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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Well as evidenced by the space between posts these days, my summer is at least as disorganized as yours!  Maybe even more!

This post started as a reply to the comments in the previous post, but took on a life of its own.  So here goes.

The big bullet point for today:  Summer.  Is.  Different.

I know.  Sounds obvious, right?  But if you carry the same expectations of yourself and your kids that you had in the spring into the summer, you’re setting yourself up for a lot of frustration and disappointment.

Acceptance is the first step…

I stole this line from a friend who stole it from AA.  But the funny thing is that acceptance doesn’t necessarily mean what you think it means.

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one”

Albert Einstein

Now I’m a philosopher so you don’t really want to get me started on the nature of reality!  (or if there is any such thing!)  But it is pretty clear to me that a lot of us make our lives more difficult than necessary when we fail to see and react to what the world is actually giving us, instead of what we wish or think the world ought to be giving us.

Only when we acknowledge what’s really happening do we have any chance of responding effectively.  This is especially the case when we don’t like what’s happening or things aren’t going as we hoped or planned for them to go.

So it makes a lot of sense to notice what’s actually going on in your world instead of what you think ‘should’ be going on.

Maybe you think your kids ‘should’ be able to play by themselves without interrupting you for longer than 10 minutes.  Or maybe you think they ‘should’ get their chores done or do their summer reading without being nagged reminded.

Maybe you think you ‘should’ be able to get the house cleaned and dinner made, or that you ‘should’ be able to get that project taken care of (cleaning out the basement?  Finishing your 8 year old’s baby book?)

Clarify your own expectations

The first thing to do is to take a few minutes and think about what your expectations are for yourself, your kids, your husband, etc.  If you think you don’t have any- notice the times throughout the day when you feel annoyed, frustrated or irritated.  Chances are, there’s some expectation you have that’s not being met.

Don’t beat yourself (or anyone else)up over it, just notice it.

That’s about enough for today- next time, I’ll have some suggestions for what to do once you’ve noticed what expectations you’re carrying around.

Until then, please chime in… what expectations do you have (that are perhaps being frustrated this summer?)

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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Lace Scarf

She Had a Rich Creative Life

I began this series a while back and got sidetracked but now I’m picking up the thread again.

In the first two parts of the series we took a look at why productivity is so much more satisfying than maintenance, using Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s definitions and understanding of ‘flow.’

In the previous posts, I suggested that part of the reason Ma was happier was because she spent more of her time on production and less on maintenance than today’s moms.  Here I’d like to suggest that Ma Ingalls was happier than you because she had a pretty hefty dose of creativity and artistic expression ‘baked in’ to her life.

I’ll just start out by saying that I think that creativity is something we’re all born with and that we all have an innate desire to express.  I’m not necessarily talking about the need or desire to express some esoteric truth by creating some magnificent work of art of sublime and ineffable beauty.  It’s really much more basic than that.  The creative impulse I’m talking about is whatever it is that propels human beings to make stuff.

And Ma spent lots of time making stuff.

She helped build the houses that her family lived in.  She grew the food that she then prepared or preserved to feed them.  She made nearly every article of clothing that they wore.  She made curtains for the windows and the quilts for the beds.  Heck, they even made the beds and the mattresses!

This was all part of the ‘productive’ work that Ma did to make sure her family had the basic necessities of life: food, clothing and shelter.

It was hard work, no doubt, but I have to think (and the books certainly lead us to believe) that when she finished sewing a dress for Laura or Mary, she was pleased and satisfied that her efforts had resulted in something both beautiful and functional.

Anyone who’s ever knitted a scarf, finished a quilt, made a painting, thrown a pot, or baked a loaf of bread from scratch knows this feeling.  It feels really good!  Making stuff is not only fun it is deeply satisfying.

Csikszentmihalyi’s theory of flow can shed a bit of light on why creative activities are so satisfying.  For one, they usually engage us physically, mentally and emotionally.  Often creative endeavors involve learning new skills or solving new problems- hitting that sweet spot where ability meets challenge.  And I have to think that creating something functional and or beautiful just is intrinsically satisfying.

Ma had ample opportunities throughout the day, week and year for many different kind of creative endeavors.  She planted her garden in the spring, made jams and preserves in the late summer.  She bought fabric and made new clothes for the girls in the fall and knit socks by the fire in the winter.

This was just part of Ma’s work.  A sanctioned and expected part of her routine.

And yet in our current situation, the need for moms to make stuff is virtually nil.  Having the basic necessities of life available for purchase means that we don’t have to make things.

The efficiency of mass production means that it’s nearly always cheaper and easier to buy something than to make it ourselves.

On one hand, this is great.  As I mentioned in the previous post, I can’t imagine having to knit all my son’s socks.  At the rate he outgrows/loses/puts holes in them, I could never keep up.   Bring on the bag-o-tube-sox!  But I think there has been a cost that we haven’t really noticed.

Trading ease for satisfaction

These days, creative pursuits such as knitting or sewing one’s own clothes, or even baking a loaf of bread can easily be seen as a luxury.  Something optional, expendable and perhaps even self-indulgent.

Because these activities are no longer necessary, they’ve been relegated to the status of ‘hobbies’ or recreation.

In other words, something to be done after our ‘real work’ is done.

As a result, moms often have to carve out and defend a space for their creative pursuits.  And let’s face it, with all the maintenance work that never ends, carving out this time and space isn’t easy.

How can I justify sitting on the sofa knitting a scarf when there is a whole pile of laundry waiting to be folded and put away?

Even when women choose and are able devote a fair bit of time to crafts of any sort, these aren’t integral to the continued good functioning of her family.

It’s the frosting on the cake, not part of the cake itself as was the case for Ma.

My point is that we have lost easy access to a rich source of potential satisfaction that comes from creative pursuits of all kinds.

The fun of playing with colors, textures, tastes and techniques.  The challenge of trying something new: a new recipe, pattern or tool.  The sense of accomplishment that comes when you can hold it up and say, “Look what I made!”  The connection that comes from sharing our creations with others.

It’s not that women (and men) don’t still make stuff.  Of course they do.  But instead of being integrated into the regular routines, it happens on the margins.  Instead of being respected and honored as necessary contributions to the family’s welfare, the creative efforts of modern moms are seen as something she does primarily for herself.

Let me be perfectly clear that I’m not advocating a return to the pioneer days.    I really don’t want to have to make my own clothes or grow every vegetable I want to eat.  And I definitely recognize the stress that some moms feel when they don’t make every meal from scratch, or sew their kid’s Halloween costumes.  I have no interest whatsoever in adding to the collective mommy guilt out there!

But I see the effects on moms everywhere of not having enough creative mojo in their lives.  Feeling guilty for taking a trip through the yarn store- well that’s no good either!

Fortunately, the remedy for this is fairly simple:  just make something.   Make a pot of jam, a simple sundress, a scrapbook for your family.  Paint an old night-stand for your kid, or knit a scarf.

What have you made lately?  How did it make you feel?  Please share in the comments!

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I’m still riffing on the ideas that came to me while reading Amber Strocel’s post on crusts.

Part one of the series is here.

Part two is here.

As I mentioned, I declared early on that my kid would not become a picky eater.  He’s outgrown his crust aversion and I have managed to re-frame his dislike of tomatoes and onions as perfectly reasonable preferences (which just happen to differ from my own).

However…  just the other night we were eating dinner and my ‘picky eater’ button got pushed again.  I’d picked up some lovely asparagus (one of my favorite signs of spring!) and my husband had grilled it.  AJ ate the top inch or so that was it.  He also does this with broccoli.  Eats the flowers and leaves the denuded stalk behind.

Before I started writing this series, this would make me nuts.  Why doesn’t he just eat the whole darn thing?  I admit when I was a kid, I preferred the stalks to the flowers of broccoli, but I ate it all.  And is there really that much variation in taste from the top to the bottom of a stalk of asparagus?  Seriously!

Surely such behavior was another warning signal of ‘picky eater syndrome.’

Putting this out into the blogosphere, I’m hoping that there’s at least one mom out there that can relate to my… umm… concern.

But I realize that there are likely to be far more moms who will wonder if I’ve lost my very last marble.

I imagine them saying,  “The kid eats broccoli and asparagus and she’s worried that he’s a picky eater?  You have got to be kidding me!”

Standards and stories

My story was that eating only the tips of the veggies was an indication that picky eating was afoot.

Remember how it goes: we observe a situation and in the next instant, create a story.

I hadn’t even realized I had such a story until I started to articulate it.  And in the act of articulating it, I got enough distance to see that even if my story was one possible story, it certainly wasn’t the only story that would make sense of the observable data .

Here’s the thing.  All those ideas we have about what we ‘expect,’ what is ‘normal,’ what’s  acceptable and unacceptable, appropriate and inappropriate… they are all stories.

The interesting thing about our standards is that they are stories that directly affect how satisfied we are with the situation at any given moment.

Whenever you’re unhappy about a situation, you can bet that there’s some standard you’re holding that isn’t being met.

Some notion of what’s ‘right’ or ‘wrong.’  Some story about what ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t’ be happening.

I have more to say on the subject of standards and stories, but for now here’s an invitation:  the next time you find yourself feeling disgruntled, unhappy, angry, or sad, ask yourself, “What’s my story?  What standards, expectations or ‘shoulds’ are at play here?”  What possibilities open up as you ask this question?

I’d love to hear your stories!  So please share in the comments!

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Wow.  It’s been a little while since I’ve posted here.  I wish I could tell you exactly what was up, but I can’t.  I seem to have gotten a little stuck.  And then like a car spinning its wheels in the mud, trying so hard to get unstuck, I got even more stuck.

So here’s what I think happened. Maybe you can relate.

There was a bunch of stuff happening all in one week way back in April.  A workshop.  Some heavy duty dental work.  Then my mom came to town for several days.

So I missed my self-imposed blog date.

And then I was picking up the pieces of the crazy week, so I missed another blog date.

By then I was feeling so crummy about the whole thing, that just seeing ‘write blog post’ on my list made me want to hide under the covers.  And of course there’s always lots of other stuff to keep me busy- though at this moment I can’t tell you exactly what it was.  But it seemed plenty important at the time.

And ‘write blog post’ was still on my list.

I had a love-hate relationship with my laptop for a while there.

I’d read other people’s blogs but not want to comment because my last post was over a week ago two weeks ago and how lame is that?

For a few days I didn’t even want to see my inbox or God-forbid my Google reader because there were all these other people who were not having the same problem and were still writing.  Daily even.

The monsters in my head were definitely getting loud then.

There was the: Look- all-those-other-people-are-doing-it-what’s-wrong-with-you-you-don’t-have-to-be-Shakespere-just-write-something-already-monster.

Tag-teaming with the: All-those-other-people-have-said-every-interesting-relevant-or-entertaining-thing-there-is-to-say-so-there’s-really-no-point-in-you-posting-anything- monster.

Between the two of them, all the words I have (and usually I have plenty!) were stuck.

Fortunately about that time, the Monster Coloring Book showed up.

I wish I could tell you I had some brilliant epiphanies about why I was stuck and had a fabulous conversation with the monsters that magically erased all the stuck about writing and getting something posted.

That’s not exactly what happened because these monsters weren’t really up for much conversation.  I did my best to ask if they had anything they wanted to say and got a lot of hrmmph-ing in return.

It was a lot like those fights where one person says to the other, “Well if you don’t know what you did wrong, I’m certainly not going to tell you.”

Not so helpful.

Fortunately there’s a chapter on how to deal with the silent monster.

We left things with me saying to them, “If you ever do feel like talking to me in a way that I can hear you, I’d be willing to listen.”

“Hrmmph”  was the reply.

But something did soften just a bit, because I was at least able to go back to a post I’d begun and take a look at it.  It wasn’t as horrific as I’d remembered, so I figured that was progress.

But that was still a while ago.  I like to think that if last week hadn’t been deadline week for my newspaper gig, I’d have gotten a post up last week.  But it was and I didn’t.   I did at least have the good sense to take ‘write blog post’ off the list of things to do for a week.

But here it is Monday- a new week and a fresh start.

“Write blog post” is back on the list.  And now it’s checked off!

At some point, I’ll go back and check in with those monsters and see if they have anything useful to say.

In the meantime how about you?

Got anything on your list of ‘things to do’ that’s making you feel crummy?  What would happen if you took it off, even temporarily?

What monsters are keeping you stuck right now?

Please share in the comments!

You’d think that a mommy blogger and coach for moms would have something profound to say on Mother’s Day.

But I don’t.

What I do have is an enormous sense of awe and respect for all the women I have met along the path of motherhood.  We’ve made hard choices.  We’ve endured difficult situations.  We’ve celebrated each other’s successes and shared each other’s fears.   We’ve laughed until we cried (or peed!).

I am so grateful to have women like you on this journey with me.   Smart, funny, and honest.  On our best days, we are brilliant.  On our less than stellar days, we hang in there and try again.

I’ve always thought that the slogan, ‘the toughest job you’ll ever love’ applied to motherhood at least as well as to the Army.

So on this Mother’s Day, let me just say, thank you for doing this tough job.  And thank you for doing it with such love.

I feel so privileged to have you in my circle of moms.

*smacks forehead*

Boy did I goof!

I’ve been having so much fun putting together the workshop for tomorrow  and class materials for the session that starts on Wednesday that I neglected to post anything about this stuff on the blog.  I got the word out to my newsletter folks, but somehow forgot that there are lots of people who read the blog who aren’t on my newsletter list.

(BTW if this is you, you might want to do something about that!  That’s where I give out the discount codes so folks can save a few bucks!)

So here’s the deal:  Tuesday, April 20 (That’s tomorrow for most of you!)  I’m doing a two hour workshop in Longmont, Colorado for moms who hate to plan, but still need to get things done fercryingoutloud!

I’m going to share with you the reasons why planning is so dang hard, tell you why it’s not your fault things don’t go as planned.  We’re going to talk about how to make plans that work in the real world.  I’m talking about the world where kids get sick, cars break down and all kinds of stuff happens that you didn’t plan for.

Sound like fun?
You can check out all the details here.

And if for some reason being in Colorado tomorrow isn’t possible, don’t worry.  I’ll be announcing a teleclass version of this workshop soon!

The class is called the Busy Mom’s Guide to Time Management- but it’s really so much more than that.   You can read a little about it here, but it’s really a fabulous group experience that you kind of have to experience to really get.

There are still a couple of spots available in that class, so if you’re interested, let me know ASAP!

OK that’s it for me today- gotta run and put the finishing touches on my workshop!

How about you?  Got any forehead smackers to share this week?  Let us know in the comments!

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!