Principles

When you were a kid did your mom ever tell you, "We all have to do things we don't like, so quite whining and get started?" In your heart did you think, "That is not true! Grownups never have to do things they don't want to do because they're the boss." Turns out she was right. Sometimes it's not just that I have to do want I don't want to do, it's not even something I believe in.

Pat and I are frustrated with the behaviors in our class this year. When she went home with a pounding stress headache a few weeks ago, we decided to have a Saturday meeting and hammer out the details of a plan we'd been thinking about for awhile. As I was explaining the new "Eastos" class money system to my family at dinner, Russ said, "So you're going to pay them to do what they're supposed to do anyway?" Yes. Yes, I am. Sometimes principles are just too heavy to bear in real life.

Or maybe it's that principles are sometimes formed in a vacuum of inexperience and then crumble in real life. When my friend Jeff's first child was born, my third child had just turned one. He and the baby were at our house one afternoon when I was hunting all over the house for my child's sippy cup of milk. If you've ever found a long lost sippy cup of milk you'll know why I was making a serious effort to toss the house until the cup appeared. Jeff just watched and I could tell by the look on his face that he felt there was a simple solution to my dilemma: Don't let them walk around with the sippy cup!

"I know what you're thinking," I said, "And it's a great idea. I thought the same thing once. After finding many a gross cup from the first two kids, I thought, 'With kid number three I'm going to have a new rule!' Uh-uh. The rule lasted about a week after she started crawling. Keeping sippy cups in the kitchen was just too hard to enforce. You'll see." Jeff nodded his assent, but I knew he didn't believe me.

We talked about it again years later and he laughed because of course he'd found many disgusting exhibits of old food in his own house/car since our conversation.

Right now I'm looking ahead to what I think my rules and expectations will be for my teenagers. I think about cell phone use, computer use and texting, being out on their own with friends, boyfriends/girlfriends and being held accountable for their choices. I watch other people and see what they do and how it's working, I try to play out different options in my mind, I talk ideas over with Russ and the kids. What I don't think is that I can really get it all figured out now. You don't really know how you're going to handle stuff until you're living it.

My Year With My Sixth Grader, Part I

Remember when I was trying to think of one of those One Year of books that I could write? I finally found one. I told JD tonight that I wished I'd known how much time we were going to spend together this year because I would have been taking notes for a book. He said, "Don't worry, you're going to spend just as much time with me next year because I'll still have to get up at 6:00 in the morning."

Truthfully, having a sixth grader has been almost as life changing as the birth of that same child nearly 12 years ago. Only, you don't see this one coming. With a baby you have nine months to try and wrap your head around the idea that you're going to have sleepless nights, no privacy, and dinners free from adult conversation. By the time the baby is actually ready to be born, you're so uncomfortable that you're willing to endure what ever challenges parenting might bring just to get that thing out of you.

With a sixth grader, (or whatever grade it happens for your child. That's the other reason you don't see it coming; it happens at different ages for different kids.) you just "wake up" one day in October or November and look around at the landscape of your life and realize that it's completely unfamiliar. First of all there's a completely new routine that you did not set. The parenting starts earlier and ends later. JD and I leave for his bus stop at 6:30 in the morning. If I'm going to school we drive and I wait with him. If I'm not, we walk and I still wait with him, except now I'm freezing. JD is chatty at 6:30 in the morning; me, not so much. In the evening, instead of settling in for some adult time with Russ at 8:30, I'm proofreading research papers or book reports and checking the progress (only the progress, I assure you) of algebra and geometry assignments. Sometimes instead of kissing him goodnight in his bed, he's kissing me good nigh in my bed because I just can't stay up anymore.

It's not that it's all bad. It's just that it's all different. Although the fact that I'm dumber than I was a year ago is irritating. Over Christmas break JD had to do an entire research project on atomic structure. The research was going to be presented as a demonstration for the class; it also included a written component, but that written piece was NOT going to be read as part of the demonstration. I told JD that he needed some kind of written plan that helped him organized what he wanted to say so that he wouldn't forget anything and so that the flow would be logical. A huge fight ensued because, well I don't know why exactly, but I ended up having a not so mature fit and saying something like, "Fine, if I'm so dumb I guess there's nothing I can do to help you. You're on your own." I know, impressive, right?

Anyway, later we were stringing popcorn and cranberries with the girls. It was quiet and a little tense. The girls aren't crazy about all the fighting between JD and me. After awhile JD says, "Wow mom, you're really good at this! How did you get to be so good at stringing popcorn and cranberries." Right. I definitely didn't feel like my credentials as a public speaker were back in place, but I did at least feel like my son wanted me to know that he loves me, no matter how intelligent I may or may not be.