Mom Power

There are many days I struggle hard with the everyday details of raising my son.  Like every parent I am trying my best to get him to the end goal, to be an independent, intelligent, kind adult.  Its so easy to get bogged down in minutiae that fog the general plan.  As my son gets older and struggles to pick & choose between independence and obedience we lock horns in battle routinely.  How do you teach someone independence when they are constantly pushing boundaries, testing limits of patience and generally appearing willful?  I have found that every time we are struggling hard, I am too close to the conflict.  There are common wisdom cliché's like "you can't see the forrest for the trees," and "pick your battles."  It is really good to allow the school of hard knocks to teach a  few lessons.   As all parents do, I am constantly fluctuating between deciding to engage in battle to call him to task, or let him suffer the consequences.

My patience runs thin regularly, I am human too.  I suspect that my son would test the patience of Ghandi, Mother Theresa, and the most experienced behaviour therapists in the world.  He is not manipulative, resistant, or defiant. Those are negative labels.  My son is intuitive, intelligent, and seems to be learning behaviour by feel.  Some people learn to park by feel, BUMP, bang, CRUNCH!  Imagine pin-balling through life, navigating all the social rules, doing pretty well at it, & then BUMP, I thought I had that rule mastered already?  Huh, there's another sub-rule in there, GHHAAAA!!!  I will post a real example of that when it comes up later so its fresh reading.

What is Mom power or Parent Power?  Mother's have been utilizing this forever, it is real time direct, tried & proven child handling strategies.  Beware, these well meaning mothers are human, with thoughts, feelings and limited time energy and resources.  Their strategies will probably never be found in any child rearing textbooks anywhere, but, they work.  No one can take the parental abuse children hand out indefinitely, there are no laws protecting the parents or adults from obnoxious children.  When my son was small once a week I would go for coffee with a few friends during precious school hours.  Inevitably the conversation would turn to our kids.  "Jack has really been pulling attitude lately, I tell him to put his shoes on & he says NO!, what did you do?"   "I can't take it anymore, I can't go to the grocery store or take Sandy in the car anymore, the little monster has decided she likes screeching, repeatedly, for no apparent reason; I don't know what to do."  "Fred has been getting into trouble at school daily now, he's almost on a first name basis with the receptionist, the principal & vice, I can't take the daily phone calls anymore."  Can you feel the desperation?  The isolation, the sheer willpower to pull through just the one current maddening behaviour?  This is the real parenting that no one warns you about.  We've all seen a kid melting down in the grocery store.  Look at other people's expressions.  Some are super judgmental, others give a sigh, meet that parent's eye & knowingly nod the "its not your fault, the kid's just having a monster moment."

Literal thinking

I love the sense of humor my son is developing.  He's enjoying literal humor and sarcasm, sometimes we even enjoy it too.  Digging out of overflow laundry situation means putting my workhorse huge front loading washer & drier to work.  I think every family should skip the heavy duty machines & invest in proper super sized machines, they are sooooo worth it.  I have to remember to check pockets carefully or it means those machines become tumblers for rocks, paper clips, super stubby pencils, candy wrappers, sticks, and all other manner of flotsam.  I picked up his jacket & thought it was surprisingly heavy, better check everything.  Once I started I couldn't seem to get to the end of it.  On second inspection, I find a jacket AND a vest, each zipped to the other in  a continuous garment!  They were arranged to seem as if the vest was over the jacket because the jacket was inside out.  Another one of his arrangements, smile!

After dinner in front of the TV it was my son's turn to take the dishes & load them into the dishwasher.  He starts pushing the TV table to the kitchen.  I asked why would he do that.  His reply was to put it in the dishwasher.  He was really thinking to put the TV table into the dishwasher!  He was embarrassed when teased that the table won't fit once he realized his goof.

Next phase of the evening, shower time.  Usual obnoxious dancing around, delaying, not on task performance.  Pet the cat, read some Calvin & Hobbes, dance around some, jump & touch every door frame in his path...  Bellowing erupts, to "GET YOUR ASS INTO THE SHOWER, NOW!"   Naked & bouncing, he hops into the bathroom, butt first.

Evidence of thinking

Every day there is interesting little findings of some sort or another in (sometimes) surprising places.  Yesterday I asked my son to bring the laundry hamper downstairs.  My belt was on the floor & I asked him to pick it up but not to put it into the laundry.  Because I didn't specify where the belt should go, this was what I found.

I have no idea why my belt was arranged like this.  Go ahead, I dare ya to open any of those drawers.  The only one you would be able to access is the top one, unless you have to removed the arranged belt.  I find similar arrangements, often more complicated than this one, fairly regularly.  Its especially maddening when I need to be somewhere at a certain time & I find these snarls in the way.  I don't know why these complicated arrangements appear.  When my boy was very young it used to be a nuclear meltdown situation if I messed with one.  Then as he grew older, he would just re-arrange & make it again.  I've been mostly lucky that sometimes now he forgets why he's done this & if the arrangement vanishes its not a big deal.  Mostly now I laugh when I find these arrangements, because they are evidence of my son's imaginative thinking.