Cottonwood Branches

Last month, we had a big snowstorm here in the front range.  Nearly a foot of heavy, wet snow fell overnight downing trees all over the area.

Colorado is of course no stranger to snow, and the people and ecosystem are well adapted to the changing rhythms of the seasons.  (In other words, no snow day!) In most cases, this storm would have come and gone without much fanfare.

However the timing of this storm reminded us that the seasons of nature aren’t always quite as regular or orderly as we might suppose.  This time the snow came before the diminishing light and cooler temperatures had signaled the leaves to dry out. And before the winds that usually come whistling down the mountains in the fall had had a chance to blow the dried leaves to the ground.

And the impact of this awkward timing was evident all over, including in our backyard!

What was so striking to me was that this was a vivid example of something that I’d been thinking about since I heard Cairene MacDonald talking about transitions and the difference between what happens when we resist them, and when we don’t.

She reminded us that we’re nearly always in transition in one form or another, whether it’s transitioning from one activity or another or one phase of business to another.  And goodness knows as moms, we’re constantly witnessing our children transitioning from one stage to another.  Newborn to infant… infant to toddler… etc.  And our parenting has to constantly shift as well.  It takes a lot of conscious awareness to keep up with where our kids are instead of where they were two months or two minutes ago!

So riffing on this article, Cairene described the natural cycles of change using a deciduous tree as an example: birth, growth, maturity, turbulence, hibernation, and rebirth.

Turbulence is a natural part of the cycle of growth and is a signal that it’s time for a change.  When we look at the natural world, it is obvious that turbulence is a beneficial force- not a sign that something is wrong.

At one point Cairene said something that really struck me:

Nature doesn’t resist change.  Only humans do.

The tree doesn’t say, “But I don’t want to drop my leaves!  I’ve spent all summer getting them just right!”

When I heard that, a light bulb went on in my head.  I saw the whole picture in my head immediately: and said to the class, “Of course.. trees HAVE to drop their leaves or else when the snow comes, they will lose entire branches.”

Little did I know when I said that (way back in September!) that I would have such a real-life demonstration of this lesson!

When we look at the natural world it’s so easy to see the valuable role of turbulence in protecting the tree as a whole, and how much more vulnerable it would be if the winds didn’t regularly come.  We don’t think the tree is sick when its leaves start to change color and dry out, we recognize this as a normal part of the natural process.

But in our human lives, we often assume that turbulence (whether it’s with our children, our spouse, our community, our household routines, etc) is a sign that something is wrong.  When those first leaves start to fall (when we forget a bill, or something upsets us beyond what seems reasonable), we think it might be a signal that something very bad is (or might be) happening.

When we think something might be wrong, we tend to get scared, and when this happens, we humans seem to hold on even tighter to the status quo instead of recognizing turbulence as a signal to start dropping things.

Especially when it’s something we wanted, or something that’s been around so long we can’t quite imagine life without it, it can be very hard to imagine dropping these leaves!  Goodness knows I’ve certainly been reluctant to let go of things (and by things I mean things- clothes, furniture, books, etc… but also ideas, projects, plans, expectations and relationships.

But can you imagine a tree protesting, “It can’t be fall yet!  I’m not ready to lose my leaves!”? It’s really such a silly image!

Unlike trees, however, humans have a choice about how to deal with turbulence.  We can go with it, responding to the signal to start dropping things, or we can resist it, in which case chaos often results.

The tangle of broken tree limbs, power outages and blocked driveways was a vivid testimonial to the chaos that can result when the trees don’t have the chance to respond to the call to drop their leaves.

Finding the Fractal Flowers

Taking a step backwards, I find it especially interesting to note the fractal nature of nature- a tree that doesn’t drop its leaves risks its branches.  And a tree that doesn’t drop its branches risks being toppled completely.

Another fractal image is the larger cycles that encompass and reflect the smaller ones.

This ‘early’ snowstorm may seem out of time, out of step with the rhythms of the seasons, but perhaps there is a bigger cycle at work.  Just as the trees shed their leaves to make room for new growth in the spring, the loss of individual branches, or even whole trees is another version of letting some things drop away to make room for new growth.

And as if this weren’t enough to ponder for one day- this showed up in my morning newspaper:

Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another.

John Muir

What do you think?

Are you like me?   Do you tend to hold on even tighter to the status quo when things get rocky?  And have you ever experienced the broken branches that result from a refusal to drop your leaves? (I know I have!) 

Do you see other fractals here that I don’t?

Why is it so much easier to enjoy the building than the destroying phases of nature and our own lives?  

Please share in the comments!

P.S.  Cairene has just released her latest masterpiece: How to Get Out of the Quicksand of Overwhelm.  In case you don’t know her, let me just say that Cairene knows that we creative types are bound to get ourselves into sticky situations biting off more than we can chew.  With great humor and compassion, she helps them us gently extricate ourselves and create paths and early warning systems so that we don’t fall into the same hole more than once!

I have this ebook myself and can tell you there’s lots of great stuff in there. She helps you figure out which leaves to drop, and what comes next in a way that keeps you moving forward in a gentle but steady way.

Hi sweetie!

For some reason, I felt compelled to write a really short post today simply to remind you that you are enough.

Right this minute.

No matter what the state of your house, waistline, bank account, to-do list is… you are enough.

Given my tendency to rather long posts, I am tempted to go on and on about all the ways in which you are enough.

But I’m going to stop here and trust that this post (short as it is!) is enough.

Can you pause for one moment and breath that enoughness into your whole being?

Leave a comment and let me know what happens when you do!

This post is a celebration of diversity, but not the usual kind.  Rather, it’s a celebration of a diversity of ways of thinking, and of how different ways of approaching the world can wake us up to the limitations of our own worldview.

It is the story of a philosopher, an engineer and a batch of failed fudge.

It all started a couple of weeks ago when the cool weather and fall smells in the air had me craving something rich and decadent.

I consider myself an above average cook, and there’s not much that really intimidates me in the kitchen.  Even pie crust, which sends some home cooks running for cover (or Pilsbury) doesn’t faze me.  But I’ve never had much success with candy.  Maybe it’s because I don’t make it much, or maybe I don’t make it much because I haven’t had much luck…. who knows?  At any rate, I decided that I was going to dig out my cookbooks and take another crack at fudge.  And not the kind with marshmallow fluff.  Because I’m hard core that way!

I followed the recipe.  Measured the ingredients.  Stirred when it said to stir.  Stopped stirring when it said to stop.  Boiled to the soft ball stage as best I could, peeking at the tiny window of my candy thermometer (with bonus points for actually using a thermometer!).  Then I let it cool to the right temperature at which point I began to “stir vigorously until mixture starts to thicken and loses its gloss.”

Let me tell you, stirring the pot of brown goo was a chore because it was really thick.  Just when I was about to give up and pour it into my buttered dish, something changed.  It was like the mixture seized and all of a sudden I had a hard, thick lump on my hands.  I just barely got it scraped into the pan before it solidified.  And boy, did it solidify.

My fantasy of creamy, silky, mouth-watering fudge was shattered.

This was a hard, grainy, dull-brown brick.  The last bits from the pan came out as rough-edged chunks that I could barely press into the rest of the now-solid mass.  This fudge would not be sliced.  Instead it crumbled under the knife.  I might have been willing to overlook all its aesthetic and textural shortcomings if it had tasted good.  But alas, it did not.

Really, this could only be described as a complete and utter failure.

Partly to share my woes (and perhaps generate a little sympathy) I posted this status update on Facebook:

I just threw away the worst batch of fudge I’ve ever seen- grainy and hard as a rock. I like to think I’m a better than decent cook, so I’m not taking this well!

A few of my friends came through with consolations and suggestions for what might have gone wrong:

MC: Candy is its own beast though. Being a good cook at everything else doesn’t matter to candy. Blame it on the humidity or something like that.

SP: sorry. i bet it was some bad ingr you had no control over!

COG: Are you sure you can’t blame the cooking-at-altitude thing?

Me:  Thanks for cheering me up you guys! I’m guessing it does have something to do with the altitude. But I don’t know enough about candy making to be able to compensate for the different boiling point. With pasta it doesn’t really matter so much!

And then this:

COG: At a guess, try focusing not on temperature but on how much the temperature has increased from the boiling point. With the lower boiling point at altitude, this will give you a lower final temp, which will leave you with chewy instead of jawbreaker…

Excuse me, your assumptions are showing…

In case you couldn’t guess, COG (aka Carl) is a beloved classmate from Rice who went on to a career as an engineering professor.  He’s a real, live rocket scientist and one of the smartest people I know but sweet and funny enough that we don’t hold it against him.

When he suggested tweaking the temperature, it was a paradigm shift moment for me.  Regardless of whether or not his suggestion would actually work, merely by making it, he was assuming that there was a solution to be found.

Bumping into that assumption revealed that I was inhabiting quite a different one.  Namely, that my ability to make fudge was dependent on some ‘mystery of the universe’ that I would never be able to know, predict or affect.

Looking through an engineer’s eyes, I saw that a very different set of assumptions was possible.  One could see the making of fudge expressed as an equation:

Sugar+ Milk+ Chocolate+ Heat  = Fudge

And that even though the transformation of raw ingredients into fudge might seem mysterious and capricious, it was subject to laws of nature that (even if I don’t know them) are knowable.  And even if I can’t (at my current level of knowledge and skill) predict or manipulate the factors necessary to achieve creamy fudge, these factors could in fact be predicted and manipulated by those with sufficient knowledge, skill and equipment.

The Coach gets Coached

In a way it was like being given a dose of my own medicine, because part of what I do as a coach is help people see how assumptions they don’t even realize they have shape their approach (or lack thereof) to a particular situation.

In the case of the fudge failure, when Carl proposed a potential solution, I realized that I hadn’t really expected that there could be an actual solution to this problem.

I’ve always been more interested in questions than answers, and so I suppose it’s no surprise that I ended up studying philosophy, a discipline that is either celebrated or ridiculed for its failure to come up with any hard and fast answers, instead of engineering where finding ‘the answer’ is par for the course.

So Carl’s response was like a gentle smack upside the head snapping me out of the world of ‘mysterious forces’ wrecking my fudge and into the world of logical, empirical cause and effect.

It’s not always comfortable, but honestly, I love that moment of ‘bing’ when I suddenly see something that was totally invisible before.  All kinds of possibilities open at that moment.

Here’s the last bit of our FB conversation

Me:  I love you Carl!
Can I just tell you, my life has never been the same without an engineer on call for just this sort of situation!
Philosophers are used to having questions unanswered so I was willing to chalk this up as one of the many great mysteries of life, whereas the engineer in the crowd assumes there might actually be an answer!

COG: Why would you assume there isn’t an answer?  The reason problems exist is so that we can find answers to them.  At least that’s what I remember them teaching me…

Of course.

Thanks for reminding me!

The Moral of the Story

My key takeaway from this experience was to notice (once again!) how a bumping into a different worldview brings my own into sharp relief.  Since then, I’ve been wondering about all the other places in my life where I don’t even go looking for answers because I assume there are none to be found.

I still believe that there are ‘mysteries of the universe’ that can’t be explained by science and in some cases we shouldn’t even try.  In other words, sometimes it’s great to let mysteries stand as mysteries.

But sometimes having ‘unsolved mysteries’ in our own lives means only that we can’t see the solution from where we stand.  Our own assumptions are invisible to us, and so someone with an outside perspective can help us find answers in places we never thought to look.

Your Turn!

Have you had the rug ripped out from under your assumptions lately?  Had a useful shift in perspective?  Do you have a fool-proof fudge recipe?

Please share in the comments!

If you liked this, you might like some other paradigm shifting posts:

When The Tooth Fairy Loses Her Wings

Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning

Morning Rush: Logistical Challenge or Existential Crisis?

Systems with a Side of Philosophizing

In this post, I spelled out my theory about why getting to school is more an existential crisis than logistical challenge.  Or at least as much an existential crisis as logistical challenge.

I also promised I’d write more about systems that you can use to ease your way through the existential and logistical tangles.

One of the first systems we ever implemented in our household was the ‘morning checklist.’  I started this when AJ was about 3 and going to preschool.  It had 4 things on it:

1. Get Dressed
2. Eat Breakfast
3. Brush Teeth
4. Shoes and Backpack

I typed this up on the computer and illustrated each activity with cheesy clip art.

This hung on our refrigerator for years until we moved.

I made this list because just a few months into preschool, I was already getting tired of feeling like the drill sergeant moving him through all the things that needed to be done in the morning.

Even before he could read, he knew what the pictures meant, and so I didn’t have to nag him about doing the next thing, and the next.

If things weren’t moving along, I could just ask him, “What’s next on your list?”  He could tell me if he needed help (which he did at first!) and at his request I was ready and willing to put toothpaste on his toothbrush, or tie his shoes.

What was so great about the list was that it empowered him to do what needed to be done without my reminding or interfering.  He could ask for help when and if he needed it, and not have me bugging him if he could handle things on his own.

I’d always intended to re-create this list, but after we moved I realized that I didn’t really need to, because after living with it for so long, we had all internalized this list.  Seven years later, this is still the order of operations around here and there’s no discussion or argument or friction in this arena.  This is a well-worn groove that leads us right to the front door every day.

So here’s your action item for the day:

Make a checklist for your morning routine.

Right now, jot down the things that need to happen to get everyone out the door.  You might want to make a separate list for each kid, and maybe even lists for the adults as well!

A few helpful hints:

• Don’t be boring! Make it colorful.  Use pictures.  If you wanted to, you could even make it a ‘treasure map.’  One mom I know writes a list (brush teeth, comb hair, sunscreen) on the bathroom mirror with dry-erase markers!
• Keep it simple. No more than 7 steps.  (Our brains aren’t really built to handle more than that.)
• Use VERBS. This tells your kid what he/she’s supposed to be DOING and keeps things moving along.  (I didn’t know this when I wrote ‘shoes and backpack.’)
• Put it where they (and you) can track each step of the way. If your house is large or they have to go between floors in the morning, it might help to have one list in each place.

So tell me something I don’t know…

I’m guessing that this idea is nothing new.  Chances are you’ve heard this bit of ‘organization’ advice before and you either tried it and it didn’t work.  Nobody read the list.  Or you wrote a list and it wasn’t the right list, so it didn’t help.

Or maybe you never even tried making a list because eewww… who wants to be chained to a checklist every morning?

I totally get it.  So here’s where I go all philosophical and spell out the deep reasons why something as simple as a morning checklist really can help with both the logistical and existential challenges.  And while I can’t promise to tell you anything you didn’t already know, maybe I can give you a slightly new perspective and some motivation to give it another try.

Putting on the philosopher hat

Back to the existential angst… Our kids start the day being utterly vulnerable, asleep in their beds surrounded by the physical and emotional warmth of ‘home.’  In the space of an hour or so, they must prepare themselves, inside and out, for the rigors of the school day.  Besides getting dressed, eating breakfast and brushing their teeth, they have to get their ‘game face’ on so they can meet the demands of the math test, navigate the social scene, and figure out how to deal with the teachers…. Never mind remembering to bring their homework, permission slip and lunch.  There’s really a lot to deal with!

There’s also an existential crisis for moms every morning.  This is the first test of the day for whether or not we are a ‘good mom’.  If we get our kids out the door on time with all their stuff, nourished with a healthy breakfast, teeth brushed, hair combed, etc…. we get to pat ourselves on the back for a job well done.

If, on the other hand, things don’t go well– if there’s screaming, crying, fighting, if the kid doesn’t have his homework, gym bag, lunch money, etc… we lose that status in our own eyes, and (we worry!) in the eyes of others.  We can’t help imagine that the teacher will think we’re a lousy mom if our kid is constantly forgetting his homework.  Or that the other moms will shun us if we’re always late for carpool.

My point is that the stakes are high for moms to ‘get it right’ in the morning.

For both moms and kids, the rush to school means that there’s a meeting of the internal world and the external world.  Whenever there is such a meeting, one is faced with the question of whether one is equipped to meet the challenges of this external world– some of which can be predicted and prepared for, and some of which can’t!

So let’s just suppose that mornings are stressful at least in part because everyone is feeling just a little anxious about whether they have what it takes to make it in the outside world.

Many of the suggestions I have for making mornings easier are all about finding as many ways as possible to reduce anxiety- for both moms and kids.  When we reduce anxiety, keeping everyone’s nervous systems out of ‘red alert’, then everything is much easier!  (See this post for more on this.)

So… what do checklists have to do with anxiety?

Checklists can provide qualities of predictability, routine, certainty, and familiarity.  These qualities can go a long way towards reducing anxiety and increasing feelings of security and safety.

Checklists can do this in a couple of different ways.  They offer us a way to navigate through time and space.  With a checklist handy, our kids know what needs to be done first, second and so on.  They can depend on themselves and not rely on you to talk/nag/drag them through each step of the process. Having a checklist means that they can relax knowing that nothing will be left out or forgotten.

With repetition, they can anticipate what happens when, and this predictability offers yet another form of security.

So now you have one piece of the ‘how’ to make mornings easier AND the ‘why’ behind it all.  More to come soon!

Now it’s your turn:  Questions?  Thoughts?  Yeahbuts?  What ifs?  Let me know in the comments!

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I love teaching so much because whenever I do it, I learn something myself.  And the Getting To School Without Losing Your Cool teleclass and private sessions I’ve been doing are no exception.

On the call a couple of weeks ago, we were discussing the challenges of getting everyone out the door and one of the moms said the hardest thing for her was the last 5 minute push to get out the door.  And another mom on the call piped in, “It’s like the birth canal!”

I’ll tell you, I haven’t been able to look at the door from our kitchen to the garage the same way since!  Best of all, her comment crystallized what I’d been thinking as I pondered what makes it so hard to get everyone out the door in the morning without all the trauma and drama.

The existential crisis of the school-age child….

The problem with most organizational ‘solutions’ is that they take too shallow a view.  Yes there are logistical challenges of getting kids out the door with all their stuff.  But that’s really only part of the story.

Because that thing about the door being like the birth canal- it’s so true.  When we’re getting our kids ready for school, we’re really preparing them to spend the day outside the sheltered space of our homes.

We want to make sure they have been nourished for their journey with a substantial breakfast, that they are prepared for the elements with jackets, hats, etc. and that they have whatever else they need to meet the day like lunchboxes, homework and gym clothes.

But there’s more to it than that.

Because for their part, our kids are spending the time between sleeping and leaving for school gradually transitioning from their ‘home selves’ to their ‘school selves.’

In other words, they’re getting their game face on.

They are preparing themselves to meet challenges we don’t really know the details of.  The kid who teases if their shoelaces come untied.  The math teacher who always calls on them just when they DON’T know the answer.  The ever-shifting sands of social status and the inevitable anxiety that comes with constantly learning new things.

This is what I mean by an existential crisis, and it’s a lot for a kid to deal with before breakfast!

At some level, we moms know this.  Which is why when we send our kids off for the day, we don’t just want their backpacks and lunchboxes to be full.  We want their internal gas tanks, their internal reservoirs of love, connection, peacefulness, confidence and competence to be full.

Because let’s face it, this is what’s really going to get them through their day.  If their internal sense of themselves is solid, they can figure out how to handle a missing library book.

This is WHY the logistics matter

As much as we might like to, we can’t avoid this existential crisis our children endure.  But how well our morning routines and systems work can make a big difference to whether our kids emerge into the public world feeling good about themselves and their ability to handle what comes at them or not.

Systems as the cure for existential angst?

Isn’t it a little much to ask a morning routine to engender feelings of love, connection, peace, confidence and competence in a kid?

Well… maybe not.

I’ll say more about how this works in another post because logistics really do matter and they deserve a more detailed post of their own.

But the basic idea is this: well designed systems (by which I mean systems that are designed to fit you, your kid, your family, etc.) can give a sense of predictability, routine and security to your mornings, helping to calm some of the anxiety generated by the existential crisis we so cavalierly describe as “getting ready for school.”

When our systems and structures help the mornings flow smoothly, our kids can walk through that birth canal we call a front door feeling as prepared and competent as possible.  You can see it when your kid feels good about herself: she holds her head high and walks confidently into the day ahead.

When our systems and structures aren’t in place, or aren’t working — when mom gets angry, when the kid forgets something and feels stupid — our kid’s tank of internal resourcefulness and resilience is drained before the day has even really started.

We’ve all seen this in our kids too.  His head is down and his shoulders are hunched even before he picks up his backpack.   Defeated before he even enters the arena, it’s hard to recover from a morning like this one.

The good news is that there are fairly simple ways to create systems that will help you and your family get off to school feeling calm, cool and connected and I’ll be sharing those soon!

In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you!

• Do you buy my ‘existential crisis’ theory?
• How does your kid get his/her ‘game face’ on?
• What makes mornings work in your household?
• What’s not working?

Thanks for sharing!

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Drowning doesn’t look like drowning.

I found this link courtesy of Patti Digh. I post it here partly as a late summer public service announcement, but also because it got me to thinking.

(I know… what else is new?!?)

The whole thing is well worth reading, but here’s the two-sentence takeaway:

Drowning is almost always a deceptively quiet event. The waving, splashing and yelling that dramatic conditioning (television) prepares us to look for is rarely present in real life.

This article struck me for a couple of reasons. The first is that it confirms that I probably really did save someone from drowning once.

Ten-year-old saves boy from drowning… film at eleven!

Well, not really.

I’m pretty sure I did prevent a drowning (or at least a near-drowning) but it wasn’t nearly as dramatic as the rescue that the author describes.

When were in elementary school, my sister and I spent several summers in day camp at the Y and every afternoon in the pool. It was a typically busy day at the pool, which was full of kids from the day camp along with everyone else who’d come to enjoy a respite from the brutal Texas heat. I was hanging out in the pool, laughing, splashing and playing with my friends.

This pool was L-shaped where the long side was basically a 25 yard lap pool with diving boards at the far end and the short side was a shallow ‘kiddie pool’ area. There was a rope separating the two parts of the pool, and a step down from the kiddie pool into the shallow end of the lap-pool.

There was a design flaw in this set-up that I noticed even as a kid.

The step and the rope were not lined up, making it possible to duck under the rope and still be on top of the step in the shallowest water. About 8 inches beyond the rope the step dropped off to the depth of the lap pool which was about 3 feet at the shallowest end. If you didn’t know it was coming, that step came as a rude surprise! And if you were short, that step could feel like a cliff.

So there I was, playing tag or marco polo in the shallow end with my friends and I looked over and saw a ‘little kid’ (which means he was maybe 4 or 5? I don’t really remember) on our side of the rope. He was just standing there and at first he looked like he was just blowing bubbles in the water which came to right his nose.  I didn’t really pay too much attention because he didn’t really look like he was in trouble. He was just standing there blowing bubbles. There were lots of kids in the pool and I was playing with my friends.

Besides, there were plenty of lifeguards all around and if there was a problem they would handle it, right?

But then I looked again and something must have seemed odd to me. Maybe I noticed that he wasn’t really moving much (which as we all know is pretty rare for kids in the pool!), or that he didn’t seem to have a grown up nearby. I can’t say exactly what made me think that something was wrong. And I don’t remember whether I said anything to him or not.

What I do remember is simply picking him up by one elbow and putting him back up on the step. I don’t recall what happened then, but he seemed to be OK, and I went back to playing with my friends.

And that was that.

After I’d done it, I realized that I might have done something important, and at the same time, completely unremarkable. This was certainly no dramatic rescue, like I’d seen on TV.

And really, what had I done?   Lifted a little kid back up onto a step.

Not exactly heroic. And it barely seemed worth mentioning to anyone.

And yet there’s something about this story that tugs at me. It seems to be a perfect example of the way that our actions can be both monumental and mundane at the very same time.  This paradox seems to be at the heart of motherhood and life in general, because I see it everywhere I turn.

Drowning doesn’t look like drowning part 2

The second thing that struck me about this article is that what the author says about drowning in water is also true about drowning metaphorically.

When someone is having a big struggle in their lives, it rarely looks like what we see on TV.

When couples fight, it rarely involves drinks tossed in the face or dramatic scenes in front of family and friends. More often it seems like we don’t necessarily know anything is going on until someone mentions that they have a new phone number because they’ve moved out.

So what does drowning look like?

It doesn’t look like flailing around. Or someone screaming “Help!”

People who are drowning look remarkably ‘normal.’ They’re upright. Their heads are above water.

Drowning in life seems to be quite similar to drowning in water.

People go quiet. They don’t show up in the usual places. They don’t seem to hang around and chat like they used to. There might be a catch in their voice when you ask how they are. Or their eyes aren’t as bright and shiny as they should be.

Could you be a hero?

Is there someone in your world that might be drowning without anyone noticing? Someone who’s gotten awfully quiet lately? Someone who looks like they’re keeping their head above, water, but just barely? Someone whose eyes are looking a little glassy?

Look closely and you might be surprised.

You might also be surprised at how easy it is to give someone who is struggling a hand. You don’t have to be a superhero or even a trained lifeguard to save the day. A simple phone call or invitation to coffee might be all it takes to lift someone back up on the step so they can breathe a little easier.

Your turn:  Got any thoughts on drowning (literally or figuratively)?  When was the last time you did something heroic (even if it didn’t seem that way)?

Please share in the comments!

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This has been a hard couple of weeks.  School is out and I still haven’t quite found my feet yet.

I was super crabby yesterday because it seemed like nothing went according to plan.  I’d start do to something, and get interrupted.  And this went on all day long.  Not a single thing on my substantial list got done, despite my best efforts.  At the end of it, I was so frustrated and fed up I couldn’t stand myself (and no one else could stand me either!).

The only consolation is that I know I’m not alone, because I’ve talked with clients and other moms who are also feeling ungrounded and at loose ends.

Why does the end of the school year and the beginning of summer throw us into such a tailspin?

I had a huge lightbulb moment a few weeks ago as I was reading Kathy Waddill’s The Organizing Sourcebook: Nine strategies for simplifying your life.

Her take on what ‘being organized’ means rocked my world- in a good way.

She says that being organized is when your systems match your life as you are currently living it.  Being disorganized results from a mismatch between your systems and your real life.

No wonder….

No wonder things are a little topsy-turvy right now.  Real life has changed rather substantially from a couple of weeks ago and the systems haven’t yet caught up.

My regular times for doing things have gotten all messed up, and so I’m spinning around trying to remember what I’m supposed to be doing and figure out when I’m going to get it done.  Some things just haven’t happened (like writing for the blog.)  Others are happening, but much more sporadically and randomly than usual.

A funny example:  Like you probably do, we have a routine in the morning that doesn’t vary too much throughout the school year.  AJ wakes up, gets dressed, eats breakfast, brushes his teeth, makes sure his backpack is ready to go, and we’re out the door.

When we don’t have school, he wakes up, maybe gets dressed, maybe not.  Gets himself breakfast and… hardly ever remembers to brush his teeth.

And honestly I can’t really give him a hard time about it, because it’s so built into the morning routine that without the regular sequence of events, I forget to remind him.

And it’s not just the daily routine that’s gotten thrown out of whack.  The milestones of the week have dropped out or changed.  Our violin lesson has been on Monday for two years, and this summer it’s been changed to Tuesday.  I’m still confused and am terrified I’m going to space out one week and miss it!

I’ve been doing the same yoga class on Friday mornings for a good long while too.  But with swim lessons in the morning for the next couple of weeks, that’s not going to happen.

So, yeah… out of whack all over the place!

My old systems aren’t matching my new reality.  And I’m not really happy about it at the moment.

In the next couple of posts, I’ll give some suggestions for how to bring things back into alignment, but for now I’d love to hear your thoughts on the transition between school-year and summertime.

What’s the hardest thing for you about this time?  What do you do that helps?

Please share in the comments!

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It’s such a cliché that kids grow up fast.

In the season of graduations and such, some of the transitions are clear and sharply defined.  These tend to be those associated with ‘official’ categories of one sort or another.  The pre-schooler heads off to kindergarten.  The 6^th grader to middle school.  And so on.

Traditional communities, including religious traditions have rituals that mark the different stages of life- moving from childhood into adolescence and then adulthood.  In our contemporary and largely secular way of life, we’ve lost some of these markers for the different phases of life.

I’m interested in this because my son turned ten in December and since then it’s been more and more apparent that he’s no longer a little kid

Some of it is physical.

All of his classmates look so much bigger and older all of a sudden.  The girls are developing and the boys are growing like weeds.  AJ is up to my shoulders now, and we’re taking bets on when he’ll be taller than me.  Right now his feet are nearly as big as mine, so I’m sure it won’t be long.

But the physical changes are only the tip of the iceberg.

Other signs that he’s no longer my ‘little boy’:

• He closes the bathroom door.

• If I want to kiss him goodbye before school, it has to be in the parking lot, NOT on the playground.

• I think he’s hearing dirty jokes from his friends.  I’m not sure if I want to know what they are or not!

• It’s hard to tell his t-shirts from mine.

He smells.  His friends smell.

One night not too long ago he had a friend sleeping over.  Finally it got quiet in his room and went to check that they were really asleep.  As I opened the door, I had to laugh because the room was filled with eau de stinky boy.  And I realized that it was going to get worse and not better for the next few years!

He’s managing parts of his life on his own

Not too long ago, he was in the shower and realized that he didn’t have a towel.  Instead of calling for help he dried off with a hand towel.

When he wanted to play a more advanced song in his violin recital, I told him he could talk to his teacher about it.  And he did.  We called the teacher up and I handed the phone to AJ.  He calmly and confidently explained to the teacher that wanted to play a different piece.  They talked for a few minutes and the teacher agreed.  He busted his butt to learn the new piece in time for the recital and surprised his teacher with how quickly he was able to get it up to performance quality.

Other people are treating him differently

For many years, the hostess would automatically bring a kid’s menu to our table.  Lately they’ve been asking if we need one.  If it’s one of those places that has a ‘big kids’ menu, sometimes he’ll order something from there, otherwise, he orders from the regular menu.

His doctor asked him if he wanted me to stay while she examined his private parts.  This time he said yes.  I imagine it may be the last year he does.  She didn’t even offer him a sticker afterwards, and I’m pretty sure he would have declined.

The latest:  when I took him to the dentist last week, and the hygienist gave him his new toothbrush- she gave him the same kind she gives me and my husband.  Not the kid kind with power rangers on the handle.  Wow.

The Fiddler on the Roof soundtrack was a favorite in our house for quite a while, so with apologies to Jerry Block and Sheldon Harnick, I made up a few new verses to one of the archetypal songs about kids growing up.

To the tune of Sunrise, Sunset

When did he turn into a big kid?

He has outgrown his jeans AGAIN!

One minute he’s my little muffin,

Now he’s TEN!

When did he get to be so smelly?

When did his language get so crude?

What will it take to teach him

Not to be so rude?

When did he get to be so hairy?

Is that a pimple on his face?

Don’t know when I became

This big dis-grace.

When did he get to be so thoughtful?

When did he learn to be so kind?

Who knew the heart that would be bursting

Would be mine?

Sunrise, sunset, sunrise, sunset

Swiftly flow the years

One season following another

Laden with happiness and tears…

How about you?  What ‘unofficial’ signs of growth and maturity have you observed in your kids?  I know this post is very boy-centric, so I’d love to hear from moms of girls what you have  noticed.

What verses would you add to my adaptation of Sunrise, Sunset?

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This is the second post in a series inspired by a conversation on crusts.  Yes, I’m talking about the things you cut off your kid’s sandwich.  Or not.

You can read the beginning of the series here.

Actually the series is about the stories we tell ourselves and it turns out that for me anyway, there were all kinds of stories tied up in the whole crust debate.

One of my stories was that I would not raise a picky eater.  Another was that that kids who won’t eat sandwich crusts are either picky eaters or on their way to becoming picky eaters.

When I stopped to ask myself why being a picky eater was such a problem, I saw more stories:

• Picky eaters make life difficult for others (because it takes extra effort to work around their dietary whims.)
• Picky eaters have a hard time when they are in environments that aren’t prepared to deal with their quirks.
• Picky eaters are fussy and demanding in other areas of their lives and make things difficult for those around them.

And then there were the stories about moms:

• Moms who cut off the crusts are overly indulgent and are enabling picky eating.
• Moms who cut off the crusts have no backbone and will get run over by their kids in all kinds of ways.
• They are setting themselves up for years of catering to someone else’s preferences and creating more work for themselves.

But one of the most surprising stories I uncovered was the idea that if my kid turned out to be a picky eater, I had failed somehow as a mother.

When I see all these stories spelled out in this way, I can see that some of them are a little absurd.  (like raising a picky eater would mean I’d failed as a mother?  Hmmm…)

But still these stories persist.

Even though AJ no longer insists on having the crusts cut off his sandwiches, I don’t consider myself out of the woods yet.  I still worry that he’s going to end up being a picky eater, and here’s why.

AJ has never liked tomatoes or onions and as much as I’d hoped he’d outgrow these aversions, it hasn’t happened yet.  These are pretty basic ingredients, and for the most part, I still cook with them.  (Because I’m not going to be that kind of mom.)

But it does kind of annoy me to see him pick them out or hear him complain about their presence.  When I dish up a bowl of soup and he’s nudging aside the tomato and asking if this little bit is onion or celery, I begin to think I’ve failed in my goal to avoid raising a picky eater.  (Triggering the ‘I’m a failure as a mom’ story.)

The Usual Error…

I love tomatoes and so find it completely baffling that anyone, especially a kid of mine, could not like them.  For a while I thought it was that he hadn’t had a really good tomato.  After all, who can be blamed for not enjoying the pale imitations of tomato that one finds in the grocery store these days?  So I kept trying.  I bought the luscious heirlooms from the farmers market.  For the last few years he’s helped to plant and water the candy-sweet cherry tomatoes in our own garden.

And still…. Not a fan.

The funny thing is that his reluctance to eat mushrooms seems perfectly normal to me.  I would never apply the label “picky” to a kid who didn’t eat mushrooms, because honestly, who could expect a kid to enjoy mushrooms?  I don’t especially enjoy mushrooms, but that doesn’t make me a picky eater, does it?

You see where I’m going with this?

We all have preferences, likes and dislikes, and to us these are ‘normal.’  Anyone who shares these preferences isn’t likely to trigger a reaction because they aren’t challenging our familiar story.

When I assume that because I enjoy tomatoes, my son will as well, I’m making what Pace and Kylie call  The Usual Error.

The Usual Error is the assumption that other people are just like you.  This is just another one of our stories- and one that we’re usually unaware of.

The possibility of choice

When I become aware of this story, my perspective shifts.  Or more precisely, when I become aware of this story, there is the possibility of shifting my perspective.

If I choose a different story, his picking around the tomatoes isn’t evidence that he’s a picky eater, but rather evidence that he has preferences that are different from mine.

As shocking as this revelation might be, it gives me much more flexibility in how I respond.

If I stick to the story that my kid is a picky eater, my attitude about accommodating him is very different that if I shift to the story that he has preferences that are different than mine.

I still have to decide whether to put the tomatoes in the soup, but all those other stories that come with ‘picky eater’ and ‘failure as a mom’ drop out of the equation.

The advantage of reframing things in this way is that it becomes much less personal and the judgments much less permanent.

It may be a fact that my son prefers not to eat tomatoes, but as we all know, preferences can change over time.  But more importantly, this story leaves his essence (and mine) out of it.  A kid’s preferences about food needn’t have any implications for his character or his ability to get along as an adult.

Nor does this preference call into question my success or failure as a mom the way that ‘raising a picky eater’ does.

Neither story is ‘right’

And neither story is wrong.

But these stories have very different consequences for my relationship with my son, and for my understanding of myself.

I can stick to my stories about picky eaters and the moms that enable them if I want to.

Or I can change my story.

What about you?  What’s your story?  Are you sticking to it?

Please share in the comments!

This post was inspired by a conversation on Amber Strocel’s blog about crusts. You know- the things you cut off your kid’s sandwiches, or the things you don’t.

So before we go much further, let me ask you a question:

What is your position on crusts?

The kids who eat them and the kids who won’t.  The moms who cut them and the moms who don’t?

Everyone I know has a position.

But here’s a more interesting question:

What’s your story about crusts?

What’s your story about kids who insist on having them cut off? What’s your story about moms who cut or don’t cut them?

Here’s Amber’s take:

my real internal struggle comes over bread crusts. Before I had kids I swore that I would never be the kind of mother who cut the crusts off sandwiches. Cutting off crusts represented drudgery and subverting my desires to someone else’s. I believed that crust-cutting would create demanding, spoiled children. My mother never cut off my crusts, and that made me the person I am today. Or something. It was a theory.

I think this resonated so strongly with me because my story about crusts, the kids who won’t eat them and the moms who cut them was so very similar.

What is so striking is that in just a few sentences, Amber captures a whole lot of story about crusts.

Cutting off crusts=   Drudgery

Subverting my desires

Creates demanding children

Creates spoiled children

(Here’s a thesis project for some graduate student in child development: is it true that children whose mothers cut the crusts off their sandwiches turn out to be picky eaters? Are they more demanding in other areas as well? Is eating crust-free sandwiches correlated with demanding, obnoxious behavior in later life? Are children whose mothers don’t cut crusts more or less likely to suffer from malnutrition in early childhood? Are they more adaptive and well-balanced? Happier, healthier and better-looking?

And for a graduate student in women’s studies: How does crust-cutting behavior correlate with a mother’s other autonomous activity? Inquiring minds want to know!)

I propose these thesis subjects as a joke- but also to point out that we have stories about the alleged meaning and consequences of this behavior, but no actual evidence.

Facts and fictions

Here’s the thing. Whenever something happens, we immediately concoct a story about it. We observe a fact, and immediately come up with some interpretation of that event. It’s just the way our brains work. And this interpretation is a story we tell. We tell ourselves stories to explain what we’re seeing, hearing, experiencing. We tell a story that puts the event in context. We must do these things to make sense of the constant stream of sensory input we receive.

And then we treat our interpretation, our explanation, our story as the Truth.

And then…. We forget that we made the whole thing up. That there might be other possible stories to explain the same data.

All further thoughts, feelings and actions proceed from this (perfectly obvious!) Truth.

Data that appears to conflict with our interpretation might go completely unobserved. If we do see something that seems to conflict with our version of the Truth, it is often written off as insignificant, irrelevant or anomalous.

But as I read the comments following Amber’s post, and composed my own reply, what struck me most was the fact that we all had our stories about crusts, the implications of kids eating/refusing to eat them, and strongly held views on what it meant to be ‘that kind of mom.’

As I wrote in my comments on Amber’s post, I caved rethought my strategy on the whole crust issue when (once again!) theory collided with real life.

I realized that when I left the crusts on, AJ would eat about 3 bites out of the middle and leave the rest of the sandwich untouched. When I cut the crusts off, he’d eat the whole thing.

The thought of wasting food was much more problematic for me than cutting the crusts, so I cut them.

For other commenters, getting their kids to eat something was more important than standing firm on the crust issue.

The point isn’t about who’s right and who’s wrong here. The point is that virtually no one was neutral on the issue. We all had our stories. And these stories have legs. They have ramifications for our thoughts, our emotions and our actions.

My story about crusts

The crust issue hit home with me because I always swore that I’d never raise a picky eater. When I stopped to ask myself why, here’s what I saw unfold in my thoughts, my emotions and my actions.

Our stories inform our thoughts

If I cut off the crusts, AJ will be a picky eater for the rest of his life. I’ll have to cook separate meals for the next 18 years. I’ll never get to cook what I want or the way I want. Picky eaters make life more difficult for themselves and for others. And so on…

Our stories impact our emotions

I resent being pushed around by a pint-sized gourmet. I’m irritated by having to expend extra effort to cut off the crusts. I’m resigned to the fact that if I don’t cut them, he won’t eat much of the sandwich. And I’m feeling like a failure because I always said I’d never be ‘that kind of mom’ or raise ‘that kind of kid.’

These thoughts and emotions combine to influence our actions

If my story is that I’m being pushed around by a tiny tyrant, I’m likely to put up a fight, and refuse to comply. Another story says that wasting food, or not having the kid eat is more important than the crusts. If this story is the one I tell, I’d rather cut the crusts than throw away half a sandwich every day, so I’ll cut them. If my story is that I get irritated by cutting the crusts, I might decide to teach him to cut them off himself. If I’m feeling like a failure, because my son won’t eat the crusts despite my best efforts, perhaps I’ll give in on this one, but not one inch on some other issue ‘that kind of mom’ would cave on.  And of course there are many more possibilities…

Again, it’s not about the ‘right answer’ to the crust dilemma- this is an invitation to observe our own story, and the impact that it has on the way we interpret and act on the situations that we face.

As usual I have more to say on this issue- so stay tuned….

Meantime- what’s your story? About crusts or anything else! Please share in the comments!