Our Boy and His Cricket: parenting

Showing posts with label parenting. Show all posts

28 October 2010

Thursday, October 28, 2010 -

Beauty is in the eye of ourselves first and formost.

Growing up I was afflicted with horrible acne and it went with me into adulthood and even now there are days when I just wanna crawl under a rock. No amount of make up can cover the scars from years of dealing with a bad complexion. If you've ever suffered with acne you know the pain, long term emotional wounds and have spent many a dollar on some miracle product. It just plain sucks all the way around. As I have begun to age and see myself through my own eyes instead of others, I have come to terms with my scars and the occasional breakout. This is who I am and I've come to actually find my face beautiful instead of scary...I love what age and growth do that to a person, the key though is to pass that on to your children.

Over the years I have watched my sons baby skin begin to change and start to resemble a face I once stared at many a day and night. Immediately I got him started on a treatment program and prayed that he would not be cursed with the same skin as me. My prayers were not answered. Now it's pretty darn clear that he inherited my lovely genes in that department instead of his dads perfect skin. And he knows this as he's mentioned it many times. My poor child is all I think to myself somedays. Then somedays I also want to knock him upside the head when he says he "forgot" to wash his face for the last two days or that it's just too much work to deal with it. Unfortunately it's going to be a lifetime of work to deal with.

In the beginning his ever growing zit population didn't seem to bother him much. I hounded him to keep at it. I also kept quiet about it until he asked what the problem was. All the while knowing what would soon be happening because once the hormones go into full on attack mode so do the comments from others. That hasn't changed in the twenty years since I was a zit faced high schooler and unfortunately I doubt it ever will...mean people just continue to grow and breed. It's facing those bullies that's hard and even harder to help your child understand why and how to deal with them. So yes, the awful comments have started and all I want to do is protect my baby and wipe away the emotional scars that will soon begin to root their way into his soul. Right now he's mad and has every right to be. He wants an instant cure. He just wants any mark on his face to disappear and never return.

He didn't ask for this, no one does. All I can do for him is support his emotions and his being and continue to reassure him that he is in fact beautiful and handsome and smart and drop dead gorgeous! And at the same time I have to deal with my own memories of the voices who once said my face was a mountain range or looked like sandpaper and deal with the guilt that I have passed this on to my own child. No one ever said parenting was a piece of cake but it's so easy to forget that what our children deal with can make parenting look painless. It's all in how we deal with their pain that will help them to understand just how amazingly beautiful they are inside and most importantly on the outside.

So I leave this post with a picture of the two of us from China when the hormonal change was beginning to take over. Before I was asked to "remove all facial yuck from my face" in any picture I posted here. This is just us. Untouched. Just us in all our God given beauty! And I know someday my son will too see the amazing being God created in him and that what we deal with today will make us better people for tomorrow.

27 May 2010

Thursday, May 27, 2010 -

Life,parenting

13 comments

Two timing motherhood

Being a parent is a full time job, of that we know. Being a parent is far from easy, it is challenge after challenge filled with overwhelming moments. To me being a parent is nothing but pure joy, it is what I have dreamed of being since I first held my son and realized that this is what I want to be, just a mom. Now that my footsteps are followed by another set of feet, I find that it is very challenging parenting more than one child. Those who have more than one may nod your heads and say, "why yes it is!", but what I am discovering is that I am challenged with parenting children who are 15 years apart.

With the addition of our cricket, Mike and I have litterally started all over again, like from the bottom. We have both parented before. We have both changed diapers and had sleepless nights. We have watched our firsts grow into those favorite shoes and go from patty cake to pass the keys please. We have been there done this. So now what makes it so hard is that we still have one child at home who needs us in a completely different way than what we are now reacquainting ourselves with.

The cricket comes with needs that are completely different than either of our first children ever had. We have to be there every minute for her and give her more than we sometimes have to give. It has added a challenge to our daily life to say the least. For instance, both of us can not be at every one of Big J's volleyball games because it is too overwhelming for the cricket, so who doesn't get to watch the game? For me I want to see them all, I don't want to miss any part of any of my children's life, so to say I'll stay home just about kills me. Then if I do go to a game, all I think about is what I'm missing at home. For me I feel like I'm letting someone down somewhere. And to let someone down just about kills me. To let my children down only pushes me further to do more, more, more.

Then there are the issues of differentiating what happens in our home on any given day or night. We may go from reading a book to the cricket about shapes to helping Big J with quadratic equations and sometimes doing both at the same time. Or watching Baby E!nstein while having a grown boy who just wants to sit and veg on MTV. We can't tell him no, and we wont give him a TV in his room either, he either has to wait (which is what he'll chose to do) or we move onto the next baby activity and give Big J the space he needs. Right now Big J is going through things in his life that need to be discussed daily. He needs to know that he can always count on us as his parents to be there for him, even when we are elbow deep in a dirty diaper. And we need to make sure we are there and don't miss out on something that could easily be ignored. It's challenging because we also need to be there 110% of the time to the cricket too. It's hard. And most days I feel like I'm failing miserably.

It's hard for me to maintain that "you got a cool mom" persona when I'm driving around a bunch of boys in the car and I'm singing the ABC song instead of listening to the newest rap song. How can I tell a houseful of boys that at 9pm they need to quite down and settle in for the night, when all they want to do is stay up all night playing R0ck Band? I don't want to take away these last few years of adolescence from Big J. And I don't want to screw up bonding, developmental milestones, emotional wellness or attachment with my cricket.

Thankfully Big J understands why we both can't be at his games or events and why sometimes I just can not drive in the car pool in the morning, he may not like it but he understands. For me I don't want to fail at something I love so much or be a failure to my children. I hate to disappoint them. I hate to not be there for both of them at different stages in their lives as a whole. Right now I am not whole. I am exhausted. I am drained of thought. I even make mistakes. I feel like I am giving them both what they need, yet not completely. Like I'm two timing. Part of me is all teen and the other half is all baby. My hats are very different with each of them. And then sometimes I just plain feel like I'm doing everything wrong and I find myself in a pool of disappointment.

I have to let go of a few threads in my thick rope that I've attached to Big J. I have to add them now to the cricket and make sure I don't let go of either rope in each of my hands. I'm sure I'll have rope burn so bad by the time Big J is 18, but it will be worth the pain. It will be worth the stress of burning the candle at both ends. I may shed a few tears or watch a few tears be shed by one or both of my children. It will be a challenge but it will be one I will learn from and hopefully pass on. For now I find myself in a tight space that is completely new and so overwhelming sometimes that I just have to let go and let God.

22 April 2010

Thursday, April 22, 2010 -

Life,parenting

10 comments

Gee, thanks for the help.

Raising teens today is hard, like really, really hard. The peer pressure our kids deal with today is more intense than it ever has been. Everywhere they go there is pressure to do this or try that and if they say no, they are ridiculed and laughed at. We send our children to school each morning and pray they make wise choices and stay clear of what lurks in the bathrooms. These choices our children face are now having to be made earlier and earlier and the choices don't get easier as they go through each grade. Our roles as parents gets harder and harder each year. It's not easy.

We, as parents have to make tough decisions sometimes for our children because they can not make them themselves. While those decisions may be difficult for them to swallow, but sometimes they are even harder for us to make AND to follow through with. But we do it, as hard as it is and as angry as it makes our children. We do it. Because not only do we love them so intensely, but we also want them to make the absolute most of each moment in their lives. And yes sometimes we want them to do more or do better than we did ourselves.

So when we teach our children about the dangers of drugs and alcohol we do it with a firm hand; it's illegal and it's NOT allowed. Period. At least that's how it is in our house. Period. But that's not how it is in others. Nor is it that way in the county where we live. Or in our state for that matter! Well, if you didn't know, Tuesday was 4/20 was a "holiday" of sorts for pot smokers and my son proceded to share with me that a lot of his friends would be enjoying the holiday. Ugg...did I say raising teens is hard?? Well of course that led to a lengthy conversation, one of many lately and I again remind him of the serious issues with smoking pot and also remind him that IT. IS. NOT. OKAY. Period.

Well isn't it a great help when the town newspaper makes this "holiday" or "party" it's headlining story the next day and adds quotes like...

Jamie Martinez, a freshman pursuing math, went to the meadow with friends early in the afternoon to stake out a prime spot. He said pot helps him do his schoolwork.
"It relaxes me. It makes me focus," he said - Santa Cruz Sentinel

Or adds video of the event on their website and pictures like this on the front page of the print version. Answer me this...How the heck are my words going to sink in when my fight is killed by MY own peers?!!? Ugggggg!! This just frustrates the heck out of me!!