Mothering Yourself: 5 tips for taking care of the person who takes care of everyone else

Since we're on vacation, which has a way of simultaneously restoring sanity 

while keeping things a little crazier than usual 

Since most of us are pretty decent people and parents when we're sane.

Since we sometimes need micro-vacations we can use anytime for restoring that ever elusive sanity.

Here are 5 micro-vacations:

1. Drink it in.  Spend 5 minutes in the morning to make a pitcher of something that is natural and nourishing.  I love iced green or mint tea with some lemon and honey, but Chinese rose tea is another favorite.  You can have a little bowl of lemon wedges in your fridge, or I have a friend who keeps a bag of frozen mixed berries in her freezer and throws two or three in every glass (her favorite is Passion flower tea).  Whatever it is, serve it in a pretty glass, sip and savor.  It's a treat that treats your body well. 

2. Time it.  Maybe you can't get 10 minutes to yourself, but you can get 1 minute, 10 times a day.  Set your watch or your phone so it beeps at the top of every hour.  Take that full minute to recenter  and re-engage with the present moment.

3. Take sick days.  Ask to be cared for.  Get soup and tea and warm blankets and a stack of books and disappear for 24 hours.  And don't say you can't.  You choose not to.  You can choose to knock it out in 24 hours or you can choose to let it linger for 2 weeks   

4. Say no.  To the next thing someone asks you.  Just because you can.  Just because you need the practice.  Don't make excuses, don't try to justify it.  Just say "No, I'd prefer not to".  Then watch as the world DOESN'T come to a screeching halt.

5. Read Children's Literature.  I know I've posted this before, but it's just that important.  The Chronicles of Narnia, The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland or anything by Edith Nesbit.  Beauty, fantasy and adventure, all without having to think too hard. 

When there's nothing wrong....

My children have been terrible sleepers.  All of them.  And the youngest is the absolute worst.  I never understood how he could be the happiest baby who can be calmed and comforted in an instant during the day and yet consistently wakes up at night absolutely inconsolable.

One of these nights, he woke up at about 3 AM and while I was trying to calm him and walk him back to sleep, someone started trying to break down our apartment door.  At least it sounded like that.  I stayed upstairs since now I had to calm and comfort 3 wide awake children while John went downstairs to answer the door.

"I cannot SLEEP!  I CAN-NOT SLEEP."  It was our upstairs neighbor, doing her best to communicate to my husband in broken English and following it with some choice words in Chinese that I can imagine were not exactly neighborly.  The conversation went something like this:

John: "I'm very sorry."

Crazy Chinese neighbor (hereafter referred to as CCN): "NO.  You do not understand!  I CAN-NOT SLEEP! (more un-neighborly Chinese muttering) WHY HE CRY?!?!?"

John: "I don't know why he is crying.  I'm very sorry.  We are trying to help him sleep."

CCN: "NO!  WHY he not sleep?!?!  WHY he CRY and CRY?!?!  EVERY night, EVERY night, EVERY night, he cry!"

I'm not sure why she thought we needed her to inform us that he cried every night.  I'm not sure where exactly she thought we were or what exactly we were doing, but apparently she thought we were either unaware  that he was awake or didn't have a problem with it ourselves.  Like we could do something about it, we just liked to be up at night with a screaming baby for fun.

CCN: "I'm take him hospital!"
John: "Sorry...what?"
CCN: "I'm take him hospital!  I have car, I'm take him hospital!"
John: "No. We are not going to the hospital."
CCN: "YES!  TAKE HIM HOSPITAL!  YOU COME IN MY CAR! THERE SOMETHING WRONG!"
John: "No, there's nothing wrong.  He's not sick.  We are not going to the hospital."
CCN: "THERE SOMETHING WRONG!! WHY HE CRY?!?!"
This went on for a while.  She refused to leave unless we went to the hospital with her, while John calmly but firmly refused to do anything of the kind.  In a last ditch effort to be rid of her, John told her we would be moving back to America in a couple weeks.
CCN: "GOOD!!! I SOOO HAPPY!!" (muttering of Chinese expletives) *door slamming* *gate slamming* *stomping up the stairs*  *more slamming doors* (screaming of Chinese expletives heard through the ceiling)

I spent the next few weeks living in fear of an old Chinese lady who probably didn't stand a head taller than Cohen.  But that's not the main point here.  The point is...."What the heck are you talking about woman?!?!  Why is he crying?  Because he's a BABY!"

Back home though, people can be just as critical, but with enough subtlety that I forget to feel indignant along with being fearful.  I'm fearful of the dirty looks I get at the grocery store, from flight attendants, from waitresses, from fellow diners, from friends and relatives, even from mothers with grown children who seem to think they actually gave birth to their children as fully functioning adults and have forgotten that they ever cried or spilled something or wore a diaper.  They are all essentially saying the same thing:  "what is wrong with him/her?"  "Why is he crying?" "How dare she poop in her diaper?" "Seriously?  spaghetti on the floor?  Doesn't he know how to do that twirly thing with his fork?  Maybe we should take him to the hospital..."  Ok.  Maybe not that last part.  Remember, they're subtle.  But it's all the same thing..."what's WRONG with them and WHY CAN'T YOU FIX IT?"

And if we would all just take a second from feeling shamed or quit googling internet remedies for infant separation anxiety or toddler hyperactivity, we would start feeling a little more indignant and stop blaming ourselves.  Because chances are there's NOTHING WRONG WITH YOUR KID.  Because there's no such thing as "infant separation anxiety."  There are infants who act like infants.  There's no such thing as toddler ADD.  There are toddlers being toddlers.  When I hear people commenting, "wow, she's old to be still waking up at night," "he just has to get into everything doesn't he?" "Well isn't your baby clingy!" "Wow, SOMEBODY is opinionated!" I am learning to lose the fear and listen to the indignant voice in my head that reminds me that my CHILD is being a CHILD.  I know that doesn't give me (or my child) the right to infringe on someone else's boundaries or well being, which is why I legitimately felt sorry for (and lived in great fear of) the CCN. But if you don't have to wake up with my kid, if they're not touching your stuff, and if you don't have to listen to them, respond to them, hold them, respect their opinions or whatever else, I don't really care if you think something is wrong or how you think I should fix it.  Children don't need to be cured of being children.

They don't smile for pictures.  And no, taking them to the hospital won't help.

   

Just you wait....

There was a period of time where the image of the "perfect mom" ran rampant on social media.  Moms would update their Facebook status with "Little Johnny just brought me flowers and drew me pictures and told me how much he loves me and that I'm the best mommy in the whole world" or "Big Johnny just got his acceptance letter to Harvard!" Then she might throw in an "I'm so lucky/blessed/fortunate" as if to temper her obvious attempt to show off her mad parenting skills.  Sort of like when you compliment a girl on her dress and she says "oh this old thing?  I don't know where I got it." It translates to, "oh my super high achieving, beautiful and well adjusted children?  Who knows how they ended up that way, must be luck!" This sort of thinly veiled one-upmanship used to be reserved to Christmas letters and people with minimal interpersonal social skills, but all the sudden it was everywhere.

Then there was a backlash.  We got sick of it.  We wanted the world to know that every second of every day is not giggling children blowing bubbles and picking flowers (as our Instagram feeds would have us suppose).  We got tired of mom-blogs that posted pictures of an apple picking outing and the homemade apple pie that followed ("which was a great way to use up all the butter that I churned last week!").  So someone or other wrote a post about what she called REAL parenting.  About late nights and early mornings  and Little Johnny puking on the cat.  Initially, I was relieved.  I wasn't a failure, I wasn't the only one who was tired and couldn't spend my whole days blowing bubbles and baking apple pies.  The problem is that it's the tiniest sample of the parenting experience and therefore is about as realistic as the perfect mom end of the spectrum (does Little Johnny puke on the cat EVERY day?).  It's also not helpful.  There was recently viral video (which admittedly I have only heard about second hand) that depicted motherhood as a 135 hour per week job during which you could never sit down.  That only those with a number of ridiculously specialized skills could do it and even then they must be suffering martyrs subjecting themselves to a lifetime of grueling and thankless work.

I'm sorry, but that's just not accurate either.  I sit down.  I'm sitting down right now.  I'm not simultaneously trying to clean or cook or wipe vomit off of the cat.  I'm spending nearly an hour doing something I enjoy while I have one kid snuggling on my lap and two more cutting pictures out of old National Geographic magazines.  This isn't every moment  (apparently there are also the moments they're unattended and mostly naked)

but just as much as it's not helpful to guilt-trip mothers by giving them a window to that small slice of your life that is picture perfect, it's not helpful to strike fear into mothers (or mothers to be, or women who might be mothers one day providing you stop belabouring how miserable motherhood is) by only giving them a window to the opposite.

But now that I think about it, women have been doing this since long before the internet.  I can't count the number of times that women tried to strike up conversations about how miserable I must be as a mother of young children.  "You must be exhausted with such a little baby!" Well yes, I am a little tired, but he does sleep 14 hours a day...I can usually stay caught up. "You must be tearing your hair out now that they're in the terrible two's."  No, not really.  See, you say "yes" to them when you can and you stick with your "no" when you have to use it.  They catch on pretty quickly.  "Well just you wait until they're teenagers!" Umm...ok.  Thanks...I guess?

I mean is that supposed to be encouraging? Motivating?  I'm not sure I understand the purpose.  I used to coach basketball and I'm trying to picture calling my team in for a time-out and trying to get them pumped up by asking them how miserable they are.  "Are you exhausted yet!"  Well coach, we're actually doing pretty good, we can keep this up. "But they're REALLY GOOD, I'm sure their full court press is going to make you TOTALLY fall apart."  Well, we've got a pretty good pressbreaker, I'm sure if we keep executing it consistently..."Nope.  You just you wait until the 4th quarter.  You'll see.  You guys are gonna get SLAUGHTERED.  Ok.  Team on 3."

So why in the world do we do this to each other?  What could we do instead?  And what's our comeback for "just you wait..."?        

The Gifted Mother Part 2: How to Outsource Motherhood

In my last post I talked about focusing your work as a mother on your actual skill set, your passions, and your gifts.  The things that you can do efficiently and relatively effortlessly, the things that give you energy rather than draining it.  As I shared my excitement with my husband, I was pretty proud of the novel idea of bringing organizational psychology and outsourcing from the corporate world and into the home-and he started laughing at me.  "It's a nice idea...but who is going to say they feel passionately drawn to doing dishes and laundry?"  I thought this wasn't quite fair, since he's one of those rare sorts who gets immense satisfaction from doing dishes (lucky me), but I figured that before other people start scoffing and write this idea off, I should address it.

When I talk about gifts, passions, or skill sets, I'm not talking about your grander life vision.  I know you might want to write a book or build an orphanage, or live on ten acres in the country with a garden and two dogs, and it's hard to see how doing laundry really coincides with that vision or how you can "care" about organizing the craft cupboard.  What I'm talking about here are the daily activities that are a part of running the organization that is your household (hopefully that organization is something you care about or you wouldn't be here).  I understand that these activities aren't always the kind of things you would include in a list of your favorite hobbies, but if you have the skills to do them without it being an agonizingly long process or you enjoy them enough that the thought of doing them doesn't suck the life out of you, you can include them in your list of things that don't need to be outsourced.

So, when there's something that does suck the life out of you, or always seems to take longer than it should, how do you stop wasting your time effort and skills that could be used far more efficiently doing something you're actually good at?

I'm still brainstorming answers to this myself, but here's my top 5 suggestions for now...I'd love for you to brainstorm and add your own!

1. Apply the 80/20 rule.  The premise of this is that usually 20% of the effort yields 80% of the result and you need to exert 80% more effort to get that last 20%.  Are you tracking with this?  Think about a paper you got an "A" on in college.  You probably researched, wrote an outline, organized your research notes, wrote, revised, revised again, edited and when you were printing your paper out after 10 hours of hard work, some other student was just starting to write his half-assed, disorganized, written in 2 hours the night before paper that he didn't even plan to proofread because he knew it would probably pull a "C" regardless.  You wanted the "A" for your GPA or for your professor's approval or whatever, but now when you stop to think about the real reason you think you need to give 100%, it's usually for your critical mother-in-law or for that mean girl you wanted to impress in high school or that snotty mom down the street who criticizes every ingredient you put in the snack you gave her kid last Friday.  If the 100% isn't for you or someone you care about, let it go.  Can you start thinking of ways to apply this?  Like do you really have to make home-made apple pie for the family picnic?  Or could store bought cookie dough pull at least a "C"?  If you don't feel like you can even pull a "C" (for example my baking will always be a solid "F"), move on to the next 4 tips.

2. Ask for help.  Someone told me recently that even when people offered her help, she would blurt out "oh no, I'm fine," without even thinking about it.  Of course she would kick herself afterward because she was desperately in need of help, but somehow we're trained to be self-reliant.  These days we're expected to be more attached, involved and engaged than parents in the past ever were, but now we're in the context of nuclear families, without the help of the more traditional extended family network to help bear some of the burden.  It's not sustainable.  There's nothing wrong with asking for help from your spouse, family or friends, returning the favor in kind when it's needed.  You'll not only release the burden of that awful, life-sucking task that's been hanging over your head, but you'll be making yourself vulnerable and building relationships in the process.

3. Trade for help.  There are people out there who like laundry.  Or organizing.  Or helping kids with their math homework.  I had a friend tell me she spent weeks battling her kids every day to get math homework done.  She thought it was something she just had to "push through" until her friend asked if there was anything she would like to trade in exchange for piano lessons.  She loves teaching piano.  Now her friend teaches her kids math and she gives her friend's kids piano lessons.  Life sucking task accomplished.  Check.  I personally would bring over a giant pot of made-from-scratch stew to anyone who would throw in a load of laundry for me.          

4. Pay for help.  I know people turn up their nose at this right away.  "Thanks a lot, Eve, wouldn't we all love it if we could pay for a housekeeper and personal chef."  Trust me, I'm not out of touch.  I lived off of a barista's salary for a family of 4 for a good two years.  We ate a lot of rice and beans, wore underwear with holes in it, and I thought paying for a babysitter or housekeeper was completely out of the question.  But I wish I had considered it.  One problem is mom's don't assign a value to what they spend their money on.  Think about how much the money you're spending improves your life.  An hour of housekeeping is $10 but is worth infinitely more to me than a few lattes.  I know you're saying "I don't waste money on lattes.  I really don't have any spare income."  And that may be true.  Senator and former Harvard economics professor Elizabeth Warren says that most of the time wasted money doesn't go to shoes and lattes, but goes into larger, month-to-month expenses.  This may require big changes on your families part, but think about whether that extra 500 square feet gives you more enjoyment in your life than 10 hours of babysitting a month.  Or whether driving a new car is going to bring you more ease than 35 hours of housekeeping a month.

5. Let it go.  Do you need to/want to/have to do it?  Or do you have to keep up with the image someone crafted on Facebook or aforementioned mom down the street?  If you're giving yourself and your family your skills, your gifts and your passions.  That's what they want.  And often that's all they need.      

Mom's School for the Gifted Part 1: Running a "Home" business

So imagine you show up to the first day at the job.  Your employer says it requires some patience and the ability to multitask.  Then he sits you down at the receptionist desk.  Your job is to field phone calls, make appointments, etc.  You'll also be required to design and maintain the company website, process payroll, go on sales calls and maintain a relationship with current clients.  After hours, the office will need cleaning, so you'll need to do that.  You'll also need to make him lunch and pick up his dry cleaning.

Except no employer is that stupid.

When I was little, my dad used to take me downtown to work with him.  I mostly went because I liked to twirl around in frilly dresses and the more people there were to look at me, the better.  I guess if you're the boss's daughter, they have to pretend you're really cute.  Also they had really good food in the cafeteria.  Somewhere along the line though, I did pick up on one of my dad's most successful business secrets.  Hire people to do what they love doing.  Don't make them do anything else.

He was ahead of his time.  I certainly don't believe most corporations did that then, and most still don't do it now, but I've never heard of a company that asked their receptionist to design a web page or had HR do their taxes.  You do the things that align with your skill set.

Personally I'm good at big picture thinking, I can create "systems."  Also, I went to grad school for child counseling and worked as a teacher and curriculum developer, so I write behavior plans, develop our home-school curriculum and have spent a lot of time researching and discussing a cohesive approach for my husband and I to co-parent.  But if you asked me to bake a loaf of bread....well you might as well ask the cleaning lady to write a corporate vision statement.  Big picture people don't do details well.  And baking requires details.  The last loaf of bread I baked my husband was kind enough to refer to as "Elven bread" because it was so "sustaining."  In other words, two bites filled you up because it didn't rise at all.  It's the kind of dense, tasteless stuff I imagine sailors ate because it tasted just as disgusting after 3 months at sea as it did the day it was baked.  Coincidentally, John has brought home a loaf of whole wheat bread from the local bakery every weeks since then.  There are some things you're great at.  And there are some things that are just worth outsourcing.  

How to outsource is Part 2, but for now lets figure out what your gifts are.  What is your skill set?  What things could you do effortlessly and efficiently all day?  If you were writing a resume and applying as a mother to your own kids, what would you say?    

Boredom and Lunch Tables

While I've encountered problems living in China these are NOT among them.  This is the first of a couple posts I hope to dedicate to the things I fear the most when going back to the US.  Boredom will be the first post, beating out my fears of not finding jobs, driving on a highway again, legal firearms, painfully bland foodand seasonal affective disorder.  

I'm not saying I don't have dear friends back home.  I'm also not saying there are no interesting people to meet.  I think there are just so many dear and interesting people that we have the luxury of choosing those who are exactly like us.  Having been homeschooled up until Jr. High, it wasn't until my first 7th grade lunch period when the girls started dragging desks around our homeroom to create separate tables that I realized I had to pick a "group."  In college it got even harder when I ended up being in both the Honors program and on the volleyball team.  The volleyball team tanned and partied with the basketball boys.  The Honors students clustered in the student lounge, studying and telling jokes about Descartes walking into a bar.  And I holed up in my dorm room and felt incredibly lonely, because you have to pick one, and those lunch tables just won't mix.  

This is the cool table...what makes you think you can sit here?

And I never stopped feeling like I had to choose.  Whenever I met new people, I felt like I was getting sized up.  Political views, theology, what I read, what I listen to, how much I make, what I'm wearing and whether or not my kids are gluten free.  It's like we're shifting the desks and dividing up all over again.  I'm just as guilty of it as anyone, having made my share of snide comments about everything from someone's taste in literature to what they ate for breakfast.  I even remember criticizing someone's favorite Thai restaurant.  At length.  Like there aren't bigger differences in the world that we need to worry about.  What I didn't realize is that if you stick with your lunch table group forever, you start running out of things to talk about.  You all shop at the same stores, read the same books and pretty much have the same philosophies about everything.  Maybe someone could take you out to a new restaurant except, oh yeah, you wrote that person off because they didn't know anything about authentic Thai food.  Mostly you just sit around agreeing with each other and slamming everyone who doesn't think like you.  How so-and-so must have spent a fortune on her dress ("sooo materialistic!") and so-and-so read Twilight ("soooo immature!") and so-and-so gave her kid a pop-tart for breakfast ("DOES SHE WANT HER KID TO DIE!?!? THE HUMANITY!!").  You have so much in common, in fact, there's no need to talk about much else.  When you can pick from 300 things to say that are going to be accepted by the group, why say the 1 thing that pops into your head that might cause a stir?

Why mention that you're lonely?  That you don't feel like there's anyone you can talk to about your real life.  That your unsure about your parenting.  That your unsure about your life in general.  That you wish God was more real to you.  That you really don't want to talk about all the benefits of breastfeeding.  Again.  That you gave your kid a pop-tart once and now you're afraid if anyone finds out, you won't have a lunch table anymore. 

I have three really good friends here.  One was a platoon leader that got a full scholarship to West Point and served two tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.  She's knows what she thinks and she's going to say it-lunch table etiquette be damned.  Around her, I don't feel like I have to pretend.  Another friend is from a hardscrabble neighborhood in Brooklyn where you couldn't pick a group that wasn't doing something or other illegal, so she's used to going against the current.  She doesn't spend a minute being insecure about her own choices and consequently doesn't waste a second judging others.  I feel no need to explain or justify anything.  Then there's my friend who went to Harvard and has a law degree and makes me explain or justify everything I say...because she honestly values my opinions and the reasoning that got me there.  She can't wait to talk to someone who thinks differently than she does because she knows it will help her to learn and explore and clarify.  It's the first time I've had to articulate everything I think so clearly and it's the first of many times I've had to recognize I hadn't thought through something or was just flat out wrong.  I actually have to think.  And be honest.  And be vulnerable.  I have to take ownership of my ideas and choices and feelings because they're actually mine now...not just "the group's."  Chances are that everyone won't agree with me.  And that's ok.  Because it gives us so much more to talk about.  

Which is why I really fear going back to the lunchroom.  Because I don't want to have to choose a group and I don't want to forever resign myself to an endless loop of breastfeeding and gluten conversations.  Because there are a lot of interesting people in the world with a lot of interesting things to say if it was a little more acceptable to just pick up your stupid lunch tray and sit down next to them.  

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.