NBCWA Workshop: Becoming the Author of Your Own Life (Memoirs)

In mid July, as part of the NBCWA Writing Festival, I attended a workshop with my mom: Becoming the Author of Your Own Life (Memoirs) with Elisha Rose, who has written two memoirs herself, I Am Worthy and the prequal Time to Wake Up My Love, about addiction, truth, lies, secrets and love.

    It wasn’t quite what I expected. I mean, I was thinking that it would be a workshop on how to write a memoir, and it was, but with some specifics versus generics. It wasn’t even a workshop that I wanted to take for myself because a memoir isn’t anywhere on my radar, but My mom has been talking about writing her memoir for several years, and I wanted to support her journey (and nudge her along), and thought that this workshop would be a great for that. And we got some mother-daughter time.

Elisha’s presentation was well organized with main Talking Points interspersed with Writing Prompts and Deep Thought questions. Elisha talked about the cost of memoirs, the secrets that they tell, wisdoms the world would be without if your story isn’t told, and how to be the main character of your own story. She asked us to think about where you are in life, why your story matters, and are your happy with where you are.

It was a great workshop. Until she lost me at the end.

Part one: Why memoirs are.

              Question posed by Elisha Rose: If your story had never been written, what wisdom would the world miss? And what is wisdom? It’s the balance of intelligence with love because intelligence without love is just arrogance.

              We all know people who are arrogant—those people who impart knowledge but leave you feeling less-than afterwards. And we all know people who are wise—elders with infinite patience teach you in ways that uplift you.

Prompt: Where are you in the story of your life right now?

              Exhausted. That’s where I am. I’m tired of Fear. Tired of not doing things that I want to do because I’m too afraid. Regarding writing, I’m afraid of failure. What if I’m a failure, and what if people hate me? And why am I so afraid of people considering my writing time as unproductive time? Probably because I LOVE writing, and it feels a bit like a guilty pleasure. This one probably also stems a bit from small comments made by adults in my childhood. “Writers don’t make any money.” “Don’t write thinking you’ll be an author. Writing is just a hobby.” (This one was said by someone who wrote great poetry himself.)

              It would have been more kind if someone had said, “OK. What are the realities of being a writer? Is getting published hard? Rejection is okay—what do you have to do to keep trying (and then encouragement to keep trying). And what do you have to do to become one? How do you make your dream a reality?”

This is now something that I try to do for my kids. I would rather encourage their dreams and push them to be real about them in order to succeed vs pushing them to be real about them to discourage them from trying.

My Dream was to be a travel writer. Fear kept me from doing either traveling or writing, at the start. Life choices, none of which I regret, have made this Not the Time. Maybe retirement will see fulfillment of that dream. In the meantime, I’m blogging more (which is writing), and I’m currently sitting with a group of writers, listening to the clack of keys while I write longhand [except for right now while I type this in, of course]. And it is productive.

I’m at a place in my life where I want to have no regrets, even if that means Revising, Editing, and Proofreading my Bucket List. And I’m at the age where I don’t care what people think. Or so I tell myself.

Part two: Secrets and Shame 

According to Elisha Rose, it isn’t Fear that holds us back. Shame holds us hostage because we are ashamed. We are ashamed of the things that we do wrong, the things that go against the values of our upbringing, and the things that make us different. “They’re all going to laugh at you.” (the movie, Carrie, and Adam Sandler.)

And Shame? Shame stems from pain. The pain of criticism, the pain of regrets, embarrassment, and self-doubt.

But we’ve all made shitty mistakes, she says. Being unkind to a friend, failing to communicate well, being unprepared for something important. Rolling a car on a gravel road when you were sixteen, for example. Marrying the wrong person (not a mistake I’ve made) or spending too long in a relationship before getting out.

We just need to be honest about it. And who, Elisha asks, is more honest about their pain? An unhoused addict, or an “influencer”? Be honest, she says. Regrets fester into shame, so not having regrets lead to letting go of shame.

When you are honest, you are unbound form the secret, and therefore free from the shame. That is the Why of a memoir. Catharsis. Because you matter. You can’t keep secrets and be free. You can’t keep secrets and be the main character of your own life.

Secrets cause damage: isolation, disassociation, and silence lead to intensification, and onward to cyclical trauma (think Generational). Elisha spoke of how the generational trauma that she experienced as a child kept her quiet in class, afraid and ashamed of her dyslexia, something she proved to have risen above by openly asking for help spelling words while writing them on a flip chart in the workshop. Until she let go of her secrets and her shame, her work ethic, self confidence, and self worth suffered.

She describes trauma as what you make of a situation. Picture yourself as a mountain, she suggests. Trauma is someone throwing rocks at you. Maybe they’re pebbles that you can ignore, or maybe an avalanche starts. Or maybe the rocks are as big as boulders. Do you let the water flow around them? The expression “it’s all relative” when talking about hardship makes more sense now.

Prompt: What is our most painful memory, and is it a secret?

              When asked what title we will give the next season of our lives in relation to our most painful memory, I was feeling hard-pressed to find a memory painful enough to be memoir worthy. Oh sure, I’ve done some stupid shit (I was in my twenties once upon a time after all), and some of it I feel bad about to this day (to be fair, I still have the odd nightmare about the first time I returned a library book late as a child), but does any real shame come from it. I mean, I’m not going to tell you about any of it (at least not today), but more because it feels a little more First World problem and less what will the world think of me?

              This prompt was hard.

Part three: The Main Character and Self Trust 

              That being said, it’s all relative.

              And the important thing is that whatever your trauma or shame is, be Authentic. Be Yourself. Be the Main Character of your life. Instead of Becoming, think of Being.

              The main character doesn’t ask for permission to be themselves.

The next few prompts asked Why we want to tell our story, Why our story matters, and what is the Why to being the Main Character in your story?

I personally cannot find a great answer to these. Like I said above, I have a lot of first-world problems. The best I can come up with is that if one person were to read my story, I hope that it would make them laugh. I hope that it would inspire them to be themselves—to hold onto their own values and to express themselves as they feel fit. To have more self worth that I ever did.

But as I sit here typing this up, I can say that there were times I was authentic to myself. As a teen I wasn’t cowed by peer pressure to drink, cheat on homework, or steal. I never really fit in because I didn’t wear the styles of the day, or makeup (in a time when it was caked on). The first bit was a hold on values. The second may have been a bit of laziness, but more likely is the refusal to change who I am just because Cosmopolitan told me I was worthless if I didn’t wear blue eyeshadow and tease my bangs up high.

Elisha asked us, what are we willing to become? What do you have to give up becoming that? Do you love what you do, and what does being more mean to you?

Self love equals Authenticity. I love that I put boundaries in place on people who expect me to be perfect; I’m never going to be perfect, and trying to be makes me so anxious (this may be topic for another post). I can be kind and supportive to others, but only if I’m also taking care of myself.

Towards the end of the evening, when discussion was opened up, Elisha asked, what is your self-trust price tag? One participant replied that she doesn’t have one; you can’t buy her—you have to earn her trust.

Elisha then suggested that we don’t act cheap (in the dating world). What exactly does that mean? A lot, and honestly, this, too, could be another essay for another post (she was hinting at dress and actions). But quickly, for me, what it boils down to is this: when I became of dating age, my dad told me that if a guy came to pick me up and honked the horn instead of coming to the door, I wouldn’t be going out with him. I was worthy of someone coming to the door.

How do you be more in your own story, she asks. All I wrote down was “The strengths I wish I’d had.”

As you can see, I’m still struggling with all the prompts. I’m still not here to write a whole memoir. Maybe I’ll do a few essays on what determines your self worth, or on how to be yourself and not give a shit about whatever anyone else thinks.

I’m just here for my mother. She’s the one with a great story to tell, and this is my way of supporting that process.

Part four: The Cost of Honesty, and lost. 

What do you lose, Elisha asks, when you write about your trauma and your shame?

She actually asked and answered this earlier in the evening, but I feel like it closes this post well.

What did she lose? Everything. Your family, your friends, whoever is affected directly by your Authentic Honesty, will be the first to reject you. They’ll project their own trauma and insecurities and shame onto you. But once you’ve been honest and said it all, what are they going to be able to say about you? So, long story short, Elisha Rose is Free, and therefore she is Happy. Her fears surrounding her memoir were of being rejected, but the happiness that comes about by being rejected by the Wrong people and being accepted by the Right people, is freeing, and she is happy. (She’s probably not going to the family Christmas dinner, but you don’t have to dig too hard online to find stories about why this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, though.)

 

And then, this is where she lost me.

Elisha described herself as a masculine woman. I never once looked at her or listened to her words and thought masculine woman. Strong, yes; absolutely and without a doubt.

She summarized the facilitation of the abuse that she suffered as being permitted by her mother being a weak feminine woman, and her father being a strong masculine man (one not being able to stop the abuse of the other).

Elisha calls for a balance of the masculine and feminine in both men and women, and sure, that’s not necessarily wrong. But stopping abuse, in my opinion, has less to do with masculine and feminine, and more to do with strength. Saying that you have to be more masculine to be strong is insulting and dangerous; I’ve known strong femininity, and I think we need more of it.

This is a whole other essay, too.

In the End 

However you look at it, memoirs are stories that give the world some information, insight, inspiration, and even representation that it would be without had they never been written.

If you write a memoir, what is the wisdom that you impart? If you write a memoir about your suffered childhood abuse, does it help others like you feel not so alone? Does your memoir put your life into perspective?

I’m still, decades later traumatized by Angela’s Ashes, and I still think about it when my own life sucks at a particular moment. Sure, my garden sucks, but I didn’t starve; I don’t depend on my garden for survival, so I’m not suffering; I’m just frustrated. Perspective.

Which brings me to another internal thought:

Must all memoirs be melancholy and morbid, harrowing and horrendous? Are there any inspiring and wise memoirs that are also funny and make you feel good?

Marley & Me, perhaps. Until it isn’t.

 ~

January: How to do better without the pressure of a New Year's Resolution Fest.

 What I learned about myself by not making any Resolutions, building habits instead, kick starting the year with a nutrition challenge, and doing less in my workouts (with bigger gains). And, my mantra for the year: "Just not all at once, and not right away."

I am part of Street Parking, an online fitness (programming) community that has its origins in the CrossFit world (at least, the founders do), but is not a CrossFit affiliate itself. It was designed as a program where if all you have is a pair of dumbbells and some determination, you can follow the program and get yourself fit. There are, of course, options for if you have more or all of the equipment, and options if you're pregnant/postnatal, or just starting out and not fit at all.

Their December mantra was Anti New Year, New Me:

In other words, don't wait for January to start your fitness journey; start / keep going in December. Build your consistency now. 

Of course, it's well past December. Did you make NY Resolutions, and now it's February, and you've already failed? Are you going to wait until next New Year? If you miss starting out in the first week of the month, are you going to wait until the next month starts? Spring? Summer? 

I hope not.

Just start now. If there's one thing I've learned over the years of trying to get fit, it's that I have to let go of my Calendar OCD. I don't have to start a yoga sequence at the beginning of a month, or on a Monday. I don't have to join a program/gym at the beginning of a year. Just start. Start where you are, and work towards your goal.

Street Parking (SP) hosted a Jump Start nutrition challenge for January.

Not going to lie, this felt a bit like a resolution thing, but it was more about learning about yourself and building consistent habits around nutrition.

Points were earned by:

• Hitting your nutrition goals each day. It didn't matter if you chose the 800g Challenge or Paleo etc.
• Drinking a set water target (of your choice).
• Walking 10 minutes/ day or reaching a step target each day.
• Starting each day with a protein and fruits or veggies at your first meal.
• Avoid Alcohol.
• Pay attention each day: 
• How was your sleep?
• How was your energy level?
• And each week, note what your biggest win and what your biggest obstacle was.

How I did on the Challenge:

I didn't choose a specific diet plan. I've been aiming for 800g of fruits and vegetables a day for quite some time now, and I've been trying to increase my protein consumption. But I didn't want to have to do it for a challenge. So I chose to log all food and beverages consumed in Cronometer because I hate logging my food, but I do so much better when I do. Sure, I still have the chocolate and the snacks, but not as much. Logging keeps me accountable, if you will. And after having to do it every single day for four weeks, I've learned that it really doesn't take that long to do (time yourself, you'll see).

Will I keep logging going forward? Yes. Forever? Hell no.

I hit my water target (80oz) every day, and while I thought I drank lots of water before, sometimes tea got in the way. And I do feel better (my bladder likes more water, too. Less UTI irritation). I can't promise myself that I'll do 80oz every day, but I think 2L is doable (64), so somewhere in between. I'm not going to log it, though.

I chose the walking 10 minutes per day option. My dog agreed that this was the good option.

I work a desk job, so hitting step targets over 6k is just so much pressure (but that 10 minute walk can get me over 6k every time), and my psyche can't handle the failure of not hitting 10k steps a day.

We often have protein (eggs and turkey bacon), and often a vegetable or fruit for breakfast, but I made sure that I had it every day, even on weekends when cereal is usually easier. Granola with yogurt and a banana works, though.

Avoiding alcohol was easy enough. Had the challenge been no honey in my tea, we would have had issues. Or no chocolate. That would not have gone over well.

One thing I learned about myself during this challenge was that reading before bed made me have a much better sleep than anything else. I mean sure, walking in -20° can make you sleepy, eating well calms you down, but reading an actual book just does something to my brain, and my sleep score improves every time. Unless it's a smut e-book.

Unrelated to the Jump Start challenge, I made a big decision about my workout plan.

If you look through all the tracks that SP has to offer, you can choose from the daily workouts, several different endurance programs, multitudes of strength programs, bodyweight programs, rucking, and recovery. You could do something every day, multiple times a day. Well, someone infinitely fitter and thirty years younger than I could.

Last Spring I found myself wanting to do it all. Program it all. 

I had to stand back and ask myself, why am I doing this in the first place? To keep up with my kids. Go hiking and biking and swimming with them. And I found myself giving it all in a few workouts a week to the point where I was wrecked on the weekend and couldn't do any of that.

So in late December I decided to back off.

I chose to do the Shift (easier) version of all the Vault workouts (the special Monday workouts that are super fun, but not easy, and if you do all 25 in a year, you get a badge) this year. I am making myself do the Shift version of the Vault this year, at least for the first time through (January - June). Even if I think I can scale the barbell version, I'm doing the Shift version. 

And you know what? It's still hard. But I'm not wrecked on a Monday.

Wednesdays for the first 12 weeks of the year, SP has decided to focus on Strength. I'm enjoying the Strength sessions. They work a lot of the body in 30 minutes, and again, I'm backing off on how hard I push myself through the workout, but in doing so I'm making bigger gains. I can't explain it. I'm not pushing myself to the point of not being able to move the next day, but each week I add a little more weight (if I feel like it), and I've improved so much in just one month. I'm not overloading my overhead movements--those gains take longer or I suffer with arms that fall asleep all night and all day. But I can shoulder-press two pounds more than I could last Fall.

The other days of the week are spent working on one or two of endurance, some Olympic lifts, swimming, stairs, and just getting out and doing things on the weekends.

It's all about building Habits.

My Perfectly OCD Calendar has all my Habit Curator bubbles filled in every day, and I hit 800g every day, and I eat enough protein every day, and I do yoga every day, and I do about five other things every day. And I'll paint my house this year.....

This whole challenge, my biggest wins have been sleeping better and having more energy, and my biggest obstacles have been my own desire to do it all now.

I did start January with the intention of doing yoga every day (mostly because my mobility is tanking), but so far that hasn't happened. And maybe it's the nightly walks, or that I've backed off on the intensity of my workouts a bit, or that I'm actually stretching a tiny bit after workouts, but I'm not as stiff as I usually am if I don't do yoga. 

Don't get me wrong. I still need to work on my mobility. But I can take it slower than every day. 

I've nailed the daily walk habit.

I am good with logging my food every day.

And even though I wasn't actively trying for it, I did reach 800g & protein macros almost every day by the end of the challenge.

I do want to work on Endurance every week. 

I want to hike etc. every week.

I want to paint my house this Spring, and garden this Summer.

But it doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be consistent. And more than nothing. Go Big or Go Home is not going to work here. And you can't have it all, not right away.

And every time I think I'm failing because I'm not doing it all right now, I think of the scene in Supergirl where Cat Grant explains how she does do it all, and I think, this actually is the very best advice:

Kara Danvers : It was very hard. Really, really very hard.... I just don't know how you do it, Ms. Grant. I don't understand how you juggle it all.

Cat Grant : Oh, Kira, you have stumbled upon the most annoying question of the century, and you are so young that you do not even realize it. How do you juggle it all? You learn, that's how. You start with two balls before adding another. I figured out how to be brilliant in business, and then I added being a brilliant mother. Far too many women burn out trying to do too much before they're ready.

Kara Danvers : So you can have it all?

Cat Grant : Of course. Just not all at once, and not right away. And not with that hair. Use conditioner, for god's sake.

How I Became a Jennifer Crusie Dealer

It was Jennifer Crusie's birthday yesterday (the 17th), so in honour of that, I'd like to write a post that I've been meaning to for a while, and tell you about how I became a Jennifer Crusie dealer. (I'll do an actual review her books some other time.)

It all started a few years ago when I worked in the Oil Patch as a First Aid Attendant. Oh, wait, no, I started dealing when I went to school in 2003ish, but I have to go back to the first time that I worked in the OP as an FAA. Because before I became a JC dealer, I became an addict.

When you work on drilling rigs as an FAA, you have a lot of downtime. A lot. Unless you're working on a rig from hell, staffed by idiots who, against the lovely OP adage, "put their fingers where they wouldn't put their penises" on a regular basis, all you had to do was keep a clean FA Room, keep a clean and maintained ETV (emergency transport vehicle), make sure all of your pertinent information was up to date, and play nice with the rig pigs. I mean the men who worked on the rig. (This was usually the hardest job.) Otherwise, you could watch TV (if you had it; see this post), exercise, do correspondence courses, or read. Or sleep.

I read, a lot. When I first started up there, my stints were a three-week max, so I got good use out of my library card. On one pre-work library trip, I was looking for just one more book. As usual, I was vehemently avoiding the "Romance" racks (I like my books well-written, thank-you very much (I had been scarred by a very badly written Harlequin), and at that point I didn't think romance could be).

I spied the shelving cart, and there, in all of it's glorious yellow (JC has some of the best book covers, I swear), was Faking It by Jennifer Crusie. The book was stamped "GF" for General Fiction (thank goodness!), and the blurb on the back sounded funny, so I checked it out. Oh my god I freaking loved it! It is by far one of the funniest books that I've ever read. It is well-written. And when Davy was pleasantly surprised to bounce off a round and soft Tilda, I was pleasantly surprised to find myself reading about a "real" woman; not some uber-fit Twiggy who always had perfect hair and make-up. Tilda is also not a simpering idiot (this could be a whole post on its own, so I'll leave simpering idiots for later), especially when it came to men. I had a new heroine. I also had a new favourite author.

So I go to work, and in between jobs I manage to hit up the local library up north. I find some more JC books (Tell Me Lies and another one, but I cannot remember which one it was). I was excited! They were stamped "ROM" for Romance. Fuck. I actually stood there with abject disappointment and tears brewing in my eyes. No. No. No. I hummed and hawed for at least five minutes before deciding, okay, and I checked the books out. I read them. I laughed. I loved them. I still had a new favourite author! Phew.

(I did have another moment of panic later on when Jennifer Crusie teamed up with Bob Mayer; I love the Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich, so when I saw one of her co-writes, I bought it. Oh man, was I disappointed. Seriously, it was some of the worst drivel I've ever read. So when I saw Don't Look Down I stood in the store for a few minutes trying so hard not to have an anxiety attack. Deep breaths. Deep, deep breaths. I bought the book, and thank-you, but Bob Mayer can actually write! Funny, funny, well-written book, and worth the leap of faith in JC. Every other co-write of hers is excellent as well.)

On the way home from the job I hit up a Chapters and bought every single JC book that they had in stock, even the ones I'd read from a library. I spent the next few years collecting every new and re-release I could get my hands on. I explored other "Romance" authors, like Sophie Kinsella and Diana Gabaldon. In more recent years I've collected even more romance (I was either pregnant, or, now, have two kids, so a girl's gotta get sex somehow when we're too tired/schedules don't mesh in real life), and I'm probably a bit of an addict, and Jennifer Crusie will always have a fond place in my heart as my gateway drug. I mean author. But this is another story.

Anyway, it's still a few years ago, and I now have a decent collection of books of all genres. I was taking a course at a college, and one of my classmates was deaf. She had an interpreter. Because the coursework was 90% practical practice, the interpreter had a lot of downtime. I noticed that she read a lot when she wasn't interpreting, so I approached her one day and said, "Have I got some books for you!" She was hooked (she aptly described the books as dangerous (in a good way)), and my JC dealing career started.

Fast forward a few years, and I'm back in the OP. I'm carrying with me a Rubbermaid bin full of books. Including my entire JC collection. A fellow FAA loved to read as well, and since we were sharing a house at the time, I happily lent her some books, Faking It and Bet Me included. I hooked another reader.

I've since lent (upon pain of Guido breaking your legs if you don't return the book) or recommended Jennifer Crusie to anyone who needs a good read. Oh sure, I recommend other authors, too, but none are as enjoyable. Or as addictive. But that could just be my opinion.

So, to Jennifer Crusie: Happy Birthday! And, thank-you for being such a great author. And thank-you for only co-writing with other wonderful authors! You rock. Even if your pajamas are being hijacked by old women.

Spinny

Oh No! Your Two-Year-Old Isn't Talking!

 Have you ever known someone who has a lot of training and/or experience in one subject, and they therefore think that they know everything about that subject, especially in regards to, oh, say, your child? And they make you feel like your child is constantly under scrutiny, and that if you don’t analyse and correct every issue, your child will be horribly delayed for life?

My mom has some training in learning disabilities, and she has a ton of work experience with children who have learning disabilities. Ninety percent of this training and experience occurred after I was a kid, so I didn’t have to bear under a constant scrutiny for developmental issues (thank goodness).

No, I get the “Hindsight is 20/20” version. In other words, since I didn’t crawl in the traditional fashion—I was more of a bum scooter—we know that my brain didn’t develop properly. I’m not actually sure exactly how I was developmentally delayed as a child, (maybe I would have been a star athlete instead of a bookworm?) but for sure I should have crawled, apparently, and my mom still beats herself up for not knowing that she should have been making me crawl instead of scooting around on my bum. I don’t know—my bum probably had more padding than my knees did. . . .

My kids, however, are fair game for the constant analysis, and just the other day I was reminded of how true this is.

Kid #1 has always been a shy guy, and Hubby and I can always tell when he isn’t feeling very confident about something. He was especially unconfident about Talking. He started to talk right On Time developmentally, but at some point he decided that animal sounds were a way cooler way of identifying animals, and he also decided that consonants were for the birds, thank you very much. Vowel sounds were in, in a big way.

So, time went on and he’d pick up a few more words here and there, but more importantly (to us, anyway) he could understand everything we said. And I mean everything. He could even follow complex, multi-step directions. He laughed and played with other kids, so he definitely wasn’t anti-social. He’s known his colours, numbers and letters since he was two, etcetera, etcetera. You get the point.

At about two-and-a-half, K1 was still not talking like other kids his age, but he was definitely communicating. Hubby and I could see that he wanted to talk, and we knew (and were told by a friend) that once he started talking, he’d be doing so in complete sentences. But, we could also tell that he just needed a bit more confidence in himself to make it happen, and while we supported and encouraged him to talk, we weren’t about to force him to do it (which would probably have shut him down completely).

At this point my mom started subtly suggesting to us on a regular basis that we should get him a referral to a speech therapist. The daycare lady began doing the same thing. Subtle was daily “discussions,” flyers on normal speech development sent home in the backpack, and notes left on the counter with the contact info for the Local Government Agency in Charge of Speech Therapy.

The pressure put on us became rather annoying, so a couple of weeks before Christmas I called for a referral, and we got an appointment set up for the end of January. By the time December and January rolled by, K2 started Talking a bit more. His confidence went up. He started Talking even more. Every day his word count climbed.

I still went to the appointment, and I will admit that I don’t regret going. I learned three important things.

1. Ultimately, my husband and I didn’t have too much to worry about. Go figure.

2. I did learn a great tip: during play, the car doesn’t go down the racetrack until the kid says “go!” for example. After they figure out that they have to say the play-trigger word, they’ll do it. This really got him Talking. In fact, by the time the therapist called for the one-month check-up, she was amazed by his progress. It was like he’d never needed to go.

3. I also learned where Hubby and I made our biggest mistake: we don’t baby talk. IE, instead of saying, “Baby crying” in a sing-song voice, we would say, “The baby is crying” in a normal voice. Apparently baby is easier for babies to copy.

You know how we talk to K2? The same way we talked to K1 when he was a baby.

You know why? Now, you can’t get K1 to shut the hell up! And, he asks some pretty good questions, and your answers will invariably lead to more questions, and he can even solve your puzzle for you:

            (Driving behind a dump truck)

            K1: Where is that dump truck going?

            Me: I don’t know.

            K1: But where is he going?

            Me: I don’t know.

            K1: Why not?

            Me: I just don’t know where he’s going.

            K1: But where is he going?

            Me: I don’t know. I can’t ask him.

            K1: Why can’t you ask him?

            Me: Because I can’t talk to the driver.

            K1: Why can’t you talk to the driver?

            Me: Because he can’t hear me.

            K1: Why can’t he not hear you?

            Me: (Enter some long, convoluted babbling on my part while my sleep-deprived/fogged up brain tried to explain this in a way that a three-year old could understand.)

            K1: But you have a phone in here. (Solution!)

            Me: (Reaching over to turn up the volume on the stereo) but I don’t know his number. (This led to a conversation about how I didn’t know who the driver was, and therefore didn’t know his number (“Maybe it’s eight!”) to call him. . . .)

I mean seriously, he doesn’t shut up unless he’s sleeping.

Sure, there are still a few words that you have to get him to repeat a couple of times before the context of the sentence helps you decipher what he’s said—some sounds are still a bit difficult for him, but generally he can talk so well that even strangers can understand everything he says.

This brings us back to the other day.

Mom was in the kitchen and K1 was talking to her. After a bit she says (and still within his hearing), “He’s still a bit delayed with his talking, hey? There are still some sounds he can’t say well.”

I took three good breaths before replying, “Mom, that’s normal. The speech therapist said that there are some sounds that kids don’t master until they’re in school even, like ‘F’.” (Our doctor said the same thing, but I didn’t think that his non-specialist viewpoint would have been appreciated, so I didn’t mention it.)

“Oh, yeah, ‘F’, and ‘R’ and ‘L’, too, are really hard. They’re the last ones, I guess,” she replied back. “I guess he comes by it honestly, if his dad and his grandpa didn’t start talking until they were three,” she said. (This statement would be true of his Talking in general, but not so much for the sounds themselves—see below.)

“Yeah, and really, he can put together sentences that I don’t ever hear coming from four-year-olds, so I’m really not worried about it at all,” I said. I could see some wheels turning in her head, still, and I wanted to tell her to back the fuck off, but I didn’t want to start our day off by making her cry, so I kept my mouth shut. Thankfully, so did she.

Later on I went online and I found a chart that lays out all of the average milestones for Speech Sound Development. Some sounds aren’t mastered until kids are eight. That’s grade three. That’s five years from now. K2 is having no problems with his Speech Sound Development, thank you very much.

I printed off a copy of the chart, and I’m going to give it to her, and I think that I’m going to have a conversation with her because she’s been analysing K2 on his development, too, but that’s another story for another day.

Talk on, folks. Talk on.

#5: Make sure your child gets sufficient sleep.

I whole-heartedly agree with this one. Well, I do in theory, anyway.

I’d like to know, though, if there’s a list somewhere called “101 Things Children Can Do to Help Their Parents?” If there is, somewhere on it is “Make sure that you let Mommy get enough sleep; she’ll be in a much better mood for when you do things that you categorize as fun but that she categorizes as ‘Really?’ or ‘Oh for Crying out Loud’ (often followed by actual crying).” 

Because let me tell you, I could use “sufficient” sleep. What would Sufficient Sleep be? Ideally, eight hours. Pipe Dream, I know. Okay, okay, sufficient would be getting to bed at a reasonable hour, followed by four to five straight hours of uninterrupted sleep with a short break for a diaper change/potty break, quick drink and a quick cuddle before quickly falling back to sleep, followed by another two to four hours of sound sleep before having to get up for the day. Oh heck, I’d be happy with just “more” sleep!

I don’t think that getting your child to sleep through the night is quite what they mean, however, although that would probably help.

I think what Eva probably means is that we should put our children to bed early enough so that when they awaken from a steady slumber in time to get on with their day they’ve slept for as many hours as recommended by people like these guys. And if not, we should provide our children with opportunities for naps (which, I’ve been told (by my mom) should be on a regular schedule and shouldn’t be prevented or interrupted by “errands” etc.

Okay, that gives me: 1. sleeping through the night, 2. going to bed early enough, and 3. naps.

1. Let me start with sleeping through the night. My first child did as a baby, and he’s really good at it now. It took a year and a half, though, to move his chosen bedtime of two a.m. (want to know how many TV shows I watched on DVD while we did four+ hour breastfeeding marathons? A few. And Yay for the DVR) to nine p.m. He’s now three and we are just getting him in bed and to sleep (not always the same thing!) by eight p.m., sometimes earlier. No matter when he falls asleep, he sleeps until seven on average, which has been awesome.

Enter child number two. He’s now almost a year. He goes to sleep for the night much earlier that his big brother, but it’s an anomaly for him to sleep for more than three hours at a time (it used to be one to two hours, so there has been some improvement). Until very recently, a night typically went like this: nurse for an hour to fall asleep; if it’s before eight, pee my diaper within an hour of being put in the crib; nurse some more to fall asleep again; sleep for two to three hours before peeing my diaper at about eleven or twelve; so that I don’t wake up my older brother by screaming through the diaper change, bring me to bed with you so that I can nurse for two hours while you “sleep” and then change my diaper and put me back in my crib; sleep for two to three hours before peeing my diaper at about three; so that I don’t wake up my older brother by screaming through the diaper change, bring me to bed with you so that I can nurse for two hours while you “sleep” and then change my diaper and put me back in my crib; if it’s before four, sleep until four and bring me to bed to nurse while you “sleep” until it’s time to get up (I might go back to my crib for an hour, but good luck with that); if it’s after four, I might go back to my crib for an hour, but it’s not recommended to try.

Recently, I’ve been putting up with a lot of biting in the hopes that it’s just a once-in-awhile thing like it was with child number one, but he finally drew blood the other day and I just can’t nurse anymore. So now I’m expressing, and he can bite all he wants (poor bottle nipple). Now a typical night goes like this: a bottle? Really? Sigh. Suck back the meagre amount that you managed to squeeze out earlier, and let you sing and cuddle me to sleep (and after the first night, I won’t scream that much); you can express some more at this point; sleep for a couple hours until I pee my diaper; this time I guess it’s okay for you to change my diaper first; suck back a bit of milk from the bottle, but let me tell you, I’m pissed off about the change in delivery modes; cuddle me back to sleep and I’ll sleep for a couple of hours until I pee my pants etc. etc. etc.; oh wait—it’s four and you just couldn’t stay awake after I fell asleep last time, so instead of expressed breast milk you’re giving me formula? Wtf, lady. Sigh. I guess I’ll drink some, but I’m going to be talking to my union rep about this when he wakes up (Mom in: I’m assuming he means his big brother. Or, maybe his father); I’ll go back to sleep, but only until six, whereupon you will give me the rest of the formula while I pretend to drink it while snuggling in bed with you in your hopes of my falling asleep again. Ha ha, joke’s on you! Get up lady!

I know that there’s a book out there on how the French mommies get their kids to eat veggies and sleep through the night (one woman was embarrassed that it took her baby until three-months-old to sleep through the night), and during one brutal night I did an internet search for books on getting babies to sleep. I found this so I thought, “Never mind,” and I’ve been making enough progress to make me think that one day I’ll look back on all of this and laugh. Someday.

2. Going to bed early enough: sleep training does work—you just have to be consistent and stronger willed than the child. Lol.

To get child number one to sleep before two, and then before eleven, and then at around nine, without having to nurse/rock/swing and sing, I followed the advice given to me by a daycare operator (I was preparing to go back to work and therefore was shopping around for childcare).

She suggested putting the child to bed at bedtime. Let him cry. After five minutes, go in and check his diaper; change it if necessary. Do not engage with the child—IE don’t talk to the child other than maybe a quick hug, I love you and/or good night. Let him cry. Go back in after ten minutes and repeat the diaper check etc. Go back in after fifteen, twenty, thirty, forty minutes and so on. The first night took three hours or more before he fell to sleep. But I got a LOT of housework done in between checks. The second night took an hour and a half. The third night was less than thirty minutes. After that it only took ten (until toddlerhood).

As a toddler, we’ve managed to get his bedtime to an even earlier hour by following several steps: I set an alarm for starting supper so that we eat by six or so instead of “Oh! It’s seven? When did that happen? What does everyone want for dinner?” I also have two alarms half an hour apart that say “Snack or Bath-time” (depending on when supper ended determines the order of snack and bath-time). Snack Time is important because it prevents the “Mommy, I’m Hungries” five minutes after going to bed. Actually, they’ll still try it, but now you can legitimately say “I don’t believe you. Go to bed.” Then I have the “Bedtime” alarm which means brush your teeth, get a story, and get to bed. I’m not super rigid with the alarms (life does happen), but it does help me keep on track a little better, and later on I’ll be able to teach my kids a useful tool for taking over bedtime as their own responsibility. There are still nights where he cries (self-soothes) or plays, and we did have a few months of having to tie his door shut so that he couldn’t escape (we tried a baby gate but he just camped out by his door which was not conducive to sleep), but it usually only takes a few minutes for things to get quiet.

We are working on all of this with baby number two. He naturally goes to bed earlier on his own than his brother did, but he does not like to sleep through the night. (See (1) above.)

3. Providing naps. I’ve met people who are housebound at specific times of the day so that their children can nap. Kudos!

Child One’s naps have always been random, and now if they happen, they happen so late in the afternoon that I’m up until eleven with him, so I just deal with a couple hours of evening crankiness and make him wait until bedtime.

Child Two regularly gets sleepy at eleven-ish, one-ish, and five-ish. I like to take the boys to Strong Start which happens from nine to noon. Sometimes I have to be out in the afternoon or evening. Therefore, naptime sometimes gets pushed back a bit. My nephew must nap at ten, so he doesn’t get to go to Strong Start. I’ve found that eventually Child Two gets tired enough to fall asleep at Strong Start (even during noisy Gym Time), while out shopping, in the car, or while visiting. And if he doesn’t, he’ll fall asleep on the way home. I do make sure that if we have a couple of busy days in a row and that if he seems extra tired, we’ll stay home and have a quiet day (Child One appreciates this, too).

So, in the grand scheme of things, I try my best to make sure that my children get sufficient sleep, but life is life, and my kids are who they are, so I’m not going to lose any sleep over any lack of sleep because eventually it all balances out in the end. At least, I think it does. I’m pretty tired, so math is a bit difficult.

101 Things I Can Do to Help My Children: The Most Important One

Recently I picked up a pamphlet titled "101 Things Parents Can Do to Help Children." I am going to try them all, but not necessarily in order.

 

The first one, for me, isn't even part of the list. It doesn't even have a number, and it's at the bottom, yet I think that it's the most important Thing of all: "Enjoy life together."

I love it when my kids are happy. I love it when I see that other people's kids are happy. I love it when I'm happy, and I love to see other people happy when they're with their kids.

But, does anyone have perfectly happy kids all the time? And, really, are any parents perfectly happy all the time? Maybe. If that's you, Kudos! I'm not sure that I believe you. More on that later.

My big questions are these: does happiness mean the same thing as enjoyment, do you need one in order to have the other, or can they be independent of one another; and, is 100% enjoyment an attainable (and healthy) goal?

I think that happiness and enjoyment can appear to be the same thing, but I think that they are also very different things. I think that happiness is more of a state of mind or a feeling in your heart, whereas enjoyment is a state of having fun. You can, for instance, be happy with your life in general, but at a particular moment you might not be enjoying what you are doing, or you could be depressed in general, but hey, right this second something tickled your fancy and you actually enjoyed this moment, if even for just a few seconds. So, no, you don’t need one to have the other, but it is probably easier to enjoy life and have fun when you’re happy than when you’re seriously depressed. I’ve known this to be true myself. On the other hand, finding a way to enjoy more and more little moments in your life can sometimes help you become happier in life. This too I know.

Is it possible, though, to enjoy absolutely everything you do, to enjoy 100% of your life (in this case, with your child)? I think only you can answer that for yourself, and I’m sure that someone out there will answer yes, and they might even mean it. Me? All I can do is to try. Yoda would be so disappointed.

Oh sure, I want to enjoy life together with my children, and I want them to enjoy life with me. I have to be realistic, though. I think that the more attainable (and healthier) goal for us would be to strive for 100% happiness. Okay, 90%, because let’s face it, crap happens that will make us sad every now and then. Enjoyment, however?

Yeah, I’m pretty sure that my toddler doesn’t enjoy his time-outs for inappropriate behaviour. Actually, I’m very sure. Yelling “You’re a bad mommy!” at me while I’m putting him in the time-out is a pretty big clue. But am I going to stop giving him time-outs for things like purposefully pouring his milk on the floor at supper time while you are telling him “No! Please do not pour your mil-argh!”? Or for pushing his baby brother over again when you just told him not to do it again or he’ll get a time-out for it? Nope. Time-outs are a pretty necessary thing; I do not want to be the parent with the completely out-of-control, spoiled brat of a child anywhere, even though he honestly tries to be that child sometimes, I swear.

I also don’t think that he thoroughly enjoys having to wear clothes some days (no really, Buddy, it is a social norm to not go out in public naked, honest), or going to bed when he’s not tired even though it’s dark outside (he’s only rubbing his eyes and crying every two seconds because we’re making him go to bed, not because he’s tired, really), or having to come in from the super-fun backyard for a potty break (because apparently telling him that he’ll be going out again right after is a big fat lie even when it isn’t, and is therefore a cause for a mini-meltdown).

I personally don’t enjoy being called a bad mommy, I don’t enjoy feeling like an ogre because I’m constantly correcting/redirecting inappropriate (bad) behaviour (when, exactly, do children stop testing?), I don’t enjoy how physically and mentally exhausted I constantly seem to be (it would be nice if the baby slept for more than two hours at a time), and I really do NOT enjoy having my nipples almost bitten off (somebody’s getting weaned, which actually makes me a little sad (but my boobs will be happier. And less bloody)).

I DO, however, enjoy reading with my kids, I enjoy playing with my kids, I enjoy going for walks with my kids, I enjoy camping with my kids, I enjoy learning with my kids, and I enjoy laughing with my kids. There’s a LOT that I enjoy doing with my kids.

And, generally, I think that we’re pretty happy.

Do you want the reality check, though? Sometimes I think that the 100% people are lying, and sometimes it’s just really hard.

I said at the beginning that I don’t believe the people who seem to be happy 100% of the time. Sure, you may seem to be having lots of fun, but are you trying too hard? Are you spending more time in your car getting to your fun stuff than you are doing the fun stuff? Are you enjoying the trip, too? Shouldn't we be enjoying the journey as well as the destinations? I don't think that you can enjoy life when you're trying so hard to have fun by doing a million fun things a day that you're stressing yourself out. 

 

That, and life throws curveballs at you that can make it hard to enjoy every moment in life. Not impossible, but harder nonetheless.

My second pregnancy/childbirth did reeealy funky things to my hormones. Some days it’s all I can do to not cry. For no reason. It takes an extra effort on those days to not snap at my kids and at my husband. Thankfully those days are in the minority.

My friend, however, is fighting (and winning the battle against) Cancer. SHE is exhausted, and with good reason. She is finding it so hard to enjoy her kids right now. She is finding it very difficult to do all of the things that she used to enjoy on a regular basis. In fact, it’s a win for her if she gets off the couch, and she’s feeling guilty about all of the things that she’s NOT doing with her younger child that she did for the older one.

How do we enjoy life with our children when crap like this happens?

For me, I’m trying to find the balance between OCD Uptight Freak-Show and Lazy Lackadaisical Useless Parent. I’m trying to do more fun things with my kids without going overboard—we all need downtime, too.

For my friend, she needs to know that it’s okay for her to spend days on the couch. I’ve seen her on her bad days. She’s still there for her kids, no matter what, which is more than I can say for some healthy parents. She needs to know, too, that it’s okay to take a break from doing all of the things that she used to do (hobbies, crafts, etc.). She needs to know that it’s okay to sleep on someone else’s couch while visiting, because hey, who wouldn’t like to be able to do that? She has an end date for her chemo, so really, she needs to know that there will come a day when she’ll not only feel like, but will be able to do everything that she wants to do. She’ll be able to have more high-energy fun with her kids. For now, though? I’m sure that she has moments where she can find enjoyment with them, even if they’re little moments.

I think maybe I’ll (try to) conclude here (it’s late, I’m tired, and what was supposed to be a shorty has turned out to be a bit long—ramble much?) even if it feels a bit random.

“Enjoy life together.”

In my quest to do these 101 Things, I will try to enjoy them all. And, in doing everything else that I do with my children, and husband, I will try to enjoy them all, too. And, of course, I hope that my kids and my husband enjoy it all too.

I would like us all to be Happy most of the time while Enjoying the Fun things (with realistic expectations, of course) because even though we all have to do things that we don’t want to do at times, the fun should outweigh the miserable. Shouldn’t it?

I'd like it to.

 

How do you enjoy life with your children?