For fourteen years I have lived in a wonderful place called Babyville.  I also have a home in Pre-schooler Junction, Tween Town and most recently, I have acquired a penthouse with views all the way to college in Port Teenager.  Each village has it’s own charm and sites that should not be missed.  Tourists often visit, but only us locals know the real lay of the land.

Now after all these years, we are moving on and bidding a fond farewell to Babyville.  We have thoroughly enjoyed our stay and have lived there much longer than most.  I’d like to say that we will miss the nightlife, but the truth is, we are more than ready to settle into full night sleeps, EVERY LOVELY NIGHT.  I will miss my favorite sweet spots, like behind the ears where there is a little bit of heaven.  Like the soft peach fuzz of little angel hair and like the overwhelming love when that tiny hand wraps around my finger.  It’s a privilege to live in Babyville and it’s a privilege to move to the next stop.

I love each of my neighborhoods, but there is a blessing in each new chapter.  Pre-schooler Junction means I no longer need the mountains of equipment I have grown used to.  Cribs, high chairs and diaper bags are no longer a part of the landscape and a new mobility has arrived.  Travel is comparatively streamlined, (just car seats now) and we have the joy of getting to know our kids on a deeper level.  Old enough for their own ideas, opinions and thought processes it is a treat to watch as they figure out their world and their place in it.   The joy of a pinecone collection and the wonder of the first time your child sees a butterfly emerge from the cocoon are priceless and some of my favorite parts of being here.

Tween Town has its own special charm.  This is where a child takes the trip from awkward to awesome and begins to feel comfortable with the person they are becoming.  Anything is possible and they begin to refine their likes, dislikes and choices.  Abstract thinking has arrived and it is great to listen to the conversations as these incredible kids make unencumbered plans and try out newfound skills and independence.   The best part of living here, for me is getting a glimpse of the adults they will be.  Discovering that one likes to cook and another wants to live in Tennessee.  This is the place where new wings are tested for flight, but they still stay comfortably close to home.   It’s a place I dearly love and really enjoy being.

I know there are more neighborhoods beyond the horizon, but the farthest I’ve travelled as a parent so far, is Port Teenager.   This is a port town because this is the first place where kids begin to chart their own course and head out on their own more and more.   Driving, dating and the occasional drama are all part of the landscape and the adult we glimpsed from Tween Town is now a regular, at least on the outside.  A long way from fully-grown, but certainly well on their way.  I believe us human beings mature in three stages, first, the body, then the mind and lastly, the spirit.  Port Teenager is where the body is mature, but the mind and spirit are most certainly still developing.  It’s a great place to have a penthouse because that way a parent can literally rise above the drama and see out to the horizon.  This is where the parent-child relationship begins to shift.   Less about corporal care and more about social emotional needs, less about talking and more about listening, less about doing for and more about doing with.  This may be the best part of being here.  For the first time as a parent, I feel far enough along on our journey to be able to look back and see how far we have come and look forward and see how far my child will one day go and take a breath here in the middle and enjoy.

Next stop is College Cove and I’m glad I don’t have to go there just yet.  Port Teenager suits me fine for now.  Wherever you are on your tour through parenting, I hope you love your neighborhood and reach out to other locals when you need any help settling in.  Let us know your tips and highlights so we can help each other on the journey.

In the meantime, I hope you keep your face to the sun so all the shadows will fall behind.

Marilynn

It’s the first day of kindergarten and little Janey or Johnny kisses Mom at the door and crosses the threshold into the wonderful world of elementary education.  In many cases they are met with a caring and experienced teacher who has a small class where he or she can really get to know each student individually.  Unfortunately, in many other cases, Janey and Johnny are met with a new teacher who is already overwhelmed by the upwards of 25 kindergartners in his or her care.

Still, most kids will be fine, unless there is the unhappy combination of insecurity and aggression.  At first blush, you might think I mean the insecurity of the child getting pushed around and the aggression of the bully, but there is more to it than that, (isn’t there always?).  Very often the biggest insecurity resides in the bully and that very insecurity, is what fuels the aggression.  Bullies, queen bees and mean kids are very often the most insecure of all.  They pick on those they perceive as weak to distract attention from their own shortcomings.  Usually, this nastiness is a learned behavior.

That said, no one has the right to bully another child and it needs to stop.  Agreed, but here’s why the bully needs help too.  In my opinion, bullying can only be effectively and permanently stopped, by attacking it on three fronts, simultaneously.

1. The child on the receiving end of the bullying has to be taught skills to stand up for him or her self before the situation escalates.
2. The adults have to work to address the needs of both the bully, who must be taught about appropriate social skills and the bullied child, whose self-esteem must be reinforced.
3. The community must adopt the mandate that bullying is not tolerated and that it is everyone’s job to stop it.

All of these issues are addressed beautifully by teaching Social Emotional Intelligence in our schools.   This type of learning helps a child feel comfortable in their own skin and also teaches the child how to treat others and put them at ease for the good of the whole community.  People skills, manners and other so-called soft skills, are what make the difference between a frustrated and unfulfilled adult and a community that values the combination of success with kindness.  I know which one I prefer.

Years ago, I faced a situation in which one of my kids felt pushed around at school.  Another child in her class loved to watch her blush when he taunted her with that old playground standard; “I see London, I see France, I can see your underpants.”  How original and how sad that it was clearly learned from someone else.

What started as a one-time insult blossomed into a taunting ritual in which my child stopped wearing her favorite skirts and dreaded recess.  Emboldened by his unrestrained success at making her blush, he moved on to taunting her during gym class.  “If you really want your team to win, you should not even try out.”  Always nice to see team spirit in action, don’t you think?

From November through February, I had three meetings with their kind and wonderful teacher who was aware of it, but of course, she was not in the gym class and recess happened with so many classes that she was not able to catch the problem in the act.  Still, she talked to the kids about kindness and using words to help, not hurt.  All good things; but not enough.  Our schools need access to the resources to support them as they teach social emotional intelligence and they need the support of our families to know that we value these skills as highly as we value others.

By February, it finally dawned on me that this was more than just a need for the bully to stop, this was also an opportunity for my child to learn some basic things about standing up for herself.  Naturally, as a mother, I wanted to handle the situation for her.  I wanted to walk right up to that kid and tell him to leave my child alone.  I wanted to call the other parent and get that bully in serious trouble, (exactly the wrong thing to do, by the way).  I wanted my child to live in a world where this never happened again, but I knew I needed a better plan than fighting this battle for her.

The adults were aware and working on it to the best of their ability and my child was uncomfortable, but the bullying was still in a sufficiently early stage, that she could build a little strength from it.  If for one moment, I believed that the bullying was beyond that, I would not have hesitated to remove her from the environment immediately.  As someone who was masterfully bullied for three years, I whole-heartedly agree that bullying is a serious and dangerous thing and sometimes the best thing to do is move on.

The thing is, you have to be sure there is no safe way to stand your ground first, otherwise, you can raise a person whose first choice is always to run at the first sign of adversity.  In this case, I believed, we were not yet at the point where leaving was the best alternative.  I believed my child had the strength and desire to participate in solving this problem and so we decided to try.

The two most important words in helping a child deal with a bully?  ROLE PLAY.  For three months, almost every night, we role-played her experience.  We kept going until she role-played the way she wished things had happened.   We developed our family’s personal safe words.  My kids all know they will NEVER get in trouble for shouting the words “BACK OFF!” to anyone, in any place, at any time they feel threatened.

I wrote “The Zoo in You” to help my daughter understand she had a right to the anger and frustration she felt and to use that legitimate anger to defend herself.  We talked a lot about her “angry tiger” and letting him roar to defend her, and we role-played and role-played and role-played.  Sometimes she was herself, sometimes the bully, sometimes even the teacher, but we worked on it until she got comfortable visualizing herself shouting “Back off”.  Then the big day finally arrived.

As a school volunteer, I was walking through the gym one day when I saw my six year old against the gym wall with a kid twice her size leaning over her.  It took everything I had not to go over there and tower over him.  Instead, I took a deep breath and wryly thought that I should have role-played my own self-control as well.

I caught my daughter’s eye and said, “Let your tiger roar.”   The bully might have been confused, but only for a second.  In the next moment a high-pitched voice bellowed, “BACK OFF!”  I gave her a thumbs up sign.  Even better, her teacher smiled and said “Nice job, kiddo.”   Other kids patted her back and even the bully claimed he was just kidding around with her anyway.

She not only flexed her self-respect muscle, she earned the respect of her fellow classmates.   She knew I would not always be there to protect her, so knowing I believed in her ability to protect herself was key.  She was still smiling when I picked her up two hours later.

Bullying is unfair and can really affect a child’s learning experience.  It is a serious matter that is everyone’s job to stop.  When we work together, we can turn this lousy experience into a growth experience, but only in the early stages.  The key to stopping bullying is to know when the risk to the bullied outweighs the potential growth.

Social and emotional intelligence need to be a part of the curriculum along side math and reading.  Bullies need to learn constructive ways to vent their frustration and we need to demand that communities stand up for those who need help.  School is more than just a place to fill young minds with facts and figures; it is a place to fill young hearts with character.

Working together I know we can all keep our faces to the sun so the shadows will fall behind.

Marilynn

One family went to Hawaii and had the best vacation they ever had. They went hiking, swam under a waterfall, enjoyed two luaus and learned to snorkel.  The best part was reconnecting with each other as a family.  They laughed at silly inside jokes and felt free and unhurried.  Truly a miracle.

Another family also went on vacation to Hawaii.  They discovered the two big sisters had to share not only a room, but also a bed.  The couple they sat with at the first luau yelled at each other and was literally miserable in paradise.  Then to top it all off, three of them got strep throat and threw up.  Truly a disaster.

Guess what?  This is the same family having the same vacation.  The difference is gratitude.  The inside joke?  “AloHA!” bags in the car just in case someone needed to say another “aloha” to his or her lunch.  We became like a well-oiled machine at recognizing the early signs of strep and became frequent flyers to the local urgent care clinic.  We laughed about it and the kids ate popsicles in the bathtub.

The good news is that the anti-biotic really works and within a day or two, whomever was sick, was feeling better.  In the meantime, it was movie night and long naps on the lanai.  We were so happy to be away and so happy to relax and so grateful that our trip to the volcano and the waterfall and luaus were okay.  We managed to enjoy those milestones between sick days and we were able to take those feeling up to it to the beach while my husband or myself held down the fort at home, (held down being the operative words.)

Here’s the thing, even paradise can be less than heavenly, but we can still control our own happiness.  Happiness is a choice, even when frustration tries to take over, (you know, like that overbearing know-it-all at a party), you can thank it for sharing, and tell it to sit down and be quiet.   Choose to have fun and laugh at the absurdity of the situation.   Look for the silly, the good and the happy, because believe me, the gross, the bad and the ugly tend to present themselves.  After all, if you don’t tell frustration to shut up, it will go on and on and bore everyone, even you.

You deserve to have more fun and your family deserves to know that we really can laugh at adversity, (it freaks adversity out).

It’s just one more way to keep your face to the sun so all shadows will fall behind.

Marilynn

For a child there is a superhero who comes home each night and lifts them up to soar around the room.  There is a storyteller, a gadget fixer and a strong hand to hold when they are out in the world.  This superhero may wear a suit more often than a red cape, but he is powerful nonetheless.  He teaches his sons how to achieve freedom through discipline and self control and he teaches his daughters how to be empowered through confidence and self respect.  He teaches about love and loyalty and compassion, more by example than by words and he is almost always the first person to call us beautiful.  He shares his name, his home and his life.  His hands in ours and we feel blessed and safe and grateful in a way no other person can provide.  He is our pal, our buddy our confidant and protector.   He is our dad.

Children who know what it is to be loved unconditionally by a dad who stands beside them, are given a wonderful gift.  So, here’s to all the dads we celebrate today.  Thanks for knowing just the right moment to let go of the back of the bike, but to never letting go of our hearts.   Thanks for encouraging us to be better than we ever thought we could be and thanks for being proud of us either way.

Dads relate to their children in a special way and embody both the family traditions and the blueprints for what’s next.  Dads deserve our love and gratitude today and everyday because having our own personal superhero means we can always take flight and soar.

There is nothing in the world quite like the moment when a woman holds her child for the first time.  Whether that moment happens in a hospital, an orphanage, an airport or at home; something magical happens.  We reach out our arms as whole, self-sufficient women and once we hold our child, we instantly melt into the most utter and complete love we never knew existed.  There is nothing like the first time we see our child, hold our child and feel the warmth of their small breath on our cheek.

Motherhood is a privilege, a gift and the greatest of blessings.  It’s early morning giggles as we pray for five more precious moments of sleep.  It’s having that marvelous mommy magic that makes the hurt go away with just a little kiss on the boo-boo.  It’s knowing the difference between hungry and tired, just from the sound of a cry.   Mothers come in all shapes, sizes and senses of humor.  We are runners, professionals and volunteers.  We are problem solvers and sock finders and always ready with a smile and a hug.  Moms are the safe place to run to when the world feels overwhelming and the hand we hold to feel brave.

Moms are heroes who sacrifice their time, talent, energy and freedom for their children.  Moms love without condition and laugh without reserve.  We are expert tent makers, cake bakers and storytellers.  We are history keepers, scrap-bookers, and chauffeurs.  We are nose wipers, bottom cleaners and hair brushers.   We are teachers, counselors and confidantes.  We are mothers.

We mother our own children and we mother those around us whenever they need us.  We mother our friends, their children, our extended family and even our spouses.  Mother is more than a noun, at it’s best, mother is a verb.

So Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms who make our world a little more tolerant, kind and especially, more loving.  Thank you for the little bit of heaven you bring to earth each day.  Never forget that you are a hero and the lucky recipient of the world’s most precious jewel: the completely unconditional love of a child.

May you always keep your face to the sun, so that all shadows will fall behind.

Marilynn