Month: November 2015

Things Grace and Whit do alone

I loved this post by Elisabeth Stitt about 10 things children need to be able to do on their own by middle school.  The post, and the topic, reminded me of Jessica Lahey‘s marvelous book, The Gift of Failure, which I read, loved, and reviewed this fall.  Lahey asserts, as does Stitt, that we need to let our children do more, in every way.  Their learning certain skills and activities both prepares them for adulthood and lifts some of the stultifying burden of doing everything from parents.

I share this view.  I want my children to emerge from our household able to do a load of laundry, cook a simple dinner, and interact confidently with adults.  With that in mind, here are a few things that I both encourage and expect Grace and Whit to do by themselves.  These tasks make my life easier (though at first I am always nervous, of course) but far more importantly they build their confidence and sense of mastery in the world.

Cook dinner.  Late this summer, when Matt was away, I went to a late afternoon yoga class and left both the children at home and asked Grace to make dinner. She cooked hamburgers on the stove, cleaned everything up, set the table, lit candles.  It was pleasurable for me and hugely gratifying for her.  She’s asked several times since them to be allowed to make dinner alone, and each time I joyfully say yes.

Fold and put away their laundry.  It was reading Lahey’s book that made me realize I have to stop putting away Whit’s laundry and refolding his tee-shirts when he rummages through them.  Who cares.  He can find what he needs, and the lesson of re-doing everything he does is far more toxic than letting a little mess stand.

Walk to and from school.  We don’t do this often in the morning, since I prioritize sleep.  As soon as our school allows it, I like Grace and Whit to walk the 0.75 miles home alone.  They know the way home that has stop lights and crossing guards, and I think they enjoy the downtime.

Solder metal.  Whit as a soldering iron and he uses it unsupervised.  It took both Matt and I a little while to get used to this idea, but the pride Whit feels when I wear a necklace he fixed for me with his soldering iron – every single time – delights me. Plus, I love that I didn’t have to go to a jeweler.

Shake hands with, address by name, and speak with adults. We are old-fashioned and use Mr. and Mrs. by default.  Grace and Whit still struggle in some cases to make eye contact with grown-ups, but it continues to be an expectation.  We spend a lot of time as a family and rarely seat the children at a separate table.  I expect them to interact with adults, to make conversation and respond when spoken to.  They’ve both learned from a very early age that it’s very important to ask questions of other people.  I’m constantly amazed at how few people do this.

Pack their own lunches.  I still sometimes do this, but the truth is I do that because I love it.  Grace in particular enjoys packing her own lunch and both are hugely capable of it.  Even when I pack lunch, they both know that the first thing they do when they come in the door after school is empty their lunch boxes and put the glass containers from the day in the dishwasher.

Do their own homework, alone.  Both kids know that if they need help or have a question, they can ask.  They do, from time to time.  Otherwise, the expectation is that they manage their own homework.  We received an email from school recently asking parents to back off from “helping” with homework.  In many cases it was clear the work was not done by the children themselves, the email said.  I laughed out loud, since while I have many issues, that is not one of them.  I think expressing interest in what they’re learning at school is vital.  I think doing their homework with them is damaging.

What should Grace and Whit be doing alone that they’re not?  What are your kids doing alone?  Do you agree with me that this is important?

Times of change are holy

“Times of change are holy. We may not know where we are going. It may not feel like our feet are on solid ground. They aren’t. We are crossing a bridge to another part of our lives. Sometimes we may find ourselves at this bridge unwittingly, not certain how we got there, not certain we want to cross. Other times we may have sought, prayed for, hoped for, longed for this time of change. Drive across the bridge. You don’t have to understand it all right now. Information and understanding will come later. You’ll get to the other side. For now trust and experience what your are going through. Know that this time of change is sacred too.”

– Melody Beattie

Thank you to Gloria for sharing these powerful words with me.

How She Does It: Angela Santomero

Angela Santomero
Angela Santomero

Do you know Angela Santomero?  You might not.  But I bet you know her work, especially if you’re a parent.  Blues Clues?  Super Why?  Peep and the Big Wide World?  Angela created these characters and more.  It has been years since my children enjoyed those TV shows, but I’ll always feel a fondness for them.  In a very real way they accompanied my early years as a mother.  In addition to being the producer responsible for such great television hits, Angela is also the mother of two daughters.  She lives with them and her husband in Connecticut.

I was hugely honored when Angela agreed to participate in How She Does It (thank you to Samantha Ettus for putting us in touch.)  You can learn more about Angela, her work, and her thoughts on parenting at her website, Angela’s Clues.

AngelaKidsGrnwch

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Tell me about the first hour of your day?  (I often describe mine as being “fired out of a cannon”)

My husband does the heavy lifting in the morning. We get up and get our two girls out the door for school and then I get ready for work. I had started meditating for 10 minutes in the morning and have my “morning pages” journal by Julia Cameron on the side of my bed. But alas, as school started I have yet to do those things!

Do you have a work uniform that you rely on for getting dressed?  What is it?

For the Fall it’s usually a dress and tall boots!

How do you and your spouse reserve conflicts about scheduling?

The same way everyone does — we debate. But we debate Italian style!  🙂

Do you second-guess yourself?  What do you do when that happens?

I have to remember to always trust my gut. My best decisions are the ones that I make from my intuition. I’ve always said that I studied and read every book about child development and then just “threw them away” and started writing from my gut. The truth is I need to be prepared and then to write from my passion.

What time do you go to bed?

11pm-ish

Do you exercise?  If so, when?

I love yoga. I tend to go to more classes on the weekends than during the week.

Do you cook dinner for your kids?  Do you have go-to dishes you can recommend?

We make a mean veggie stir fry!  Varying the veggies and protein and sauce changes it up!

Do you have any sense of how your children feel about your working?

I know they feel proud. They have been to some of my talks where I get to thank them. And they love to see the entire production process and help out in it. My girls are 14 and 12 now so they have helped to give notes on scripts, storyboards, animation, and have even lent their voices for voice overs! They love seeing a bit of themselves on screen! I also know it’s hard when I travel or work late. FaceTime has been a godsend– I’ve been face timed out of meetings to check on next day outfits or haircuts or to hear the latest news in their lives.

What is the single piece of advice you would give another working mother?

Make your own rules with regard to your own kids and how you parent. Don’t follow anyone elses. And the best advice I was ever given was “you are the best parent when you don’t care what others think.”  Also, as a working mom, the ability to be flexible is key for me so I can be at as many things as possible.

And, inspired by Vanity Fair, a few quick glimpses into your life:

Favorite artist? Greg Santomero, my husband and Traci Paige Johnson, co creator of Blue’s Clues

Favorite jeans? AG

Shampoo you use? Kerastase and switch off with Peter Thomas Roth

Favorite book? The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron.

Favorite quote?  “Play is the work of childhood.” – Piaget

“Education is a dress rehearsal for life that is yours to lead.” – Nora Ephron

Favorite musician? Listening to a lot of Taylor Swift these days!

Favorite item (toy, clothing, or other) for your children?

My 12 year old:  her sewing machine

My 14 year old: her collection of Broadway playbills.

My writing life, and our only true zero-sum resource

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My favorite line from Lauren Groff’s Fates and Furies, which I read this weekend.  I think you could say that a central task of adulthood for me has been stripping away whatever is unnecessary so that I can be sure to be present for the small and the daily, which is where I find life.

On my post marking nine years of blogging (O.M.G.) I asked if there were specific things people wanted to hear about.  More than one person asked a version of how do I balance it, how do I make time for writing, how do I juggle the various responsibilities that are a part of my life.  And then, about a month ago, a reader and friend wrote me an email with some more questions about making time for writing and it felt right to answer these queries in a post.

I’ve written about time before.  It’s one of the themes I circle around, like a black hole, drawn inexorably into its orbit.  I believe firmly that time is life’s only true zero-sum resource.  My life is replete with both joys and responsibilities.  I work full time.  I have limited childcare because I want to be Grace and Whit’s primary caretaker.  I don’t have a lot of help with household tasks and I am responsible for most domestic chores.  I keep a pad of paper on my desk, between my two computers (I have a laptop for work and a laptop for personal things, on which I do my writing and my blogging).  On that pad of paper is a running to-do list for household/life things, and I fill the page every couple of days.  I’m looking at it right now, and it says: UPS store, laundry, Whole Foods, Grace Thanksgiving food contribution, birthday card to Alexandra, post office, dry cleaner, order holiday gifts for godchildren, send book to Gloria.

One thing I know for sure is everybody feels busy.  No matter what our lives consist of, they all feel full.  And this feeling is all that matters.  I don’t participate in the societal glorification of busy that I see all around me, and I refuse to compare my life to anyone else’s.  That is just irrrelevant.  As I tell Grace all the time: run your own race.  That’s all any of us can do.

So how do I do it?  When do I make time for writing?  What does my life look like?  I wish I had good, clear answers here, but I don’t.

All I know is this: I have prioritized what matters to me.  I’ve made choices.  I’ve let a lot of things go. 

Once you know what you prize above all else, then how to allocate your time becomes radically clear.  I’ve stripped away almost all claims on my hours other than those belonging to work, family, and writing.  Because time is zero sum, things had to go.  I have many dear friends I very rarely (never) see.  We are often not invited to social events anymore, maybe because I said no several times and maybe because I’m boring.  I’m not on non-profit boards and I rarely go to adult events in the evenings or weekends. That time is for Grace and Whit.  This, the idea that how we spend our time reflects what we value, is a theme I’ve touched on many times before.  We know from Annie Dillard that “how we spend our days is, of course, how we spend your lives.” Your week is a map of matters to you.  I am deeply comfortable with my map.

I am an extremely structured person so many have been surprised that I have a fluid approach to work/life/writing balance.  I actually dislike the word “balance.”  Maybe it feels better to say that I have a fluid approach to integrating the various essential parts of my life.  I used to write after the children went to bed, but Grace and Whit stay up later now and that doesn’t work anymore.  I also find I am absolutely fried by the end of the day.

So on an average day, I wake up early – 5, 5:30.  Maybe 4 days a week I will go out for a run at that point.  I like being up before most of the rest of the world and find the dark and quiet very soothing.  When I get home, I have my first cup of coffee (this is one of my very favorite moments of the entire day) and take a shower.  Sometimes I still have half an hour before Grace and Whit get up, and I’ll use that time to clear out my work and personal email and to skim the blogs I read daily.

Then it’s up and at ’em.  I wake the children up, make breakfast for them, and take them to school.  I try to leave my phone in my bag during this hour, because I’ve found that I’m materially more present and relaxed with them when I do that.  We live less than a mile from school and could easily walk, but we usually drive because I’d rather they slept the extra 10 minutes in the morning. By 8 I’m at my desk and starting my work day.

While my office is in my house, about 3 or 4 days a week I have to go into Boston or elsewhere for meetings for work.  Most of my days, Monday to Friday, are composed of work.  Occasionally, if I have a 30 minute break in my schedule, I’ll read blogs or check twitter or, even, sometimes, write a quick blog post.

This is true answer to the question of when I write: around the edges of the rest of my life.

There’s no doubt that working at home is essential to my life operating as it does.  Despite the fact that I work a lot of hours, I have a lot of flexibility and I’m hugely grateful for that.  I have wonderful babysitters who pick the children up from school during the week and bring them home, but I’m also around most of the time.  Parenting children of this age feels less outsource-able than any other time before.  I don’t know when it is that they’ll want to talk, and I want to be sure I’m here when they do.  So I put that desire above almost all else.

Most days I take a break from the work computer around 6 to have dinner with Grace and Whit (usually something easy that I put into the oven earlier in the day).  Our babysitters have usually left by then.  After dinner I’ll do another hour or so of work while Grace and Whit are showering and finishing homework or simply puttering.  Many days we have to fit a practice in here too, so I drive several children to the hockey rink or make sure mine are ready to be picked up by a carpool.  My favorite days are the ones where we don’t have practice and life has a slightly slower rhythm.

I spend time with both children before bed, often quietly.  Sometimes we all pile into our bed to read books together.  Sometimes I read Harry Potter or The Golden Compass to one child.  Sometimes we talk about a math problem that is particularly thorny.  Sometimes we discuss what happened that day at school.  In between time with Grace and Whit I’ll check blogs or twitter again, and my email a last time.  I try to have all screens shut down and put away by 9 and that has made a difference in my sleep.  I read 30-45 minutes of an old-fashioned paper book in bed before I go to sleep.

My days tumble by at alarming speed, and many of them have a similar shape.  There is a lot of work, some domestic chores and responsibilities, and time for simply being around my two children.  Matt travels for work and is here some of the time but not all.  As you can see, there isn’t a ton of time for prolonged, focused writing.  I try to spend a couple of hours during the weekend doing that, and I’ve been known to sit at the hockey rink with my computer during a weeknight practice.  But I haven’t written a book yet, that much is clear, and maybe this is part of the reason why.  Blog posts lend themselves to brief windows of time, but sustained narrative works don’t.

I have often exhorted people to stop hiding behind “I don’t have time” and to recognize that what they value they make time for.  If I believe that – and I do – I should own up to not prioritizing writing a book.  When I do work on longer form things (and I have, multiple times) I use Scrivener. I love this software for structuring a book-length work.  I write essays for places other than my blog in Microsoft Word.  I write my blog straight into WordPress.

This entry is long-winded and unstructured, but I think in that way it echoes the topic at hand.  My life, and the days that compose it, aren’t rigidly ordered, either.  I put my professional life and my family life at the top of my priority list (those are the rocks in the jar of my life) and writing and reading come next (the sand that fills in the gaps between the rocks in the jar, to continue that metaphor).

Of course I feel sorrow sometimes at the things I haven’t done and those I don’t do on a regular basis.  I wish I had more time for yoga, more time for my friends, a published book under my belt.  But when I look hard in the mirror, my choices hold up to scrutiny (my own, that is – and nobody else’s matters, does it?).  On the surface, my life may look small, but what I have realized is that tight focus on what I truly value allows me to access a deep, glittering cavern inside.  My life is simultaneously narrow and wide.  I don’t have any true regrets about what I prioritize in my life, and I feel comfortable that anyone can extrapolate from a description of my days what it is I most value.  Do you feel that way?

there is a consequence of attentiveness

And as with prayer, which is a dipping of oneself toward the light, there is a consequence of attentiveness to the grass itself, and to the sky itself, and to the floating bird.  I too leave the fret and enclosure of my own life.  I too dip toward the immeasurable.

– Mary Oliver, Winter Hours

Thank you to Katie, whose post about this book reminded me of it and caused me to re-read it.