Why parenting methods are like skinny jeans...

And why neither one is helping you.

There are a lot of parenting methods/philosophies/cultish parenting groups that are GREAT.  The ideas behind them really make sense and they want for moms and babies to turn out happy and healthy.  Some people out there have really done their research or sought out some insight and come to some great conclusions.  There are some that I personally strongly believe in.  Then there are some where I question most of the group members' ability to either read research correctly or trust basic human compassion or common sense.  Yet I don't feel the overwhelming urge, (as a number of other mothers apparently do) to get on the internet and find all those well-meaning ladies who disagree with me and try to evangelize them in spiraling arguments on online discussion boards.  Why?

It's like if you woke up one morning and decided you wanted to lose some weight to improve your health.  You came to me, your wise and compassionate friend, to share your intentions and I said "Awesome!  You'll have so much energy and you'll feel great!  Here, I've got a pair of size 2 jeans, try 'em on!"

I think you'll feel better if you've lost weight.  So just start acting like someone who's lost weight and...tada!  Probably not the wisdom or compassion they were looking for.

I can't tell someone to "just do" something that I believe in and think that it will address the roots of the problem.  It doesn't work, it makes you feel bad (and likely defensive) about what you're not and maybe, just maybe, everyone's not made to fit into your size 2 parenting jeans.

Just search around you for some quick anecdotal evidence.  Do you know parents who have nice kids?   What are the common factors?  Maybe....nice parents?  What about kids who are kind? Grateful?  Caring?  Mature?  Kids who make healthy life choices?

What the Attachment Parenting/Sleep Trainers/Breastfeeding Mothers of the World Unite advocates aren't telling you is that their "method" isn't a magic formula for raising a happy, healthy child any more than trying to squeeze into some skinny jeans is a magic formula for transforming your body.  So how do you raise happy, healthy children?  I don't have all the answers yet, but I think being a happy, healthy human is a good start.  Because if the kind parents I know have raised kind children, I can postulate some guesses about the children of the mean, judgmental parents.  Even if they vaccinated/didn't vaccinate/worked/homeschooled/breastfed their kids until they were 7.    

I'm not saying these choices are irrelevant, any more than I'm saying that those aren't some pretty darn cute jeans.  I try to make the best choices for my kids.  I think and pray and research and perpetually doubt myself.  Then I try to be the kind of person who would make good choices.  I try to be wise and kind.  I try to be thoughtful, I try to be compassionate.  I try to consider that others might be wiser than I am and often when I think I'm right and the rest of the world is wrong....I might just be wrong.  I hope that if I pursue a good heart and a wise mind I will find that the right choices seem to fit naturally, and that I'm modeling someone I would want my children to emulate along the way.  So when it comes to other mothers? I don't just tell them to toss on some parenting methods and call it good.  I encourage rather than evangelize, I do my best to help them be healthy and, if they ask, I can help them pick out some jeans that fit.  

10 things our kids do that we should too...

1. Read for fun. If I have to think really hard to figure out why a book is good, the author didn't do a good job. Read The Chronicles of Narnia, The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, or anything by Edith Nesbit.

2. Play dress up. Put on what my daughter calls "dancing dresses" (anything you can twirl in). Something that makes you feel beautiful every time you move around. Then go look in a mirror and tell yourself how beautiful you are.

3. Put yourself to bed. Bedtime routines (like all things mothers seem to be competing about these days) are starting to get a little over-the-top. Brushing your teeth and a goodnight kiss aren't enough, you need a bath, aromatherapy, infant massage, a few books and some mozart before you tuck them into their organic cotton jammies. So why not do a little bit of that for yourself? It only takes a few minutes to go from crashing in an old t-shirt with your makeup on to washing up, rubbing a little lavender into your temples and crawling into a real pair of comfy pajamas. Don't have some? Get them. Extra points if they have footies.

4. Get really excited about stupid things. Like flowers and dogs and ice cream.

5. Get really sad about stupid things. You can cry because you wanted to wear your favorite purple pajamas and now they're in the wash. It's ok. Then see below....

6. Get a kiss to make it better. Kids let all their emotions out, ask for comfort and move on. ASK being the key word here.

7. Play like it's your job. Color a picture, build a block tower, or design an elaborate doll house with ridiculous intensity.

8. Revel in small accomplishments. You got dressed all by yourself! Way to go. You're a big kid.

9. Ask for help. Because sometimes you just want someone to tie your shoes for you. Not because you can't, but because you want to know that someone is willing to take care of you if you ask them to.

10. Live in the present. Kids generally can't predict what will happen next, so they don't really try. New flash: Neither can you. So stop worrying about it.

Parental Paranoia/The REAL Story of Pinocchio/A Fervent Apology to Homeowner's Associations Everywhere

Sometimes I picture my children's funeral.  Morbid, yes.  Paranoid, for sure.  I've probably been to one to many funerals myself, and perhaps I have somehow assimilated tragic freakish deaths as a normal part of life.  More likely it's a defense mechanism, like some kind of pre-emptive strike on your own civilians to prevent an enemy victory.  "You thought you would capture our city?  Ha!  Too bad we BURNED IT TO THE GROUND!" (Maniacal laughter ensues).  In order to avoid being blindsided by tragedy, I have anticipated countless gruesome demises for my husband and children and played them out in my head in harrowing detail.

(she has no idea what dangers are out there...)

  

The thing about China is, there is no way to anticipate everything.  Statistically, I'm sure it's safer.  We don't drive, we no longer live by a pool, or a 55 mph speed zone on a blind curve, or by redneck neighbors who hunt in our woods with high powered rifles.  Violent crime is nearly nonexistent, nobody even owns a gun, and traffic is too bad for anyone to drive at more than 25 mph.   It's safe, it's just an unpredictable sort of safe.  In the US, after you've commuted 30 miles on the highway a thousand times, you sort of assume the thousand and first time will be the same.  Never mind that you're careening across concrete at 70 mph in a combustible steel cage, if you do it often enough, it's like a kind of exposure therapy.  Then you try to cross the road in China.  Like I said before, I know it's safe.  My rational brain has recognized that China does have very effective "rules of the road".  They operate on the principle of "offensive" driving  (due to a shortage of weird, single, middle aged, white guys willing to preach "defensive driving"?) which is actually very effective as people assume that everyone, everywhere is about to step into oncoming traffic, cut them off, drive the wrong way, or park their "meimbou che" in the middle of the road to sell vegetables and knockoff sunglasses.  You could, theoretically, send your children darting out in front of a bus

(or use the train tracks as a walking path)

and they'd probably be a lot safer than in your SUV with a five point harness, because the bus driver has never had the luxury of predictability to lull him into a sense of safety.  So says my rational brain.  Unfortunately, my rational brain can engage just long enough to recognize that four lanes of traffic has suddenly morphed into 5 (or 6, or 7), that there are a horde of electric bikes driving down the road the wrong way, and that the old man elbowing me out of the way to cross the road first is holding a live chicken.  This is when I shift into primal fight or flight mode.

And this is where my apology to homeowners associations comes in.  I get it.  I understand why you want to establish predictability, sameness.  Why it feels good to know that when you get up and walk your leashed labradoodle that everyone's grass will be the same height.  If I could speak more Chinese I would gladly head up a homeowners association in our complex if only to enforce elevator inspections BEFORE I got stuck in one and to tell everyone's kids that they need to stop peeing in our courtyard.  It's ok to do that on a farm in Tennessee, just like it's ok to burn your trash there, but it is definitely not ok to burn your trash in our apartment stairwell.  That being said, it's probably a great exercise for our whole family to not have control (or the illusion of control) over everything.  If we want to go somewhere, I can't tell my kids when (or if) our bus is coming, I can't guarantee it will go where it's supposed to, I frequently don't even know exactly where we're going in the first place, and I certainly don't know what a chicken is apt to do when squeezed onto a crowded bus.  Chances are though, even in my morbid imagination, that death by rabid chicken on a Chinese bus is very unlikely.  In fact, the majority of the unpredictability isn't a life or death issue, it just shakes us up enough to ponder the possibility.

Cohen likes to listen to stories while he falls asleep and, recently, we played Pinocchio for him.  I know that Disney usually puts a spin on fairy tales, but Pinocchio was one that I hadn't heard the real version of yet.  In the real version, Pinocchio smashes Jiminy Cricket (who actually doesn't have a cute name like Jiminy) with a hammer in the second chapter, the blue fairy (who is actually the "azure" fairy) dies of grief when Pinocchio abandons her, and Geppetto gets eaten by a shark.  Apparently in other cultures and other times,  people didn't have the same illusion of safety that we do, and there was no such thing as Disney to further foster the illusion.  The funny thing is, coming from the person who usually didn't entertain such illusions, the unpredictability is rather freeing.      It's no longer possible to imagine every possible scenario, so there's no way I can imagine I'll be prepared enough to cheat death.  Because no one can.        

So I can go ahead and replace paranoia with acceptance and my reliance in my own preparedness for future tragedy with a perpetual engagement in the present moment

and a trust that I will cope with the future when I come to it.

 Because predicting it is no longer an option.
China, we are so ready to take you on.        

Why We Took a Quarter Life Retirement

I figure a year into our trip, it's about time to give everyone a little background on why we even came in the first place.  I can't speak for John, perhaps he owes everyone a post of his own, but I personally saw it as sort of a quarter-life retirement with a little bit of young life crisis and some gap year thrown in.  With 3 preschool aged children of course.  This doesn't really strike me as strangely as it strikes most, since most of my life has been done out of order anyway.  I was never one to follow predetermined structure.  Not that I didn't want to, lest you think I'm trying to paint myself as some sort of free spirit struggling to break the confines of societal expectations.  I won't say I love societal expectations either, but I've always craved them, like any good little neurotic co-dependent would.  Most of my life has revolved around grades and scales and stopwatches, but I'm one of those crash and burn types.  The type who starves themselves for 5 days and then binges on the weekend, or who gets straight A's the first semester, and drops out the next.  All told, I've dropped out of school 5 times, probably gained and lost hundreds of pounds and attempted to master no less than 4 instruments and 5 sports.  I've also written the first chapter of about 4 different novels.  Point being, I'd do just about anything for a pat on the back, which is probably why I couldn't stand the thought of NOT graduating college, even after I was married with a kid.  So forget the life plan where you graduate college, do your gap year, get married, flourish in your career, buy a dream home and then decorate a nursery.  We got engaged the day my husband started his first full-time job, got married 8 weeks later and were surprised exactly 9 months and 6 days after our wedding by a beautiful little bundle of colic, skin rashes and food allergies.  Did I say that?  I meant joy.  Bundle of joy.

Anyways, since I was hell-bent on finishing college, but the only way to stop the bundle of joy from screaming was to make sure he was permanently attached to my boob, I wrote my final papers with a laptop propped up sideways so I could lay next to my nursing newborn.  Of course I couldn't stop there, because a walking inferiority complex is never satisfied.  Once the bundle of joy was old enough to start putting everything in his mouth, the screaming abated somewhat and I moved right on to graduate school.  Somehow part time turned into full-time and one bundle of joy became two and pretty soon I was the only student racing out of class to nurse my baby during breaks.  My husband had, in the meantime, moved his way from lowly barista to store manager, which meant he was doing pretty much the same thing (making sure you got your sugar-free no-whip, double tall vanilla soy latte in less than 97 seconds) only for 60 hours a week rather than 40.  By the time I was ready to graduate, bundle #3 was ready to make his way into the world, I was working way too many thankless and unpaid hours as a counseling intern who ended up organizing my boss' file cabinets far more often than I did any counseling.  John would leave at 3:30 AM to open the store and come back in time to pass off kids before I went to my internship or night classes.  I came back from night classes in time to put the bundles back to sleep for the 2nd or 3rd time with about 6 hours to sleep before they were up to greet the sun.  Then there was the fact that the resounding consensus I heard from every mom with 3 or more kids was that 3 children was where you descend into a murky mom-haze from which you won't emerge until all your kids can sleep through the night and fix themselves breakfast.  You'll apparently wake up after your first morning of 10 uninterrupted hours of sleep wondering who you are and where the last 4-15 years of your life went (depending on how many more kids you have).  One mom also described having 3 young kids as being the same as her natural labor-agonizing pain somehow tempered by your body's natural happy bonding drugs that it produces for these sorts of occasions.  I have had 3 all natural labors and, while they were beautiful in their own right, I have no desire to experience them for years on end.  Also, the whole dissasociative experience doesn't sound great to me.  Also, let's go back to the hubby's 60 hour workweeks and my graduate degree that gave me the opportunity to keep doing my thankless internship work for about as much as I used to make babysitting.

I didn't want to see John only while trading off kids so we could both work more hours than we wanted at jobs we didn't like.  I also didn't want to give up on work I know I would love if I got the chance to leave the file room.  I didn't want to miss the bundles' entire childhood because I was in a sleep-deprived mom-haze.  I also didn't want to give up working part time and never have a reprieve from the aforementioned mom-haze.  I didn't want to spend the kids' most formative years just "managing" them-making sure everyone made it through the day alive and fed.  I didn't want to turn down reading books and building block towers because I was walking the baby to sleep or dinner needed to be made.    

And like most things in life, there's always have an alternative.  We could have searched for an alternatives in the US.  There were definitely ways to slow down what we were doing.  We could have made a lot of tradeoffs, but instead we decided to think outside the box and find some way where we didn't have to give up any of our biggest priorities.

And I think it's worked.  John has had a chance to bond with the kids and has given me a chance to regain my self and sanity without mom-haze swallowing me whole.  We're a way better and more balanced parenting team.  We have the time and energy to take care of ourselves and consequently have the time and energy to be present and focused with the kids.  I never have to multitask and so I'm a mom rather than a manager.  We're so blessed in so many ways and being out of the US keeps us constantly reminded of that fact.  We've met so many amazing and interesting people and been able to see ourselves through the eyes of people who haven't known us our whole lives.  Also, it's 70 and sunny outside and I'm snacking on fresh pineapple and sipping water straight from a coconut.  In your face Chicago,

The rat race, the American Dream, keeping up with the Jones', or whatever else you call it....it's way over-rated.

Here's to doing life a little out of order.