, sorry.. I liked the way you looked with your wild golden curls. Yesterday, when I tried to tame your mane a bit to stop your hair from falling into your eyes you said you no longer wanted long hair. Because your grandmother doesn’t like it. Now you have a haircut that’s shorter but not the crew cut you had before. You’re lucky, I have never ever cut anybody’s hair with scissors. I’d say for that it looks really good.

Again, you have learned so much. Whenever I talk to your kindergarten teacher she is full of praise for your knowledge, and interest, for the way you treat the other children, and your language skills. It was a surprise for all of us when you had the impression that you weren’t doing well at the “Vorschule”. You thought it was only you who had to struggle a bit with this concept of sitting still for twenty minutes, drawing what you were told, doing things that could be “right” or “wrong” in the end.

I have to confess that I always expected you to do well in an “academic” setting. As you do. Gaining knowledge, learning, thinking, and remembering is easy for you. I love that. The thing that comes as a surprise to me is the fact that in addition to that you are so popular among your peers. I can hardly enter the kindergarten building without somebody asking me if their son or daughter can have a playdate with you. As somebody who always had troubles fitting in I hope you appreciate how precious a gift that is. Interestingly, when I ask you about your day you typically tell me about the times someone was not so nice, or something didn’t go as planned. You rarely talk about the fact that everybody wanted to play with you.

While you talk endlessly you don’t talk much about the things that happened during the day, or the people you spent time with. Again, this isn’t something I would have expected. You’re telling me all about your visions for projects, things you want to do, or buy, places you’ll go but I always feel a bit weird when your friend’s mothers come to me saying, “My child talks about your child all the time! They spend so much time together!” Well, I didn’t hear anything. (It might be a bit mean to say that my child talks about my child all the time, too.)

Still you’re not an inconsiderate person. The other day when you had a friend over, a friend who doesn’t like to draw pictures, you told him, “Just keep on drawing, you’ll get better in no time.” and “When I started kindergarten I couldn’t draw either and then I drew, and drew, and drew, and now I’m so good at this.” and in the end, “This is quite good. See, you can learn this.” I fear that teaching is another things you have inherited from your parents.

I really love that you have started learning a musical instrument, even if recorder is not your favorite thing in the world. Every time I force you to practice you like it in the end. The thing I don’t have to force you to do is playing drums. Your father has borrowed a drum set, and we are both filled with pride to the brim every single time you sit down to play. For somebody who is not quite six, and who never had drum lessons (well, apart from the informal ones you get from your father) you’re really good.

But the thing that you like the most, again, is drawing pictures, and building things out of cardboard and glue.

Every day I’m telling you that I love you so that you don’t forget it, and it’s really nice to see that you’re doing the same thing. That, even though you’re very manly nowadays, and reserve your fantasies of fairies and bunnies for your private moments at home, you still think it’s not unmanly to hug your friends, and the people you love.

I wish you a very happy year as a six-year-old, may your last year of kindergarten be merry and bright, and your transition to elementary school smooth, and uneventful. Happy birthday, my son!

Well, Rae wrote something about the tooth fairy which tied in with the fact that one of my son’s teeth has started to come lose. For about a year now he has asked us if there will be a tooth fairy at our house when he’ll lose his teeth. And for a year (or maybe more) I have said, “I don’t know, I’ll have to talk with your father about it.”

You see, when I was a child there was no talk of tooth fairies here in Germany. Losing a tooth, and especially the first tooth was, of course, a milestone but then you had the option of putting it somewhere safe, or throwing it away. Now that Germany seems to become more US-like every day all of a sudden not only do we celebrate Halloween, but there seem to be Santa Clauses and Tooth Fairies around too. I’m confused.

On the subject of Halloween in Germany I have to say: What? Halloween? Dressing up is what carnival is for, also the 31st of October is Reformation Day, and now do I have to buy candy for tomorrow or not? Because the year before last there were about ten trick or treaters. Last year there was none, not a single one, and I ended up eating all the candy myself. Three years ago there were two, by the way, they knocked on our door two days too early and put liquid soap in our mailbox because I didn’t give them candy on account of thinking they were joking. That’s what happens when you adopt foreign customs, you get them all wrong and get confused. End of Halloween rant.

So, with the tooth fairy. I’m completely opposed to giving children money for something like losing a tooth. My husband feels the same obviously, he mumbled something like, “What will children get money for next, pooping?” Which leaves us with a bit of dilemma nonetheless because, according to our son, he will be the only child in kindergarten (or maybe the whole world) who won’t receive a toy for losing a tooth. Bummer. And again, foreign customs equal confusing because as far as I know in the English-speaking world there will be coins for teeth, not toys.

I haven’t spoken with the other parents about this but I expect it to be a bit like the “tradition” of gift bags for children who attend birthday parties. As far as I know this “custom” is about five years old. But in an act of collective memory loss everybody nowadays knows, of course, that if you’re hosting a birthday party for your offspring, every little guest has to receive a nice little bag with little plastic toys and yet more candy. So far I have avoided the “gift bag issue” by doing making crappy non-fitting pirate hats with the children which they could take home with them. Ahem.

I could tell my son to suck it up, or tell him the truth, “Your parents are mean and do everything different than others, get used to it.” but somehow I think he won’t like it. So once again we’re opting for not lying to our son, there is no tooth fairy, no Easter bunny, and no Santa Claus. We also tell him not to talk about this too much because there are people out there who want their children to believe in these stories, and they don’t like it when you tell them different.

In the end I thought about the underlying need he had. His real reason for asking about the tooth fairy isn’t that he wants his childhood to be more magical. (It’s magical enough as it is because he lives a parallel life where he is the queen of Teddyland. Teddyland is the land where it’s always summer, there are fairies and unicorn dances, and nobody has to brush their teeth. All his stuffed animals are alive there. They also have excursions to Candyland quite often. Just so you know.)

The underlying need is the want for toys and money. He is in a phase where he believes that if only he had all the toys and things and sweets he wants he surely would be happy. We try to tell him otherwise, and we try to help him be happy too but it might take a bit of additional convincing. The concept of money is very fascinating to him, he tries to understand it, and why I get to buy books, and magazines, and yarn, and he doesn’t. At least not as much.

So today, on the spur of the moment, I decided that he will start getting pocket money when his tooth falls out. He found that quite nice, then said, “But I’m getting pocket money already.” No, you’re not. When one gets pocket money one gets it every week. Wow! You should have seen him. Much better than the tooth fairy. Money every week!

In a way that’s very typical of the things I’m doing these days. I agonize about the color scheme, I imagine people being put off by it, resorting to reading it in a feed reader because all the pastels are hurting their eyes, or deciding they don’t like the blog at all because of all these colors, and pictures, and on top of that flash ads. Hrmph. And knitting content, or not enough knitting content, and silly fictional stories, and not enough posts about my son, and being a parent, and whatever.

So for now I declare that I won’t bother with the theme, and color scheme of my blog any further until I either a) have the urge to make a new header picture, or b) about 50 people tell me that they hate it and that it takes forever to load. Which it does. Thanks to the tasty flash animation. Sorry.

I’m feeling a bit down, nothing unusual, it has been raining, and raining, and raining, I have a cold that’s getting better very slowly, my son is cranky and has a cold too, and my period came about every three weeks for the last two months which is a) too much information, I know, and b) highly unusual. I went to see my doctor because of this, and she told me very kindly that this isn’t unusual at my age. I’m taking some herbal medicine and vitamins and hope for the best.

My son is a bit unhappy and therefore quite cranky. His best friend will start elementary school in September and he is already very sad about it. Which he then expresses by telling that he doesn’t want to play with his friend anyway. And for every day that they play happily at kindergarten there’s another one where they are telling each other that they are not each other’s friends anymore. Consequently my son has been either very clingy with me or acting up. Usually he’s clingy when we have to part, or when I can’t spend time with him, and then he shuns me when there would be time for us to be together. Fun!

All that together with the traditional “fight about getting up”, “fight about getting dressed”, “fight about eating breakfast”, and “fight to get out the door on time”, in the morning, and the equally traditional “fight about eating dinner”, “fight about getting into pajamas”, “fight about brushing teeth”, “fight about how long to read before bed”, “fight about when mother can leave child’s bedroom”, “fight about how long mother has to stay in the adjacent room”, and “fight about whether child has to stay in bed”, and “fight about whether child has to sleep at all”, and, finally, “fight about how often child can get up after sleeping time before mother totally loses it”.

I know, I’m the adult, I should be able to stay calm, and patient, and nice through all of this but, well, it’s not easy. If he hadn’t been sick this week I’d told him to just stay up as long as he wants to, I don’t care. Somehow he has to understand that sleep is not some cruelty that I force upon him but something very much in his own interest.

I started this blog post just before lunch, and now I’m while I’m waiting for my last student who obviously doesn’t come life looks a bit brighter. My dear husband is vacuuming in the background, for which I’m very, very grateful. (He just asked why I’m the one blogging, and he’s the one doing housework. It could be the other way around. Seems I’m a mean chauvinist pig. (I dusted! And did the grocery shopping! And I’ll upgrade his blog on the weekend!)

I have a nice little blog post that I wrote into my notebook more than a week ago while waiting for the train at midnight. I thought that would be the next one to post but then I’d have to type it into the computer. It’s not that I’m completely disorganized. The notebook has been sitting next to the computer for that past week.

I’m still doing more thinking about all the things I should be doing right now and will have to do until the end of the year than actual doing the things I should do. I can tell you that’s really exhausting. I don’t know if I’ll ever learn it. Doing the things one after the other really needs much less energy. I have been making progress, some things have moved and are looking better but I’m still at the point where every heap of stuff that gets done reveals another heap underneath.

This weekend at least we’ll be home, no parties, no visits, well, almost no visits, no vacuuming or dusting or grocery shopping, I bet I can do everything on my list and start a few new projects.

What do you think?

Still, he couldn’t get over the fact that women would wear something as uncomfortable as that, something that makes you almost unable to breathe. My next thought was, “Today’s women would never do that!” But then I thought of high heels. Shoes that make your feet hurt, and your back, and your knees, and your hips, and you can’t even walk in them. And then – I thought of cosmetic surgery. And made the mistake of talking about that as well. Have you ever tried to explain to your kindergardener why some women want to put plastic bags into their body? Because they think it looks pretty?

Of course, I couldn’t really explain it to him because I don’t understand it myself. I do understand not feeling pretty, I understand not being content with the way I look (though I wish I couldn’t). But pay a fortune to have surgery that isn’t really necessary? And where do you stop, then? When you look like a Barbie doll? When you have grown so old that your heart doesn’t take it anymore?

Cosmetic surgery is on the rise, and I sense a paradigm shift that makes it more “normal”. Younger and younger women are thinking about it, and having it, even at an age where their bodies aren’t yet finished.

I’m really worried about a lifestyle where we are defined by our looks. Where we try to look like the ideal 18-year-old until we die.

I’m also very worried that something like cosmetic surgery seems to be much more available these days. Until not that long ago, in Germany, cosmetic surgery was only for people who really needed it. People with horrible scars and such. Nowadays it’s something that you just pay for. Don’t like your nose? Snip.

I’d love to be able to tell my son that people have evolved since the days of the corset but it seems they haven’t.

(And, please, don’t forget to send your links for the Just Post roundtable. My e-mail address is creativemother AT web DOT de.)

I know, how unusual, and I even read it, and read it with much pleasure. It’s called “the creative family” by Amanda Blake Soule and with that title of course I had to have it. Also I love Amanda’s blog, I find it very soothing and positive and inspirational and it’s the same with the book. So before you read anything else you have to keep in mind that I really love the book, am about to read it for the second time in a row and just went out to get embroidery supplies to embroider some of my son’s drawing onto cloth even though I never liked embroidery before. I will make quite a few of her projects and am looking forward to do some “family drawing time” in the future. There was only one thing in the whole book that didn’t sit right with me and that started with the following paragraph from the introduction:

Given the creative nature of children, it is no coincidence that so many of us are led to seek a more creative life in their presence. Either an old creative passion or pursuit that has been forgotten is internally churned up, or we suddenly feel a need for something else in our lives when we’ve never considered ourselves creative before. Being around even the youngest children – and the purity of their rich creative energy – brings out our need for that same innovative spirit. They inspire us not only to nurture and embrace all of who they are, but to nurture and embrace our own creative selves as well.

(from “The Creative Family”, p. 2)

I know that my situation before having a child was quite different from hers in that I already was an artist then. I wasn’t exactly lacking imagination or creative spirit, only energy and sometimes time to make music, or write, or craft. Then I got pregnant and tired all the time and tried to record vocals for my husband’s CD while being out of breath, tried to help him mix the CD while being extremely sensitive to loud noises (and music), then had a baby, and was even more tired all the time while trying to parent, teach, and still make music on the side while helping my husband with his next CD, recording vocals during naptime, and once with a baby on my hip (oh no, on his hip, but in the same room, and it even kept quiet). So, while I always encourage people to be creative and while I have even written a series of posts about how to be creative when you don’t have the time, resources, or space for it there are several things about having children that don’t foster creativity for me.

Before I dive into list-making though I have to tell you that I really love my son and really think that he makes my life richer. He is a very creative and imaginative person. He’s fun to be with. So this is not about him, it’s about the daily things that come with having children.

1. I’m tired. When I’m tired my body wants me to sleep, or eat and rest, not to spend energy making art.
2. I have much less time than when I didn’t have a child even though I teach less. I have to spend a lot of time caring for my son or attending to household chores that didn’t exist before. For example ever since I returned from the hospital after his birth our laundry has been triple the amount than before.
3. I’m being interrupted constantly. It’s much harder to find time to hear myself think.
4. After talking with him for more than ten minutes I feel as if my brain is dripping out of my ears. Now, don’t get me wrong, he is an intelligent and entertaining human being, it’s only that after being talked at for an hour about robots, or building a submarine in the backyard, or going to the moon with his stuffed bunny in a LEGO rocket I usually need about thirty minutes of quiet time on my own to feel like I have any mental capacity at all.
5. There is so much more organizational detail to attend to that my mind gets constantly drawn towards things like bringing money to kindergarten for the field trip, organizing baby sitting, searching for his rain pants, remembering that he had his rain pants with him when he went to that birthday party three weeks ago, asking the mother of his friend where his rain pants are, searching again because that other mother said her husband had dropped the pants off at our place, remembering while her husband might be sure that he did that I haven’t set eyes on the pants since my son left for the birthday party, making a note on my to-do-list to buy new rain pants at the second hand store, actual remember the rain pants when I’m near the store, go in, look for pants in his size, not finding any, make another note for another day, finally after three attempts get new rain pants, only to have him lose them at kindergarten the following week, start over. – And that was only one thing. And one child.
6. Did I mention that I’m tired? Before I had a child when I stayed up late I just slept in the next day and restored my energy. Nowadays if I stay up late I have to pay for it for three days straight.

These things don’t make being creative impossible but it’s much harder. Even on weekends there is never a feeling of “open end”. Creativity has to be pressed into whatever slice of time is available. And for me that is partly the reason that most of my creativity these days comes out in knitting and blog posts, and there are no new songs written by me. That’s not to say that I can’t be creative with my son around but I have to say that I find it hard.

And I have found that there are different degrees of creativity for me. Things like knitting or sewing other people’s patterns, while fun, don’t fulfill my creative urge adequately (and neither would designing my own patterns, I tried). Writing blog posts is okay but writing fiction is better. Practicing guitar and playing other people’s songs is okay, improvising is better, and writing my own songs is best. But writing my own songs or writing fiction is neither “fun” nor relaxing for me. It’s hard and takes a lot of energy. I tried to find a way to make this easier but even when everything flows perfectly afterwards I feel like I have climbed a hill. And also my mind is entirely elsewhere. My son doesn’t like this. Nobody likes it when his mother has this far-away look on her face and doesn’t really pay attention.

The creativity Amanda talks about in her book is mostly the crafting type. And in the book there are mostly projects you can do with your children, which I love. But that’s just it. I can sit next to my son and knit, even while he plays or draws or even knits himself. (I’m so proud of him, he has knitted all of two rows on a scarf for his teddy bear. Of course after that he lost interest again.) Sometimes, very rarely, I’ll even play the guitar a little or sing while he’s with me but I can’t do more than that. Creating art requires your full attention and your child does too. Which is why even Amanda does most of her book writing and serious embroidery and sewing at night after her children have gone to bed.

Please understand that I am not saying anything against her or her book, in fact I strongly recommend buying it, it is lovely and very inspirational. That paragraph I quoted was only the starting point for me to say something that has been on my mind for a long time (and on my husband’s even longer). I find that I am not alone in this. I see a lot of musicians who used to practice for hours every day spending their evenings slumping in front of TV these days because they feel too brain dead after a day with their children. I also see people picking up something new through their children’s activities like the mother who started playing the guitar when her daughter didn’t want to any longer and who is now learning something she always wanted.

So, what’s your experience? Are you more creative or less since you’ve had children? (Of course, comments are open for people without children too…

for Wordless Wednesday

I only realized why I got all worked up about this when I went to look at a nearby Montessori school. I entered the classroom, I saw the teachers, I heard their presentation and thought, “That’s how school is supposed to be!” And I realized how much I had suffered as a child in school because I had to learn so slowly. I didn’t get top grades but basically I just sat there, made an attentive-looking face and thought of something else.

I’d like my son to have the chance to learn as fast or slow as he needs to.

The other thing that has me all worked up is the Bavarian school system. When I studied music education I learned a lot about the various school systems in the different parts of Germany. When my husband and I got married, and when I briefly worked as a music teacher in a Bavarian school, I told my husband that we had to move somewhere else in case we had children so that they didn’t have to go to school here.

All in all it’s a jumbled mess of reformed reforms, of decision made hastily and then altered because it all didn’t work. That’s possibly true of most institutions but the Bavarian school system is especially prone to promote only a few elite students and leave the rest behind.

There are only very few students who still love knowledge and learning after leaving school even if they have been successful there. I can see it right now at kindergarten level when dozens of people tell my son that he should be glad to still be in kindergarten because he won’t be having any time for playing anymore once he’ll start elementary school. (Which is crap by the way, school’s from 8 to 1 and they don’t have much homework the first two or three years.) I see it in a kindergarten teacher telling another parent – while I and our two children were standing nearby – that it’s a shame, the things first graders have to do these days in schools, some of the lessons were too hard even for the kindergarten teacher!

And then, in third grade, it gets worse because then the children are pressured to get good grades otherwise their chances of getting access to a college or university education later in life will be minimal. (Really.) And if they get top grades and get admitted to the Gymnasium the fun only begins. With the recent reform of the system joy of learning and knowledge has a very hard time in school today. “Learning” is again used as a synonym for “cramming as much facts in your head as it can hold until the next test and then forgetting all about it”. Learning is considered to be hard, to be something one only does when forced to, something that isn’t fun for sure. And it’s not as if the students were taught how to learn, it seems as if they just get fact after fact dumped on them, without any strategies of how to deal with that.

I, on the other hand, still believe that learning is fun, that it’s something that occurs naturally, and especially that children are eager to learn as much as they possibly can. Just like Maria Montessori did.

In order to have our son visit a Montessori school we’d have to pay about 350 € every month for school, have him driven to school to the next town, and we’d have to be lucky to get him in since there are much more people interested than they can take. Regular elementary school is free, it’s nearer to our house than kindergarten, and it has to take him by law.

Those of you outside Germany might ask why I don’t homeschool him, seeing that I am that passionate about learning and a teacher on top of that. Well, homeschooling is illegal in Germany. This goes back to the 19th century when children were forced to go to school for the first time ever, even those whose parents depended on their labor, like farmers. I always believed that this is a good thing that it makes society a bit more equal.

But now that it is about my son I’d like him to be a bit less equal, or better yet, that all the children can have access to schools where learning is fun and where both teachers and students are looking forward to go to every day.

I know that there are still a lot of children in the world who would love to go to school and can’t. Children who have to work for money like they were adults, children who’d love to learn anything, and can’t. But still I’d like to live somewhere where learning is driven less by fear and more by enthusiasm.

I have been thinking about plastic toys. I’m not particularly fond of plastic toys as such. On the other hand there are plastic toys that I loved when I was a child myself and that I still consider great toys. I’m speaking of LEGO and playmobil.

Last year my son received a huge amount of playmobil cars, a helicopter, a doll house, an ark, animals, and whatnot for his birthday and so I consider the playmobil department overflowing. I don’t think that he really needs more of that. Of LEGO he has quite a bit but only in the duplo size which is aimed at preschoolers. So I broke out the LEGO catalogue, and sat down with my son to see what he would like to have.

Okay, that was a lie. These catalogues are what he is usually “reading” every day. I always deemed this a harmless and nice pastime until about two years ago when I had to rip out all the pages containing bionicles because my son was so scared and fascinated by them that he couldn’t stop talking about them. He still thinks that bionicles are totally cool but I told him they are for bigger children only. So he’s looking forward to his eighth birthday because then he will have horrible black creatures throwing plasma balls and riding monstrous spiders.

Since I have been following these catalogues for a few years I have the impression that there are more and more of these bionicle-like LEGO toys. Do I want my then 5-year-old-son to play with hideous alien monsters of which every single one carries at least two weapons? No.

I feel a bit hypocritical writing this because it was me who gave my son a duplo castle with knights and armored horses and a fire-breathing dragon. I didn’t like the ferocious faces of the dragon knights and the amount of weapons that each single knight came with but in the end it turned out well, my son had the knights cooking meals and sleeping in the castle all of them together, caring for sick horses and the dragon. Mostly.

I know that children’s play has to include aggression, that it’s their way of making sense of the world, and that children everywhere incorporate scenes of conflict and war into their play. I only don’t want to give my son a toy that’s only a weapon. – Says she who gave her son a wooden sword last year. I don’t know what it is but somehow unarmed combat and sword-fighting seem more noble to me than pointing a gun. So far I don’t want any toy guns in the house (nor real ones, of course).

So, back to LEGO. There are several sets aimed at the younger children, most of them things like an airport, a police station, a hospital, and firefighters. And then comes a whole range of really cool sets, and “worlds”, all involving fighting. There are aqua raiders who are obviously doing research underwater. And then all their submarines come with guns, and they have to fight ghastly skeletons and sharks. The thing that I loved at first sight was the “mars mission”. Anything with space ships and astronauts has to be good, hasn’t it? Well, to my son and me anyway. So what do we find? Instead of research there are glowing-in-the-dark aliens and fighting over minerals. Aliens are imprisoned, and there is nothing but fighting between them and humans.

In short, almost every set of LEGO is about fighting and shooting. Apart from the sets that are for children age 12 or older that involve building cars and such. And every single thing about LEGO seems to be about vehicles or machines. And here I was, thinking that LEGO was for building houses.

Playmobil isn’t better, you have lots and lots of pirates fighting, roman soldiers fighting, vikings fighting, knights fighting, you get the picture. Of course, like with LEGO, there are real world sets too, houses, and a zoo, police and such. I probably should be very thankful that all those fighting scenes take place in a sort of fairyland. That there are no real soldiers with real weapons.

So I don’t quite know what to do. While I’m typing this my son is sitting on the floor building a tank out of castle parts. I’m not worried much because he usually quits this kind of play after a short time since he has to care for his pregnant stuffed bunny. But stuffed bunnies are not cool. Deformed machine-like people who let destruction rain on the world obviously are.

Girls, by the way, don’t get to play war. They get the double pink princess-unicorn-fairytale-castle. Where the princess gets everything her heart desires (including the handsome and brave prince) because of her beauty. Which poses another problem.

I know this post is totally ambivalent but that’s because I am too. I only wish that there could be toy sets about research and adventures that didn’t involve killing.

So, how do you feel about this? Anyone with bionicles in the house? Am I over-reacting?

Only I did still feel guilty from time to time. Because I’m not the mother I want to be, because other mothers do different things with their children, and because – to be frank often I try to sneak away and do something on my own. Like computer things. And when you’re a mother that’s Wrong.

I read about mothers feeling guilty all the time on blogs even if the mothers I meet in real life rarely talk about it. But even if they don’t talk about it you can feel it. Every time when two or more mothers meet you can sense it. And it isn’t triggered by competimoms only, every single, innocent remark can, and probably will, trigger someone’s guilt. “Look, we made cupcakes and decorated the room.” someone says, and the likes of me think about how they never bake anything, and that their method of decoration is to give their children paper and scissors and afterwards saying, “That’s really nice, of course you can tape it to the fence.” On the other hand I then say, “Oh, my son isn’t going to music class, but he likes to bang on the drums and piano, and walk around with the guitar pretending he is a rock star.” and immediately all the other mothers feel guilty for not creating such a stimulating creative environment for their children, while I feel guilty that my son who is the son of two musicians grows up without any musical training. The list can go on and on. Someone says, “Oh, we go to the playground every day.” and I feel rotten because I never go to the playground and my poor son has no peers to play with, and then I say, “Oh, we just open the door and let him out in the garden.” and the other mother feels rotten because her son has to grow up in a tiny apartment without his own sandbox and swing.

In the end we all feel rotten, those of us who bake cupcakes, those of us who grow their own food, those of us who let their children watch TV, those of us who don’t, those of us who work, those of us who stay at home, every single one. Every mother who cares about her children (and I’d say there are only very few who don’t and they probably don’t blog about it) feel guilty and like she isn’t doing enough or doing things wrong.

I recently read a post by Chris Jordan on this: “The Modern Mother“. She quotes her mother-in-law who said being a mother was easier fifty years ago. It might have been but I recall the stories my mother and my mother-in-law tell and they always had the feeling that they were not good enough as a mother somehow, plus they were feeling rotten because they wanted to work outside the home, and they couldn’t.

So, I don’t think that going back fifty years is the solution (and neither does Chris Jordan, by the way). I just think that when every single mother in the Western Hemisphere (or maybe only most of them) feel guilty about the way they are treating their children, this is not a personal phenomenon, this is social. And it is always a good thing to remember that societies are made by human beings and that the rules therefore can be changed by human beings too.

I have been reading the sentence, “I better start saving for my child’s therapy bill because I …” (yelled at her, lost my temper, have let my child down in any way) so often. And every single time I’d like to write a comment and say, “Cool down. If that’s the worst that ever happens to your child it is very fortunate indeed.” All this implicates that mothers should be somehow superhuman. Patience personified. Never making mistakes. Never treating their children unfair. We all have this image in our heads of the loving mother surrounded by her children, nurturing always. At the end of the day she sits in the midst of her children who all are smiling with perfectly brushed teeth wearing their hand-sewn pajamas, and reads them stories before tucking them in their beds. Do you realize that this is propaganda that is more than a hundred years old? Propaganda that got resurrected in the 1950s and that’s still sitting in our heads? Only now we have to be hot, sexy, intelligent, self-reliable and making money too.

In 2005 I read “The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined All Women” by Susan Douglas and Meredith Michaels and it opened my eyes. We all have this image of the ideal mother in our heads, and it is blasted at us from all media too. Imagine a celebrity saying that she is overwhelmed by new motherhood! Somewhere inside of us we secretly still think that becoming a mother is the most fulfilling and joyful thing we can ever achieve. And in a way it might be but then we don’t always feel fulfilled and joyful all day long. Blogs are giving us the opportunity to see real mothers in real life who also talk about the less joyful aspects of it all. Still we think that nothing we can ever do will be enough. Still we think that we are the key to our children’s happiness. That we alone hold their fates in our hands.

Well, it’s time to stop this. Our children are their own persons. They determine their own fates as much as the people around them. We should always be grateful that we live in places where we have the energy and time to worry about whether it’s good for our children to have swimming lessons or too much cake. All the children of the people who read this have enough to eat, a roof over their heads, clothes to keep them warm and mothers and/or fathers who love them and care for them. Mommy guilt is a luxury problem that harms us and our children.

I have a little task for you: every time you catch yourself thinking, “I’m a bad mother.” or “My child will need therapy because of me.” or something similar, replace it with, “I love my child and trust him (or her) to turn out okay” or “Being myself is all I have to do.”.

Okay, I don’t seem to be good at making new slogans against mommy guilt. I’m afraid you have to help me out here. What will you be replacing your old mommy guilt phrases with?

One of the most helpful comments to me was the one Anne wrote. Sadly there are no posts in her blog. I hope there will be. She also addressed several ways of asking a child to do something. I like her emphasis on teaching the actual skills versus the chore aspect of this. Obviously meno’s daughter has the most things to do which isn’t surprising since said daughter is about 16. Sober put it best when she wrote:

All the things that Anne said – not actually being responsible for a task, but learning alongside, taking turns doing things that he can do and watching you do the things that require the precision of an adult.

In addition to your comments I have done a little thinking on my own and pulled out a copy of “Kinder fördern im Alltag.” (Petra Kunze, Catharina Salamander)“. So, a preschooler like my son should be able to do the following:

• pick up his toys
• dress and undress himself
• set the table (in our house somebody else will have to get the dishes because he can’t reach them)
• fetch things from the fridge
• help to peel and cut vegetables
• rake leafs, help with yard work like watering (my son has his own little rake and watering can), pull weeds, put seeds into the ground, pot plants
• pour juice, milk, or cereal
• sort laundry
• put dirty laundry in the hamper
• put fresh laundry away
• load and unload the dishwasher
• help with grocery shopping, fetch things that are on low shelves, take a little shopping cart and push it through the store (my son also often gets to decide which cheese we’re buying, which fruit or vegetables
• put the groceries away when home
• put his own things back where they belong
• clean up spills

So there are a lot of things that even a preschooler can do. My next question of course is, “How do I motivate him to do any of this?” I’m a little reluctant to make any of this things his “duty”. This is not how our family works. While there are things that one or the other of us does more frequently (I do most of the shopping and errands while my husband cares for recycling, for example.), mostly everybody does everything as needed. Sometimes on of us cooks, sometimes the other, sometimes both or all three. Sadly our son isn’t interested to join us. He’d rather sit and draw a picture or look at a book. (Yes, he truly is his mother’s son.)

As a friend pointed out to me, “After a while it just isn’t fun anymore.” Well, I didn’t know housework was supposed to be fun, I just know that it has to be done regardless of how you like to do it. And I definitely know that spreading it around and doing it together helps in making it more fun.

I have noticed that my son is especially reluctant to help if he thinks he won’t be able to accomplish the task. So sometimes all it takes is to show him that he can do it. He’s very eager to try things like make his own sandwiches. And when I get him to help he is always very pleased with himself. Like today I put everything that was needed to set the table out and he did the rest himself. After a lot of whining, “Why do I always have to do so much?”, and us pointing out that there are people actually doing more than him, he was perfectly happy to have set the table on his own.

Housework isn’t such a big deal but it’s the first and easiest way our children can contribute something to family life. And everybody has to learn how to care for himself or others.

Thank you for all your helpful suggestions. After reading your comments I kept thinking of more and more ways to involve my son. He doesn’t appreciate it now but he sure will in the future. As Hel wrote:

I hated doing chores as a child but now I am able to create a pleasant living space free of old crusty pieces of bread and unwashed cups.

On the subject of responsibility and hovering parents I might have to write another post soon.

For the past year or so my son has been really moody. Sometimes aggressive, sometimes depressed a little. We were fighting so much that we asked the preschool to switch from him going only in the afternoon to almost the whole day. (Yeah, that’s right, I put my son in daycare because we (him and me) were fighting so much.) When I approached his teacher, telling about my difficulties and the constant power struggle in our house, she said that she didn’t see any of it in school. And that maybe it had to do with him being around adults all the time. At home he is always the weak one, the little one, and the one who isn’t allowed to decide on his own. So I’ve been thinking about ways to make him feel more independent.

The other thing I have been thinking constantly about is how many of my students seem to be incapable – and unwilling – of doing anything on their own. It often seems to me that their parents still hold their hands at an age where they should be almost grown-up. And I think that this makes the students (and maybe the parents too) unhappier and doesn’t help building self-esteem

So maybe our children need more responsibility. I’m not talking about child labour here. I’m talking about having to stand up for the consequences of their own actions. Since most of my students come from rather privileged families, I have seen children sent to boarding school when they were about to fail a grade. I have seen parents doing homework, I have seen parents making up for everything their children screw up. Lost a coat? You get a new one. Forgot your homework? Your mother’s doing it. Have to go anywhere? Your parents are driving you everywhere you want. Even in the middle of the night. You don’t know what to do after high school? Well, just sit around at home moping until you find out.

They have nice parents, do they? (Of course, not all parents and students are alike. I do have students who have to be quite self-sufficient too.) But I can’t shake the feeling that these young adults have the deep feeling that they are really dependent on their parents. And that they won’t know what to do when on their own.

While responsibility might be a burden, eventually each and every one of us has to take responsibility for himself and his life. Well, there even might come a time where our children will have to be responsible for their children or, gasp, even us, their parents. With responsibility comes a sense of accomplishment and capability too. It’s not all bad though there are a lot of young adults out there who shy away from it. Who never learned it.

Young adults who grew up thinking that it was their parents they were doing their homework for. Interestingly they started failing school the minute they were old enough to realize that their parents don’t have any real power over them. When I had talked to those parents earlier and said, “Well, let him go to school without his homework then.” The parents had answered, “But then he will have bad grades!” Yeah, he will. Maybe that’ll teach him to do his homework.

I’m not talking about not helping. I’m the first one to explain something for the umpteenth time, to say, “Maybe you should try this.” But today my son refused to get dressed and then had a tantrum about his breakfast (“What do you want for breakfast, müsli or bread?”, “Müsli.”, “Are you sure?”, “Yes, Müsli.” – “Here’s your müsli.”, “But I dooon’t WAAANT MÜÜSLIIII!!!). So I told him if he didn’t get dressed he could walk to preschool naked. Then he dressed. And then we left for preschool. No breakfast. For him that is.

But I’m still behind what I thought I would be doing before I had a child. Back then I thought that a four year-old should be able to dress himself, pick up his toys, and help with housework. Very funny. Right now my son’s responsibilities are: dress and undress himself, know when to use the toilet, and unpack his backpack. Sometimes, very rarely I ask him to put his plate on top of the dishwasher after meals. One reason for this is that housework around here mostly happens when he is at preschool, but maybe we should change that.

Children of his age that are visiting Montessori school already learn how to cook a little, they brush their hair, they brush their teeth and they know how to sweep the floor and cut vegetables. They certainly have to pick up their toys.

So I’m thinking about which responsibilities to introduce next. I don’t want to end up with a boy who’s 16 and who comes home, drops his shoes in the middle of the floor, slumps into the next chair and says, “I need something to eat.” And who then expects me to cook something for him. I definitely don’t want him to grow into a man who says that housework is for women. A man who never will move out because he doesn’t want to be without room service and clean laundry.

I’d like to raise my son with the knowledge that actions have consequences and that he will have to face them on his own someday.

So, what are your children responsible for?

But I wanted to write about cloth diapers. I only realized how much I care about them when my husband’s cousin had a baby a couple of weeks ago; she took all the baby stuff I had left and when I forgot that the cloth diapers were still sitting in a closet in my bedroom, and told her I’d bring them over, she just made a vague noise and shrugged it off. And since then I have been wanting to force the cloth diapers on her. And to persuade her to use them. But I can’t. And I know perfectly well that most of the people reading this blog don’t have children of diaper age, or are well set in their ways. Nonetheless I’d like to tell you why I like cloth diapers so much:

1. They don’t smell as much.
Really. When my son went to play group the teachers there often didn’t realize that his diaper badly needed changing because there was not that much stink. On the other hand, when – for travel reasons or such – I had to use disposable diapers I kept thinking that he had a poopy diaper when in fact he hadn’t.

2. You don’t need to haul immense amounts of diapers home from the super market.
And

3. You don’t need to pay insane amounts of money for diapers.
When I first contemplated the cloth-or-not-cloth-issue I stood in the diaper aisle of the grocery store thinking, “Oh, they aren’t that expensive.” And then I started to do the math. Let’s take an average of 4 diapers a day for 2 1/2 years, and let’s say one diapers costs about 25 cent (which it doesn’t in the grocery store, I just found a discount price on the net right now), and then you’ll pay 912.50 € for diapers. At least. (That would be 1.234.25 $. But then I don’t know the cost of diapers in the US.) And I know that washing things also costs money, and cloth diapers cost money, but not that much. Which brings me to the next point:

4. You often can get used cloth diapers very cheap or for free.
Most of the diapers I have been using for years were given to me by a friend. She used them for about two weeks and was very glad to give them away. I have bought some new diapers over time because some were worn out, and I have been using disposable diapers from time to time, but the money I spent was nowhere near 900 €.

When I was pregnant I read tons of books about pregnancy and babies. In one of them the author said, “Imagine yourself on the balcony, folding nice clean diapers with your baby in a sling, while everybody else is stuck in a traffic jam because they have run out of diapers and have to get new ones in a panic.” I thought she was a little cuckoo. But really, some of my fondest memories of my son’s first year indeed involve me hanging up or folding diapers while carrying him in a sling. Of course I don’t think that much about the days when I had to do everything wearing him in a sling while he screamed on top of his lungs, and I had to rush around, sterilizing my milk pump and washing diapers. (And I am a sling fanatic too. Not that I practiced Attachment Parenting, but I really have to stop myself from pressing a sling on every new parent. It literally saved my life. I even volunteered to teach people how to use them. If you’re anywhere near Munich, drop me an e-mail, come to my house and I’ll show you.) I seem to be a bit of a missionary at heart. Sorry.

5. Cloth diapers are better for babies with sensitive skin.
My son developed a rash every time we went on vacation and he wore disposable diapers more than two days in a row.

So now about the things that people don’t like about cloth diapers:

1. You have a bucket of smelling, dirty diapers sitting around all the time.
Yep. True. Make sure to get a small bucket with a fitting lid. Contrary to popular belief you don’t have to swish them in the toilet though. Or iron them. You don’t even have to touch them after changing, or soak them. Just get a laundry net, hang it in the bucket like a trash bag, roll the used diapers up, and put them in there. Close lid. When the bucket is full, take it to the washing machine, grab the net, close it, toss it in the machine – well done. You have to clean the bucket once in a while, though. Think of it as training for when your child uses the potty.

And really, a diaper bucket doesn’t smell more than a cat litter box. And trash cans with disposable diapers in them smell too. Unless maybe you use those thingies that wrap each and every diaper in plastic, and really how environmental unfriendly do you want to get because of a little poop smell?

2. Your babysitter, day care person, or some such, won’t know how to use them.
Well, most people can be trained. And there are cloth diapers that work like disposable ones. The only two things people have to keep in mind are: a) don’t throw the cloth diaper away, and b) most types of cloth diaper require a kind of cover since they are not water-proof per se. In our family the challenge was to prevent my babysitter from putting a diaper cover on my son when for some reason or other she had to use disposables once in a while.

At first when my son was in play group (without mothers), I put him in disposables to make it easier for the teachers. But since they never changed him anyway, I just put a little plastic bag in his backpack with a fresh cloth diaper and a big handwritten sign saying: “Please us this diaper. Please put the diaper cover over it, and please put the soiled diaper in the plastic bag.” Voilà. No problem.

3. It is too complicated and time consuming.
Again, look at this:

or this:

4. They leak when the baby gets older.
Well, yes. I almost gave up when my son was about nine months old. Then I bought a couple of extra layers like these:

And there was – no more leakage.

5. But who wants to do all that laundry?
Come on. You’ve got a child. You’re doing laundry all the time anyway.
I was surprised at the amount of laundry we had after having a child. And I only changed his clothes about twice a week or so. Since then I made peace with the five loads a week concept. (Of course now I have less laundry than when I still had to wash the diapers. That’s true.)

Have I forgotten something? I stole all the pictures from the excellent shop “Wickelkinder” by the way. I can only recommend it. For Germans anyway. What do you think about cloth diapers? Have you tried them?

I know I have milked the subject of pink shoes or socks enough already, but – today is the day of the May just post roundtable and there will be some new readers coming over to read the story of my son’s pink socks. All because I didn’t write anything else remotely social or just for the whole month. And those new readers – and the old ones as well – will then think that my poor son still suffers and maybe cry a little for him.

(And for those who are new to this and too lazy or pressed for time to follow the links: my son wanted to have pink shoes which I didn’t buy because I was afraid that he would be made fun of at preschool. Then I bought him pink socks. He wore them to preschool once and after being laughed at never wanted to wear them again.)

I’ll continue to be angry at gender inequality, I promise. And right now I have the feeling that maybe little boys don’t have as much choices as little girls. And then they will grow up and become men. And maybe they will be grown men in a society where they still earn more money than women, and do less housework. They might live in a world where a mother has to come home from an important meeting immediately because her child puked so she can mop it up, even when the child is with his father at the time. If said child’s father on the other hand were to be – let’s say – going out with his friends for a couple of beers, and the child got sick, there might be a fat chance that he heard about the incident only the morning after. “Oh, by the way the child will be staying home today, it got sick in the evening.”
(Disclaimer: This is not to be confused with the situation at creative family where master guitarist and creative mother share childcare duties and mopping up. Each of them is considered to be a fully grown parent without need of further assistance.)

So maybe I should shut up about the pink socks. And I will. I only want to write this post to assure you all that my son isn’t sad any more about the pink socks or shoes. He has forgotten the pink shoes entirely. For a four year old he has a remarkable memory so this shows it hasn’t been that important to him. It was important to me. Because I chose to use my powers of persuasion to change his opinion. And though I use my powers of persuasion all the time with my son this time felt a little immoral. Only I didn’t want to have to buy another pair of shoes.

So. His social standing in the preschooler community obviously didn’t suffer much. One boy who had laughed at him because of the pink socks invited him to his birthday party just last week. The little girl who had said to her mother, “The boy is wearing girly socks.” did so not in malice or ridicule but in curiosity. She found it odd and remarkable but not alarmingly so.

I won’t talk to the teachers about this issue because I doubt that there is anything they can do about it. The children already know that they shouldn’t make fun of others. They still do occasionally. They are just trying to figure out how to be social animals. Friendships are forged and broken. At least in this school the atmosphere is very friendly. When we go through the door in the morning there are children shouting, “Hello Leo.” right and left. The children are nice to one another. Unlike my memories of preschool, girls and boys play together often. A boy can play with the dolls or in the doll kitchen without being stigmatized. When I was four years old there was a boy in my preschool who liked to play in the doll’s corner. He never recovered from that. And I went to school with him until fourth grade. I don’t think that something like this could happen in the school my son attends.

Also his teacher told me that she admires my son for being quite independent. She said, “He plays nicely with others though he is quiet and a little shy. He has no problems. And when he has enough or doesn’t want to play what the others are playing he goes away and plays alone.” That made me quite proud. My son is independent and self-reliant. He won’t let himself get coaxed by peer pressure. At least for now.

Those of you with preschoolers and kindergarteners probably know that this is one of the most rigid and conservative phases in life. These children are setting out to learn the rules, and so they like people to stick to them. They try to understand what being male or female means. They try to understand what being a child and an adult means. They try to see the big picture, how people work, how one does things.

So my son goes back and forth between his likings. He declared, “I no longer like pink, I like black and brown now.” a couple of weeks ago. When I told him that one can like all three at once, he said no. You can’t. Just yesterday he declared, “I don’t like black and brown any longer. I like pink better again.”

My son’s biggest ambition right now has nothing to do with clothes but with his deep desire to be master of his own fate. He wants to be grown-up and be able to do everything he can imagine. He just starts to see how rich the world is and what range of things and activities are available to human beings. He wants to grow his own food, make his own clothes, build a space shuttle and travel to the moon, become a knight, have children, and cook.

His most persistent fantasy is that of building his own submarine, build an ocean in the backyard and then live there on his own. So that nobody can tell him what to do. He will be staying up all night, wear his pajamas the whole day and have robots who manufacture everything he desires. (No, he never saw a James Bond movie.) He plans to move out at his fifth birthday, but we can come and visit him. He even told me that I could stay with him in the submarine to travel to Brazil. Or maybe Italy. Or both.

He dressed up with his cute socks and jeans and his new sandals. He told me, “But you will have to buy a pink t-shirt to go with them, you know. I have to have a pink t-shirt.” Okay.

He went to preschool. When I asked him in the evening, he told me that everybody loved his pink socks. That he really needed a pink tee. Have you ever tried to find a pink t-shirt without ruffles or something? Just a plain t-shirt. Not too girlish? Not too expensive, too, since I didn’t know how long he would like to wear it. What I saw in the department store made me glad to have a boy. There was not one t-shirt that I liked. (And I remembered why I keep buying my son’s clothes out of a cataloge. It’s not only the girl’s clothes that are ugly.) So I tried the second hand store. And found a pink t-shirt like this for 2 €:

Of course this had to be washed too so he couldn’t wear it the day after I bought it. But he had his socks. The next day we arrived at preschool, late as often, and a little girl sat down beside him. She told her mother, “The boy is wearing girlie socks.” And he showed her, proudly. In the evening he was very sad to learn that his socks had to be washed since they were very, very dirty. A few days later I told him they were ready to be worn again and that he could wear his new pink tee with it. He had loved the tee when I showed it to him. Then he said, “No, I don’t want to wear the socks or the t-shirt to preschool.” “Why?” “L. and F. made fun of me.” It turned out that a couple of kids had laughed at him because of the socks. And that everybody had been talking about it for days. Obviously a boy wearing pink socks is a very hot topic for preschoolers.

And that was it. He didn’t even want to wear the t-shirt or the socks on weekends. They are tainted with the laughter of his peers.

This makes me sad. I’m even sadder because I saw it coming. Of course I could have prevented this but then I thought, “Maybe it’s not that bad.” And that everybody should be able to wear the color he or she likes. I’m still angry that I’m living in a society where people can’t wear the colors they like. Not even when they are only four years old. I knew that preschoolers and kindergarteners are highly conventional. You can’t really blame them, they learn their values from the adults around them. Women do housework, men can work with computers, women are bad at math, men can’t sew, women always want to be pretty, men don’t care how they look, blablabla. As if there were no individuality.

Or am I the only one who thinks that gender inequality is creeping back?

(Edited to add: Since there were so many comments on this post where people felt sad for my son I wrote yet another post on this to round it all up: Pink – the third)

(Before you think I’m all “holier-than-thou” I have to add that my mother-in-law owns a car. It is sitting in our garage and we share it. But when this one dies (and it’s an old car) there won’t be a new one. For the money it costs to just have it sitting in the garage you can take a taxi to the grocery store every time and buy a piano on top of that.)

But I didn’t want to write about cars though I could go on and on, I wanted to write about what gives me a feeling of freedom. First it’s this:

It’s not because they are red though it helps. These shoes are a symbol to me. A symbol that I value myself enough to buy myself real comfortable shoes. They tell me that I can walk everywhere. That I am strong and capable. And independent. I’m not dependent on a machine; I can just walk away whenever I choose to. And my feet could carry me to China and back again. It would take a little while, I know; that’s why I’m not walking everywhere. But for my everyday life I can shop, go to preschool and back, go for a walk in the woods and all I need are those shoes. They are special walking shoes. For nordic walking to be precise, though I don’t do this often (haven’t pulled my sticks out in half a year or so). My feet don’t hurt. When I was in my twenties and had moved to the city my feet always hurt. In cities you have to walk a lot more than in the country. Then I discovered walking sneakers. With expensive shock absorbing thingies in the heels. Ha! When I visited a friend in Berlin and we went sight-seeing one day from 9 to 3 we came home and she lay down on the floor with her feet up on a chair saying, “My feet are killing me.” And I stood next to her thinking, “Well, my feet do feel a little uncomfortable, come to think of it.” And that was all.

The next thing that gives me a feeling of freedom is this:

I know, it’s not very pretty. Though it is red which is always good. I bought it when I was at my biggest. Right now I’m waiting for oversized jackets to come into fashion again.

I had wanted a gore-tex jacket since 1990 when I first discovered that there was such a thing. What I love about this jacket is that I can wear it all year round. It has a fleece jacket inside that you can zip out when it gets warmer. It is light, it is rain-proof but you don’t feel like you’re wearing a plastic bag. When I’m out walking and it starts to rain I just pull the hood up and I’m comfy again.

Every day when I’m bringing my son to preschool I have to smile when I see the other parents struggling with finding parking space and fiddling with keys, car seats and safety belts. My son and I just walk there. Quite slowly because he’s only four. Then I say goodbye to him for the day and there’s this feeling of freedom rushing in. I zip my jacket and just go. Often I take a detour for the sheer joy of walking. I move, I can think, I feel the air on my face, the pavement under my cushioned shoes – bliss. It’s even better when I got for a walk in the woods. Unencumbered I just walk and look and think. It makes me happy.

There was a time when I felt guilty about this sudden feeling of bliss and freedom I have at the door of preschool every day but then I remembered the times before my son was away from home five days a week. I remembered the walks I took with him. They were the only form of exercise I did in those days. I put him in the stroller, donned my walking shoes and my trusty jacket and started walking. And I felt the same feeling of elation. Even if he spent most of the walk screaming, it was worth it. When he was a baby I often put him in the sling. Then I could even walk in the woods. Or go to the city. I could laugh at stairs and narrow doors. I would just keep on walking. Stepping over obstacles. Free. Strong. Independent.

So don’t tell me freedom is about convertibles or motorcycles. I’m really not one of those women to whom it’s all about shoes but in this case shoes are very important. Shoes one really can walk in. Free.

It isn’t as if he had expressed a liking for pink and girlish things only yesterday when we went to buy new sandals. For weeks he has been saying that he only likes colors like pink and purple and that he wants pink sneakers or pink socks or whatever pinkish clothing caught his eyes in the supermarket.

I have been thinking about this for ages. Periodically he wants to be a girl or a woman. He then wants to be called like Leah instead of Leo and pretends that he is a female astronaut or the mother of his teddy who’s then called Kokolishba (he made that name up). Leah by the way is Brazilian. Kokolishba is her son, they are both visiting Germany and Kokolishba is four years old. Sometimes Leah is married to the child’s father whose name is Kokolishba too. Of course Leah wears skirts and dresses and likes to got to the spa, dye her hair and wears make-up. As a mother I can say that this Leah is much easier to bath than Leo. After a few weeks of pretending to be female my son always finds something else to play, reacts to his real name again and that’s it. Until the next time.

Of course at four he is the age when all children are thinking about gender roles and about what things are appropriate or not for men and women. It is the age of conventionality. We meet a man with long hair, my son starts laughing, “But men don’t have long hair!”, how ridiculous. I say, “But of course there are men with long hair. Just like women can have short hair. “But women have long hair!” So what about your grandmother and the kindergarten teacher and …

He come home one day and says that he only likes colors like black and brown nowadays. Because he’s a boy and boy only like dark colors. Like a good feminist mother I say, “But you can like all colors. Whichever you want.” “But only girls like pink and purple.” “But boys can like pink and purple too.” Obviously he took that to heart. When we went to the supermarket two weeks ago there was a display of children’s clothing up front. My son wanted to have pink, um, “Gymnastikschuhe” (the nearest would be ballet slippers I think but in Germany small kids wear those during gymnastics). I said that he already had some. He wanted pink socks. They were too big. I was relieved.

So yesterday I bought him new sandals since the old ones were too small. We entered the shop and looked at sandals in his size. “I want these.” he said, pointing to very, very girlish pink ones with flowers. “Or these.”, he said clutching those:

Well, if they were to be pink those would have been acceptable to me. But then what if the other children in preschool would laugh about him. “Look at Leo”, they’d say, he’s wearing girly shoes!” and then they’d laugh like my son laughed when he saw a man with a ponytail and then he wouldn’t want to wear them again. Shoes for 45 €. I tried to interest him in the same model in blue. No chance. A sales woman came. “But you can’t have pink shoes. You’re a boy.” and then to me “Is he in preschool?” “Yes.” “The other children would make fun of him. Children can be cruel.” In the end us two grown-ups showed him all the advantages of pretty blue and mud-colored sandals. Now he has a pair that is very suitable for jumping into puddles:

He’s very happy with his new shoes and claims that he can jump better and run faster with them. But I feel rotten. I never would have thought that I would discourage my son to follow his taste. Mind you, I wouldn’t want a girl to be dressed all in pink either but I’d tend towards brighter colors, more orange, yellow and red. Have you ever compared the boy and girl section of a clothing department? Well, I suppose you have. Rows and rows of bright and colorful girl’s clothes followed by about half the amount of things for boys. And then you can choose between blue, grey, and mud-colored. With pictures of trucks or skaters.

Why isn’t there more unisex clothing for at least the smaller children? Bright and cheerful colors? Why does everything for girls have to be pink and frilly? Why are horses girlish? Since when? Horses used to be for knights and warriors and work. Now they are girl stuff. Why does there have to be so much gender distinction? Why did my mother-in-law fear that my son would turn out gay when we gave him a doll for his first birthday? (And for his third another one?) Why aren’t there more male dolls?

I don’t know if I should have made a statement. Buy my son pink sandals. They would have looked mud-colored after a few weeks anyway because, seriously, white soles? Very funny. Are they machine-washable?

When I became a feminist at age 13 I never would have thought that 18 years later people would still say things like, “But everybody knows that men can’t iron.” “Men just can’t talk about feelings.” , “You know, I never can figure out computers, but that’s because I’m a woman.” Okay. So women don’t have brains and men don’t have feelings? A boy has to be interested in sports, computers, soccer and fighting and a girl has to be interested in dolls, horses, fashion and housework. Wow, I’m glad I figured that out.

And the other thing I never would have thought would be that nowadays it’s okay for a girl to play soccer but a boy still isn’t supposed to play with dolls. I’m really angry about this. I’d like to live in a world where everybody can wear what he or she wants. Pink, blue, high heels, sneakers, who cares.

But I’m not living in such a world and so I wonder: Should I have bought him pink sandals?

Oh, and later that day I went out and bought him pink socks. With horses. And hearts.

(There’s a follow-up to this post here.)

Technorati Tags: gender, parenting, sandals

Since my husband and I had been to a very, very loud nicotine-infected concert the night before all I managed was, “Um. Not right now.” I was so grateful that my mother-in-law had said she’d make him breakfast and take him to preschool and so I took him upstairs and went back to bed.

Grandmothers seem to be more patient than mothers because in the evening he proudly showed me this:

Cinderella-Princess-Unicorn-Crowns modeled by Teddy and Mikesch, the Cat

All evening long he talked about which crown was his and which was A’s and that his had to have long hair glued to it so he’d look like a girl.
And there would be a play and the unicorns would dance and there would be aparty. And that he would go and make scenery with his father on Saturday. (We had persuaded him to wait until the next morning.) And that I should go and prepare the food and freeze it.

On Saturday morning he woke up, early again, and told me to go and sew the costumes now. While he would build scenery in the cellar with my husband. And that he had already started on that.

In his room I saw that he had started to draw a “castle” on the big piece of cardboard that we use in lieu of a blackout blind so he doesn’t wake up too early. He even had tried to cut out pinnacles. Actually he woke us to say that he needed the big scissors. Fortunately I could discourage further cutting and promised to buy a real blackout blind soon so he could use the cardboard for his play.

All my poor tired husband wanted was a little sleep. So I told my son with all the authority I could muster that real theatre people always make sketches of everything. Costumes, scenery and who’s supposed to be where. Here they are:

The Unicorn’s Costumes

(Notice the unusual colors, red unicorns with black hooves. Also the “cinderella-princess-crowns” with their golden unicorn horns and eyes with extra-long eyelashes.)

The story of the play goes like this:

Two female unicorns are having a wedding. They have a picknick. Suddenly there is a knight who hurts the unicorns.

The Knight’s Costume

Very traditional though his sword is quite thin and cross-like. The knight is to be played by J, another preschooler.

The unicorns say, “Oh, don’t hurt us, knight, we are very nice unicorns.”
The knight stops.

All this is happening in front of a castle:

The Castle
(Very old with a sagging tower.)

At the end there is the unicorn dance. The two (played by my son and A) are dancing gracefully.

The Unicorn Dance

The audience is delighted.

The Audience

Afterwards there is a party with food and then A and J are to stay overnight.

First of all I very much doubt it. Most children tend to have that much survival instinct that they don’t starve in front of a full plate. As the wise Moxie always says food is one of the few things that children can control. The more it is important for you the more you will have a power struggle. So now I tell you what we did. And our son eats absolutely everything. So when he was about nine months old we started giving him part of the meals that we were eating. When he was older than a year he ate everything we did. We continued cooking the same as ever, only, we found out that eating hot food caused his diaper rush so we cut back on that.

What we do is this: At mealtime we sit down and everybody gets a plate with the meal of the day. With all of it. My son then eats. When he is clearly done, the rest will be thrown away. If he decides to eat nothing, well that’s fine too. But then this is it. No substitute, nothing to eat until the next designated snack time. Period. If he decides that asparagus is not to his liking, well, then he’ll just have to eat potatoes only. The next time we have asparagus there will be asparagus on his plate again. Interestingly he often then decides to eat the exact same food that he left over last time and to shun the potatoes.

It also helps that we eat everything. You know that children learn more through example than through your words, don’t you? And I have to tell you that I was a very picky eater as a child. And to be honest I still don’t like strawberries and raw tomatoes. Though I’m not allergic to them. So, when I’m at home I don’t eat them – mostly. When I am somewhere else and somebody makes strawberry cake I say thank you, smile and eat strawberry cake. I come from a family of picky eaters. My father doesn’t eat: rice, pasta, poultry, fish and innards. My mother doesn’t like mushy foods, peas, lentils and beans, anything with a strong taste (like brie), hot or spicy. My sister’s a vegetarian and doesn’t eat: eggplant, bell peppers, mushrooms, zucchini, and I don’t know what else. In addition to the strawberries and raw tomatoes I used to be a vegetarian too from the age of 18 to 29 and didn’t like celery.

Imagine cooking for that family. You make something like pasta bolognese and end up cooking potatoes too for my father and have your two children eating pasta with ketchup. Or you make something like bean soup and have three people eating bean soup (vegetarian bean soup) and one eating leftovers from the day before. My father doesn’t like vegetarian meals, when my mother wanted fish she had to make something else for the rest of the family, it took all the fun out of cooking. Interestingly even the people who clearly dislike certain foods will eat them when they are prepared differently. The on not eating peppers will like the vegetable quiche with bell peppers, the one not eating poultry will eat Tandoori chicken every day when in India, it’s all a bit mysterious. And every single one of them will at least try everything that my husband has cooked, because he is a formidable cook.

When I moved to Bavaria and started living alone, life became a culinary adventure. New kinds of pasta! Eggplant! Greek cheese! French cheese! Wow! Then we went on vacation in Italy, the whole family together and everything was just so delicious that I gave up being a vegetarian and started eating meat and fish again. Imagine having the whole menu to choose from! When you’re in a traditional German restaurant and you are a vegetarian you have actually about two or three choices: vegetables with a fried egg on top, Kasspatzen (which is a special kind of pasta with cheese), and Semmelknödel with mushrooms (not strictly vegetarian since there is broth in the sauce). In Bavaria especially they even have bits of ham in your vegetables, because obviously there has to be something in it to make it edible. So after ten years of that I started eating everything. I tried things I never ate before, seafood, exotic vegetables (garlic!), cheeses from all over the world, Italian salami, chick peas, Indian food, Greek food, Thai food… Marvelous.

My husband is not only a fabulous cook, he comes from a family where there are no picky eaters. None. Period. So we decided to make our son a non-picky eater. So far we have succeeded quite well, but I found out how this picky eating thing might have gone. When he started eating the same food as we there were often things that he obviously didn’t like. He left onions on his plate, he didn’t eat the outsides of his bell pepper, he didn’t like asparagus. And I found myself panicking, “Oh, he doesn’t like onions!” But I didn’t stop giving him onions to eat. Also we tried to introduce our son to every food we could imagine because I had read that all children get picky at age 3 to 8 or so. And right, for the last year or so he has started announcing that he doesn’t like this or that and wouldn’t eat it. This has become a little more since he started eating lunch at preschool because all they get there is traditional German cuisine. And pasta bolognese. But since we always respond with, “You can stay hungry if you want to.” he just eats. Sometimes he doesn’t eat his potatoes, sometimes he doesn’t eat his meat, sometimes he eats all the meat first and wants seconds, sometimes he eats only potatoes… All in all he gets a very rounded diet. Sometimes he eats only one or two bites, sometimes he eats more than me. His needs obviously are changing.

When we go to a restaurant he gets part of our dishes too. He may choose which one to have, but he can’t choose his food. We don’t have to order something special for him since restaurant portions are too big anyway and he doesn’t eat that much. One thing I found is that people seem to suggest to him that some foods might be unsuitable for a child. Like, “What? You’re eating FISH!” or “And when you’re going to an Indian restaurant, what do YOU eat?” Well, the same as Indian children I’d say. If it’s too hot he gets a little yoghurt stirred into the dish and more rice. My husband and I are a little jealous of him because our childhoods didn’t include olives, foreign cheese or even Chinese food. When we grew up pasta and pizza were considered exotic.

You might think that I’m only lucky and maybe I am, but I didn’t make this into a power struggle and I think this is key. You might also think that I wouldn’t have done this if my child were underweight, but you’re wrong. I recently found out that according to US growth charts my son would be considered seriously underweight. By German standards he is on the light side of the chart with no need to worry. My mother thinks he should gain weight because one can see his ribs sticking out. I think he is like me and like my husband’s brother, a skinny kid. Since he is healthy, growing, smart and active I don’t worry.

Technorati Tags: children, food

This whole diaper-thing has been bothering me for quite a while. I even once wrote to Moxie because of it. Of course, the moment I asked somebody for advice my son changed tactics and became content with wearing diapers at night again. Then another problem surfaced: there was leakage. During the last months there would be little (or not so little) puddles in his bed. Three mornings out of four. Yuck. I changed from cloth to disposable diapers. That helped a little. Then we thought, maybe the problem is not the night, maybe the problem is that he dreamily empties his bladders in the morning into his convenient diaper. We tried to teach him to go the toilet first thing in the morning. You know, like all the adult do. We even reestablished the potty. Well, he just isn’t at his best in the mornings…

Then, one evening – about two weeks ago – after I gave him the “and then when you get up you use your potty immediately”-lecture he said, “I’ll just go to sleep without my diaper. Just like the adults do.” My first reaction: PANIC! my second: “What the frell, we’ve been having wet sheets anyway.”

I didn’t sleep well that night, I can tell you. I thought I’d be woken up sometime in the night by a crying child in need of fresh linens. Surprise! Everything was dry in the morning! The second day he forgot that he wasn’t wearing a diaper anymore. And that’s been it. No more diapers ever.

I have been washing two to three loads of diapers for 3 1/2 years. When he was about nine months old, the first round of leaking started. Fortunately I found a website about cloth diapers and the problem was solved with the purchase of a little more padding. I’m really fond of cloth diapers. They are much cheaper (especially when a friend just hands you her stack of almost unused ones), they don’t smell as bad (Really, really true. In playgroup my son would often run around for an hour with a full diaper, because the women there hadn’t smelled it.) and the child has that adorable duck-like butt.

Of course I had just opened a new pack of disposables. But I don’t mind. So, what shall I do with the blog now? Keep the title anyway? It isn’t the best title in the world. Substitute something for “diapers”? Please help me out here.

Technorati Tags: diapers

pee man

Note the full bladder and both genders:

pee woman

I love those signs so much we even have one on the toilet that our students use – posted at the right height for a 4.year-old…

Then my husband said, “This looks like the Trojan Horse.” (Well, actually like the Tojan horse with its foal.) We didn’t quite remember the story of the Trojan Horse, so of course we looked it up. Then, because that’s the way those things go in our house, my husband fetched his copy of the Ilias. In German though, not Greek, we don’t go overboard with this. My husband began reading a passage out loud and our son said, “And what happened next?” … “And what happened next?” … “And what happened next?”

Storytelling time (and before breakfast as you can see by my husband attire).

And then the Greek made war with Troja. And the Trojans didn’t want the Greeks to come into their city. Then the Greek built a big wooden horse. The Trojans took the horse into their city and then the Greek opened the gates from within.

“And what did Helena do then?”

Does anybody know the answer?

So we had a little ritual to mark the beginning of the school year. On Sunday we opened a bottle of champagne and sat down to talk about what we did during the last weeks and what we’d like to do during the next weeks. I feel much better because of this.

So, what happened? My son got a cold. First sniffles, then a mild fever then we thought he’s better already and then it got worse. Monday night he woke at half past two in the morning, couldn’t get back to sleep, kept us all awake, until my husband went off to the guest bedroom and I pulled out the anti-pain-medication. The child slept, in my bed and managed to take up two thirds of it. I don’t know how he does it.

Yesterday, of course, all my plans were automatically canceled, I became nurse to a miserable child. Other people tell tales of miserable children, clingy and – miserable. Mine becomes clingy and – very angry. He spent most of the day restless, talking without a stop and throwing one tantrum after the other.

When I looked for something to help him, I took out my books on homeopathy (yes, books not book). And I think I’ve found something for him.
But homeopathy won’t help me with my time and energy management issues. While I long for the structure that my teaching days give me, there actually is less time to accomplish anything. So on my to-do-list is:

• fix new shelves to wall in living room
• transfer video recorder and television set to new stand
• layout and print new flyer to attract more singing and piano students
• entertain my son, who’s staying yet another day at home due to his cold
• send e-mail to banking guy to alter something on the mortgage
• give a singing lesson to a new student
• write new blog-post
• do grocery shopping
• do two or three loads of laundry
• and, most important, practice singing, piano and guitar.

Funny, isn’t it?

Okay, I’ll practice in the evening. I’ll do the grocery shopping after the singing lesson, when my MIL can babysit.

(Short break, while I look for my son, who is playing in the garden.)

Son still there. Phew! E-mail sent, blog-post written.

(I promise another one titled “Do what you want or surrender” the next time I can hear myself think.)

Technorati Tags: cold, teaching, to-do-list

But back to my starting point. The questions:

1. Do your kids know about your blog? If they’re too young to know, do you plan to keep it open to them as they get older?
My son is 3.5, so even if he knows that I have a blog, he doesn’t understand it. I’ll keep it open to him.

2a. If so – do you worry they may get embarrassed later? What would you do if they asked you to stop writing about them? What would you do if they wanted you to take it down all together?
I don’t worry about him getting embarrassed. He’ll sure be. I don’t know, if I would stop writing about him, but I only blog about my life anyway. If he objected to a given post, I’ll give him the chance to add to it maybe, or alter it. I don’t know, if I’d take it down. It’s my blog. He’ll be free to make his own, where he can write anything he wants.

3. Do you think our kids will appreciate the archive of their childhood? Do you wish your parents had done the same?
I think he’ll eventually appreciate it. Though it’s not exactly an archive of his childhood, but of my life at this time. I wish, my parents had kept an archive. We have only a few photos, one or two anecdotes, and my mother remembers almost nothing. My father was out working. I’d love to be able to read diaries or to have scrapbooks.

4. Do you go back and re-read your past parenting milestones? Do you realize you forgot a lot?
Since I started the blog only half a year ago … When I’m reading my old journals, I see that I’m forgetting much of the details, but not much of the emotions and main problems at any given time.

5. What about your children’s friends/teachers/moms-of-friends? What if they found your blog? Do you tell your child not to tell anyone about it or are they free to talk about it? Do you worry their teachers or other parents will think it’s weird?
I haven’t told any of those people of my blog yet. But more out of the frustration that almost every person I told about it said, “What is a block?” “Why are you doing this?” “Ha?”. If they found it, I don’t think it’d bother me. I have made the mistake of telling my students that I have a blog, and ‘though I didn’t give them the URL, there were people arriving at this blog by searching for my full name and blog. So I suppose some of my students know, where to find me. I don’t think, they’d be reading this for long. I assume, they’d find it boring. Some of my friends know. No, a lot of my friends know, but only a few are reading this. My parents are the only ones that I didn’t tell. And I asked my sister not to tell them too. She’s reading the blog, BTW, and when I met her and started telling my bra-story, she was the first one ever to say to me, “Oh, yes, that was funny. I read it on your blog.”

I quit worrying if people think that something I do is weird. A lot of people think that I’m weird, no matter what I do. And I have an excuse. I’m an artist.

Technorati Tags: blogging, BlogHer, mommyblogger

At the time that I opened up my blog, diapers were foremost in my mind. Not because there were loads and loads of them, like diapering three kids under the age of four, but because my son wanted to get rid of them. A year ago he decided to get diaper-free. Hurray, you’d say. But not if you’re the one to wash dozens of soggy pants and underpants and socks and sometimes whole outfits. Every day. Okay, not every day, because we don’t have that much outfits. But it became real stressful. Is he gonna pee? Does he need to go potty? Or not? Do I force him? Am I allowed to restrict his strive for independence? Only when there’s only one dry pair of pants left? Is it okay to hang up soggy pants and underwear to dry and then let him wear it again? How long can a two-year-old last without going potty? (Answer: longer that you think, but not long enough to avoid the soggy pants)

Sometime around July I decided to relax. I said to myself, this is his concern. His responsibility. And I made a deal with him that he had to put on diapers when there was only one pair of pants left. This went very well, especially since it became warm enough to let him roam the garden butt-naked. Then we had little, ahem, turds on the lawn. I thought, he’d never get it. But then he got it more often than not. With the pee. Poop was another matter. And I heartily dislike poopy pants. You know, a poopy cloth diaper is much easier to treat than a poopy jeans. Believe me.

Then I promised him a sticker for every poop that got into the potty, and voilà! everything went fine. Tada!

I’m just thinking about this whole thing, because there’s a new diaper-related problem. I even wrote an e-mail to Moxie about it. And she answered! (My question is the second one.) So there might be diaper-free times ahead. Well, there sure will be. Only very few kids go off to college still wearing diapers at night.

But what to do with the blog? Should I change the title? Or is it okay to leave the diapers in it as a pointer that this is a “mommyblog”? And then go on posting little essays on cloth diapers from time to time?

Feel free to leave comments.

The ambivalence should have vanished when I became a feminist at age twelve and decided to stop celebrating mother’s day, because it’s reactionary, a florist’s chain invention, and because Hitler made it popular in Germany. Since then I have been giving my mother a “I think mother’s day is reactionary and commercial, but my best wishes anyway”-speech for mother’s day. This simplifies the question of gifts enormously.

A lot of women say that they only appreciate what their mothers did for them, when they have children of their own. I can only say that I’d do the same for my child as my mother did for me. Maybe more. In contrast to my mother I have the advantage of being able to continue working for pay and of having a husband who does a lot for his child too. (The more reason to think about this year’s father’s day, a day that I thought to be complete nonsense.)

What’s really strange about this whole mother’day thing is, that it’s really, really important to me that my son’s giving me something. The first sign was my disappointment, when my husband didn’t give me flowers for my first mother’s day. Not that I’m thinking he should give me flowers on mother’s day, since I’m not his mother, but acting for our son… So I bought myself flowers. And was quite embarassed about feeling offended. The next mother’s day we went to a florist together to buy flowers for my mother-in-law, and I told them to pack a rose for me, too. On our way home we debated my ambivalent feelings.

Since then it’s going better, the child’s in kindergarten and has been in playgroup before. In playgroup they made littler cardboard-flowers, and the children got greeting cards with little poems. When I read mine, I cried! My husband went to get his mother’s flowers without me and when he came back, he sent me the little one with a flower pot. (Soooo cuuute!) This year I got my present for mother’s day on Friday (The child could’nt wait.) He made it all himself. With an almost recognisable dandelion. I’m so proud. The card says that he loves the most about his mom: going for walks. This is what you get, when your child has to participate in your walking workout routine.

Today I phoned my mother because of mother’s day. Before I got to wish her the best, she wished me a nice mother’s day. Um. Sometimes I think I should buy her flowers.

There is one thing I’m understanding better, since being a mother myself. Now and then my mother tells the story of my birth. It was quite dramatic, I was six weeks early, my mother was at home all alone, without a telephone, and didn’t know what happened. I was born on the way to the hospital in an ambulance. Then I was immediately transferred to another hospital. This took place at the end of the sixties. Parents were not allowed in the baby’s ward. No touching, nothing. How hard it must have been for my mother to see her little premature baby only through a window, I only understood, when, 35 years later, I couldn’t sleep in the hospital, because I had allowed the nurses to take my baby away for the night. And it wasn’t for a few hours for her, but for a few weeks.

It was this, she had meant when she said, “It’s completely different when it’s your own children.” She meant this overwhelmingly big feeling, love that’s bigger than your own life. And it’s quite inapprehensible to feel it for somebody, but it’s totally inapprehensible that somebody feels it for you. But it’s certainly true.

Apart from my mother and me. This is not a single occurrance, I observe it all the time. A friend of mine (not a very close friend) and her fifteen month old were at our place. The toddler was with me, the mother at the other end of the garden. Toddler says, “Mamamamamamamam.” I said, “He’s saying “Mama.” Mother says, “Oh no, he also says that when he’s hungry.” So what? He’s fifteen months old. Mother, food, being hungry, being tired, that’s all connected for him. But these parents are giving their children the message that the children are stupid. That their wishes and feelings don’t count.

That makes me real furious. Okay, sometimes I felt like a fool, blabbering away with my baby. We’re out, he’s in the stroller, and saying “Da!” and pointing. And me, “Yes, that’s a nice flower.” Sometimes I’d imitate his sounds just for the fun of it. And because I respect his urge to communicate. Now that my son is three, he’s an amazing talker. Big vocabulary, very articulate, quite good grammar. I don’t know whether this is because of all the talking, but I didn’t do it to boost my child’s language skills. I did it because it seems natural to me, and because I see children as real persons.

I believe that even babies understand more than they can express. What Moxie writes on babies and sign language makes perfect sense to me. I think that it’s hurtful for a person (even one that’s only a couple of weeks old) to tell her (not directly, of course) “You’re stupid. I’ll only talk to you, when you’re all grown up. Try to point out something to me, I won’t be listening anyway.”

I have been accused of trying to turn my son into an “anti-social super-brain”. By a person who thinks that you can be too intelligent. I don’t think that one can be “too” intelligent. I believe, intelligence can be boosted only so far. But it can be dampened. As can be the urge to communicate. (By the way, the only thing I do to “boost” my son is listen to him, when he talks, and answer his questions as good as I can. I’m not the one with the flash cards or anything.)

But talking to your baby or toddler seems to be very odd behavior. Imagine my delight when I went to a party recently and almost all the parents there talked to their babies. Like “I know, you’re hungry right now, you’ll be getting your bottle soon. See, the water is already boiling.”

I don’t know, why I’m spending so much time around people who make me feel really weird.

Oh, they’re family.

When I introduced my son to sippy cups at the age of seven months, I expected to be done with them after a few months. I read all those helpful parenting books (still do) saying that a one-year-old is perfectly capable of drinking out of a real cup.

When he was one year old he could drink out of a cup, but I’d rather not have him, because of spilling – or throwing the cup on the floor regardless of its contents. In our quest for uninterrupted sleep I provided him with a cup placed in his bed, so he could help himself to a drink of water during the night.

I thought, okay, at least he’s not drinking from a bottle, I’ll put the sippy cups away when he’s eighteen months old. Since then I’ve talked it through with him now and then, he’d say that he’s a big boy now, and doesn’t need a sippy cup at night, I’d put him to bed, he’d cry for his cup. (Same thing with the pacifier, but that’s another story.)

This morning, my husband put our breakfast things into the dishwasher and said, how much he hated taking apart those cups. And I thought, why don’t we dispense with them altogether? I told everybody, my husband’s glad, my son will be having a glass of water in his room (he never drinks in the night anyway), and there will be less stuff in the kitchen which is always good.

So bye sippy-cups. I liked you very much when my son was a baby, even ‘though you were dripping, but now it’s time to part.

„Sorry, I’m only overweight.“

„WHAT?“

„You know, after the first birth I had to have a hysterctomy, but now I’m in psycho-therapy.“

„That’s none of your business.“

My favorite answer is: „This is a very intimate question. And children are not plannable.“

When I was young, I thought people having unwanted children are too stupid to use birth-control. Well, I was totally sure, nothing could happen – a really safe day. Then I had this stomach flu for weeks. After two months I finally tried a pregnancy test. – It was positive. So I stay humbled.

I even know families with four not-really-planned kids. I also know people trying everything to become a child and then failing.

So every time someone asks me about „the second child“, I get really angry. About them being nosy and about the assumption that you’re only complete if you’re having two children. Get another one to complete the set.

Only rarely do I tell the truth, because it’s quite complicated:
I desperately wanted two children. I just wanted to wait about two years. But my husband doesn’t want another one! His reasons against a second child are quite valid. („Then we’ll have to quit doing music.“ „I’m too old, this will kill me.“) My reasons for a second child are quite valid. („I don’t like single children.“ „Wouldn’t it be nice to have a tiny baby again?“) And most of my reasons are completely hormone-driven. And most of his are completely mind-driven.

What to do? We deemed this to be an issue where a veto counts and so we just changed our method of birth-control so I gained a four-percent chance of getting pregnant.

At the beginning of this year I my period was late, and instead of being happy about it, I was shocked. The image in my head of a sweet, sleeping baby was suddenly replaced with pictures from real life, where I try to sleep while the baby in my arms is crying his heart out. (This has really happened to me.) So, why do I want a second child?

1. As everyone knows, a child needs siblings to learn social skills.
2. The second time I’ll do everything right and become a perfect mother with a perfect child.
3. This time I’ll have a perfect natural childbirth experience.
4. Etc.

Quite a humbling list. Of course single children are not anti-social (Are you saying something about my son?), and in real life I’ll never be perfect, not even with my tenth child. And I can’t control everything.

So I’m counting my blessings. I’m happy that the tension concerning this issue has gone. I’ll take it however it’ll turn out. One child, two children – fine with me.

…

(But I’m still keeping the baby stuff in the attic. Just in case.)

I’m not really comfortable with the “instinct-approach”; maybe I would if it were working. So I’m one of these parents who are constantly reading parenting books. I’m excusing this with being a teacher, so knowing more about education and children is a good thing, and I really love to read as well.

Everytime, I read a parenting book that contains more than merely receipts of “how to put your baby to sleep” (haha, I could put him any way I wanted, he just didn’t), I feel elated. (I’m referring to books like Everyday Blessings as opposed to the Ferber method, for example).

Everytime, I try to carry this feeling of elation and purity with me, and to be super-mom to my precious son. Until it turns out he’s wanting something again, like watching TV because he’s to tired to go to bed (which he’s never allowed at all, no TV in the evenings for him), and we end up with a shouting match and a full blown temper tantrum. Sometimes tantrums for both of us. Because nobody can trigger you like your own kid. (My husband at least shows some restraint, when getting angry.)
Afterwards, both of us sit there, mother and child cuddling, feeling ultimately exhausted, and don’t quite know, what we did wrong. Since I’m the grown-up, I should have been able to contain my anger; to see were this has been leading and not to let it happen.

But lately I’m not so sure anymore, whether I did something wrong. Not that I’m thinking “This is only a phase, tantrums happen, he will grow out of it.” (All of life is “just a phase” and, eventually, we will grow out of it.) But this “phase” – as every “phase” – is about learning something new. And in a way it never leaves you, even when you’re almost forty years old and never would be kicking, hitting and screaming in public.

You see, last week my son and I had a major fight over something small – and it’s almost always something small. It lasted about an hour, both of us alternately screaming and trying to make up, him crying, and crying. – It was horrible. And we both vowed, not to fight like this again. I announced some new rules to minimize further conflict, and promised myself to put him to bed earlier.

We were both so shaken; and this little 3year old as weel as me, or maybe even more so. So he was really nice the next day, and the next, and tried to do everything asked of him. He tried so hard not to become angry, to restrain himself and to act like a grown-up. And then – of course – he blew up – in kindergarten.

His kindergarten-teacher was stunned. He had been exploding because he didn’t want to drink anything, and – he didn’t want to have a water-bottle with him. Very logical. So I finally figured it out: these tantrums were about venting frustration. About adjusting to the new situation of being in kindergarten, and of growing bigger and bigger but not real big. His life just is a little to exciting for him. Even ‘though he loves going to kindergarten, it’s a big change. And he isn’t a grown-up, he’s three.

So my task is to find a way for him to cope with his anger and frustration, and the feeling of life being a little overwhelming. How can he release all this tension wthout having to fight with the people he loves. And before being able to show him this, I might have to learn a little more on it myself.

Maybe he needs something physical; time to pull out the bike again …