Now this makes sense!

I love this. It gives me a million ideas.

A Bad Hair day is not a problem.

One of my kids told me this week that my hair looked awful. She was right. So I got a haircut today, and now it just looks bad. Bad haircuts (so long as they're not expensive) don't bother me too much. Why sweat a problem that will eventually disappear?

Okay, so I am obviously not the type of woman who reads Glamour. I never was, but when you've got five kids it kind of takes a lot for bad hair to qualify as a crisis. Everything gets channeled through Mom's triage station before it merits attention.

Got an issue? Here's how I sort them:

Inconveniences require unsophisticated treatment: I shrug. (Note to young moms: learn to shrug. Really.)

Temporary Problems call for endurance, and perhaps a Tylenol. Sometimes dark chocolate helps.

Real Problems require deep breaths, a bit of time to generate a calm mind, and doing something besides posting about it on Facebook.
 
Lemme tell ya, you can waste a whole lot of otherwise useful energy if you get these categories mixed up.

Lately I've been re-reading Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard. Gosh, but it's a good book! I am appreciating one of the points the authors make: when we face a giant-hole-sized problem, we tend to look around for a giant plug to fit into it. That means most of the time we're in a panic, stammering that nothing will work. But most good solutions aren't giant, they're incremental; they fill the problem-size hole bit by bit, over time.

Now isn't that sensible and heartening? You don't have to solve the whole problem at once, with a single solution! And when you can't solve the whole thing, you can still do something. The more little somethings you do, the smaller that giant hole becomes. You make progress, AND you stop feeling quite so helpless. And that gives you the strength to do a few more somethings.

Go for it. Do something small. Take a step. And forget the bad hair.

Teaching Hi-ho, Hi-ho, instead of ho-hum

I don't know when I learned how to work. It wasn't in high school: my mother claims she never saw me bring home a textbook. I went off to college and found that getting straight A's required more than nominal effort, and opted for a less-strenuous B+ average.

After I graduated from college I spent a year working in Puerto Rico, building an interactive model of the economy for the Governor and his aides. I did have to scramble at first: I didn't know the computer language I was supposed to be programming in (didn't know any programming at all, actually), and econometrics had been my worst grade in college. But after a very steep learning curve, the job was rather relaxed.

Things changed the following year in Philadelphia, after my long-term boyfriend dumped me. I threw myself into my job then because it was like anesthesia, and because it gave me an illusion of purpose. There was nothing grand or noble about my labor, no deeply-rooted work ethic or redeeming social value. I worked because my job was the one place I could build something, or at least re-build my self-esteem. Maybe that was the start of what I now understand work to be.


Yesterday at my book group we discussed several of the biographies of 19th century builders within Brave Companions. Conversation drifted to how hard it is to teach kids the value of hard work these days. We've read the Little House books to our kids and pointed out the many chores Laura and Mary had, noting (for our kids' edification) how easy their lives are in comparison. We bemoan how our kids moan about being asked to clean the toilet, forgetting how little we did at ages 8 and 10 and 14. Then we storm about how important it is to get kids to do chores as if using a bit of cleanser on the indoor plumbing is just as important as hoeing the garden so the family will survive a bitter prairie winter without starving.

Note to self: Kids are smart enough to realize nobody's going to go hungry because there's a minor ring in the pot. When a child is hungry -- whether it's for attention or success or mastery of something or comfort or food -- he works with vigor and perseverance (and generally without persuasion) to get what he needs. Hunger teaches viscerally what we're trying to teach philosophically. And I wonder how we can adjust our lives so we feel more of that hunger, instead of just talking about it.

FOLLOWUP: I just read this post by a literary agent and it gives me ideas. Good ideas. Fear and hunger are closely related.

*       *       *       *       *

Tomorrow Eldest and I get on a bus; her winter break is over, and she's heading back to the high seas of schoolwork. She goes to a tough college, one where you hand in one mind-bending assignment only to get the next one in return. Even aiming for B's doesn't provide much of a break. Eldest is feeling a bit daunted at the prospect of re-entering the surf, and I understand why. It's a lot of work.

Staring at a mountain and knowing you'll have to scale it can be daunting. There are times when I'm exhausted and juggling butcher knives while running in circles blindfolded and it feels less impossible to keep going than to slow down, because if I stop I'll have to start again.

I don't really know how you teach a child how to deal with that, other than to tell her to focus on the trail at her feet instead of the minuscule line barely visible at the top of the mountain. So much of life -- including work -- comes down to focusing on what you have to do, when you have to do it. The other part involves figuring out what you're supposed to do, and deciding if you're going to say yes.

No answers here, but if you have ideas, I'd love to hear them.

Idealism as an antidote to anxiety

On Mondays the kids take an art class. Great teacher, beautiful space, close to home, quiet, inexpensive, focused -- and all three of my homeschoolers can go at the same time.

Yesterday Little Guy scowled, "I don't want to go today!"

I inwardly groaned, and ignored it, using the classic "Sorry, but it's already paid for" line.

A little while later Little Guy proclaimed, "I'm not going to art today!"

"Hmmm," I replied, "Sounds like you're unhappy about something."

"We have to draw our sculptures today, and I'm not doing it!"

"I'm sure you'll be fine," I countered, adding, "And besides, if you don't go to art, you don't go to soccer."

Soccer trumps all. Glumly, he put on his coat. As we headed to the train for our two-stop journey I commented, "You know, usually when people don't want to do something it's for one of two reasons. Either they're afraid they'll be embarrassed, or they're afraid they won't be able to something well."

Little Guy nodded. I knew he'd made an awesome Dr. Seuss-like paper sculpture the week before, and he was scared it would be too difficult to draw.

Around here, any time a kid digs in his heels, you can pretty much bet that anxiety is behind it. It often helps if I can put a name on that writhing, scrungy feeling that makes children not want to do things: it's fear. Knowing the name and shape of the enemy makes it a lot easier for them to avoid mistaking Mom for the enemy, too.

We chatted about other things on the train. As we got off to go to art I said, "Do you know how many drawings Picasso made before he even started to paint a picture? Dozens! And how many paintings he did before he got one he liked? And that was Picasso! It's okay if you don't get it right the first time -- or the twentieth time."

"Yeah," Little Guy grumbled, half-smiling, "And Picasso put the eye under the nose, too."

I laughed, and said, "All I care about is that you try. I know it's frustrating when it doesn't work out perfectly, but you can't get better if you don't try." He went into class without complaining.

As it turned out, they elaborated upon their sculptures this week, and will draw them next week. All I have to do between now and then is draw the path to confidence for him a few dozen times, and then perhaps a few more dozen times, and then maybe he'll get the picture. Maybe. For at least one class.

It reminds me of the quote by the famous Anonymous, who said, "An optimist is a person who sees only the lights in the picture, whereas a pessimist sees only the shadows. An idealist, however, is one who sees the light and the shadows, but in addition sees something else: the possibility of changing the picture, of making the lights prevail over the shadows.” Me, I aim for idealism.

Postponing worry, resolving conflict

I've been in the process of coming down with a cold. I mean, I have a cold, but since it keeps getting worse I've been waiting to see how far down it's going to come. Yesterday it moved into my chest, and when I coughed it felt like someone had rubbed my trachea with sandpaper. No fever, but still, not good. Especially since Eldest is going back to college later this week, and I very much want her to stay healthy.

Which way will it go? There's nothing worry finds tastier than ambivalence. So when it's not clear whether or not I need to worry, I set myself a check-in time and a next step, and then focus on something else. With my cough, the check-in was this morning: if the cough got worse over night (it didn't), I would go see the doctor. With Eldest, the check-in is en route to Boston on Friday. If she's coming down with crud, the next step will be to remind her that she has Mucinex, buy her a stock of juice, and give clear instructions on when to go to the infirmary.

I find that thinking through an action plan takes the teeth out of worry most of the time. But then I'm big on using if...then types of plans to simplify life. When the kids were little and one started screaming on the subway my rule was If you shout, we get out. It gave me something to do besides get frustrated, and taught the kids quickly that yes, Mom really would let the train drive away from the platform.  (It's fine to be upset, but disturbing others with loud crying is inconsiderate. That has taken some of my kids a looong time to learn!)

The corollary to this is that when I am facing a repeated frustration, it behooves me to think up an  if...then plan. If Little Guy doesn't get his socks and shoes on without repeated reminders, I need to note that we're dealing with a pattern, and that (as proven by ample experimentation) doing more of the same thing louder is not working. Therefore it's time to think through what's going on, and come up with a new approach.

The advantage of thinking through an if...then ahead of time is that it allows me to be way more rational about problem solving than I am when I have to problem-solve on the spot. I can weigh whether a carrot or a stick is more likely to be successful (duh -- the carrot), and I can think through my child's likely responses. I can explain the plan so the child isn't taken by surprise and knows what to expect. And if I take a rational approach to talking about it, e.g., "I've noticed that most of the arguments you and I have been having lately happen when we're trying to leave the house..." the child might eventually learn to recognize patterns to conflict himself.

An now I'm off to think up if...then number 257 for cleaning up after yourself. Wish me luck!

Things to like about apartment living

Yesterday I went down to our building's laundry room to put in a few loads of darks, and discovered that some wonderful person had folded the load of whites I'd forgotten about. Smile. I like mystery kindnesses.

While I was downstairs I scanned the books people had left on the giveaway table, and picked up a couple of things that looked interesting. I happily added My Name Is Red to the stack (a failure for me: either I don't understand Turkish thought or the author is way too smart for me or it's a bad translation or the book is obnoxiously, self-consciously complex), and left a few no-longer-wanted toys for whoever wanted them. I tossed a bag full of not-good-enough-to-give-away clothing into the fabric recycling bin.

Little Guy and Snuggler played soccer in the adjacent room. I was able to do five industrial-size loads of laundry in about two hours. I can't tell you how nice it is to wash clothes in bulk, instead of in an endless stream. Now I'm pretty much set until about Monday.

I think I would hate having my own washer and drier.

Progress

One of our family mottos is 'practice makes progress'. There are days I feel like I yap an endless loop of 'you'll only get better at it if you keep trying' and 'it's only too hard if you don't ask for help' and 'no, you aren't terrible at this -- you feel terrible because you're afraid you're not very good at it'. It gets tiresome.

And then once in a while there's a sign of progress. Yesterday when I took Little Guy to the library he confided, "Reading used to be my least-favorite subject, and now it's my favorite!" He borrowed seven A to Z Mystery books, one for each day of the week. He's reading. Not fast, but independently, and because he wants to.

He's also made progress on writing. This is a kid who was beaned by writer's block at birth, who freezes solid when given an assignment. He writes happily when he's relaxed and when it's a project of his own creation. So we've been working on writing on demand, even if I'm not demanding a whole lot. The other day I told him to write a 5-sentence story about losing a tooth. Thirty questions later ("Does it have to be about my tooth?" "Can it be about more than one tooth?" "Can it involve lots of blood?") he wrote a classic kid story about a boy who was crushed by a hippo and lost all his teeth. There was, indeed, lots of blood and the story concluded with "it was a tragic death". (We're working on punctuation and spelling, so I'll worry about the pathology later.)

Meanwhile, we've had some slippage in the math and mouthiness departments. I'm not quite sure what that's about, though I've long noted that when kids to spurt ahead in one area, they often backslide in another. Which means that sometimes parenting is like trying to keep up with an ice cream cone in July: just when you think you've smoothed out one side you discover the other side has gooed its way down your sleeve. Ah, well. It's still sweet, even if it's messy.